The Best From Fantasy and Science Fiction – Sixth Series, Edited by Anthony Boucher – 1955 (1956, 1957) [Unknown Artist – Edmund A. Emshwiller]

Rather than presenting a general “science-fictiony” scene, the cover presents an illustration inspired by Poul Anderson’s “The Man Who Came Early” from appeared in the June, 1956 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and anthologized in this sixth series of stories from the magazine.   

Like the great majority of Anderson’s work – at least, what I’ve read of Anderson! – The Man Who Came Early is excellently written, and of greater import, tackles with profound social, psychological, and philosophical questions, all the more impressive in that these are manifested in the form of a short story, rather than a book or novelette.  Though ostensibly a tale of science-fiction, themes of technology and science, whether real or conjectural are not really the tale’s focus – this is emphatically not “hard” science fiction! – and only serve as a brief and opening springboard to set the plot in motion.  An air of inevitability emerges as the story progresses, and it concludes on a note of pathos, which perhaps makes it all the more effective, and, memorable.

(The copy originally serving as this post’s image – see at bottom; rather bent and worn; I purchased it at a flea market in the 1970s! – has now been supplanted by a scan of a copy in far better condition.)  

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The Cosmic Expense Account, by Cyril M. Kornbluth

Mr. Sakrison’s Halt, by Mildred Clingerman

The Asa Rule, by Jay Williams

King’s End, by Avram Davidson

The Census Takers, by Frederik Pohl

The Man Who Came Early, by Poul Anderson

Final Clearance, by Rachel Maddux

The Silk and The Song, by Charles L. Fontenay

The Shoddy Lands, by C.S. Lewis

The Last Present, by Will Stanton

No Man Pursueth, by Ward Moore

I Don’t Mind, by Ron Smith

The Barbarian, by Poul Anderson

And Now The News…, by Theodore Sturgeon

Icarus Montgolfier Wright, by Ray Bradbury

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6/19