Adventures in Time & S...

by
Raymond J. Healy

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Adventures in Time & Space

by Raymond J. Healy (Editor), J. Francis McComas (Editor), Milton A. Rothman (Contributor), Cleve Cartmill (Contributor), Willy Ley (Contributor), Alfred Bester (Contributor), Isaac Asimov (Contributor), Harry Bates (Contributor) , more…

4.16 of 5 stars 4.16 · rating details · 85 ratings · 16 reviews

Requiem (1940) by Robert A. Heinlein
Forgetfulness (1937) by John W. Campbell, Jr.
Nerves (1942) by Lester del Rey
The Sands of Time (1937) by P. Schuyler Miller
The Proud Robot (1943) by Henry Kuttner
Seeds of the Dusk (1938) by Raymond Z. Gallun
Black Destroyer (1939) by A.E. van Vogt
Symbiotica (1943) by Eric Frank Russell
Heavy Planet (1939) by Milton A. Rothman
Time Locker (19...more

Paperback, 997 pages

Published April 12th 1978 by Del Rey (first published 1946)

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Feb 09, 2013 Aidan Nancarrow rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: fantastika

If I can steal a phrase from Mark Twain, the Golden Age of SF was more Gilded than Golden.

It had ambition, it lacked guidance. It had inspiration, it lacked verve. It dreamed, but it dreamed in tunnel-vision.

Adventure's in Time and Space proposes to be '33 of the Greatest Stories, Novelettes & Short Novels by the Best SF Writers of All Time!"

That's a tall order and no surprise the volume falls short.

It doesn't help that the whole thing begins with a essay by the editors equal in pretension t...more

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Nov 10, 2009 Dave rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, arkham, speculative-fiction

“Adventures in Time and Space” edited by Raymond J. Healy and J. Francis McComas is one of the best collections of science fiction short stories, novellas, and novelettes ever published. Originally released in August of 1946 as collection of 35 works from what are now considered the legends of science fiction. It was tied for 4th on the Arkham Survey in 1949 and the top rated book on the Astounding/Analog polls in 1952 and 1956. In 1966, 20 years after it was published, it was still rated as the...more

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Jul 31, 2009 Charles rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction

Here's the deal. There was a hardcover book by this title published, and then the hardcover was broken into two volumes for paperback publication, one of the same title, which I have, and then "More Adventures in Time and Space," which I don't have.

However, in looking at the contents of the hardcover, I've read most of the stories in it in other formats so I've read somewhat over half of this book. But I only own the first paperback.

Good stuff though. This is a collection that deserves it's good...more

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Jul 26, 2010 Werner rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Science fiction fans

Shelves: science-fiction

Originally published in 1946, this thick anthology was the first major venture by a mainstream U.S. publisher in the SF field, and as such a significant contributor to the post-war popularization of the genre with general readers outside of what had been, up to that time, a small ghetto of fans served by a handful of pulp magazines. (The new popular interest in and respectability of the genre was largely due to the war's obvious vindication of two staple SF themes that the English-speaking pre-w...more Originally published in 1946, this thick anthology was the first major venture by a mainstream U.S. publisher in the SF field, and as such a significant contributor to the post-war popularization of the genre with general readers outside of what had been, up to that time, a small ghetto of fans served by a handful of pulp magazines. (The new popular interest in and respectability of the genre was largely due to the war's obvious vindication of two staple SF themes that the English-speaking pre-war scientific community had largely dismissed as nutcake fantasies: atomic energy and rocketry; science fiction, people suddenly felt, was the form of literature best adapted for learning about the new scientific reality. Capitalizing on this interest, the editors included, along with the 33 stories, two scientific essays on rocketry and time travel, which I did not read --my interest here was just in the fiction.) Since I'd read most of the stories, I've had the collection posted for some time on my read shelf; but I've only recently read the last few so that I could review the book.

Drawing their material strictly from the genre pulps of the 1930s and early 40s, and trying to select what they felt to be the best samples of that tradition, the editors assembled works from 23 authors (several, obviously, represented more than once) who include many of the best known of that generation. The Goodreads description above gives a helpful complete contents list of essays and stories, with the authors --and also identifies the latter by their real names as well as the pen names that frequently disguise their identity in the book itself. (It might be mentioned, though, that while they only credit Henry Kuttner as "Lewis Padgett," his wife C. L. Moore was a frequent collaborator in works published under that moniker.)

Given their origin, the stories often reflect the limitations of the technophilic, largely secular humanist perspective of the handful of pulp magazine editors who shaped the American SF ghetto in and before its "Golden Age" --especially John W. Campbell, Jr., two of whose own stories are included. (One author, Eric Frank Russell, was British, but the two stories by him appeared in the U.S. pulps.) Uncritical Darwinism is often a theme and a presupposition, as is triumphalist utopian optimism; but the two ideas sometimes war against each other, as some writers imagine the concepts of extinction and devolution applying to the human race like other species before them, or predict the dying of the solar system, in a philosophic framework devoid of purpose or teleology and holding no brief for humanity as such. (H. P. Lovecraft and his tradition, which developed outside the SF ghetto, isn't represented here; but the latter perspective has much in common with his "cosicism.") Hard science definitely predominates, except for the several time travel stories, and most of those revolve around time paradoxes, a type of scenario that I find too implausible to summon a "willing suspension of disbelief" for. And the style of writing in a number of the stories is relatively pedestrian. (In several cases, I had some trouble identifying which stories I'd already read --which does NOT speak well for their memorable quality!) Heinlein's "The Roads Must Roll" is particularly poor stylistically, long and tedious; it also reflects his ultra-right wing economic attitudes in his picture of labor union members as the villains, ignorant and duped tools of a union boss out to victimize society for his own personal agenda. And while the true literary value of SF has never lain in successful prediction of future technology, his vision here of the future replacement of the highway system by a system of giant conveyor belts is so implausibly wild and off-beam, flying in the face of economic and technological practicality, that it boggles the mind to think that any editor took it seriously. Another booby prize in that area goes to Lester del Rey's "Nerves," where the message is that atomic energy MUST be pursued, despite the misgivings of the troglodytic, backward-looking naysayers --but it must be pursued because it's of irreplaceable value as a killer of the boll weevils that bedevil the cotton industry! :-) (In that story, a Chernobyl-style meltdown is, of course, averted by a technologically brilliant hero, the kind we can always automatically count on to save us --the effect of that message, on any readers with a nodding acquaintance with reality, might not have been as reassuring as del Rey imagined it to be. :-)) And the "humor" of the "Lewis Padgett" stories featuring Galloway, the inventor who's scientifically brilliant only when he's intoxicated, has not worn well over the ensuing decades.

Those considerations pulled down the overall rating of the collection. But there are stories here that would easily deserve five stars, rated by themselves. Van Vogt's "the Weapons Shop" and Heinlein's "Requiem" are absolute masterpieces, libertarian classics that will endure forever. S. Fowler Wright's "Brain" is the complete antithesis of the whole secular humanist utopian vision, a root-and-branch excoriation of that whole school and everything it stands for, which is doubly satisfying here because it's so unexpected in this venue! (Not surprisingly, its appearance in this anthology was its first U.S. publication --given its British setting, Wright may also have been British.) It's also amazing prescient in predicting the anti- democratic nature of scientific elitism's influence on government, and the willingness of science-worshipers to annihilate a whole city full of civilians as a military expedient. (Unfortunately, since 1945 the latter hasn't been confined to the realm of fiction --nor has the former.) Other favorites of mine include de Camp's "The Blue Giraffe" and Fredric Brown's delightful "The Star Mouse." Campbell's "Who Goes There?" and Van Vogt's "Black Destroyer" are two of the best variations on the "humans vs. super-deadly menacing monster" theme ever penned. And besides these standouts, several second-tier tales, such as "Symbiotica" and "Within the Pyramid," are entertaining and well worth a read. Even some of the stories whose premises I don't share are well-written; and Asimov's "Nightfall" has one of the genre's most original premises (though he couldn't resist his trademark bashing of religious believers in trying to execute the premise). So overall, the collection well deserves a positive rating, as one that I liked!(less)

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Jan 08, 2008 Muzzlehatch rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: sf, anthologies

I don't think this was the very first SF anthologoy published in the USA -- I believe there was a Pocket paperback original a couple of years earlier, and Groff Conklin's 'The Best of Science Fiction' came out the same year (1946) -- but it remains the best-known and best-loved early example. It's easy to see why; 1000 pages of extremely well-chosen stories from the early years of the "Golden Age", 1937-1945, by virtually every big-name American writer in the field. It's all from the magazines,...more

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Sep 05, 2009 Karen the Comic Seller rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The stories date from the '30's & 40's, - some are good, others are great yarns, some make you think, just how far have we come? Or have we? An excellent collection of stories, varying in length, tone, humor, serious, philosophical -
Among my favorites were Lewis Ladgett's "The Proud Robot" & "Time Locker" (stories with a weird twist); L. Sprague de Camp's "The Blue Giraffe" (the price of gene-splicing? or a really good yarn?) & A.E.Vogt's "The Weapons Shop" (definitely NOT what you...more

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Jul 22, 2012 Craig rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Arguably the best anthology of science fiction ever published; the best of golden-age sf almost surely. Almost all of the stories have been reprinted over and over again, and almost all of the authors are remembered as being important and influential forces in the field. I've re-read many of the contents multiple times and hope to have the time to pull down my tattered volume several more times!

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Jul 31, 2008 Anastasia rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is a science fiction anthology at the heart of a sci-fi class I took a few years ago in the American Studies department at University of Maryland, and it seems to have gone out of print. I was planning to use it for one of my own classes for its unique historical placement: this is, in short, the pioneering anthology of science fiction back from the era of World War II when writers like Asimov and Heinlein were beginning to shape the genre. Many of the stories--like the vision of roads that...more

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Aug 22, 2012 Pinks2000 rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

One of the oldest and one of the best collections. I have the 1975 version. This book got me interested in science fiction and I have never regretted it. Highly recommended.

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Aug 10, 2011 Michael Tildsley rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This was just average to me. "Time Locker" by Lewis Padgett is the only really memorable story for me. I love the liberties taken with the linear nature of time.

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Jul 10, 2011 Ashley rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: sci-fiandfantasy

An excellent collection of science fiction stories from the 1940s. There are some really good stories and some mediocre ones in the collection. You can tell which authors went on to become famous science fiction writers and which ones did not. I believe the story that inspired the original The Day the Earth Stood Still is in this collection. The character names and situations are just too similar to be coincidental. It is a collection from the 1940s, so there is a film noir quality about the cha...more

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Dec 31, 2010 Frank added it

My version is from Dec. 1979, with a different cover

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Nov 26, 2010 Erik Graff rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: sf fans & literary historians

Recommended to Erik by: no one

Shelves: sf

I recall the title of virtually every one of these stories not so much because I read them here, but because they're famous and have been read in anthology after anthology.

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Jun 14, 2008 Brad Waller rated it 5 of 5 stars

This may have been the very first Sci-Fi book I bought and I still have it. 1975 edition.

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Nov 19, 2007 Mike rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: scifi

All the classics. Start here if you are not familiar with the masters of scifi.

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Jan 05, 2011 Mark Dickson rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: partially-read

My oldest sci-fi anthology of stories and one of my favorites.

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May 16, 2013 James marked it as to-read · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction

May 13, 2013 Prabhat Patel marked it as to-read · review of another edition

May 12, 2013 Robert Allen marked it as to-read · review of another edition

May 12, 2013 Jon Willis rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

May 07, 2013 David Lewane rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

May 04, 2013 Phil added it · review of another edition

Shelves: all-paper, p-mass-mkt-paperback

May 03, 2013 Don Sakers rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: sf

May 02, 2013 Najwa Mohd sebri rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Apr 27, 2013 Mike marked it as to-read · review of another edition

Apr 25, 2013 Don Lee marked it as to-read · review of another edition

Apr 24, 2013 Craig Brummer added it

Apr 23, 2013 Ryan A. marked it as to-read · review of another edition

Shelves: books-i-own

Apr 17, 2013 Dave marked it as to-read

Apr 11, 2013 Kevin rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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About Raymond J. Healy

Raymond John Healy (1907-1969) was a pioneering American anthologist who edited four science fiction anthologies from 1946 to 1955, two with J. Francis McComas. The first, Adventures in Time and Space (1946, with McComas as coeditor) is generally recognized as the finest early anthology from the Golden Age of Science Fiction.

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