Introduction to ONEIROMACHIA by Conrad Aiken from Atlantic Monthly

An introduction to this poem, or to its author, would be certainly tautological, and probably presumptuous. The poem serves rather as an introduction to the book, stating the case for the literature of the imagination far more effectively (literately, and imaginatively) than I should hope to do myself. "Oneiromachia" will be included in a new book of Mr. Aiken's poetry, The Morning Song of Lord Zero, to be published shortly by Oxford University Press.

Introduction to A PASSAGE FROM THE STARS by Kaatje Hurlbut from The Saturday Evening Post

Loosen the rainbow, Mr. Aiken says ... or splinter the light. They are the same thing seen from different sides of any prism. It is this function precisely, and uniquely, that defines the scope of what I mean by the derived initials of my title. "S-F" means all the ways of filtering feelings and ideas through imagination so as to project them in another form—no less "true," but a great deal less expected.

Kaatje Hurlbut has been writing for eighteen years, and is a fairly regular reader of science fiction, but this is her first s-f story. In telling me how it came about, she described graphically the working of this "prism effect":

"I went out before dawn one cold morning in October '57 to see the first Sputnik.... It must have uprooted me, because I began to see how beautiful the earth is in approach ...and these two things impressed me tremendously: first, how precious it is—a flourishing globe of life in the lifeless dark of space; and second, that it is ours, it is home...."

This story was published, she adds, on "the day Shepard made his space flight. I was delighted. I felt launched too." Actually, she was well launched some time before that. Since her first appearance in Mademoiselle, six years ago, Miss Hurlbut's stories have been published in a cross-section of leading national magazines, both slick and literary, and two before this have been reprinted in "best" anthologies: a collection from Mademoiselle, and The Best American Short Stories, 1961.

Introduction to AMONG THE DANGS by George P. Elliott from Esquire and Among the Dangs (Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1961)

But that's not science fiction...!

Even my best friends (to invert a paraphrase) keep telling me: That's not science fiction!?

Sometimes they mean if couldn't be s-f, because it's good. Sometimes it couldn't be because it's not about spaceships or time machines. (Religion or politics or psychology isn't science fiction—is it?) Sometimes (because some of my best friends are s-f fans) they mean it's not really science fiction—just fantasy or satire or something like that.

On the whole, I think I am very patient. I generally manage to explain, again, just a little wearily, what the "S-F" in the title of this book means, and what science fiction is, and why the one contains the other, without being constrained by it. But it does strain my patience when the exclamation is compounded to mean: "Surely you don't mean to use that in 'S-F'? That's not science fiction!"—about a first-rate piece of the honest thing.

For some reason, this comes most often from other editors—and most irritatingly from the editor who first bought and published the story in question, and does not want to think that he printed that kind of story. But the ultimate in frustration is to hear the same thing from the editor who is publishing me. . . .

"Among the Dangs" first appeared in Esquire in 1958; in 1959 it was reprinted in Fantasy and Science Fiction, and in the O. Henry Awards. And in both years, my editors said with dismay (you guessed it!)—"That's not science fiction!"

Last year, it became eligible for inclusion in this volume once more by appearing as the title story in a collection of Mr. Elliott's short stories. It is a multiple pleasure to be able to reprint it at last—partly because I too am a real-science- fiction fan and, in a year when there was precious little of the pure product published anywhere, "Among the Dangs" remains a first-rate sample of what science fiction really is.

Introduction to IMMEDIATELY YOURS by Robert Beverly Hale from Mademoiselle

Now this one is not science fiction. It is, very much, "S-F." Mr. Hale was not concerned with how or why his strange events occurred, or with the logic of the situation—and neither am I.

Rationale here is not just unnecessary; it could have been ruinous. What Mr. Hale has done is to paint an alien viewpoint in an unknown perspective, and do it so graphically that (to return to the earlier metaphor), the resultant rainbow seems the natural way for light to be.

Of course, he has some special advantages. Possibly, this story could only have been written by an author who is both architect (by training) and anatomist (lecturer on, at the Art Students' League) as well as a painter and poet of some years' standing, and an editor, writer, and teacher of art. (Among other things, Curator of American Painting and Sculpture at New York's Metropolitan Museum.)

Introduction to PARKY by David Rome from Science Fantasy

David Rome is another new writer, whose work has appeared only in the past year in the two British magazines, New Worlds and Science Fantasy. This is his first American publication.

Introduction to THE FASTEST GUN DEAD by Julian F. Grow from IF

For every change in outlook, there is an equal (and opposite?) shift in insight.

This dictum, known (up till now, to an exceedingly small group) as Merril's First Law of S-F Psychodynamics, is admirably demonstrated by the two preceding stories and the one that follows. The basic ingredients of all three are startlingly similar: an Alien with Powers; a central character who is awkward, unconventional, and a Natural Victim; a Shrewd Operator standing by to take advantage ... maybe. Even the widely varied backgrounds have this similarity: that an art colony, a carnival, and the Old West (coming up) are all basically tourist attractions to most of us: real settings that seem more like fable than fact.

A still further coincidence is that this is Mr. Grow's first story too—although he has been a professional journalist for some time, and is currently a News Bureau Chief for a leading New England newspaper.

But this time, the invader from outer space is neither studying sex nor seeking to save civilization....

Introduction to ALL THE TEA IN CHINA by R. Bretnor from Fantasy and Science Fiction

I was suitably startled to learn last year that a recent conference of the Modern Language Association had included a seminar on science fiction—but my sense of shock was in no way due to the realization that s-f has exerted its influence on our language, as it has on our literature. What surprised me was that official cognizance of this self-evident phenomenon should have been taken, so readily, by a learned body of academicians.

Actually, publishers of science fantasy have known for some time that the colleges and universities provide some of their best markets: but s-f reading was something almost everybody did, and practically nobody talked about. I wonder how much of this emergence of science fiction from the academic kitchen to its parlor is due to the change in media (so much easier to discuss a story from Atlantic or even the Post, than one from Thrilling Wonder), and how much to the persistent subversive efforts of a few literary guerrillas who have been sniping steadily from positions of irreproachable intellectual eminence at the guardians of literary snobbery. The more celebrated of these have included Anthony Boucher, Clifton Fadiman, and the late Fletcher Pratt; but none have been more staunchly effective than Reg Bretnor.

Linguist, Orientalist, lecturer, critic, and author, Bretnor's last two books have been a translation of Moncrif's Les Chats (Golden Cockerel Press; 400 copies; morocco, $40, cloth, $20); and a paperback collection of vignette-length extended s-f puns. In the past he has served as adviser on Asian affairs to the U.S. Government; taught writing at San Quentin; edited one of the earliest and best volumes of s-f criticism (Modern Science Fiction, Coward-McCann, 1953). His short stories appear, ordinarily, either in literary quarterlies or in s-f magazines.

Introduction to THE PORTOBELLO ROAD by Muriel Spark from The Go-Away Bird (Lippincott, 1958), and Cosmopolitan

"The incredible we believe immediately. The impossible takes a bit longer."

We live in an age of what we casually—without embarrassment—call "scientific miracles." And if the innate paradox no longer grates on the literate ear, I suppose it is because the contradiction in terms is no longer a contradiction in attitude. The quickening pace of scientific progress has so far outrun the capacity of most of us to comprehend, that we are now in the absurd position of accepting science on faith: prepared to believe almost any statement from almost any source cloaked in the vestments of that same "science" which is the discipline of skepticism, the attitude that accepts nothing without evidence, and credits no effect without a cause.

This very scientific spirit has destroyed, for most of us, the capacity to believe in the witches, elves, demons, fairies, and angels that frightened and delighted our forerunners. Now, more and more of our new scientific knowledge rests on proofs as abstruse and mysterious as the motives of godlets and demons once were.

In any case, the modern mind can achieve the "willing suspension of disbelief" much more readily for a spaceship than a flying carpet, for an equation than an incantation. Concomitantly, the field of "pure fantasy" is out of favor, and its practitioners are few.

Among these, two of the most competent are Mr. Bretnor and Miss Spark. Perhaps there is some significance in the fact that the one was raised in the Orient and has lived since in the pragmatic United States; and that the other was born and raised in commonsense Edinburgh, and then went to live in Africa?

Introduction to OTTMAR BALLEAU X 2 by George Bomber from Rogue

Sometimes the labels are meaningful. But sometimes—

This story is a careful, indeed painstaking, imaginative extrapolation from the best available data on a major frontier of scientific endeavor; yet it is not science fiction.

Fantasy—subjective fantasy—is its subject matter; but it is not a fantasy.

Once, it might have been a story of daemonic possession; today, it is not. It mocks certain of our most cheished institutions, with barb-edged humor; but it is hardly true satire.

It utilizes a distinctly alien viewpoint to accomplish an effect of horror; yet it is not really a horror story.

It is "S-F": first-rate imaginative, speculative fiction. It is also, by the way, another FPS (First Published Story, for future referenced—and again, by an already established writer—this time of radio drama, most notably for the CBS Radio "Suspense" show.

Introduction to THE DANDELION GIRL by Robert F. Young from The Saturday Evening Post

Devil and ghost, witchdoctor and madman, seer and space-mate: but one kind of otherness has not yet appeared.

Space travel and shape-changing, telepathy and levitation, astronomy, anthropology, marvelous inventions and mental marvels: there is still one of science fiction's favorite themes that has not been used.

Sex and psychosis, murder and avarice, friendship, revenge, reform, conquest, hospitality: one major emotion has not been touched.

This is a love story, about time travel.

Introduction to NIGHTMARE IN TIME by Fredric Brown from The Dude

Chances are that no one could have composed this short, short-short horror story except a man who worked as a proofreader for some twenty years, before turning in desperation to writing.

Introduction to THREE PROLOGUES AND AN EPILOGUE by John Dos Passos from Midcentury (Houghton Mifflin, 1961)

A shift in viewpoint, lighting, or perspective may serve to study the background as well as the figure. Most of the selections so far have been concerned with individual insights; in the group that follows the focus shifts to the outlook for society.

Jules Feiffer's cartoon made graphic use of a device for this purpose that was also effectively employed, recently, in Gore Vidal's Visit to a Small Planet: the detached observer's viewpoint (from space or time). George Elliott used, instead, the reflection of a single individual in the mirrors of two cultures, to shed light on both. Ward Moore (who follows this selection) makes use of retroflection—a sort of hindsightin-advance gained by viewing through sympathetic and familiar eyes a society that could result from ours.

John Dos Passos is probably the outstanding contemporary practitioner of a less common and non-science-fiction technique for the same purpose. In his "mural novels," he interweaves and counterposes strands of fact and story lines in such a way as to compel the mental eye to follow a pattern which composes a sort of aerial view of society. This can, sometimes, constitute Einstein's famous "pause to wonder" in its most immediate form—as in these excerpts from Midcentury.

I should like to express my gratitude to the editors of Audit (published at the University of Buffalo), where I first saw this printed as a unified whole.

Introduction to IT BECOMES NECESSARY by Ward Moore from Gent

It was just about twenty-five years ago, as a high school student, during the period of hope between the Great Depression and the pre-war "recession," that I first read Dos Passos' U.S.A.

That was the day of the WPA, PWA, CCC, and WA. In my school in the Bronx, a dollar was enough for an evening's date; none of my friends owned a car; the burning question among Young Intellectuals was whether to take the Ludlow Oath (never to fight in a war) or to support Collective Security (economic sanctions against fascist and militarist nations). Compulsory military service in peacetime was a practice of undemocratic foreign governments. We worried about civil rights; we were proud that this country held no political prisoners.

The prevailing intellectual tone was agnostic: religious instruction in the public schools was as unthinkable as sex education was unobtainable. The only really strong opposition to Communism here was from the extreme right wing—and the Trotskyites. The failure of the League of Nations had undermined any hope for world government.

In the quarter century since then, we have been acutely conscious of the changes in our physical existence. Synthetic fabrics, antibiotics, the home freezer, television, transistors, fm radio, cloud seeding, DDT, jet planes, radar, atomic reactors—all these were unknown, and almost undreamed, twenty-five years ago.

But the social and political changes—good and bad both —and both greater than all the changes in the first hundred and fifty years of American history—have crept in on us, almost unawares.

Introduction to MY TRIAL AS A WAR CRIMINAL by Leo Szilard from The Voice of the Dolphins (Simon & Schuster, 1961)

Another FPS—First Published Story—although first published some time back (1949, in The University of Chicago Law Review!—and once again, by a writer already more than well established in other fields (although very little of his work had been published outside Top Classified circles for some years).

Dr. Szilard was born in Budapest in 1898. After teaching in England for several years, he came here, to Columbia University, in 1939. Three years later, he went out to the University of Chicago, where, with Dr. Fermi, he developed the first uranium-graphite reactor.

Introduction to A PRIZE FOR EDIE by J. F. Bone from Analog Science Fact & Fiction

It is one of the odder paradoxes of our modern world that the only really functioning internationalists are those same scientists who are regarded by their several national governments as top priority defense materiel.

Of course this paradox has minimized global exchange and communication among scientists, so that the personal acquaintances which were once so common are now less likely to develop....

Introduction to FREEDOM by Mack Reynolds from Analog Science Fact & Fiction

Last year, I got a pin-up postcard from Mack Reynolds, who has been touring Europe as Travel Editor for Rogue magazine. The handsome astronaut on the back of the card was, said Reynolds, a national hero; his picture hung in every bar and waiting room. Some months later, John Glenn had his historic ticker tape parade, achieving the same status in this country. The man on my card was named Titov; the card was mailed from a small Eastern European country.

Introduction to HIGH BARBARY by Lawrence Durrell from Mademoiselle

But that's not science fiction?

I have already elaborated on the several ways in which this question can irritate or annoy. Perversely, it was saddening that no one asked it of me about Mr. Reynolds' story. It would seem we are so thoroughly alienated from the Russians that a simple political yarn, involving no space travel, wonderful invention, time machine, psi power, or oven far-future speculation, but just the simplest extrapolation from the present situation, should seem as imaginatively remote as an analogy set on Mars. (Which raises the question: Is it science fiction if the author has been to Mars? Whether the reader has or not?) This next selection, in any case, is certainly not science fiction—perhaps not even fiction. (Mademoiselle called it a short story; I should incline more to "satirical essay.")

Mr. Durrell is probably the leading exponent of the shifting viewpoint among contemporary mainstream writers. His famous Alexandria Quartet is essentially a view of love through four different persons' eyes. But before he turned to his examination of love, the author had an unusual opportunity to study some of the less congenial emotions. Like Mr. Reynolds, he was a "traveling man," but under rather different auspices: Press Officer for the British Foreign Service, and lecturer for the British Council, in Athens, Cairo, Rhodes, Belgrade, among other places.

Introduction to THE QUAKER CANNON by Frederik Pohl and C. M. Kornbluth from Analog Science Fact & Fiction

"Social science fiction" is too often thought of as limited either to angry satire or to ponderous utopian novels. Certainly the Pohl-Kornbluth combination has been noted primarily for a highly specialized kind of satirical novel set in a stiflingly overpopulated, advertising-drenched, cold-warlike future.

This kind of novel, whose objective is to pinpoint some of the more flagrant of our cultural absurdities, must of necessity assume the continuation of some sort of peace on Earth, however uneasy or precarious (just as the last group of stories here have done). The novelette that follows is unusual in several respects:

First, it is an atom-war story which is neither about the onset of the war nor its aftermath, but the war itself.

Second, it is a straightforward, serious, subjectively sympathetic Pohl-Kornbluth collaboration (completed by Mr. Pohl after Mr. Kornbluth's sudden death).

Third, it is concerned less with the effects on our society of another war, than with those of our culture on such a war.

Introduction to QUAKE, QUAKE, QUAKE by Paul Dehn and Edward Gorey from Quake, Quake, Quake (Simon and Schuster, New York, and Hamilton Hamish, London, 1961)

It is a traditionally slim volume of illustrated verses. The drawings are quaintly Victorian in atmosphere; the verse is conventional in rhyme and meter. And the book as a whole is just about as comfortingly familiar as the latest word (if one could hear it) from a bacteriological warfare laboratory.

Paul Dehn, who wrote the verses, is an established British poet, a movie critic for the London Daily Herald, and the co-author of Seven Days to Noon. Edward Gorey, the illustrator, has published several pictorial books, the best known here being The Hapless Child.

Quake, Quake, Quake is divided into several sections: "A Leaden Treasury of English Verse"; "Rhymes for a Modern Nursery"; "Weather Forecast"; "From a Soviet Child's Garden of Verses"; "From a Modern Student's Song Book"; and "From a Modern Hymnal."

Introduction to JUDAS BOMB by Kit Reed from Fantasy and Science Fiction

And then, of course, there is still the possibility of peace—if you find the prospect peaceful.

Mrs. Reed here suggests some prospects derived from the present trends in urban teenage gang behavior. (The trouble with these reductii ad absurdum is they don't always seem so absurd—ten years later. We can only hope.)

If anyone can cope with the peaceless peace, by the way, I am convinced it will be the Connecticut housewives. There was Mrs. Schoolfield (Kaatje Hurlbut), wife of a New York newspaperman, raising three children exurbanly, writing four hours a day, six days a week for eighteen years (the first twelve without selling a word of it)—and still able to get up and out for a pre-dawn stroll to watch the sky.

And now a "faculty wife," married to an English Professor at Wesleyan University. In the eight years since she finished college, Mrs. Reed has been twice named New England Newspaperwoman of the year; published two novels (most recently, Mother Isn't Dead, She's Only Sleeping, Houghton Mifflin, 1961); acquired two children; and published short stories in such diversified media as F&SF, Cosmopolitan, Seventeen, and the Yale Literary Magazine. With a two-year-old and an infant son at home, she says she can now manage "only one" freelance newspaper job—besides her fiction, that is.

Introduction to A SMALL MIRACLE OF FISHHOOKS AND STRAIGHT PINS by David R. Bunch from Fantastic

Some further thoughts on child care—this time from a mid-western bachelor. Mr. Bunch is another of the growing number of young writers who seem to divide their efforts between the literary and s-f publications. Both of the fields being notoriously underpaid, he earns his living as a professional cartographer for the Air Force.

Introduction to THE TUNNEL AHEAD by Alice Glaser from Fantasy and Science Fiction

...And yet another FPS—unless you are the cynical sort who would insist that an article on soldiering experiences in Laos, written by a lady editor who has never been east of Paris, France, is not truly non-fiction. (The men's adventure magazine that published it said it was true.) Miss Glaser, Long Island born and bred, is an ex-expatriate now working as an editorial associate at Esquire magazine.

Introduction to EXTRATERRESTRIAL TRILOGUE ON TERRAN SELF-DESTRUCTION by Sheri S. Eberhart from Galaxy

The ever-more-pressing probability of planetwide overpopulation is both more real and less remote than it may appear. Certainly, for the smog-breathers of the great centers of modern civilization, as for the emergent peoples of the world's "underdeveloped" areas, the pressures of the new population explosion are daily more evident. And as the cities grow out, and the primitives grow up, the room in the middle grows steadily less. Each new medical discovery, every agricultural advance, every increment in social security, every headhunter converted to some gentler philosophy, each "international incident" settled however precariously without resort to all-out war—each one of these and a score of other proofs of our progress, adds measurably, if minutely, to the factor by which our fruitfulness constantly multiplies.

The problem, of course, is new only in scope, and (through Malthus back to Moses, and no doubt before) in the more limited test cases, it has proved, drastically, self-regulating. Unless new land was found for the overflow, war, famine, and pestilence have always cut problem and population both down to size.

The recent historical alternatives are especially familiar to Denver's Regional CARE Director, Sheri Eberhart. An ex-saleswoman, -secretary, -draftswoman, and -pottery-painter, she also became an ex-short-story-writer when after two sales, and "enough rejections to paper a wall" her daughter advised her to quit because, "You don't think like a grown-up." Mrs. Eberhart promptly turned to children's plays—including a handclapping version of the Pentateuch (The Beat Bible), which has made her the swing-ingest Sunday School teacher in town.

Introduction to THE COUNTDOWN by John Haase from The New Yorker

In the catalogue of natural wonders, along with such unlikely miracles as the existence of self-conscious intelligence, the fecundity of humanity, and the evolution of communication, we may now add this marvel: that, after two decades of possession of a means of destruction volatile enough to match our mob furies, we (the people, of the third planet) are still very much alive.

The almost incredible indication is that we are—slowly, with utmost caution—approaching a real awareness of the irrevocability of the global interdependence our technology has created. Not only is it increasingly obvious that the worst they can do to us (from either viewpoint) is less terrible than what we-and-they can do to all-of-us; it is also becoming clear how much we-and-they might do, if we chose, for all of us; and further clear that the most we can do will be none too much, for if we avoid self-devastation, we may well be faced with self-suffocation.

Mankind, united, will undoubtedly level mountains and plumb the ocean depths; but with the same strength, we can more readily perhaps find our new space out in space. The stories that follow this one are all based on the assumption that man can and will go out to other worlds. This one is still set on a near-future Earth, but it concerns a pioneer of the still-uncertain emigration. It is the first science fiction (to my knowledge) by an author best known for his novel, The Fun Couple (Simon & Schuster, 1961), from which the hit Broadway play was adapted.

Introduction to THE BEAT CLUSTER by Fritz Leiber from Galaxy

The latest thing in subnuclear theory (I learned from an article in The Saturday Evening Post) is that the sub-particles have subparticles—and those subparticles have ad infinitum. That is, it may be impossible to reach the ultimate submicroscopic unit of the atom.

A similar likelihood has been evident for some time in the case of scholarly-literary distinctions. For instance: science fiction is a subform of science fantasy, which is a subform of fantasy, which is a subform of fiction—and still, within s-f, the afficionado subdivides repeatedly.

The subspecies most widely identified with the field as a whole is, of course, the space story: this is what is commonly considered the "science fiction" that "science has caught up with." Science fiction (meaning: the space story) is dead—they say—because it has become true-adventure; and they would be right, if science fiction (or even the space story) were limited to speculation about rockets and orbits. But when we consider the people in those now so-nearly-true adventure orbits ...

Introduction to IN TOMORROW'S LITTLE BLACK BAG by James Blish

An observer of the s-f scene once commented that science fiction-writing was less a means of livelihood than a way of life. It could as easily be said that s-f is not so much a kind of reading as a way of thinking.

Reginald Bretnor and Robert Heinlein (notably, in The Science Fiction Novel) have advanced the proposition that the identifying fundamental of science fiction is not the specific science content, but the writer's awareness of science, and in particular of the scientific method.

To utilize this discipline—(observation, hypothesis, experimentation)—in fiction it is necessary, first, to get the best reliable information whether on weather, whales, witches, or whatever; then, to relate data and drama in such a way as to obtain a story line; finally, to devise the most useful environmental situation against which to play out the drama.

One might approach the same area of definition from another viewpoint, and say that the identifying factor in s-f is the interaction between man and his environment. "Mainstream" writing ordinarily confines itself to situations resulting from man's reaction to only one phase of environment: his fellow-men. "Straight fantasy," by definition, deals with unreal—fantastic—environmental factors. S-f, specifically, considers the effect on/of a human being of/on a realistically modern or logically predictable future environment (physical, technical, natural, or manmade).

Part of that physical environment for each man is the body his subjective self inhabits. Mr. Blish, who writes science fiction by night (as a way of life), is by day (for a livelihood) a public relations man specializing in the highly esoteric field of institutional drug promotion. Out of this combined background, he considers some of the possibilities inherent in our persistent efforts to modify, amend, and improve our own fleshly surroundings.

Introduction to THE SHIP WHO SANG by Anne McCaffrey from Fantasy and Science Fiction

The idea of a human brain connected to a mechanical "body" is at least as old as Frankenstein, and as new as the latest advance in prosthetics. The first story I recall which specifically considered the hooking up of a living brain to a spaceship was, coincidentally, James Blistes "Solar Plexus," almost twenty years ago. The difference in focus and treatment between that story and the one that follows are almost a two-step lesson in the Developmental Trends of Modern Science Fiction.

Anne McCaffrey describes herself as "the perfectly normal, well-adjusted wife of a public relations Duponter," in support of which she points to a Wilmington home, three young children, and an ambitious canning, sewing, and den-mothering program. All nice-normal enough, till you add: she raises German Shepherds; sings in the Wilmington Opera Society and her church choir; translates opera. A trained linguist specializing in the Slavonic languages, she is also an ex-advertising copywriter.

Introduction to A PLANET NAMED SHAYOL by Cordwainer Smith from Galaxy

A little more than ten years ago, a story by a completely unknown writer, published in an otherwise unremarkable semi-amateur magazine, provoked a storm of interest and inquiry among other writers and editors. "Cordwainer Smith" had all the true ring of the pseudonym, and the quality of the story was professional; but its content and style were so fresh that the pen-name could not be attached to any established writer in the field.

Mr. "Smith," as it turns out, is a VIP (for Professor) of Sociology at a school near enough to Washington to make things convenient when the State Department calls. (He is surely the only ambassador—small "a," generic, not diplomatic—of the U.S. who has ever established friendly relations with an asiatic governmental official by asking science fiction all night.) Outside s-f, his writing is almost all in his main field of specialty; inside the field, a large part has been devoted to speculation about the possible physiological evolution (externally caused or self-effected) of mankind.

Introduction to THE ASTEROIDS, 2194 by John Wyndham from Amazing Stories

The "space story" (the one science caught up with) was originally concerned with the techniques of space travel—with our ability to manufacture and control what we now call "the hardware" of space flight. The "planet story" has traditionally been rollicking-romance-adventure (prototypically, Burroughs' "Princess of Mars.") Both of these varieties dealt primarily with man's effect on the environments of space. A third type, and indeed the earliest one, has been the philosophic novel, in which the space (or, most usually, Moon, setting) was essentially a stage for a passion play; in these there was no real interaction; the voyageur was primarily an observer.

Now, more and more, writers confronted by the imminence of space travel, are considering the effects of the trip into the unknown on mankind. One hears the old phrase, the "conquest of space," less frequently now. That there will be immediate and perhaps profound effects on us, physiologically and culturally, is clear; equally obvious, but much less clearcut, are the potential effects on our psychology, philosophy, religion, and mystique.

Introduction to THE LONG NIGHT by Ray Russell from Rogue

This short sad story of the last days of Argo III—as lost a soul as ever lifted jets—is included (along with some happier interludes in the Emperor's early life) in Mr. Russell's collection, Sardonicus and Other Stories (Ballantine, 1964). The author, who was executive editor of Playboy for most of its first seven years, has now turned full-time writer. Besides the short-story collection, and the movie of the same name, he has recently published a novel, The Case Against Satan (Obolensky, 1962).

Introduction to TO AN ASTRONAUT DYING YOUNG by Maxine W. Kumin from Atlantic Monthly

Mrs. Kumin has published one book of poetry (Halfway, Holt, 1961), and several children's books. She is an instructor in English at Tufts University, currently on leave to study on a Radcliffe grant.