Going back to the far past can be a scary proposition. Going back to the far past when reading a literature that looks to the future can be even worse. My excursions into the past have met with mixed results. No doubt, if you fall back on something safe (say, great authors like Bradbury, Clarke, Asimov, etc.) then you will see great things and, usually, bring back great memories. However, the minute you explore old, uncharted territory, then all bets may well be off.

As much as I may fear them, I am a sucker for old collections of science fiction. I stumbled across this book at a library sale. And what drew my attention was the fact that it was a "Best of" from one of the better magazines (one of the few that has managed to survive into today) and included authors such as Alfred Bester, Manly Wade Wellman, and Philip Jose Farmer. Now, just because they are giants in the industry, that doesn't guarantee success. But a cheap price, a firm pedigree, and a solid roundup of players was enough to draw me in.

The immediate concern with a book like this is how well time has treated the stories. This book was published in 1954 (it is older than I am) and some of the stories are far older. (At least one is from 1947.) To give you a feel of just how different a time this was, here's a quote from the editors' introduction. "With...annual book production running somewhere between 50 and 75 volumes..." Yes, there was a time when you could read every science fiction book published. And one more example from the blurb on the back cover: "Life Magazine says there are more than two million science fiction fans in this country." Forget how dated the reference to Life Magazine makes the quote, nowadays you don't even have a best seller if two million people buy your science fiction novel.

So, how did the book fare against all these obstacles? Well, sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't. (Not a surprise. However, as already noted, it would be expected that age might push that pendulum to the "not work" side of things.) The writing styles and the plot lines occasionally evidence being written in the '50s. And the issue of being a part of the times in which they are written is also evidenced by the protagonists of the stories. For example, as would be expected for the mid-fifties, the role of men and women falls into a very predictable pattern. Even one piece written by a female author cannot seem to keep from falling into a certain non-feminist wish fulfillment at the end. (This is in spite of the introduction which tells us "So here is a fantasy into which women can gleefully escape...")

However, there are more decent stories in this collection than disappointments. (And the disappointments – except in one case – are not really that bad.)

There are good and entertaining stories here. And true to the way Fantasy and Science Fiction has always been published, there is an eclectic mix of hard SF, fantasy, and a lot of strange stuff in between. And while these may not have been their best efforts, Bester, Wellman, and Farmer do not disappoint.

I know you are not going to be searching out for this book. Rather this review is intended to be a reminder. Keep up on current science fiction (something I don't do as well as I should) but don't forget the past. There is some really good stuff out there. And, if you stumble across a tattered collection or novel that was put out before you were born, it might be worth your while to save it from extinction and take a read at it.

(An addendum: F&SF has always been a publisher of poetry. This collection continues the tradition. There are no introductions to the poems, and they are not included in the table of contents. However, they are buried throughout the book. I'm not going to say they are great. However, it was just nice to see the nod to an often overlooked aspect of science fiction writing.) ( )

The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction has been published regularly since 1949 (currently coming out in a double issue every other month), and from time to time paperbacks have been published containing the best stories from that magazine; The Best From Fantasy and Science Fiction, Third Series, edited by Anthony Boucher and J. Francis McComas, is, as the title suggests, the third such volume, published in 1953. I expected to find a lot of gender and race stereotypes in stories from that era, and although there is some (for example, most of the women are housewives only - and only a few stories even have female characters; race is generally not mentioned except in terms of the extra-terrestrial variety), these stories are generally surprisingly free of such biases. There are some very well-known stories included here, such as Boucher's own "Snulbug," about a very small demon; Manly Wade Wellman's "Vandy Vandy," which reads like an Appalachian folktale with a supernatural twist; and Alfred Bester's marvelous "Star Light, Star Bright," in which children are not what they seem. There are also many authors who are more or less forgotten now, but who contribute some amazing stories of their own; the best of these, to my mind, are William Lindsay Gresham's "The Star Gypsies," a post-apocalyptic tale in which the Roma are now seen as wise teachers while the village folks are caught up in the cult of "civilization-as-we-know-it"; "New Ritual" by Idris Seabright, which is a rare example of a misused housewife getting her way at last; and Ann Warren Griffith's "Captive Audience," in which corporations, particularly advertising corporations, rule the country... not too far off from what is true now! Clearly these are all worth treasuring, although I'm not sure that this particular volume would be easy to find nearly 60 years after its publication; but the stories themselves might be available and I would highly recommend searching them out! ( )