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sjstuart's review
4.0
An early 60s compilation of seven sci-fi stories, by mostly well known and award-winning authors.
The book is a product of its cold war era: more than half of the stories can be read as projections of imperialist societies into interstellar space, or extrapolations of warfare and weaponry beyond the atomic age. The writing mostly the earnest, straitlaced prose of the classic sci-fi era, but with at least a little looser, more experimental writing beginning to creep in.
All of the stories are fairly strong. Most had a twist of some sort, although some were relatively easy to predict. My favorite was [a:Sam Merwin, Jr.|126826|Sam Merwin Jr.|http://www.goodreads.com/assets/nophoto/nophoto-M-50x66-e07624dc012f2cce49c7d9aa6500c6c0.jpg]'s "The Final Figure", a short but well paced story about a hobbyist model maker with an uncanny ability to intuitively predict the direction in which military technology will evolve in the near future.
The book is a product of its cold war era: more than half of the stories can be read as projections of imperialist societies into interstellar space, or extrapolations of warfare and weaponry beyond the atomic age. The writing mostly the earnest, straitlaced prose of the classic sci-fi era, but with at least a little looser, more experimental writing beginning to creep in.
All of the stories are fairly strong. Most had a twist of some sort, although some were relatively easy to predict. My favorite was [a:Sam Merwin, Jr.|126826|Sam Merwin Jr.|http://www.goodreads.com/assets/nophoto/nophoto-M-50x66-e07624dc012f2cce49c7d9aa6500c6c0.jpg]'s "The Final Figure", a short but well paced story about a hobbyist model maker with an uncanny ability to intuitively predict the direction in which military technology will evolve in the near future.
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