Stories for Tomorrow an Anthology of Modern Science Fiction - William Milligan Sloane

"All the stories human beings tell are about ourselves." The strangest and most distant corners of the universe throng into this book but it still remains true-all the stories are, at heart, about ourselves, about human beings with human needs and emotions. The places and situations they find themselves in are another matter. The writers have given free rein to the kind of imagination that H. G. Wells showed in his stories and this book shows the direction in which that tradition is now leading. The range of the stories is immense. "First Contact," for example, tells how a space-ship from earth encountered for the first time a ship from another, unknown world and how, hanging there in the deeps of space, both were trapped in a terrible dilemma. In total contrast is a story by Ray Bradbury telling, quite simply, how two girls say goodbye to the earth-town they love, the night before they leave to join their fiancees on Mars. Then there is the child, lost in the world because she belongs to another, greater race, who finds her home among humans in the end. Some of the stories are tense with excitement, some are sad, some are outright funny; but in all of them there are vivid reality and characters one cares about. There is nothing here of the old, hackneyed space opera'-stories that are classed as fiction only because they could not possibly be true and as science because no normal reader can make sense of them. Each of the pieces in this book is an original and excellent example of story-telling. Most of them are taken from very recent sources, but already some of them have become classics. Of the authors, some are famous-Arthur Clarke, Ray Bradbury, Eric Frank Russell, John Christopher, Murray Leinster, and Clifford Simak, for example-and there are also some brilliant newcomers who will certainly be heard of again. The editor, William Sloane, has prefaced the stories with short introductions that are themselves a notable part of the book. It is altogether a memorable collection, that shows how varied, exciting, and adult, this kind of fiction can be. STORIES FOR TOMORROW CONTRIBUTORS to the book James BLISH Anthony BOUCHER Ray BRADBURY John CHRISTOPHER Arthur CLARKE Mildred CLINGERMAN H. B. FYFE Raymond JONES Murray LEINSTER Milton LESSER Kris NEVILLE Chad OLIVER Frank M. ROBINSON Eric Frank RUSSELL Wilmar S H I R A S Clifford S I M A K William SLOANE Ralph WILLIAMS Mari WOLF EDITED BY WILLIAM SLOANE"