Strange gifts: Eight stories of science fiction

"Published in 1979 this is a collection of stories written mostly in the ‘50s, with one in 1948 and one in 1961. These are the types of stories I cut my teeth on…science is mentioned in passing, but the people & situations are the primary interest. The aims of such stories were to challenge the reader to place ourselves in the story and see if WE could solve the predicaments posed.

How to handle the danger posed by a man who can’t think, but can predict—and react to—what will happen in the next few seconds? How would you handle knowing, intimately, everyone on Earth? What if you were so lucky that everything worked out in your favor? What would it be like to have—not just synesthesia, but an actual switching of sensory show more inputs? How would you handle being a couple of thousand years old, and still not physically mature? What if you had the power to access the original world from which fairy tales derived? And what if you suddenly discovered that you REALLY were an alien, raised by humans?

And what if these stories were early tales written by some of the best? Alfred Bester, Philip K. Dick, Gordon Dickson, R.A. Lafferty, Frank Belknap Long, Robert Silverberg, et al.?

These aren’t complex tales and don’t stand overmuch analysis. Just read them and muse to yourself…and enjoy." show less