The World Turned Upside Down

By Chester S. GeierWyman GuinChristopher Anvil, et al.

Book Overview

Publisher Jim Baen joins two of his top authors to collect the stories which made them SF readers in their youth and fitted them to make major impacts on the SF field today. The quality of the stories in this huge volume compares favorably with that of any collection in the past fifty years--there's been nothing of equal size and quality since Groff Conklin's Omnibus of Science Fiction in 1952. Nevertheless the selection wasn't through some would-be objective standard but rather by a deliberately subjective process: these are the stories which, when the editors read them, turned their worlds around. Each story was picked because of the emotional charge it gave one or more of the editors on first reading. The story sources range from Analog to Weird Tales, the first appearances from the early '30s to the mid '60s. Many were written by the greatest names in the SF field. These are stories that made the editors think and feel. They will do the same for you. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0743498747
• ISBN13: 9780743498746
• Release Date: January 2005
• Publisher: Baen Books
• Length: 743 Pages
• Weight: 2.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.6" x 6.3" x 9.7"

Customer Reviews

Not Free SF Reader

The three editors in this case have put together a selection of stories that influenced them as kids, some are obscure, some most definitely not. Certainly an interesting bunch, and definitely no junk here. Rescue Party - Arthur C. Clarke The Menace from Earth - Robert A. Heinlein Code Three [Clay Ferguson] - Rick Raphael Hunting Problem - Robert Sheckley Black Destroyer [Beagle] - A. E. van Vogt A Pail of Air - Fritz Leiber...

A must for any 'best of the best' reader of the genre

David Drake, Eric Flint and Jim Baen are a powerful combination of literary forces together in The World Turned Upside Down, in which publisher Baen joins with two top authors to gather the stories which made them sci fi fans in their youth. Sources used range from Analog to Weird Tales from the early 30s on and pack in some of the finest names in the field: a must for any 'best of the best' reader of the genre.

All the lost greats in one place

Do you ever pine for that one great science fiction story you read as a kid, lost in some back issue of astounding or TMOFASF, with a forgotten title and author, never to be found again? The editors here have gathered all those together in one place. I can't tell you how many lost gems there are in this collection, or how many times I exclaimed, "That's who wrote that! I read this once 30 years ago and have been looking...

A big pile of great stuff you've probably read already

I'm conflicted about how to review this, because--on the one hand--I'd read a good three-quarters of the stuff in it before (in some cases, quite a long time before.) On the other hand, there was some new stuff, and the "liner notes" for each story were often interesting. You could probably put together a very good literature class around the stories in this volume. On the gripping hand...riffing on classic sci-fi is a...