When I picked up this book, I expected the common fantasy genre with vampires, cute and cuddly aliens, hobbits and elves. But in The Vintage anthology of science fantasy, a collection of short stories written in the late 50s and early 60s, this was not the case. In this period, “space opera” and technology were replaced by stories on sociological issues and relationships among men. Editor Christopher Cerf explains that Sputnik and the race to the moon was a reality in this time period and much more exciting to readers than fictional trips to the next galaxy. Twenty stories which follow this trend are presented. I was familiar with many of the authors such as Simak, Roald Dahl, Bradbury, Walter Miller Jr., et al. and was introduced to Gironella, Kawalec, Brust and Seabright. All the stories were well written, interesting and entertaining.

Clifford Simak’s Shadow show takes a remote location, a special research project and the mental health of the scientists along with the play, a nightly ritual. Time is an exceptionally interesting topic, especially when J.G. Ballard uses it in Chronopolis. Time can also be an enemy as Alfred Bester knows in The man who murdered Mohammed. Random quest, probably my favorite story, is about an elderly doctor and the young man who comes to him with questions; John Wyndham takes what would be a trite story and makes it into a classic. Then there is Arthur C. Clarke’s Patent pending and Roald Dahl’s The great automatic grammatisator. I want my very own grammatisator (laptop model should be available now), especially when writing LT reviews. Eerie is the only word for José Maria Gironella’s The death of the sea. Equally disturbing is Avram Davidson’s Or all the seas with oysters, the portrait of a bicycle shop owner with his own agenda. Popular mathematics writer Martin Gardner contributes No-sided professor and topology will never be the same. We read A canticle for Leibowitz, the short story that Miller later expanded into his wonderful novel. In addition to the book of the month club, there is one for eggs in Idris Seabright’s An egg a month from all over. And there are more great stories.

In reading this book, it was very evident that the technology was from the 1960s with tubes in TVs, computers taking up whole buildings, telephones that depended on wires, and absence of ebooks. But the stories also dealt with the human condition and that does not change.

Usually collections of science fiction stories will have one or two outstanding stories and the rest are ordinary or unreadable, but this was not the case here. Not all the stories were to my taste but all were well written and thoughtful. ( )