F/SF

"Reasons," by Isaac Asimov, 12 pg. (1941): 8
- I've learned to more quickly dismiss the quirks of Golden Age sf from my perturbation engines, and a good thing for "Reason", because Asimov traffics in them up and down. One particular to this story: the hot-headed jerk character, who cannot speak a sentence without including some spastic insult ("Now watch out you metal ignoramus!"). Getting beyond this, though, there's -- and, truly, against my better impulses -- a nice metaphorical turn here in the story.

"Desertion," by Clifford Simak, 14 pg. (1944): 9
- The rare GA story whose writing amplifies a rather cut-and-dry story, rather than the other way around (although, I should keep in mind the era, and the novelty of the bio-tampering for alien environments possibility here).

"Mimsy Were the Borogoves," by Lewis Padgett, 32 pg. (1943): 8.25
- Too cute by half, or whatever the 40s equivalent is, to answer the question no one was asking: i.e. what was up with Jabberwocky? Some nice, early Golden Age, smoothly jocular, wink-winky opening lines however (those being, "I'm not gonna describe 1,000,000 AD, cause it's no use").

"The Million-Year Picnic," by Ray Bradbury (1946): 8
- A story built around a punchline, as much early sf. And that's not necessarily a bad thing.

A drippy little meditation on loss, redemption, and loneliness -- shot through with a maudlin overcurrent potentially off-putting if it wasn't so well-matched to the beats themselves. One of the rare GA sf stories in which the writing outpaces the story [see the steady infusion of bits of information bespeaking the varying degrees of crazy our protagonists are going].

Ok, I skipped most of the notes, and some of the stories. But honestly, I have about three yards of SF anthologies to read and I already have gray hair - I'm not about to become a scholar, or even a connoisseur, now. I like a provocative yarn, and there are plenty of them in here. And if I'm in a used book store and see other volumes in this series I will add them to that shelf.

This would be a great book to keep, especially if you're new to SF, as reference (lots of oft-mentioned stories are here for handy reading) and as a sampler (check if you like this story by that author before heading out to collect his oeuvre).

Btw, I've been working on this, in v. odd moments, for a long time. I couldn't begin to actually remember details of each story. ( )

As with all anthologies, the general level of writing is average to high (even though these are "the most important" that does not translate into "things I think are really good"). The introductions to each story give a good over-view of the genre and the writers, as well as the publishers and magazines.
Useful for students of science fiction, but most of the stories would now be considered cliché (having been the first to do things that are now common-place among their successors).
Although I was familiar with all the authors by name and most by reading, I had somehow missed many of these particular works, having come into the field with access only to library collections and not the magazines (until much later in the 1970s).
PS Tom Godwin of "Cold Equations" =/= Mike Godwin of "Godwin's Rule of Nazi Analogies".
CAUTION: One at least of the stories is not suitable for children but I don't remember which one.

Contents: All You Zombies-- (Heinlein); Reason (Asimov); Desertion (Simak); Mimsy Were the Borogoves (Padgett = Kuttner & Moore); The Million-Year Picnic (Bradbury); Thunder and Roses (Sturgeon); That Only a Mother (Merril); Brooklen Project (Tenn = Klass); Coming Attraction (Leiber); The Sentinel (Clarke); Sail On! Sail On! (Farmer); Critical Factor (Clement); Fondly Fahrenheit (Bester); The Cold Equations (Godwin); The Game of Rat and Dragon (Cordwainer Smith); Pilgrimage to Earth (Sheckley); Who Can Replace a Man? (Aldiss); Harrison Bergeron (Vonnegut); The Streets of Ashkelon (Harrison); The Terminal Beach (Ballard); Dolphin's Way (Dickson); Slow Tuesday Night (Lafferty); Day Million (Pohl); We Can Remember It for You Wholesale (Dick); I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream (Ellison); Aye, and Gomorrah (Delany); The Jigsaw Man (Niven); Kyrie (Poul Anderson); Masks (Knight); from "Stand on Zanzibar" (Brunner); The Big Flash (Spinrad); Sundance (Silverberg); from "The Left Hand of Darkness" (LeGuin); When It Changed (Russ); The Engine at Heartspring's Center (Zelazny); Tricentennial (Haldeman). ( )

It is fascinating to experience and learn the history of Science Fiction and how it got to where it is . In this book James Gunn does a fantastic job of Tracing Science Fiction from the Golden Age in the '40's to present day. I did not like all of the stories, but I didn't expect to, everyone has different tastes, but I did like most of them and I recognize the place each story has in the Pantheonic History of the coolest genre. ( )