The World Turned Upside Down, edited by David Drake, Eric Flint, Jim Baen

29 Stories, the likes of which I've not seen for over 50 years. These are stories that are so gripping that I do remember the majority of them…if not their authors or titles. Well, "gripping" may be too strong; let's say "memorable". Indeed, I have memories of rethinking the plots of many of these very stories in the past 50 years (and wondering who wrote them and what were they called). These are the types of stories that stick with you and tickle at the back of your mind with "what would I have done?" "is this possible?" "this story was so prescient."

There's one tale the plot line of which, if not the actual story, was possibly the inspiration for an episode of "Star Trek, the Next Generation" where the young hero is condemned to death despite his innocent ignorance of what seems to be an arbitrary law. How would you feel, knowing that you're about to die for doing something you thought was at worst a silly prank? Or, how would you feel being the executioner of someone who truly does not deserve to die?

There's only one story that is monster-scary, "Who Goes There?" and it was made into two movies: "The Thing From Another World," 1951; and the remake, "The Thing" in 1982. (I remember the 1951 movie, with James Arness—Matt Dillon, from "Gunsmoke"—as the monster…okay, I date myself.)

These vignettes, averaging about 24 pages…including prefaces and postscripts by the editors, describe situations that require meditative effort to comprehend. Not that they're complicated or intricate; but that they serve as examples of "thought experiments" conducted by philosophers or psychoanalysts. What would be right action under THESE conditions.

Forgive me, but these are the Sci-Fi tales I grew up on; these are the stories that fed my psychological needs. The short-stories of today just don't "touch" me in the same way. Or captivate me to the same extent. I recommend each story and the whole book of them to anyone who wants to either reawaken lost emotions—or to inspire the emotions of a prior age's childhood.

My recommendation is that you not read this book too quickly. Give each story it's due and let yourself digest it before you move on to the next. ( )

That true rarity: an anthology where I didn't even mildly dislike any of the stories. Some old friends, some classics, and a couple that were new to me. Excellent! ( )

Extensive collection of early "SciFI", most were excellent then and many remain so. ( )

This anthology consists of science fiction (and a few fantasy) short stories, that the editors read when they were young, that they felt left a strong impression on them. They stories selected are chosen more for the authors that wrote them in many cases, than for the specific story itself. But this is not necessarily a bad thing. As the editors state in their comments on several of the stories, the best known stories by the authors in question have been in so many anthologies that they really don’t need to be added to yet another one.

Over all, I greatly enjoyed the selection of stories in this anthology. I had read a small number of them before, but I didn’t mind that, as it had been many years since I read any of them. In recent years, I have read almost exclusively novels by modern authors, with occasional novels from the likes of Asimov or Anderson. There was only one story in the entire collection that I didn’t enjoy, and in this case, I couldn’t even bring myself to finish it. “Spawn” by P. Shuyler Miller. It has some of the worst purple prose I’ve ever read, and it was sickening me within the first two pages of the story. I ended up skipping the majority of the story.

However, overlooking the one fly in the ointment, I must say this was a superb collection of stories, and one that has opened my eyes to some new authors to look at, in my reading later this year. I applaud Baen, Drake, and Flint for their excellent taste, and look forward to reading some of Drake’s writing later this year as well.

A 5/5, and a definite recommendation for any fan of scifi. ( )

This could have been very self indulgent - a collection of the editors' favourite stories from the golden age of science fiction (from the time you were thirteen or so :-)) but by-and-large, they have come up with excellent stories and authors, some of which I had not heard of and some of which are definate classics.

Some stories show their age - inevitably given the fact they were written over half a century ago, but the great surprise is the way most manage to remain interesting despite their age.

Of these, the classic Arthur C Clarke 'Rescue Party' opens the anthology but in many ways Rick Raphael's 'Code Three' takes pride of place as an example of descriptive science fiction. It's basically the story of a highway patrol on the superhighways of an international freeway system that is basically impossible to imagine these days. The weirdest piece by far was P Schuyler's 'Spawn'. CL Moore's (Caroline Lucille) 'Shambleau' is one of the greatest stories ever written to be set on Mars, despite it being a Mars that is difficult to envision these days, but it's her first ever published story and has a great deal of back story that appears well developed if it was her first ever story. ( )