ISFDB

Other reviews:¹
Everett F. Bleiler, The Guide to Supernatural Fiction, pp. 295 – 454, 1983
Anthony Boucher & J. Francis McComas, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, May 1953
Groff Conklin, Galaxy Science Fiction, June 1953
Leslie Flood, New Worlds Science Fiction #29, November 1954
Damon Knight, Science Fiction Adventures, December 1953
Robert W. Lowndes, Future Science Fiction, May 1953
Sam Merwin, Jr., Fantastic Universe, August-September 1953
P. Schuyler Miller, Astounding Science Fiction, August 1953
Sam Moskowitz, Science-Fiction Plus, May 1953
Mark Reinsberg, Imagination, September 1953
George O. Smith, Space Science Fiction, May 1953
George O. Smith, Space Science Fiction, September 1953
Uncredited, Thrilling Wonder Stories, June 1953
Bud Webster, Anthopology 101: The Pohl Star

_____________________

Editor, Frederik Pohl

Fiction:
Country Doctor • novelette by William Morrison ∗∗∗
Dominoes • short story by C. M. Kornbluth ∗∗∗
Idealist • short story by Lester del Rey ∗∗
The Night He Cried • short story by Fritz Leiber ∗∗∗+
Contraption • short story by Clifford D. Simak ∗∗
The Chronoclasm • short story by John Wyndham ∗∗
The Deserter • short story by William Tenn ∗∗
The Man with English • short story by H. L. Gold ∗
So Proudly We Hail • short story by Judith Merril ∗∗∗
A Scent of Sarsaparilla • short story by Ray Bradbury ∗∗
Nobody Here But— • short story by Isaac Asimov ∗∗
The Last Weapon • short story by Robert Sheckley ∗
A Wild Surmise • short story by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore ∗∗
The Journey • short story by Murray Leinster ∗∗
The Nine Billion Names of God • short story by Arthur C. Clarke ∗∗∗

Non-fiction:
Cover • by Richard Powers
Editor’s Note • by Frederik Pohl
Introductions • by Frederik Pohl

_____________________

Frederik Pohl is best known as a writer but he was also a successful editor for a large part of his life. This part of his career spanned three decades, and had four distinct phases: the first was his editorship of Astonishing Stories and Super Science Stories in the early 1940s; the second was his editorship of the Star Science Fiction anthology series in the 1950s; the third was his editorship of Galaxy, If, Worlds of Tomorrow, etc. in the 1960s; the last was his stint as an editor for Bantam Books in the early 1970s.
The book under consideration, Star Science Fiction, is from that second phase, and is the initial volume in the first original SF anthology series (depending on how you view Donald Wollheim’s Avon Science Fiction, that is).² Pohl’s series would continue, off and on, through several books and one abortive magazine, until he became editorially involved at Galaxy in the late 1950s.³

Pohl picks a traditional story to start the volume, a piece that wouldn’t be out of place in that period’s Astounding magazine: Country Doctor by William Morrison. This begins on Mars when a Dr Meltzer is summoned to what he thinks is an accident at a nearby spaceport. Once he gets there he finds that the ship is okay but that it contains a huge “space cow” which is sick. The authorities want him to treat it, something which involves getting suited up and descending into the beast’s digestive system:

The two men with him stretched out a plastic ladder. In the low gravity of Mars, climbing forty feet was no problem. Dr. Meltzer began to pull his way up. As he went higher, he noticed that the great mouth was slowly opening. One of the men had poked the creature with an electric prod.
Dr. Meltzer reached the level of the lower jaw, and with the fascinated fear of a bird staring at a snake, gazed at the great opening that was going to devour him. Inside there was a gray and slippery surface which caught the beam of his flashlight and reflected it back and forth until the rays faded away. Fifty feet beyond the opening, the passage made a slow turn to one side. What lay ahead, he couldn’t guess.
The sensible thing was to go in at once, but he couldn’t help hesitating. Suppose the jaws closed just as he got between them? He’d be crushed like an eggshell. Suppose the throat constricted with the irritation he caused it? That would crush him too. He recalled suddenly an ancient fable about a man who had gone down into a whale’s belly. What was the man’s name, now? Daniel—no, he had only gone into a den of lions. Job—wrong again. Job had been afflicted with boils, the victim of staphylococci at the other end of the scale of size. Jonah, that was it. Jonah, the man whose name was a symbol among the superstitious for bad luck.  p. 8-9

This readable and straightforward story largely involves the doctor wandering around examining the innards of the beast until he concludes his investigation. The ending, where (spoiler) the doctor cures the alien, sees the writer pulling a rabbit out of a hat (the solution involves the small creatures Meltzer finds swimming around inside the space cow—its offspring). This is an enjoyable tale for all that, and I wondered whether the story influenced or inspired James White to write his ‘Sector General’ series.
Dominoes by C. M. Kornbluth opens with a stockbroker called Born reflecting on the interdependence of world financial markets:

Already the office was a maelstrom. The clattering tickers, blinking boards and racing messengers spelled out the latest, hottest word from markets in London, Paris, Milan, Vienna. Soon New York would chime in, then Chicago, then San Francisco.
Maybe this would be the day. Maybe New York would open on a significant decline in Moon Mining and Smelting.
Maybe Chicago would nervously respond with a slump in commodities and San Francisco’s Utah Uranium would plummet in sympathy. Maybe panic in the Tokyo Exchange on the heels of the alarming news from the States—panic relayed across Asia with the rising sun to Vienna, Milan, Paris, London, and crashing like a shock-wave into the opening New York market again.
Dominoes, W. J. Born thought. A row of dominoes. Flick one and they all topple in a heap. Maybe this would be the day.  p. 26

After this prescient beginning Born gets a call from Loring, a scientist who Born has been funding to build a time machine. Loring says that his experiments have suceeded, and that mice and rabbits sent to the future have returned safely. Born then goes to the lab, and travels two years into the future to get financial information that will enable him to make a fortune.
When Born arrives he overcomes a number of minor obstacles (against the background of a countdown clock) before he makes it to a library. There he discovers (spoiler) a financial crash is about to happen in the time period he has left. He returns and liquidates his assets.
In a final encounter with a ruined Loring (he has lost his money in the crash and can’t pay for the experimental equipment) we find out that it was Born’s disposals that triggered the crash.
This is a neatly done ironic tale, and one that foresees future flash-crashes.
Idealist by Lester del Rey starts with Paul Fenton waking up and finding himself alone in an Earth-orbiting space station’s hospital bay. He gets up and explores the station, and finds a number of dead people. Some of these have been killed by a missile attack on the station, and some have been shot (there are mentions of a traitor). He later discovers that the majority of the station’s nuclear missiles have been fired.
When Fenton turns his attention to Earth he sees the results of a nuclear war but also detects survivors—and when he contacts them the various parties want him to help them continue the conflict. Sickened by this he fires the station’s remaining missiles at Earth, and takes the station’s spaceship to the far side of the Moon.
I’m not sure this entirely works. First off, the partial amnesia he initially suffers from drags out the process of establishing what is happening (and so feels like padding); second, the response of the people on the ground is nihilistic (though not improbable); finally, the occasional interstitial material about man’s destiny in space is at odds with Fenton’s actions with the missiles. It rather feels as if it was written to push an editor’s buttons (Campbell’s?), but it’s an okay piece overall, I guess.
The Night He Cried by Fritz Leiber is a merciless parody of the school of writing typified by Mickey Spillane, and has an opening passage you wouldn’t see in the magazines:

I glanced down my neck secretly at the two snowy hillocks, ruby peaked, that were pushing out my blouse tautly without the aid of a brassiere. I decided they’d more than do. So I turned away scornfully as his vast top-down convertible cruised past my street lamp. I struck my hip and a big match against the fluted column, and lit a cigarette. I was Lili Marlene to a T—or rather to a V-neckline. (I must tell you that my command of earth-idiom and allusion is remarkable, but if you’d had my training you wouldn’t wonder.)
The convertible slowed down and backed up. I smiled. I’d been certain that my magnificently formed milk glands would turn the trick. I puffed on my cigarette languorously.
“Hi, Babe!”  p. 49

After the alien gets in Slickie Millane’s car they go for a drive. When they pull over, it reveals itself to Millane:

As the hand of his encircling arm began to explore my prize possessions, I drew away a bit, not frustratingly, and informed him, “Slickie dear, I am from Galaxy Center . . .”
“What’s that—a magazine publisher?” he demanded hotly, being somewhat inflamed by my cool milk glands.
“. . . and we are interested in how sex and justice are dispensed in all areas,” I went on, disregarding his interruption and his somewhat juvenile fondlings. “To be bold, we suspect that you may be somewhat misled about this business of sex.”
Vertical, centimeter-deep furrows creased his brow. His head poised above mine like a hawk’s. “What are you talking about, Babe?” he demanded with suspicious rage, even snatching his hands away.
“Briefly, Slickie,” I said, “you do not seem to feel that sex is for the production of progeny or for the mutual solace of two creatures. You seem to think—”
His rage exploded into action.  p. 50

The rest of this amusing piece details Slickie’s multiple shootings of the alien/femme fatale until there is a climactic scene that involves Millane witnessing a body transformation that forever traumatises him. Probably the best piece in the collection.
Contraption by Clifford D. Simak is about a maltreated orphan called Johnny who finds a crashed flying saucer in the woods. It has that rural setting which is often present in Simak’s fiction:

He found the contraption in a blackberry patch when he was hunting cows. Darkness was sifting down through the tall stand of poplar trees and he couldn’t make it out too well and he couldn’t spend much time to look at it because Uncle Eb had been plenty sore about his missing the two heifers and if it took too long to find them Uncle Eb more than likely would take the strap to him again and he’d had about all he could stand for one day. Already he’d had to go without his supper because he’d forgotten to go down to the spring for a bucket of cold water. And Aunt Em had been after him all day because he was so no-good at weeding the garden.  p. 57

We learn more about Johnny’s domestic circumstances and his harsh treatment before he eventually befriends the dying aliens. After they learn of Johnny’s treatment (by telepathy—they never leave the ship) they suggest an exchange of gifts: the glowing jewel he receives from them in exchange for his broken penknife (spoiler) changes the attitude of his step-parents towards him for the better.
This story has good organic development for the most part, something that is spoiled a little by the gimmicky ending.
The Chronoclasm by John Wyndham is a time-travel tale that, given it takes half the story before this gimmick is out in the open, ends up reading like a refugee from the Saturday Evening Post. It opens with a Dr Gobie approaching the protagonist Gerald Lattery (after erroneously referring to him as “Sir Gerald”), and warning him that it is imperative that he avoid contact with a young woman called Tavia. Lattery tells the stranger that he doesn’t know anyone of that name.
The story picks up two years later, and details Lattery’s sightings of a striking young woman. These two or three events are padded out with a lot of fluff like this:

“Young woman in here asking after you, Mr. Lattery. Did she find you? I told her where your place is.”
I shook my head. “Who was she?”
“She didn’t say her name, but—” he went on to describe her. Recollection of the girl on the other side of the street came back to me. I nodded.
“I saw her just across the road. I wondered who she was.” I told him.
“Well, she seemed to know you all right. ‘Was that Mr. Lattery who was in here earlier on?’ she says to me. I says yes, you was one of them. She nodded and thought a bit.
‘He lives at Bagford House, doesn’t he?’ she asks. ‘Why, no, Miss,’ I says, ‘that’s Major Flacken’s place. Mr. Lattery, he lives out at Chatcombe Cottage.’ So she asks me where that is, an’ I told her. Hope that was all right. Seemed a nice young lady.”
I reassured him. “She could have got the address anywhere. Funny she should ask about Bagford House—that’s a place I might hanker for, if I ever had any money.”
“Better hurry up and make it, sir. The old Major’s getting on a bit now,” he said.
Nothing came of it. Whatever the girl had wanted my address for, she didn’t follow it up, and the matter dropped out of my mind.
It was about a month later that I saw her again. I’d kind of slipped into the habit of going riding once or twice a week with a girl called Marjorie Cranshaw, and running her home from the stables afterwards.

Blah, blah, blah. Eventually, Marjorie gets dumped, and Lattery and Tavia the time-traveller get together. Some of the fluff is swapped for explanations about chronoclasms, changes caused by time-travellers, and how she is pursued by men from the future who want her to return to her own time. Despite all this Lattery and Tavia get married, and we are soon back to the fluff again:

“M’m,” mumbled Tavia. “I think I rather like Twentieth Century marriage.”
“It has risen higher in my own estimation, darling,” I admitted. And, indeed, I was quite surprised to find how much higher it had risen in the course of the last month or so.
“Do Twentieth Century marrieds always have one big bed, darling?” she inquired.
“Invariably, darling,” I assured her.
“Funny,” she said. “Not very hygienic, of course, but quite nice all the same.”
We reflected on that.  p. 80

Meanwhile, Tavia tells Lattery of devices he can “invent” so he’ll have an income to support them both. It isn’t long before the men from the future turn up: initially it is Dr Colbie waving a white flag (the result of a shooting incident two days later) but his words fall on deaf ears. Then (spoiler) Tavia gets pregnant, and then she disappears.
The story ends with Lattery—remarkably composed given his wife and future child have vanished—writing the letter than caused Tavia to come back to find him.
This is a pretty routine time travel story but it’s of interest for the view it gives of the lost society of the 1950’s which—in some respects—is as fascinating as some of SF’s alien societies.
The Deserter by William Tenn starts with Major Mardin arriving at a facility that houses the first Jovian prisoner humanity has taken alive. Mardin (who was an archaeologist before the inter-system war began) is there to interrogate the massive, methane breathing alien.
Martin is briefed by a Space Marshall—colloquially called “Rockethead”—who is an aggressive and over bearing bully, but also a very successful soldier. After brow beating Mardin, the Space Marshall sends him out on a metal chair that hangs above the huge alien, at which point Mardin attaches a tendril to his forehead and comes into telepathic contact with it (we learn during the story that Mardin was one of the first Jovian prisoners, and was interrogated by this method before he was rescued).
Mardin learns the Jovian prisoner’s personal history, and the reason it allowed itself to be captured—which is to give humanity information to develop a weapon that will stop Jovian society’s increasingly militaristic culture.
As they communicate Mardin’s feelings about the xenocidal Space Marshall break through, and the Jovian questions him further. Mardin gives a brutally honest response. When the Jovian realises (spoiler) what kind of society humanity is, it commits suicide by venting the methane gas in its chamber. This also kills Mardin.
This is a satisfyingly dense story to begin with but it goes downhill with the introduction of the Space Marshall’s character, a comic book version of a military leader. Subtler characterisation would have made this a more effective anti-war story.
The Man with English by H. L. Gold⁴ is a short gimmick story which starts with a bad-tempered husband called Stone falling off a ladder at his store. He wakes up with a peculiar condition:

“Every one of your senses has been reversed. You feel cold for heat, heat for cold, smooth for rough, rough for smooth, sour for sweet, sweet for sour, and so forth. And you see colors backward.”
Stone sat up. “Murderer! Thief! You’ve ruined me!”
The doctor sprang for a hypodermic and sedative. Just in time, he changed his mind and took a bottle of stimulant instead. It worked fine, though injecting it into his screaming, thrashing patient took more strength than he’d known he owned. Stone fell asleep immediately.  p. 110

This last twist, the idea that a stimulant would act as a sedative, breaks the story’s logic, as this has nothing to do with the reversed senses Stone supposedly suffers from (this effect would require a completely different biochemistry).
Stone then has an operation which (spoiler) swaps rather than reverses his senses (synaesthesia⁵)—as he finds out when he comes round after the operation:

“What smells purple?” he demanded.  p. 113

So Proudly We Hail by Judith Merril is a slow burn which has a woman and her partner waiting to board a colony spaceship to Mars. Initially it appears that they have both been accepted as colonists, but we eventually find out that the woman has been “pink-slipped”—rejected—for health reasons. She conceals this from her partner.
When the “one hour to departure” warning sounds, she tells him she isn’t going. He is irritated by what he thinks is her last minute nerves, and goes for a walk.
As the time runs down, we see events from both viewpoints. This involves, among other things, the man having a conversation with another colonist which plants the idea she may be seeing someone else; meanwhile, the woman reflects on the reason for her rejection and why she kept it secret for so long:

She didn’t show Will the slips that night. She had to think it through first, decide what to do, how to tell him. Because as soon as the lesson of failure was thoroughly learned for herself, another piece of knowledge took shape within her.
If she told him, he’d stay too. He’d stay at home, and go out to stand in the yard on starry nights. He’d stare at the sky, smoking his pipe, the way he always did—the way he always had—but it would be different. He would stand alone, and his hand would not touch her arm, nor would she be with him. And when he came back into the house, his eyes would avoid her, and he would hate.
You’re going, Will, she promised in her heart when she understood that much. It’s the thirst of your soul, and I shall see that you drink, though it drains me!  p. 125

The man says eventually says goodbye in a tense, passionate scene, and goes off to induction. The story (spoiler) ends tragically as she runs onto the launch pad during the rocket’s lift off.⁶
This examination of a disintegrating relationship against the backdrop of the outward urge makes for a welcome change of pace. A good mood piece, albeit it one with a melodramatic ending.
A Scent of Sarsaparilla by Ray Bradbury is a short piece of whimsy where a dreamer/husband rubs up against his shrew/wife. The man spends too much time in his attic:

“Cora,” he said, eating his lunch, relaxing, beginning to enthuse again, “you know what attics are? They’re Time Machines, in which old, dim-witted men like me can travel back forty years to a time when it was summer all year round and children raided ice wagons. Remember how it tasted? You held the ice in your handkerchief. It was like sucking the flavor of linen and snow at the same time.”
Cora fidgeted.
It’s not impossible, he thought, half closing his eyes, trying to see it and build it. Consider an attic. Its very atmosphere is Time. It deals in other years, the cocoons and chrysalises of another age. All the bureau drawers are little coffins where a thousand yesterdays lie in state. Oh, the attic’s a dark, friendly place, full of Time, and if you stand in the very center of it, straight and tall, squinting your eyes, and thinking and thinking, and smelling the Past, and putting out your hands to feel of Long Ago, why, it . . .
He stopped, realizing he had spoken some of this aloud.  p. 133-134

He (spoiler) eventually converts the attic into a time machine which takes him back to his past.
The idea of returning to childhood days is a common theme in Bradbury’s fiction, and I wondered if this is one of the earliest examples.
Nobody Here But— by Isaac Asimov starts with Bill, a computer/robot scientist, at his girlfriend Mary Ann’s apartment. He briefly talks on the phone to colleague Cliff, who is at the lab which is six miles away. Moments after the call ends, Cliff turns up at the Bill’s girlfriend’s apartment, and both men realise something peculiar is going on. They wonder if this occurrence is connected to the computer they are developing.
The rest of the story takes place at the lab where the two men inspect the computer. They find several modifications to their work (a loudspeaker, extendable metal arms, etc.), and when they start dismantling the device to inspect it more closely, it starts acting defensively, electrifying parts of itself, etc.
Meanwhile (spoiler), Mary Ann gets more and more impatient (she and Bill are supposed to be on a date), and when she finally walks out “Cliff” tells Bill, “Why don’t you ask her to marry you, you lunkhead?” Of course, it turns out that it wasn’t Cliff who made the suggestion but the computer.
I suppose this is vaguely entertaining, but it’s laboured and rather twee. Barely okay.
The Last Weapon by Robert Sheckley has three men on Mars searching a dead race’s superweapons. When they find them Edzel starts experimenting to see what they can do. When one of the other men complains, Edzel kills him. Later, after they find a robotic army, Edzel is in turn killed by the third man, Parke.
The story ends with Parke testing a device labelled “The Last Weapon,” at which point vapour comes out of the box. This coalesces into a pair of eyes and a large mouth floating in the air. It expresses a liking for protoplasm before it eats Edzel’s dead body and then Parke’s living one . . . .
This ending is a weak deus ex machina.
A Wild Surmise by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore opens with Timothy Hooten in his psychiatrist Dr Scott’s office. Hooten is seeing Scott because when he dreams he thinks he is an insect. In his dream world Hooten consults another psychiatrist called Dr Rasp:

“Do you feel that you are dreaming now?” Dr. Rasp telepathized gently.
Timothy Hooten evaded the psychiatrist’s faceted gaze. He swung his oval body around to stare out the sky-slit at the distant polyhedron of the Quatt Wunkery. Then he waved his antennae gently and clicked his mandibles.
“It’s like a dream, isn’t it?” he said evasively, though naturally not audibly. “Imagine building a Wunkery simply to pleat Quatts. Of course they never showed up. That sort of thing could happen only in a dream. Oh, you can’t convince me. This is a dream. Imagine walking around on all sixes.”
Dr. Rasp scratched a memorandum on his left wing-case.
“How do you think you should walk?” he asked.  p. 163

The story eventually becomes a duel between the two doctors to break Hooten’s delusion, and Hooten oscillates ever more rapidly between Scott’s sodium pentothal and Rasp’s hypnosis until something finally gives. At that point (spoiler) both the psychiatrists find themselves in the other’s world.
This is entertaining once it gets going, but the ending does not convincingly flow from the rest of the story.
The Journey by Murray Leinster is a coming-of-age story about a young man called Joe, who gets a temporary job on a spaceship to Pluto before starting his adult working life.
The piece largely details, at least for the first half or so, the menial work he undertakes (swabbing the floors, oiling the engines, etc.), the coarseness of the crew and their teasing of him, and the fact that he never sees the stars that surround him—except once, when one of the officers checks an observation port:

The mate was making a routine check of the few, emergency, rarely-or-never-used viewports in the ship’s hull. In the unthinkable event of disaster to the control room—from which the stars were normally viewed— the ship could be navigated by hand with men at such ports as this, reporting to a jury-rigged control room. The mate was simply verifying that they were ready for use. But he uncovered the stars. And Joe looked.
He looked with his own eyes into infinity—past the mate’s head and shoulders, of course. He saw the stars. Their number was like the number of grains of sand. Their color varied beyond belief. For the first time Joe realized that they differed only in brightness and color, because they were all so far away that they were the same size. None was larger than a mathematical point. It was a sight which no man has ever seen save through some such window as the mate had uncovered.
Joe gazed with absolute rapture. The mate matter-of-factly made his verification of the condition of the port and the shutters that closed over it outside—the shutters which infinitesimal meteorites might pit with their tiny, violent explosions if they struck. The mate closed the inner plate, making sure that the outer shutters closed with it. He locked it and turned to go on. He saw Joe, dazed and agitated, staring at the metal plate which had just locked out the universe.
Joe said, swallowing:
“I—never saw the stars before, sir.”
The mate said, “Oh,” and went on.  p. 176

The whole story seems to be an anti-sense of wonder piece, and even when they arrive and land on Pluto months later his time there is quite low-key.
In its last third the story changes into a different type of piece altogether: Joe meets a young woman going from Pluto to Earth. They eventually talk, and later become emotionally involved. Joe wants her to see the stars and the sky; she worries about what she will look like in sunlight. When they finally get to Earth, Joe is initially oblivious to his waiting parents as he and the young woman get off the ship to address these issues. (By the by, there is occasional mention of the worried mother and father throughout the story, and the effect it is having on them physically.)
Some of this story, such as parts which address the mundanity of space travel, is quite well done albeit slow moving. However, the separate strands don’t really come together as a satisfying whole, and I wondered if this was a ‘Will F. Jenkins’ (Leinster used his real name for his slick work) reject.
The Nine Billion Names of God by Arthur C. Clarke begins with a Tibetan Lama in a computer company office arranging for the purchase of a machine that will enable the monks to print out the nine billion names of God.
The story then fast-forwards three months to two engineers who are in Tibet maintaining the machine. One of them is friendly with one of the monks, has found out why the monastery is undertaking this task, and tells his colleague what he has discovered:

“Well, they believe that when they have listed all His names—and they reckon that there are about nine billion of them—God’s purpose will be achieved. The human race will have finished what it was created to do, and there won’t be any point in carrying on. Indeed, the very idea is something like blasphemy.”
“Then what do they expect us to do? Commit suicide?”
“There’s no need for that. When the list’s completed, God steps in and simply winds things up . . . bingo!”
“Oh, I get it. When we finish our job, it will be the end of the world.”
Chuck gave a nervous little laugh.
“That’s just what I said to Sam. And do you know what happened? He looked at me in a very queer way, like I’d been stupid in class, and said ‘It’s nothing as trivial as that.’”  p. 192

As the process nears completion the engineers become concerned—not about the monks’ beliefs, but about what their reactions may be when nothing happens. They decide to delay the project until they can arrange to be on the way out of the country when the project finishes.
The story ends with the pair travelling to the distant airstrip, and catching sight of it in the distance:

“There she is!” called Chuck, pointing down into the valley. “Ain’t she beautiful!”
She certainly was, thought George. The battered old DC 3 lay at the end of the runway like a tiny silver cross. In two hours she would be bearing them away to freedom and sanity. It was a thought worth savoring like a fine liqueur. George let it roll round his mind as the pony trudged patiently down the slope.
The swift night of the high Himalayas was now almost upon them. Fortunately the road was very good, as roads went in this region, and they were both carrying torches. There was not the slightest danger, only a certain discomfort from the bitter cold. The sky overhead was perfectly clear and ablaze with the familiar, friendly stars. At least there would be no risk, thought George, of the pilot being unable to take off because of weather conditions. That had been his only remaining worry.
He began to sing, but gave it up after a while. This vast arena of mountains, gleaming like whitely hooded ghosts on every side, did not encourage such ebullience. Presently George glanced at his watch.
“Should be there in an hour,” he called back over his shoulder to Chuck. Then he added, in an afterthought:
“Wonder if the computer’s finished its run? It was due about now.”
Chuck didn’t reply, so George swung round in his saddle. He could just see Chuck’s face, a white oval turned towards the sky.
“Look,” whispered Chuck, and George lifted his eyes to heaven. (There is always a last time for everything.)
Overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out.  p. 194-195

The first time I read this I hated the ending, which struck me as a religious (irrational) finish to a SF (rational) story. This time around, and having foreknowledge of the ending, I sort of liked it. I still wouldn’t call it a “classic,” but I thought it well crafted. The last half page in particular is very atmospheric, and the final line stunning.
It occurred to me that the reason so many people liked this when I didn’t is because they perhaps process the religious ending as a sense of wonder one.

The original wraparound Cover for the anthology appears to be an early effort by Richard Powers—it is not typical of his later, more abstract, work (apologies for the poor images—if anyone can provide a better scan of this or the next, I’d appreciate it):

When the book was reissued in 1972 it had a new (semi-wraparound) cover by John Berkey, and a modified title:

The only non-fiction items in the book are the Editor’s Note and Introductions by Frederik Pohl.
The Editor’s Note appears to be a revised—or completely new—introduction for the 1961 reprint of the collection as it references a 1931 Jack Williamson serial published “more than three decades ago.”⁷
The introduction mentions SF’s addictive qualities, and its breadth:

Publishers, critics and a good many readers have a tendency to think of science fiction as one of the “categories” of publishing, in the specific sense of the term; like detective stories and Westerns. But unless you can think of The Big Sky as a Western or Hamlet as a whodunit, you can hardly class in a tight little group so widely variant an assortment of stories as justly fit under the common label of science fiction.
One can get tired of cowboys or corpses; it’s hard to tire of a field that can take you anywhere in space, time or the dimensions.  p. 1

Later, he goes on to say “you need be neither huckster nor Wobbly to enjoy science fiction”, so I presume that this is all an appeal to a mainstream audience who have bought the book out of curiosity (although they probably won’t know what a “Wobbly” is—I didn’t).
The Introductions are occasionally informative:

Many men have made a life work of editing a magazine; Lester del Rey, very nearly single-handedly, edited five—at least one of them, Space Science Fiction, close to the top of its field. Since this occupied fewer than 60 of the 168 hours in a week, he filled his idle time with a writing production schedule which has been known to top 50,000 words over a weekend.  p. 34

Tenn’s first science-fiction story was written between watches as a Merchant Marine radio operator just after the war; his second was written within a matter of hours after recovering from the shock of getting an immediate check for the first. That was Child’s Play—anthologised, to date, no fewer than six times, with more coming up.  p. 88

[Robert Sheckley’s] first story appeared only one year before the original publication date of this collection.  p. 151

Summing up, I’d have to say I found this volume a slight disappointment: I expected, from its reputation, a high quality production but it’s much more mixed than that. Nevertheless, this is an interesting group of stories, especially coming to them from reading an older run of Astoundings: you can easily see the improvement in standards over time—they all seem better written and constructed.
Talking of Astounding, my hunch would be that the Morrison, Kornbluth, del Rey, Simak, Asimov, and Kuttner/Moore stories could have appeared in the 1950’s version of that magazine, but not the others. I’d hazard a guess (my knowledge of other magazines of the time is not as good as I’d like) that the Wyndham, Merril, Bradbury, and Leinster stories could appear in mainstream magazines like the Saturday Evening Post, or in F&SF, and the Leiber (taboos permitting), Gold, and Clarke could have joined them in the latter. The Tenn and the Sheckley seem like Galaxy stories (would Campbell have used Tenn’s anti-war or Sheckley’s victorious alien story? Possibly Sheckley’s, given he used Philip K. Dick’s Imposter, but I doubt it.)
Finally, I note that the majority seem to depend for their overall effect on a gimmick or clever ending.
Worth a look.  ●

_____________________

1. Anthony Boucher & J. Francis McComas, (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, May 1953) provide a brief comment:

Leading the science fiction collections is Frederik Pohl’s Star Science Fiction Stories (Ballantine), available both in paperback form and in an unusually inexpensive hardcover edition, and containing fifteen stories never before published in any form, representing most of the top names in the field at the height of their ability—in all, as welcome a bargain as you’re apt to find in the year’s crop.  p. 90

Groff Conklin, (Galaxy Science Fiction, June 1953) opens his review with this:

Here, friends, is science fiction’s World of Tomorrow in publishing: an original 35-cent paper-backed anthology of first-rate short stones never before published in any form, magazine or book! True, it’s not “reading tapes.” such as we old s.f. fans have been promised in the W. of T., but it’s the next best thing.  p. 120

Conklin then talks in detail about the stories:

[For] my taste, the opener by William Morrison is a bit on the ghastly side, despite a fresh idea and good handling. On the other hand, we have Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore (husband and wife) with a magnificent farce-fantasy on psychoanalysis; and we also have A-class stories by Leinster, Clarke, Kornbluth, del Rey, Leiber (with a bit about “Slickie Millane” that should make a Certain Novelist want to sue for ego-damages!), Simak, John Wyndham, Tenn, H. L. Gold (what a sock ending!), Bradbury (exquisite tale!), and Asimov. (He’s going fantasy, too!) . . .
Only a couple of items fell flat on my ear, besides the Morrison. Judith Merril’s seemed in need of cutting, I thought, and Robert Sheckley’s Mars was a bit too much like Bradbury’s Mars.  p. 120-121

Leslie Flood (New Worlds Science Fiction #29, November 1954) says the anthology is “aptly named”, and “practically all of the stories are superior to the general run of anthologies.” He notes that, of these fifteen specially commissioned stories, two, the del Rey and the Sheckley, have been reprinted in New Worlds. He says, “I enjoyed every one, and I think you will agree with me that this is a rare science fiction treat.”  As for specifics, he adds:

On the light-weight (and lighter), side are Kornbluth’s “Dominoes” and Gold’s “The Man With English”; the broad humour of Fritz Leiber’s hilarious travesty “The Night He Cried,” and a curious piece by Arthur C. Clarke called “The Nine Billion Names of God.” I liked the gentle irony of William Tenn’s “The Deserter,” and John Wyndham’s delightful time-twist in “The Chronoclasm.” I inhaled with very great pleasure Ray Bradbury’s “A Scent of Sarsaparilla,” and was moved by Simak’s “Contraption” and Judy Merril’s poignant “So Proudly We Hail.” I recommend this collection unhesitatingly.  p. 119-120

Damon Knight (Science Fiction Adventures, December 1953) says:

I remarked about Healy’s New Tales of Space and Time that an anthologist working with a single-shot collection of new stories is unlikely to better a good single issue of a top-flight magazine. That still goes; this is a bright, exceedingly readable collection, however, and its four A’s and six B stories make up for five stinkers. The B’s are high B’s; perhaps I ought to explain that I keep the first category for stories that seem to me either absolutely flawless or so near as makes no difference; a great many good stories go into the second compartment for some small logical lapse or element of triteness. Cyril Kornbluth’s Dominoes and John Wyndham’s The Chronodasm, for example, are beautiful jobs of writing, but their time-paradox plots strike me as stale. William Morrison’s Country Doctor is a memorable thing, probably the best work this writer has done yet; several unanswered or badly answered questions about the ailing monster kept me from enjoying it fully. H. L. Gold’s tongue-in-cheek The Man With English contains an essential bit of illogic; Ray Bradbury’s A Scent of Sarsaparilla and Murray Leinster’s The Journey are low-key stories, unimprovable but relatively unexciting.
The C’s include Clifford D. Simak’s plotless and soupily ruriphile Contraption, Judith Merril’s soap-opera So Proudly We Hail, William Tenn’s hortatory and humorless The Deserter, Isaac Asimov’s “Nobody Here But—” and Robert Sheckley’s The Last Weapon, the last pair both too trite, for my taste, to be redeemed by occasional flashes of brilliance.
The A’s are wonderful: Idealist by Lester del Rey, a world’s-end story written with the quiet competence which distinguishes this writer’s best work; Fritz Leiber’s The Night He Cried, an absolutely demolishing satire on a certain “Slickie Millane;” a little gem by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore called A Wild Surmise, in which two mutually exclusive psychiatrists, one spectacled, one bug-eyed, wrestle for the soul of a gentleman who does not believe in either of them; and Arthur C. Clarke’s The Nine Billion Names of God, about which I will only say that the ending is predictable, but this fact doesn’t matter in the least.  p. 120-121

Robert W. Lowndes (Future Science Fiction, May 1953) says this isn’t a typical anthology:

[What] we have here is a representative sample of just about every type of science-fiction writing, and every separate attitude toward science-fiction, that is to be found on the contemporary scene. The odds are that no one (except that rare person who enjoys everything labelled “science fiction”) is going to like all the stories in this volume; but, whether you like a given tale or not, you will find it no less than competent in story-line and writing—and you’ll find a number that are considerably more than just good.

Lowndes has these specific comments:

Morrison offers a very fine example of what I would call the “straight” science fiction yarn—a fascinating scientific problem, not cluttered with abstruse gimmicks or technology, combined with an equally-fascinating human situation. Kornbluth presents the hard-boiled approach, but not overdone, with a “trip to the future for a valuable tip” theme, del Rey and Tenn give their own versions of the ethical problem story, the latter satirical, where the former is straight. (And In both instances, I felt that the story could have been done better, and that the author himself was the one to do it better after a cooling-off period.) Leiber presents a delightful burlesque of the Mickey Spillane school, which has invaded science-fiction of late; while Simak offers a “child” story, which some will find moving, but which also struck me as being heavy-handed. Wyndham represents the intellectual and literary approach, which manages to maintain a light touch, and is all the more effective for it; Gold goes in for more of the belly-laugh type of humor, and his story will be more appreciated by those who have not read Lemkin’s “A Matter of Nerves” (June, 1932 Amazing Stories) and Dr. Code’s, “A Surgical Error” (Astounding Stories, November, 1937) —in short, to those readers to whom this will look like a new idea.
Judith Merril presents the “woman’s slick” treatment to science fiction (and, it should be noted, without many of the inane tabus one finds in that medium), while those who consider Bradbury’s nostalgia for 1910, and thereabouts, to be in the science-fiction orbit, will enjoy his tale. (I don’t, and didn’t.) Asimov gives forth a lighthearted (but not completely so; there are deeper undertones here) account of man versus thinking-machine; Sheckley has a facile, but enjoyable biter-bit tale, and the Kuttners combine with a somewhat delirious but completely enjoyable takeoff on psychiatry, human and inhuman. Leinster’s slice of people “as real as you and I”, I found tedious, but can’t condemn it—it’s part of the plenum, and better done than many other specimens, Lord knows. And, speaking of the Lord, Arthur C. Clarke has examined theology on a scientific basis in his “[The Nine] Billion Names of God”, with frightening, but stimulating results.

Lowndes concludes by saying that the volume is a bargain, and a selection that could not be found in any single magazine issue (the opposite of Knight’s view!) He adds, “I think any of my colleagues would have loved to have some of the stories, and would have cheerfully bounced others, as I would have myself.”

Sam Merwin, Jr. (Fantastic Universe, August-September 1953) says that it is an “outstanding volume,” and that readers need to pick their own favourites. However, “we personally went most heavily for the tales by Morrison, Bradbury, Sheckley, del Rey and the Kuttner-Moore combine. But there isn’t a bad story in the entire book.”

P. Schuyler Miller (Astounding Science Fiction, August 1953) says, in part:

[This] is an excellent collection of original short stories selected by and written for the author-editor-agent, Frederik Pohl [. . .].
There are fifteen stories in the book, whose contents page runs like a roll-of-honor of the best current magazines. Most of them are good, some of them stand out.
One of these is the opening yarn, William Morrison’s “Country Doctor,” in which a veterinarian on Mars has to get inside his patient to find out what’s wrong. It is one of the best of the “old-fashioned” problem tales of situation. Then there is Fritz Leiber’s outrageous satire on Mickey Spillane’s detective stories, “The Night He Cried.” And I liked John Wyndham’s “The Chronoclasm,” a time-twister, the irony of William Tenn’s “The Deserter,” and Arthur C. Clarke’s outre “The Nine Billion Names of God,” in which a computer invades secret Tibet. . . .[?]
The old business of seeing the future and growing rich is the theme of C. M. Kornbluth’s “Dominoes,” one of the minor items in the collection. Lester del Rey’s “Idealist” is a wry little tale of one man in war, not unlike “The Deserter.” Clifford D. Simak has a neat gadget-story in “Contraption,” H. L. Gold replaces the gadget with the gimmick of a man whose senses reverse in “The Man With English,” and Ray Bradbury uses time to his own good ends in “A Scent of Sarsaparilla.”
From Judith Merril we have a characteristically human story of a wife who must stay behind when her husband goes to Mars, “So Proudly We Hail.” Isaac Asimov uses the mechanistic approach to romance in “Nobody Here But . . .” From Robert Sheckley it’s a not too original commentary on man and Martians, “The Last Weapon,” while “Lewis Padgett” fissions into Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore to do “A Wild Surmise,” a rollicking twist on psychoanalysis and dreams which belongs right in there with the best. Then Murray Leinster has a very human little episode about a boy in space, “The Journey.”
Even without the Ballantine prices, this would be a good anthology—and remember, it’s all brand new.

Sam Moskowitz (Science-Fiction Plus, May 1953) states that a number of the stories are “very strong,” and “it is difficult to see how the potential purchaser could go wrong, [regardless of which edition purchased]”.

Mark Reinsberg (Imagination, September 1953) says:

Here’s a remarkably good anthology at a bargain price. Remarkably, because all fifteen stories in it are printed for the first time. Usually that would make one doubt their quality—several other s-f anthologies having presented original material with dismal results. But Pohl’s collection is a tribute to his gathering as well as editorial abilities.
Admirable variety of content is supplied by [. . .] Leiber’s droll alien-sex parody of Mickey Spillane, Clarke’s muted end of the universe, Simak’s rural “Contraption,” Tenn’s grim interlude in the eighteenth year of Jovian siege, [. . .] and Wyndham’s charming trans-time love affair pointing up the romantic aura that future centuries may well attach to our own present-day life.
Pohl’s urban [urbane?] prefaces to each tale set the right biographical tone, even if in a few instances the stories themselves falter. Neither science nor fantasy are overly obtrusive in this collection, which maintains a welcome balance of cosmic logic and warmheartedness.

George O. Smith (Space Science Fiction, May 1953 and Space Science Fiction, September 1953) says:

Ballantine Books recently created quite a furor with their plan to produce originals in both hard covers and pocket-size simultaneously. Now they’ve turned to science fiction, and their first book is due out March 16, 1953. It’s an anthology, but every short story is brand new and hasn’t previously appeared!
[. . .]
The stories by Gold, Leiber, and del Rey represent the best by these writers, and rate high among even a generally excellent selection. But the prize goes to Country Doctor, by William Morrison; this should easily place among the top dozen stories of the year. In fact, the book looks like the best buy in science fiction for this or any other year.  p. 85

He adds these further comments in a second review:

(If you can’t get the hard-cover edition, try the 35¢ edition. Ballantine Books has no fear of competing against themselves; they bring the pocket and the hardcover volumes out simultaneously. I doubt that the rest of us will ever hear whether this is a financially sound procedure directly, but if it works, it will be shown by continued operations along these same lines. My personal opinion is that it is sound.)  p. 95

Uncredited (Editor Samuel Mines?) (Thrilling Wonder Stories, June 1953) says:

The quality, as in practically all anthologies, is somewhat uneven, there are both good and indifferent stories in the collection. We liked Country Doctor by William Morrison, the tale of a vet who goes down into the stomach of a huge alien beast sick on a space ship. The Man With English by Horace Gold was lightweight but smoothly entertaining. A Scent of Sarsaparilla by Ray Bradbury was a nostalgic tale in the Bradbury-manner, of a man who found spring in his attic. So Proudly We Hail by Judith Merril explored the agonies of a young wife who couldn’t go to Mars with her husband. The Deserter by William Tenn probed at the most ticklish of alien stories— suppose the protagonist finds himself more in sympathy with the aliens than his own kind?
[. . .]
Compared to most anthologies, this is excellent value.

Bud Webster’s Anthopology 101: The Pohl Star is a useful essay on the history of the Star Science Fiction Stories series, and is followed by comments on the stories in each of the volumes. This is what he has to say about #1:

Morrison was a pseudonym for Joseph Samachson [. . .]; this story concerns a doctor on Mars who really gets into his work. Kornbluth’s “Dominoes” is an uncharacteristically pedestrian yarn on a subject that had already been explored any number of times. Alas, the del Rey is a good example of a bad, idea-driven story, and an excellent example of why I frequently find his work frustrating; too long a build-up to a disappointing pay-off. The Leiber is a terrific hard-boiled parody, targeting Mickey Spillane specifically. The Simak is typically and pleasantly Simakian, if not one that stands out from his other pastoral tales; it reminds me a little of Avram Davidson’s “The Goobers”. The Wyndham works for exactly the opposite reason that the del Rey doesn’t: it’s a much-used idea, but the characters are more fully developed. The Tenn . . . the Tenn! If you can forgive the author one cardboard characterization (and I, for one, have no trouble doing that), “Deserter” is a brilliant little gem; the ending is both heroic and tragic, but without either the nostalgia of the Bradbury or the heart-break of the Merril. Gold’s “The Man with English” could have appeared in Unknown Worlds, and if it’s dated, it doesn’t hurt the story in the least; it’s still funny. [. . .] Merril’s “So Proudly We Hail” is tragic, beautiful, and could have been written last week; except for a few bits of hardware, it’s absolutely timeless. Bradbury’s story is the flipside of Heinlein’s “The Man Who Traveled in Elephants”; nostalgia both sweet and bitter, but with a different, less idyllic ending. Asimov described “Nobody Here But . . .” as his one and only “big lug” story, and it’s an apt description; Asimov’s humor could fall pretty flat, but not here. The Sheckley is typical of his early work, which is to say witty and O’Henry-esque; this is exactly the kind of story he built his reputation on. The Kuttner-Moore yarn is a gleeful little dig at psychiatry, a much-used trope in the early ’50s; of them all, this is one of the best. Speaking of the best, the Leinster alone is worth the whole Star series; if there was ever a single story to prove to a new generation why Leinster was called the “Dean of Science Fiction” long before Heinlein was, it’s this one. I doubt anyone has to be reminded of the Clarke story; it’s deservedly a classic in the field, and one that left this 10 year-old church-goer gasping at its audacity.

Webster’s collected anthology essays are available in Anthopology 101: Reflections, Inspections and Dissections of SF Anthologies, 2001 (Amazon UK/USA).

I found these dozen or so reviews fascinating: not only do the favourites vary wildly, there is only moderate mention of Clarke’s The Nine Billion Names of God, a future Hall of Fame story (the Leiber seems the standout, followed by the Morrison and the Kuttner/Moore).

2. The Science Fiction Encyclopedia page on the Avon Science Fiction reader series says it was “treated by Wollheim as an anthology series [. . .] but by contemporary readers as a magazine.” There is also this from the page for the Avon Fantasy Reader: “Magazine bibliographers consider it a magazine; book bibliographers think of it as a series of books.”

3. Pohl describes how he became involved with the Ian and Betty Ballantine (the publishers) in his autobiography, The Way the Future Was:

I showed the tear sheets of Gravy Planet to Ian. Poor fellow, he was just too inexperienced a publisher to know it was no good. So he published it. And kept on publishing it, for twenty-some years.
Not only that, now that he had caught the sf fever he wanted more. I trotted out half a dozen candidates from the limitless resources of my agency, and he bought them all. We will do one science-fiction title a month, Ian decided, but in order to assure a supply, we will have to figure out some way of keeping our image bright in the memories of all science-fiction writers. How do we go about that?
Well, I said, you could publish an anthology. There is nothing like getting checks, even smallish anthology-sized checks, to make a writer aware of your existence. Come to that, I’d be glad to edit one for you.
Ian pondered that for a moment, and then his face lit up. No, he said, I don’t want to do what all the other publishers have done. I want to do something original—in fact, what I want to do is an anthology of all original stories. You edit it. We’ll outpay the magazines, to get the very best. We’ll call it—we’ll call it—well, never mind, we’ll think of something to call it. You get the stories.
That’s how Star Science Fiction was born. There have been a good many imitations of it since, but Star was the first regular series of anthologies of originals.
And, you know, not bad, either. It should have been pretty good; I had everything going for me. So many of the best writers in the field were my clients that I could easily get first look at the cream of the crop. I couldn’t shortstop it all. I had, after all, some obligations to the editors I had been dealing with. But I also had some obligations to my writers, and Ian had opened the treasure chest wide enough so that we were paying twice as much as the magazines.
So I began assembling stories, first by checking out what my own clients had to offer.  p. 161

Pohl adds that he waived his agents fee on stories he bought from his clients.

4. In The Way the Future Was Pohl tells an amusing story about The Man With English:

It also gave me perhaps the sweetest moment of revenge I have ever tasted, on the hapless body of Horace Gold.
The thing about Horace was that he was a dynamite editor, energetic, talented, skilled, but he had this one little fault. He could not keep his fingers off his writers’ prose. He got his training under Leo Margulies, in the old pulp-chain days when an editor’s productivity was measured by the proportion of pencil markings on the pages he sent to the printer. Horace never forgot the lessons learned at Leo’s knee.
He drove some writers wild. Even Cyril Kornbluth, compleat pro, casehardened against all editorial madness. Even me. We all muttered in our beer about the way Horace tinkered with our words. Most of us tried to tolerate it—he was, after all, putting out just about the best magazine in science fiction. But we hated it. It was the kind of curse that seems put upon the world to strengthen our spirit, like hemorrhoids or the torment of psoriasis.
And then Ian gave me Star to edit, and Horace gave me the manuscript of his story, “The Man with English.”
Cyril dropped into the office just as I was finishing reading it, and I told him what it was. Are you going to buy it? he asked. I told him I was, and he looked pensive. You know, he said, I’d like to buy a story from Horace. I’d like to buy it, and then edit it. I’d like to go over it from beginning to end, with twelve sharp pencils, and then—
He stopped, and we looked at each other. Inspiration was born.
So I sent Cyril out for a bottle while I had my secretary type up another copy of the script. (There were not yet Xeroxes in every office!) I prepared the new copy for the printer and sent it off, and then Cyril and I settled down to enjoy ourselves.
Ah, the creativity of that evening! No manuscript has ever been as edited as that one. We changed the names of the characters. We changed their descriptions. If they were tall, we made them short. We gave them Irish brogues and made them stutter. We switched all the punctuation at random and killed the point of all the jokes. We mangled his sentence structure and despoiled the rolling cadence of his prose, and then we came to the point of the story. The hero of “The Man with English” has somehow had his senses switched around, so that he hears light and sees sound. At the end of the story he thinks he has had them straightened out, but then he wrinkles his nose and asks, “What smells purple?” We argued over that for half an hour, and then crossed it out and wrote in, “He said, ‘Gee, there’s a kind of a funny, you know sort of smell around here, don’t you think?’”
And then, with great cunning, I let the manuscript be mixed in with some others intended for Horace, as if by accident, and dropped them all off at his apartment on my way home from work. And by the time I walked into my house the phone was ringing.
If you ask Horace about it now, he will tell you, sure, he knew it was a gag all the time. Don’t you believe him. “Fred,” he said, “uh, listen. I mean—well, look, Fred. You know I’m a pro. I don’t object to editing. But . . .” Long pause. Then, “Jesus, Fred!” he finished.
Well, in the long run it made no difference; Horace kept on doing what he always did, making authors weep and putting out a fine magazine. But one thing it did do. For a while one evening it made Cyril and me feel a lot better.  p. 162-163

5. The Wikipedia page on Synaesthesia. Gully Foyle experiences this in The Stars My Destination. Is this where Bester got the idea?

6. The Merril story was the reason I read the anthology, coming to it after a discussion in the Great SF Stories group about her Dead Center and So Proudly We Hail, and whether they were stories that should have made the ‘Year’s Best’ collections. (Actually, Dead Center did make a year’s best—it is in The Best American Short Stories 1955. There is a letter from Andy Duncan in Locus about the handful of SF magazine stories that have made it into that anthology series and the O. Henry one.)
While I’m talking about Merril, I’d suggest that Knight’s “soap opera” comment above about So Proudly We Hail is rather superficial. That criticism could certainly be made about some of her work (I’d say that about Death Is the Penalty, Astounding January 1949, reviewed here recently) but I think he underestimates Proudly.

7. The introductions also appear to be revised: there is mention of C. M. Kornbluth’s death at the age of 34 (in 1958, five years after this anthology first appeared).  ●