4/5/22

Not one of Horace's best collections, although it does contain some gems. Not everything ages well, sadly. ( )

A very uneven collection, the household names notwithstanding.
The Clifford D. Simak piece The World That Couldn't Be is an old-fashioned 'hunting the alien' story, not very exceptional, except for its truly mind-twisting conclusion, and therefore not bad.
Alan E. Nourse's hard SF Brightside Crossing about an impossible trek on Mercury's surface is robustly written, but fails to excite with even a remotely original idea.
F.L. Wallace's poking fun at Terran burocracy, Mezzerow Loves Company is only mildly funny. Almost.
Damon Knight's An Eye For A What demonstrates the inability of humans to truly fathom alien mores and uses a tone a touch too light for such a grave subject.
People reconsidering the role of the female in society will not be amused by Mark Clifton's A Woman's Place, neither was I.
L. Sprague de Camp's A Gun For Dinosaur is yet another hunting story that drags on too long.
Richard Matheson tries in One For The Books to makes us believe that an alien has been occupying the mind of an average citizen to collect all possible information on earth by making him omni-absorbent, not very convincingly.
Luckily Edgar Pangborn succeeds in The Music Master Of Babylon at least in creating an eerie atmosphere to go with a credible story of a new version of Homo Sapiens that takes over after the catastrophe. A point in favour for this anthology.
Finally there's the somewhat funny Once A Greech by Evelyn E. Smith, with over-the-top religious fads conquering a whole space-crew after inadvertently 'stealing' an alien from a newly discovered planet. Mildly amusing.
All in all not the anthology you would serve to people wishing to get acquainted with the genre. ( )

If you are looking for memorable sci-fi or fantasy, it's not here. there some good pieces by Simak and Matheson (the latter used as a twilight zone episode -- titled One for the Books), but nothing startling. The first and last nouvella are good bookends. In "Onch a Greech," we are given a new version of evolution, and when put side by side of a human in the womb, it holds true. While within momma, we go through the stages of having gills, and the embryo at times resembles a dog, pig, et cetera more than an human. ( )