Review
A collection of oldies which Aldiss obviously finds golden, but which may persuade the irreverent that no matter how lousy some sf is now, more of it used to be worse. Most of these selections (short stories with some excerpts from longer works) are from the '40's and '50's, and Aldiss provides good background essays - sometimes a lot better than what he's writing about. The purple prose of A.E. van Vogt and Leigh Brackett is dusted off, the sinister mind behind the universe awakens in Daniel Galouye's "Tonight the Sky Will Fall," and the high and lonely destiny of a prosthetized space pilot is explored by Thomas N. Scortia. On the plus side, there are Fine contributions by Ray Bradbury and Philip K. Dick, a couple of ingenious tongue-in-cheek computer stories by Jeff Sutton and Isaac Asimov, and an inspired parody of the intergalactic-Armageddon genre by Robert Sheckley. (Kirkus Reviews)
