Before the Golden Age: A Science Fiction Anthology of the 1930s

Before the Golden Age #- Full Original Text

by Isaac Asimov (Editor/Contributor), Edmond Hamilton (Contributor), Murray Leinster (Contributor)

The Man Who Evolved by Edmond Hamilton; The Jameson Satellite by Neil R. Jones; Submicroscopic by Capt. S. P. Meek; Awlo of Ulm by Capt. S. P. Meek; Tetrahedra of Space by P. Schuyler Miller; The World of the Red Sun by Clifford D. Simak; Tumthak of the Corridors by Charles R. Tanner; The Moon Era by Jack Williamson; The Man Who Awoke by Laurence Manning; Tumthak in Shawm by Charles R. Tanner; Colossus by Donald Wandrei; Born of the Sun by Jack Williamson; Sidewise in Time by Murray Leinster; Old Faithful by Raymond Z. Gallun; The Parasite Planet by Stanley G. Weinbaum; Phoxima Centauri by Murray Leinster; The Accursed Galaxy by Edmond Hamilton; He Who Shrank by Henry Hasse; The Human Pets of Mars by Leslie Frances Stone; The Brain Stealers of Mars by John W. Campbell, Jr.; Devolution by Edmond Hamilton; Big Game by Isaac Asimov; Other Eyes Watching by John W. Campbell, Jr.; Minus Planet by John D. Clark; Past, Present and Future by Nat Schlachner; The Men and the Mirror by Ross Rocklynne.

Genres: Science Fiction, Short Stories, Anthologies, Fiction, Classics, Science Fiction Fantasy, Speculative Fiction

986 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 1974

About the author

Works of prolific Russian-American writer Isaac Asimov include popular explanations of scientific principles, The Foundation Trilogy (1951-1953), and other volumes of fiction.

Isaac Asimov, a professor of biochemistry, wrote as a highly successful author, best known for his books.

Asimov, professor, generally considered of all time, edited more than five hundred books and ninety thousand letters and postcards. He published in nine of the ten major categories of the Dewey decimal classification but lacked only an entry in the category of philosophy (100).

People widely considered Asimov, a master of the genre alongside Robert Anson Heinlein and Arthur Charles Clarke as the "big three" during his lifetime. He later tied Galactic Empire and the Robot into the same universe as his most famous series to create a unified "future history" for his stories much like those that Heinlein pioneered and Cordwainer Smith and Poul Anderson previously produced. He penned "Nightfall," voted in 1964 as the best short story of all time; many persons still honor this title. He also produced well mysteries, fantasy, and a great quantity of nonfiction. Asimov used Paul French, the pen name, for the Lucky Starr, series of juvenile novels.

Most books of Asimov in a historical way go as far back to a time with possible question or concept at its simplest stage. He often provides and mentions well nationalities, birth, and death dates for persons and etymologies and pronunciation guides for technical terms. Guide to Science, the tripartite set Understanding Physics, and Chronology of Science and Discovery exemplify these books.

Asimov, a long-time member, reluctantly served as vice president of Mensa international and described some members of that organization as "brain-proud and aggressive about their IQs." He took more pleasure as president of the humanist association. The asteroid 5020 Asimov, the magazine Asimov's Science Fiction, an elementary school in Brooklyn in New York, and two different awards honor his name.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_As...

Reviews

[Werner]

Over the last ten years, I've dipped into this book intermittently at times, most recently in 2008, so it's been parked on my "being read intermittently" shelf since then. But I've recently decided to move it to "started and not finished." It isn't awful as such, like some of the permanently-abandoned books on that shelf; it's just that I've realized that I'm not really excited about finishing it, when there are so many other books out there I actually want to read and would be excited about! (I actually began reading it back when I was projecting the development of a college-level SF class; but when that fell through, the book ceased being vital reading for that plan.) The clincher to the decision to change shelves was the discovery that I'd failed to write a partial review of the material I've read up to now, as I would have if I'd been following my current practice at the time! So, I'll consign it to limbo, with the notation that the stories I read were workman-like SF pulp, but not as worthwhile as most of the content in Adventures in Time and Space: Famous Science-Fiction Stories.

[Nandakishore Mridula · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read these stories from the toddler years of SF with great delight. One can see the child growing up from infancy to early childhood. I can easily pick out two favourites in "Sidewise in Time" and "The Parasite Planet".

A worthy addition to the library of any aficionado.

[Rhys · Rating 3 out of 5]

This thousand-page monster is one of the longest books I have read for a very long time. I didn't rush through it: I picked it up in a second-hand bookshop in 2003 and began reading it soon after; I finished the final story on the last day of December 2010. Seven years from beginning to end -- exactly as long as the time-frame (1931-1938) covered by the anthology itself, for this is a chronological showcase of Nineteen Thirties pulp SF edited by Isaac Asimov.

The guiding principle behind BTGA is an interesting one, namely the magazine stories (but not the novels or longer novellas) that most impressed the youthful Asimov when he was an avid reader of SF but not yet published himself. Hence the volume's title. The "Golden Age" of SF is generally said to date from August 1938 (with the publication of John Campbell's 'Who Goes There?' in the pages of Astounding Science Fiction) to the beginning of the "New Wave" in the early 1960s. Asimov was a crucial part of that Golden Age, as were Heinlein, Van Vogt and L. Sprague de Camp. None of those authors will be found in this anthology. In fact, very few pre-Golden Age writers survived into the Golden Age and many of the names in BTGA were unfamiliar to me.

Some of the authors in BTGA are represented by more than one story. Edmond Hamilton has three, all of them founded on intriguing concepts and every one solidly written. The piece that kicks off the volume is one of his, 'The Man Who Evolved', a nicely wrought tale with an inevitable but genuinely satisfying ending. Later in the volume, another Hamilton story, 'Devolution', serves as its reciprocal and answer; but the best Hamilton contribution on display here is 'The Accursed Galaxy', which is based on the fabulous conceit that the human race is a dreadful virus, a disease so terrible that our galaxy can be regarded as 'infected', causing all the other galaxies to flee in panic, which explains why the universe is expanding.

Although 'The man Who Evolved' is a powerful opener, the story that immediately follows it, 'The Jameson Satellite' by Neil R. Jones, is far more creaky; Asimov regards it as the weakest piece in the book, but in fact the core dilemma at the heart of the plot is very good: a scientist held in suspended animation in a sealed space capsule is awakened in the far future by a race of alien cyborgs. Humanity has ceased to exist: the refugee from the past is offered a choice between living out his natural span as the last relic of his race, dying a natural death and condemning the human race to oblivion, or being converted into a cyborg, losing his humanity but gaining immortality and the opportunity to acquire vast knowledge.

The conceit of a man who is put into suspension only to awake thousands or millions of years later was a popular pulp SF device. Nat Schachner contrives a situation whereby an Ancient Greek and an American from the 1930s both end up in a far future dystopia resembling the social hierarchy of Brave New World. Schachner betrays a greater grasp of social issues than most of his contemporaries and 'Past, Present and Future' is enriched by a political awareness generally lacking in the other BTGA stories. It's a worthy read, but the most startling deployment of the "sleeper awakes" theme occurs in the story 'The Man Who Awoke' by Laurence Manning, the first in a linked series that follows the adventures of one Norman Winters through vast eras of future history. This first instalment has made me curious to seek out the entire set, and they do all exist in book form: I consider this to be an essential purchase for 2011. 'The Man Who Awoke' demonstrates an acute ecological sensitivity that is startling for a story written in 1933.

Another popular theme, possibly even more overused by early pulp SF writers, is the "shrinking man" who has adventures on the surfaces of atoms. Ray Cummings specialised in this kind of story in the 1920s. Another specialist was Captain S.P. Meek, represented in BTGA by two linked novellas, 'Submicroscopic' and 'Awlo of Ulm'. Colourful, vibrant and bigoted, these display all the worst qualities of pulp SF and yet they are not without their redeeming features. Certainly they possess incredible momentum, far more than (for instance) P. Schuyler Miller's 'Tetrahedra of Space', which is reminiscent of the very first Jack Williamson story, 'The Metal Man'. Lush and overwritten, 'Tetrahedra of Space' is followed by the crisp and bitterly ironic 'The World of the Red Sun' by Clifford D. Simak, a time machine exploit with an exceptionally bleak ending.

Time travel also plays a significant role in Jack Williamson's 'The Moon Era', which rather unusually takes place on a much younger version of our Earth's satellite, a miniature world with its own atmosphere and strange flora and fauna. It's an enjoyable romp but completely overshadowed by Williamson's second contribution to BTGA, 'Born of the Sun', an astonishing example of the "thought-variant" subgenre, in which it emerges that the planets and satellites of our solar system are in fact the ready-to-hatch eggs of immense star-birds. Williamson was one of the few truly successful pre-Golden Age writers to survive intact into the Golden Age: he had a vibrant and lengthy career. Many years ago I read The Early Williamson, a showcase of the stories that first established him as a "name" in the SF field, and I was impressed: his ideas were always original and interesting and his grasp of plot relatively sophisticated.

Returning to the "shrinking man" theme, two offbeat treatments can be found in BTGA: Henry Hasse's 'He Who Shrank', which takes the concept to an extreme, its unfortunate narrator descending through uncountable submicroscopic universes nested inside each other, with the implication that the loop will eventually be closed; and Donald Wandrei's 'Colossus', which reverses the idea, the main protagonist expanding in size until he grows bigger than our universe, which turns out to be a single atom in a much larger cosmos. Hasse's prose style is dense and overwrought and reminiscent of the Weird Tales standard; Wandrei's is extremely clumsy and awkward and doesn't do justice to his concepts.

Charles R. Tanner is a forgotten name now, but Asimov cites him as a major early influence, and on the strength of 'Tumithak of the Corridors' and its sequel, 'Tumithak of Shawm', one can understand why. Both novellas are well-written and unusual, almost the sort of thing a youthful Jack Vance might have written, and indeed they are among the highlights of BTGA. Apparently Tanner wrote four 'Tumithak' novellas which combine to make a novel: it's out there somewhere, issued by a small press, and is undoubtedly worth making the effort to seek out.

I was less enthralled by Raymond Z. Gallun's 'Old Faithful', which is a sympathetic portrait of an alien being along the lines established by Stanley Weinbaum's justly famous 'A Martian Odyssey' (in the July 1934 issue of Wonder Stories). That particular Weinbaum story doesn't appear in BTGA, as Asimov states that he was unaware of it at the time, but 'The Parasite Planet' does, and it's almost as good, with a traditional "hostile world" scenario rendered more special by a superior writing technique and skilfully timed dynamic. Weinbaum would surely have become a major Golden Age author had he lived long enough, but he died of cancer only eighteen months into his career at the age of 33.

Murray Leinster, as an extreme contrast to Weinbaum, enjoyed a career of immense duration. His first SF story, 'The Runaway Skyscraper', was published in 1919 in the pages of Argosy, predating Williamson by one decade and Asimov by two. 'Sideways in Time' is the first properly developed "lateral dimensions" story. Various alternate presents appear on Earth at the same moment, turning our world into a patchwork of bizarre lateral civilisations. The concept is vast and difficult to handle, but Leinster does a good job, though his prose is a little stiff. By the time of his second contribution to BTGA, 'Proxima Centauri', he has become a much more fluid and controlled writer, and in fact this tale of an alien race that has evolved from carnivorous plants and travels in wooden spaceships is one of the finest in the anthology.

A quirky story that rises above its numerous defects and becomes almost an example of unintentional surrealism is 'The Human Pets of Mars' by Leslie F. Stone, the only female writer represented in this volume and one of the few women active in the field in the 1930s (of whom the greatest was probably C.L. Moore). Asimov claims that 'The Human Pets of Mars' no longer stands up, and yet I found it thoroughly enjoyable. Owing as much to Swiftian satire as contemporary pulp SF, Stone's parable of a group of humans who are abducted by octopus-like aliens and turned into domestic pets, fed on overich food, pampered and punished, subjected to mystifying training sessions, is amusing. It reads almost like a parody of pulp SF, though almost certainly that wasn't Stone's intention. I found it even more entertaining than the story that immediately follows it, 'The Brain Stealers of Mars' by John W. Campbell.

Campbell is represented in BTGA by two stories, one of which is a sort of speculative essay in a series designed to educate the casual reader about the conditions on the various planets of the solar system. 'Other Eyes Watching' is a mildly interesting piece but nothing special. 'The Brain Stealers of Mars', on the other hand, is actually a very good story, a puzzle tale about two maverick adventurers stuck in a very nasty tight spot who must use wits rather than brawn to escape a dreadful fate.

The authentic puzzle tale is an abstruse subgenre of its own, known in German as a "gedanken". One of the finest examples of this specialised genre rounds of BTGA in fine style, Ross Rocklynne's 'The Men and the Mirror'. Rocklynne should have been as big as Asimov and Heinlein but for some reason it never quite worked for him, although he was an important part of the Golden Age and a major influence on Asimov. 'The Men and the Mirror' drops its two protagonists into a situation where only a good understanding of the laws of physics, coupled with an accurate mathematical ability, will be able to get them out. It's an ingenious tale. It also happens to be well-written and is undoubtedly the highlight of BTGA.

I have neglected to mention that Asimov includes one of his own stories in the anthology, 'Big Game', an early piece he thought had been lost. It's a slight throwaway affair, scarcely worthy of the mighty author who penned Foundation. Of vastly greater significance are the autobiographical linking pieces between each of the stories in which Asimov talks about his youthful discovery of SF, his own attempts to write it and the rocky road of his home life and education.

BTGA was worth reading, but I feel obliged to stress that it's not really an anthology that can be digested all in one go without extensive pauses between the stories. The quality of the writing is mostly competent but rarely brilliant and although there's a tendency to forgive such clumsy prose by saying "It was only the 1930s" it must be remembered that writers such as Yevgeny Zamyatin, Karel Čapek, Frigyes Karinthy and Olaf Stapledon had already produced immensely more sophisticated SF before this time. Pulp magazine SF was enjoyable and often responsible for some genuinely intriguing and original concepts, but it was still pulp fiction, not highbrow literature.

[Mary JL · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an anthology edited by Isaac Asimov. He picked stories from the 1930's that he felt were memerable or important in the development of science fiction at the time.

He surrounds each stories with autobiographical interludes; telling about his life and times at the time he read the story. So we get a peek at Asimov's life and a peek at lots of old,Classic SF stories.

Of the 26 stories, some of course are much more dated than others. A few I found really pretty bad. However, most of these stores have NOT been collected very often and would take some searching to find. If you ARE curious to read early science-fiction and see how the genre was 70 years ago, this anthology would be a good starting point. (Note: for paperback publication it was split into two volumes)

Recommended for those who are fans of Asimov; and those curious about the early years of science fiction.

[Jennifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

this book was amazing, but probably has a pretty specific audience. some of the stories are awkward by today's standards - both literary and science-y - but always fascinating as a sort of sociological record of the thirties. the best part is definitely asimov's commentary. he has written a sort of autobiographical intro as well as a page or two between each story placing them in the context of his life and burgeoning science fiction interest. asimov is brilliant and he knows it and he's still brilliant, if you get me. the stories are eclectic and colorful and extremely well presented.

[Jay · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a massive (900-page) collection of science fiction stories written between 1932 and 1938. Why those years? Well, 1932 is when young Isaac Asimov first started reading SF, "borrowing" the magazines his father sold in the family candy store in Brooklyn. In 1938, two things happened: Asimov published his own first story, and John Campbell took full control of Astounding Stories magazine, the premier publisher of SF in those days, thus ushering in the beginning of the "Golden Age of Science Fiction." Hence the title of this anthology, which also serves as a sort of autobiography of Asimov, as he groups the stories by year and recounts what was going on in his life when he first read the stories as a young man. In that sense, this book also serves as a prequel to "The Early Asimov," a 1972 collection of his own stories from 1938 to 1949, which are--as in this book--interspersed with autobiographical narrative.

Like the stories in Heinlein's "The Past Through Tomorrow" collection (see my review), one striking feature of these stories is that all of the accomplishments in travel either through space or time is the result of individuals, not governments; a trend we're seeing these days, now that NASA has utterly failed in its mission and has reduced itself to politically correct appeasement and passed the torch to private entrepreneurs like Musk, Bigelow, Bezos, and others.

(Some reviewers have mentioned that the stories in this collection are rife with sexism and racism. I would suggest that those readers are hothouse flowers who should stick to their trigger warnings and leave the realities of exploring the future to those of us who are more rugged. What bigotries are present in these stories is very minor, and more representative of the realities of the 1930s than the artificial PC environments of today. The sooner we get back to the attitudes of the 1930s, the better for humanity as a whole.)

The stories collected in this volume are:

"The Man Who Evolved" (1931) by Edmond Hamilton, in which a scientist finds a way to speed up evolution, and naturally decides to test it on himself.

"The Jameson Satellite" (1931) by Neil R. Jones, is not, sadly, about a whisky distillery in orbit, but another scientist, this time one who wants to preserve his body after death in hopes of being revived by advanced technology someday. And in fact he is eventually discovered, by an alien race which grants his wish.

"Submicroscopic" (1931) by Capt. S.P. Meek is the first of two stories in this anthology from Meek's Awlo of Ulm series, and one of several that explore the possibilities of finding new worlds by either vastly expanding or shrinking one's size. In this one, a scientist (you see the theme of the protagonists in these early stories) discovers a way to shrink himself to the size of a molecule, and discovers an entire world in which he is a hero--very reminiscent of Burrough's John Carter of Mars.

"Awlo of Ulm" (1931) by Capt. S.P. Meek is the immediate sequel to "Submicroscopic," in which the protagonist Courtney Edwards fights with a rival for the hand of his princess and control of the submicroscopic kingdom.

"Tetrahedra of Space" (1931) by P. Schuyler Miller is the first story in this collection that had, for me, a glimmering of the feeling of stories from the Golden Age. Explorer find an alien menace growing in the jungles of South America, one that has the potential to destroy humanity. The plot is reminiscent of Wells' "War of the Worlds," while the tone and style are very Lovecraftian.

"The World of the Red Sun" (1931) by Clifford D. Simak describes two men who build a time machine that doesn't work quite as intended--then they blame the machine instead of themselves! The whole plot development seems a little artificial and not credible, demonstrating that this is Simak before he got...well, good. The story is pretty derivative of H.G. Wells' "The Time Machine."

"Tumithak of the Corridors" (1932) by Charles R. Tanner is the first of two Tumithak stories in this volume. In this one, in the far future, Earth has been conquered by aliens from Venus and humans have been driven to live and hide in tunnels deep below the surface (shades of "Terminator"). After centuries, one man summons the courage to travel to the surface and confront the alien overlords.

"The Moon Era" (1932) by Jack Williamson is a tale about an explorer who discovers that travel through space also means travel through time--the two are linked. He visits the Moon in ancient times, when its population is in the last stages of a genocidal war. Very impressive for the depiction of alien life forms and ecosystems, well beyond its time. The aliens aren't just men dressed up in monster suits, but truly alien. Has to be one of the first, best depictions of how alien life might evolve.

"The Man Who Awoke" (1933) by Lawrence Manning is a sort of proto-environmentalist tale crossed with the 1960 Rod Taylor "The Time Machine" movie adaptation.

"Tumithak in Shawm" (1933) by Charles R. Tanner is the second Tumithak story in this book. In this one, which moves the story line into the "epic" category, Tumithak, having risen to prominence after his visit to the surface, unites the subterranean clans into a daring attack on an alien shelk settlement on the surface; and in the process they find unlooked-for allies. A ripping good yarn, as they say. Would make a great movie these days.

"Colossus" (1934) by Donald Wandrei. Wandrei was a friend of H.P. Lovecraft and wrote some of the canonical Cthulhu stories. The fraught, nervous writing style that worked so well in those stories doesn't come off so well in this sci fi tale. It's sort of the inverse from the earlier story "Submicroscopic." An explorer discovers that all universes are just an atom in a larger universe, as he expands and passes from one universe into another and then another. Jagged writing, obviously contrived plot devices, and wooden, stereotyped characters make this tale a chore to get through. I did like that the protagonist's cylindrical, double-pointed spacecraft sounds just like Beowulf Shaeffer's GP hull in Larry Niven's "Neutron Star."


"Born of the Sun" (1934) is an early work by Jack Williamson, who after the death of Robert Heinlein in 1988 was often called the next Dean of Science Fiction. This is another very Lovecraftian tale in which the entire solar system is threatened with physical destruction, abetted by a mysterious Oriental cult on Earth. The story has an amazingly original premise, but I found the ending unsatisfying.

"Sidewise in Time" (1934) is by future award-winning author Murray Leinster. It's a very creative and well-written tale of a time disturbance that affects the whole world. This story illustrates why Asimov himself considered Leinster (real name William Fitzgerald Jenkins) to be the real Dean of Science Fiction for fifty years or more.


"Old Faithful" (1934) by Raymond Z. Gallun is a story about first contact with an alien species, surely one of the first to explore how we would handle such an event. The story hasn't aged well in how it deals with the human side of that equation, but the examination of the alien astronomer's thought processes is very evocative and well thought out.

"The Parasite Planet" (1935) by Stanley G. Weinbaum is a brilliant and sophisticated tale of two adventurers--who don't particularly like each other--trapped on the hellish surface of Venus. Inventive, fascinating descriptions of an alien ecosystem; definitely a milestone in the evolution of the "alien world" genre. I liked it so much that, on Asimov's unwitting (in 1974) recommendation, I looked up Weinbaum's other story "A Martian Odyssey" on the Internet and read it too.

"Proxima Centauri" (1935), another by Murray Leinster, is a terrifying account of mankind's catastrophic first encounter with another alien species--a cunningly devised race that has to be one of the most memorable in all sci fi. Great counterpoint to "Old Faithful."

"The Accursed Galaxy" (1935) by Edmond Hamilton is reminiscent of the opening scenes of 1960's "War of the Worlds" film. Pretty good story nonetheless, not an epic, but a good use of a few pages.

"He Who Shrank" (1936) by Henry Hasse is a good companion story to "Submicroscopic," only in this story there is no lower limit to how small the explorer can shrink. He finds that each universe is an atomic particle in a larger universe, and uses that principle to visit a number of interestingly-crafted alien worlds. Goes on a little too long--Asimov calls it "beautiful elaborateness" but I call it overdeveloped--but it's a good tale regardless.

"The Human Pets of Mars" (1936) by Leslei Frances Stone is...well, kind of a dumb story on the face of it, with cardboard cutout characters, an outlandish plot, and an ending that seems rushed and incomplete. But when you stop to think about the predicament and situation the characters find themselves in, it's actually a pretty terrifying plot. A for effort, C for execution.

"The Brain Stealers of Mars" (1936) is by the aforementioned John W. Campell, Jr., soon to be the guiding hand at Astounding Science Fiction, and you can see why he was one of the most influential authors on young Asimov. In this story, early visitors to Mars encounter an alien life form that can mimic any being based on intercepted thoughts, and the protagonists have to learn to tell the counterfeits from the real thing. Asimov reveals that Campbell later reworked this story into the more polished "Who Goes There?" in 1938, which became the basis for the 1951 film "The Thing from Another World" (which sucked) and 1982's John Carpenter remake "The Thing" (which was awesome).

"Devolution" (1936) is another story by Edmond Hamilton, similar in some ways to his "The Accursed Galaxy" but clever (and humbling) in execution. Easy to see why young Asimov liked this one; it turns conventional wisdom (personified a bit too stridently by one of the main characters) on its ear.

"Other Eyes Watching" (1937) is another John W. Campbell story, with lots of hard science (in this case, chemistry and physics) which have a particular appeal to me, which is why Poul Anderson is one of my favorite writers. Very short story, with an ending meant to leave the reader wondering...and looking up at the night sky.

"Minus Planet" (1937) by John D. Clark is probably the first sci fi story to deal with the then-new concept of antimatter, and the effect it could have on our dimension/universe/reality. For that reason I think it presents a fascinating window into the evolution of science fiction, keeping up with the newest scientific discoveries and theories of the 1930s.

"Past, Present, and Future" (1937) by Nat Schachner is a lightweight but entertaining tale about a Macedonian warrior, an Indiana-Jones style archaeologist (I was surprised the archetype went back this far--did Lucas or Spielberg ever read this story?), and a future oligarch who band together to escape the bonds in which they each find themselves in their own time. Great blend of sci fi and fantasy with the deus ex machina of volcanic gas.

"The Men and The Mirror" by Ross Rocklynne is the only story from 1938 in this anthology, and a great story on which to end the collection. It prefigures the increasingly hard science stories of the Golden Age, and has interesting and memorable characters. It presents a problem in physics whose solution depends on the skills and personalities of the protagonists, and the closest parallel I can think of are the wonderful Unorthodox Engineer stories by Colin Kapp 30+ years later. In this one--the latest in a series of stories about criminal Edward Deveral and pursuing space cop Lt. Jack Colbie--the two men must solve a physics puzzle in real time to avoid a horrible death; similar in that respect to Niven's "Neutron Star" and other "science puzzle" stories.

Before I read this anthology I wasn't aware of the "Early Asimov" collection of Asmiov stories; but now that I see the influence these early SF authors had on Asimov, I will go out immediately and find a copy of that collection as well. In addition, I'll seek out other works by some of the authors in this volume, since they were clearly skilled and visionary writers ahead of their time. We're indebted to Asimov not only for assembling these disparate stories, but for infusing them with the significance they had for him as a young reader and writer as well.

[James Hoff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Before I get too far into this, I wanted to add a personal note.  I owe much of my appreciation of some of this material to a little known Italian film director and SF fan named Luigi Cozzi.  My first interest in science fiction came not from books, but from the "sci-fi craze" of the late 70s through the early 80s.  Think Space: 1999 to Blade Runner, and every science fiction film and show in between.  I couldn't get enough of the likes of Star Wars, Buck Rogers, Jason of Star Command, Quark, Logan's Run (the film only--the series was goawful) and SO many others.  One of my favorite movies was the ultra-cheesey Cozzi-directed Starcrash.   When I first saw the opening and saw "Murray Leinster" painted on one of the ships, I thought maybe it was a model-maker trying to gain credit he hadn't been given, or something like that.  When I turned my SF attention to library and bookstore bookshelves, I discovered that I had made a mistake.  The Murray Leinster ship was an allusion to a classic author--I discovered this when I first found Sidewise in Time in a collection called Worlds of Maybe edited by Robert Silverberg.  I would later discover (via "A Reader's Guide to Science Fiction") that the villainous Zarth Arn was in fact named for the hero of Edmond Hamilton's classic space opera, The Star Kings.  Cozzi pointed me in a good direction, and over the years, I read as much of both Hamilton and Leinster as I could get my hands on.  So I was familiar with at least some of the material herein.  I was also familiar with Clifford D.  Simak (who I found next to Sliverberg in my local library), but had not read the World of the Red Sun contained here.

To me, Before the Golden Age is a veritable treasure trove of SF from the thirties, some of which may have never seen the light of day again without it.   It's enhanced greatly by Asimov's autobiographical tidbits, first in an extended introduction at the beginning, then between the stories.
Some have said that the writing style is dated, but to be honest, the quality varies from piece to piece.  A personal  opinion is that the majority are solidly written.   
Several stories (in no particular order) really stand out to me:
The Accursed Galaxy by Edmond Hamilton offers a  dark view of life.  Alien progenitors see it (created accidentally by one of their own) as an abomination, a scourge to be cleansed from the young universe.  Hamilton is amazingly effective here with a big idea, and as in most of his best works, the plot moves with relentless speed.
Sidewise in Time (which I'd read many times before) by Murray Leinster.  One of my favorite novellas from any era of SF.  I love the way Leinster first describes what must be a  timequake, then sets the table with a series of vignettes: Vikings appear of the US east coast and begin to plunder: a platoon of ancient Roman soldiers turn up in Joplin, MO, and slaughter a man who blows his car horn at them.  A prehistoric jungle over grows and consumes a farmer's acreage, then an unnamed prehistoric dinosaur consumes the bewildered farmer himself!  A giraffe splits into two egg shaped masses and creates a duplicate of itself via budding. The plot settles nicely into a fast paced, straight-forward adventure.

The Moon Era by Jack Williamson takes an adventurer back millions of years in time, when the moon was habitable in it's own right, full of life itself.  At first I thought this one would be about time-travel, but it turns out to a superb world-building story, complete with a sympathetic alien who befriends the hero.  The moon turns out to be a beautiful, but deadly hostile world.
The World of the Red Sun by Clifford D Simak is a time travel story, with a surprisingly dark twist at the end.  This was apparently Simak's first story, and it is easy to see he was going to be one of the greats.
Tumithak if the Corridors  Is  a real surprise in it's originality, and the strange world it creates.  I wasn't sure what to expect, but it's hero's journey was gripping.
Old Faithful by Raymond Z Gallun.  One of the most compelling of all the stories in this collection, describing a sympathetic Martian who simply wants to learn about the humans he has made contact with.  He risks everything in a desperate attempt to reach Earth, and meet them.  It is full of nice little bits about Martian technology as the plot progresses.  This was so good that I went straight to my online bookseller and ordered The Best of Raymond Z Gallun right away ( great in its own right, btw).
The Parasite Planet by Stanley G  Weinbaum had the same effect--I ordered his "best of" right away too.  An excellent world building action adventure, Weinbaum created an all too vivid and hostile Venus (still theoretically plausible when written).   It really stands out.
I thought  Born of the Sun by Jack Williamson got off  to a rather slow--and cliched for the era--start.  Things picked  up considerably in the second half.  I loved the idea of the planets being eggs,  and hatching into massive aliens.  They seemed completely  indifferent--or was it oblivious?--to the present of  those living on the Earth.   It's combined elements are a bit messy, but the exciting second part of the story really saved it for me, despite some shortcomings.
Devolution by Edmond Hamilton is a fascinating and dark  take on the history and evolution of humanity.  
A few other mentions:
Leinster's Proxima Centauri didn't do a whole lot for me.  Maybe it's because I've already read so much other great stuff from him (like the already mentioned Sidewise in Time, The Pirates of Zan, or Invaders of Space), but it just hold up well for me.
P Schyler Miller's Tetrahedra of Space started off nicely enough, but I quickly lost interest in it.  I may go back and give it another shot.
Worth mentioning are  Asimov's recollections of the time frame--the last decade of his childhood when these were all written.  It's  very personal and gives you an idea as to the impact these stories had on him.  I particularly liked the way he had to convince his father to let him read the pulps ("science" was in the title, making it  educational), and the fact that he had to carefully read all of the stories  working in the family candy store, being sure not to damage them as he could not afford to actually purchase them.
If you enjoy these, I would also highly recommend the likes of:
The best of Edmond Hamilton edited by Leigh Brackett
The best of Murray Leinster edited by JJ Pierce
The best of Stanley G Weinbaum edited by Isaac Asimov
The best of Raymond Z Gallun edited by JJ Pierce
The best of Leigh Brackett edited by Edmond Hamilton
The best of Cordwainer Smith edited by JJ Pierce
What's It like out there?  and other stories by Edmond Hamilton
Sidewise in Time  (collection) by Leinster  You can find this online and this version includes Leinster's first sf story ,The Runaway Skyscraper.

[Tim · Rating 5 out of 5]

(review coming)

[Phil Friel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Before the Golden Age: A Science Fiction Anthology of the 1930's Isaac Asimov could sure put together a mean anthology, and this has to be one of his best. There are so many great stories in this book that I won't list them all, but my favourite has to be Jack Williamson's classic Wellsian tale "The Moon Era". This is an absolute gem of a story, which featured a complex and sympathetic alien protagonist (the "mother") several years before the first appearance of Tweel, in Stanley G. Weinbaum's classic SF short story "A Martian Odyssey". But, then, Jack Williamson was often ahead of everybody in SF, wasn't he? :)
 
With what seems to be a recent resurgence in popularity of classic Golden Age and pre-Golden Age SF and the growth of specialist SF publishers such as Haffner Press, who concentrate on collectible editions of golden oldie classics from the same era, BEFORE THE GOLDEN AGE is an absolute "must have" for all fans of this kind of SF.
 
This is one of my favourite SF anthologies, EVER. A mammoth hardcover of over a thousand pages, which is broken up into three (sometimes four) books when published in paperback, this book collects some of the best SF stories of the 1930s. Bursting at the seams with nostalgia and sensawunda, I'd recommend this gem of an anthology to all fans of early SF.
 
This huge hardcover, the original edition, is the most desirable for true collectors (and I'm totally thrilled to have it). But if you can't find it (or afford the expense), track down the much cheaper paperback volumes, which seem to be found easily enough on Amazon or Ebay. You won't regret it.

[Jason · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nerdy, geeky, cheesy, but endlessly fun. These are all words that come to mind when thinking about Isaac Asimov’s Before the Golden Age anthology. In 1974 the famous and prolific science-fiction writer put together this collection of stories from the 1930’s. It is certainly worth a good read for various reasons.

The stories are framed by an autobiographical narrative by Asimov about his high school years when he worked in his father’s candy store. The store kept a stock of pulp science-fiction magazines which his father thought were trash but they fascinated the young Asimov anyways. In between each story, Asimov gives brief anecdotes about his life along with commentaries and background information about each selection. These were the stories that he found most memorable and influential.

Common themes emerge throughout the book. One of them is travel. It could be said that most of these stories are actually adventure tales that take place in a science-fiction setting. There is a proliferation of space travel and time travel but a couple stories also deal with the theme of shrinking down to subatomic size and traveling in the smallest regions possible. A lot of stories are claustrophobic as well. Many take place in underground tunnels, domed cities, lonely laboratories and, most of all, a whole host of various space-travel vessels. Isaac Asimov admitted to having a fascination for enclosed spaces so these themes might be less of a particular literary pattern and more of a preference of the editor himself.

Being a science-fiction anthology, the prevalence of the hard sciences is also a key element in all these stories. Biology, evolution, atomic and mechanical physics, technological warfare, environmentalism, robotics, and relativity all serve as the basis in one place or another. These stories are science-fiction, though, with the emphasis on the fiction. While the physical sciences frame these writings, the plots easily fly off into the wildest realms of fantasy and imagination. Scientific accuracy takes a backseat to wild story telling. One memorable story, “The World Of the Red Sun”, involves two men who travel into the future where a tyrant uses telepathy to plant nightmarish delusions in peoples’ heads, making it easy to control them with fear; the time travelers learn that the despot is motivated by deeply rooted insecurity and narcissism, so they start laughing at him thereby weakening him to the point where he is easy to kill. Here we get a little social commentary on the psychology of bullying, making me wonder if the author had a particular person in mind when writing the story. And wouldn’t it be great if we could destroy Donald Trump simply by laughing him into oblivion? Another story, “Born Of the Sun”, is about how the Earth and moon are actually eggs containing flying green monsters that cause an apocalypse as they start to emerge from the shells; two men and a woman build a space craft so they can leave and begin repopulating the human race in outer space while a doomsday religious cult tries to stop them. Towards the end, another story, “Other Eyes Watching”, possibly a precursor of Stanislaw Lem’s Solaris, is about two astronauts who show up on Mars where a race of creatures draw data out of their unconscious minds and use it to reproduce twenty clones of themselves. They have to think quickly, using logic and basic scientific knowledge to outsmart the clones and prove which ones are not the real Earth-men. While scientific gadgetry plays a central part in these stories, many of them pose puzzles that need to be solved with a bit of psychology rather than brute force. That brains-over-brawn element is what separates science-fiction in its highest and truest sense from the less exciting pulp stories of people with ray guns fighting bug-eyed monster aliens.

In addition to the science-based wild imagination of each story, there is also some cultural baggage of the time that finds its way in. The 1930’s saw the last days of the Prohibition era, the onset of the Great Depression, and the rise of fascism in Europe too. It was a bleak time for America. These short stories are undoubtedly escapist but escapism can indicate what it is the authors and readers were escaping from. The idea of all-pervading loneliness, alienation, and mediocrity is mentioned by the narrators. Many of these scientists are lone individuals who work in solitary laboratories while being ignored by the rest of the world. Using a motif rooted in the telling of classic fairy tales, the ordinary man travels to another world and becomes transformed into somebody extraordinary by embarking on colorful adventures that result in heroic status at the end as he saves the lives of space aliens, subatomic humans, or even ordinary humans in some cases. One sad and lonely guy even falls in love with a female fur-ball with purple eyes and giant lips when he travels to the moon which is far more exciting than his life in Texas as a high school math teacher.

On the downside, the worst cultural baggage in these stories is racism. Many of the monsters and villains are racial caricatures, based on negative and unfair stereotypes. In his commentaries, the ever-Liberal Asimov rightly criticizes this racism which was all too common in that era. But rather than simply dismissing it outright, he uses these stories as examples of how to spot racism in literature, explaining why it is harmful and why it needs to be avoided in future science-fiction writing.

The stories in this anthology vary in quality but they do not vary greatly. The are easy enough to read but there are a lot of them. Retro junkies and fans of vintage culture will find a lot to like here. Most significantly, you can read this literature as one of the starting points that would eventually lead to comics, tv shows like Star Trek and The Outer Limits, movies like Star Wars and the whole plethora of sci-fi books that have been produced up until now.

https://grimhistory.blogspot.com/

[Craig · Rating 4 out of 5]

This huge old dinosaur of a book from the early 1970's collected what Asimov felt to be the best of old dinosaurs from the 1930's; the pre-Campbell golden-age era. The stories are for the most part crude by modern standards in so far as characterization and, in some cases, narration, but they are filled with the sense-of-wonder element that popularized the genre. Asimov's lengthy autobiographical interludes are interesting but occasionally grow a little tedious, but it's easy to skim them and launch into the next story. Great stuff from Murray Leinster, Jack Williamson, Edmond Hamilton, and many others, including Campbell himself. My favorites were probably the two Tumithak stories by Charles R. Tanner. It's a terrific history of the beginnings of the field.

[DaughterDaDa · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm enjoying these stories from the early days of science fiction in the 1930s, as quaint as some of them seem nowadays. Interesting that in these stories the travel through space or matter is the result of individuals, not concerted efforts by large groups or nations. Several stories explore the relationships between what might be called the microcosmoses and macrocosmoses, where the protagonist either shrinks or grows and finds multiple levels of universes built on the same patterns. May 26, 2009.

[S. M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

An entertaining mix of sci-fi history and Asimov autobiography. It's an excellent selection of science fiction stories that influenced the Golden Age authors. The stories got progressively better; I thoroughly enjoyed most of them, and it was fascinating to see the advanced ideas that were being used as early as the '30s...also rather comical the sheer number of phenomena they attributed to "cosmic rays."

A must-read for the sci-fi buff who can't get his hands on any 1930s sci-fi magazines.

[Harold Cardona · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great compilation. My favoirite Story; Tuminak of the Corridors.

[Reet · Rating 3 out of 5]

Many familiar stories here from anthologies galore!

A reread from 2017, for the sake of rereading these two stories:

Tumithak of the Corridors and Awlo of Ulm.

Tumithak of the Corridors, Charles R. Tanner, 4 stars
Taking place somewhere around 5218 a.d., this story takes place in corridors underground.
The story is that many years ago, Earth men went to Venus. The venusians, in this story called shelks, captured the space ship and its astronauts, and built many spaceships which they copied from the original. The astronauts managed to escape, run to their spaceship, and take off, in order to warn earthlings about the coming shelks. But they weren't early enough, and the tunnels that earthlings started to dig weren't deep enough yet. War was fought when the shelks landed, and Earth men were forced down into the tunnels.
The hero of the story is named Tumithak, and he vows to slay a shelk.
Here's a description of a shelk:
"...in over a hundred years, a man of Loor gazed upon a shelk!
Standing about four feet high, they were indeed spider-like, just as tradition said. But close look showed that this was only a superficial resemblance. For these creatures were hairless, and possessed ten legs, rather than the eight that belong to a true spider. The legs were long and triple jointed and on the tip of each was a short rudimentary claw much like a finger nail. There were two bunches of these legs, five on each side, and they joined the creature at a point midway between the head and the body. The body was shaped much like the abdomen of a wasp, and was about the same size as the head, which was certainly the strangest part of the entire creature.
For the head was the head of a man: The same eyes, the same broad brow, a mouth with tight, thin lips, and a chin-all these gave the head of the creature a startling resemblance to that of a man. The nose and hair alone were missing, to make the face perfectly human."

Pretty cool story for something published in 1932.

Awlo of Ulm, Capt. S.P. Meek, 3 stars
The protagonist has an "adjuster" that either makes you bigger, or smaller. He uses this adjuster to go find his princess aloe who has been taken from him and will be made the mate of the king of a rivalry Kingdom unless he can rescue her.

The protagonist makes friends with his buddy, named Olua, who was taken prisoner but managed to escape with the help of the protagonist. He tells him where he's hidden his secret suit so that he can use it to fight against the enemy, the Alii:
" " . . . The Alii have suits with more arms and more deadly weapons, both offensive and defensive. It is said that Kapioma Sibama has made a suit with forty arms but it is so heavy that he cannot walk with it on. It operates, not on the usual wavelength, but on the private wavelength on which his flyers operate.
"That, however, is not the most effective suit in Kaulani. The most deadly suit is one which I manufactured in secret and which is hidden there. I had no opportunity to bring it with me or all the forces of Kas could not have harmed me. I will tell you, Siba Tam, where it is concealed. The knowledge may never benefit you but it will do you no harm In the power house is a laboratory where fighting suits are made and tested. One entire end of the laboratory is taken up by a screen against which all rays are helpless. Unknown to everyone, I have tampered with that screen. If you ever wish to get the suit, go to the laboratory and turm the ordinary red ray, the heat ray of the common suits, against the upper corner of the screen, fourteen inches from the top and eleven inches from the left end. Leave the ray on full force for eight seconds and then apply the orange ray for twelve seconds. A portion of the screen will open and the suit is behind it. It operates on the same wave as Kapioma's."
"Thank you, Olua," I said, after I had practised with one of the suits until I could manipulate it rapidly, "you have told me what I wished to know very frankly and fully. I will reward your confidence by being equally frank with you. Although I am Siba Tam of Ulm, I was not bom in that empire. I was born in a much larger world. Do you understand the composition of matter?"
I soon found that the education of an Ali of Kau left little to be desired from a scientific standpoint. Olua was perfectly familiar with the division of matter into molecules and atoms and of the atoms into protons and electrons. One of his statements surprised me a great deal until I had time to reflect on it. He said that the atoms were static instead of in motion and that the same was true of the electrons. I started to correct him, when a sudden thought made me pause. A moment of reflection told me that he was right. In his plane, both atoms and electrons were static.
When I had first started my electronic vibration adjuster, which t duced the amplitude of vibration of the electrons, my switch had jamined reduced me to the size of the men of Ulm and had then ceased operation. and I had broken it in trying to open it. Despite this fact, the adjuster had On each subsequent trip, the same phenomenon had occurred. The reason on reflection, was obvious. I had reduced the amplitude of vibration to zero and in this minute plane, the electrons did not vibrate.. . . "
Thus the reader gets a little enlightenment in physics from his world.

When Courtney Si Bama, the protagonist, makes it to the land of the Alii, he is told that he's a liar and he's ready to be taken as a slave. He has to convince his former soldiers of the truth, because Awlo's kidnapper has told lies about him:
" ". . . Listen, old friend," I said to Moka, "it was never your way to condemn a man unheard in his own defense on the testimony of his enemies. You have known me as your lord and as your friend for years; have you ever known me to speak an untruth?"
"No," he admitted.
"Then listen, old friend, while I tell you the truth. Lamu Siba is the traitor, not I."
Rapidly, but in great detail, I told him all that had happened since the fatal day when I left Ulm in my adjuster with Awlo and Lamu to bring back the guns and ammunition with which I hoped to rout, if not destroy the besieging Mena. I told how Lamu had learned to operate the adjuster, how he had stolen my princess and had fled with her, leaving me desolate. I told of my struggle to get material and of the months of feverish work while I had constructed a duplicate of my machine and gone in pursuit. Last, I told of how I had landed with my guns and ammunition and had met Olua and how I had surrendered to the Kauans in order to be brought to Kaulani.
Moka's face grew graver as my story progressed. My sincerity almost convinced him, but for months he had thought me a traitor. The struggle was evident in his face. He wanted to believe and yet could not. When I had ended my tale and again held out my hand to him, he hesitated, but another of the auditors, a young officer named Hiko, who had at one time been my personal aide, had no doubts.
"My sword to your hand, Courtney Sibama!" he cried, as he dropped on one knee and pressed my hand against his forehead and then to his lips. "My life is yours to command!"
His enthusiasm carried the day and in a moment, not only Moka, but the rest of the group were on their knees professing their loyalty to me.
"Forgive me for doubting you, Courtney Sibama," cried Moka with tears in his voice, "but the words of a Siba carry weight."
"Where is my Sibimi?" I demanded.
"Alas, my lord," said Moka, "she is a prisoner in the palace of Kapioma Sibama, Lord of Kau. I have seen her twice but none of us has ever spoken to her."
"Did you not speak to her in Ulm?" I asked.
"No, my lord. She or Lamu never returned to Ulm. Four months after you left us, Ulm fell to a night assault of the Mena. Had you been there, it would never have happened, but discipline was relaxed after you left . . . "
Thus Courtney Si Bama is going to have a rough time of it getting his Sibimi released to him.

There's a humorous part where Courtney is in his miniature size, and some Mountains go flying through the air, risking his life:
" . . . Through the air were flying rocks the size of mountains, some of them apparently miles in diameter. The were flying toward the east and I realized that some of them must be falling on or near Kaulani.
"The kahumas! The giants!" cried Awlo.
"Kahumas, nothing!" I replied. "I don't know what it is, but it is no witchcraft."
As I spoke, another blast of wind came and again the sun was darkened When it cleared, more of the huge masses of rock were flying through the air. One boulder, which must have weighed a million tons, fell not over two miles from us.
"Quick, Awlo!" I gasped. "Come with me!"
I grasped her hand and we raced for the adjuster. The only defence against such masses of rock was to increase our size until they were small in comparison to our bulk. We entered the machine and I turned the speed control to maximum, at the same time setting an automatic stop I had put on my new model, which would halt our increase when I arrived at my normal six feet. My hand reached for the increasing switch when a fresh cloud of rock masses came hurtling through the air, this time falling to the west of us. One of them struck the mountain above us and started a slide. I looked up and saw thousands of tons of rock rushing madly toward us. Awlo gave a cry of despair and fear but before they reached us, my hand closed on the switch and I pulled downward with all my strength.
I stepped from the adjuster and faced with clenched fists a grizzled old prospector, who lay on the ground where he had been thrown by the adjuster, as it had grown almost instantaneously to its original size.
"What do you mean by digging here and killing my friends?" I demanded hotly. "This is private property."
"Taint so on the map," he retorted as he rose. "It's a public domain and I reckon a man can prospect where he pleases. Where in hell did you come from?"
Without bothering to answer him, I hastily pulled the adjuster to one side. Under where it stood was piled dirt that that wretched fool had thrown and the weight of the adjuster had packed it smooth. Ulm, Ame, Kau; all were gone; buried under what was to them miles on miles of rock.
"Where did you come from?" demanded the prospector again as he dusted off his knees. "You weren't here a minute ago!"
"I came from a better land than you'll ever see," I replied grimly. "Hand me your shovel for a moment."
I took his tool and reached in and changed the speed of the adjuster..."

Well, so the kingdom of the Alii was crushed under the mountains of Pebbles thrown by the prospector, and Courtney Sibama and his Sibimi lived happily ever after. The end.

[Jeff · Rating 5 out of 5]

This massive (over 900 pages) anthology was assembled by Isaac Asimov. These are science fiction stories from the pulp magazines that he read when he was growing up, and he includes his thoughts and biographical information as well, so that we can get a picture of his youthful wonder and of the work that inspired him to become a writer. Some of the stories may seem unsophisticated by today's standards, and a few have some racist overtones, but so did much of the fiction back then. I just chalked it up to the ignorance of the times. But overall, these stories are remarkably entertaining. Space travel, time travel, aliens, microcosmic and macrocosmic universes -- all as imagined by the pulp authors of the 1930s.

[JohnPaul Henry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Only minorly tainted by the inclusion of some Edmond Hamilton, otherwise a very entertaining collection.

[Lordvoldemor Gmailyosoy]

Los 2 primeros de la serie son mejores, pero es bueno

[Chuck McKenzie · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fantastic omnibus collection of Asimov's three 'Before the Golden Age' anthologies, comprising a wonderful selection of early 'sense of wonder' science fantasy tales. If you love pulp-era science fiction romps, this anthology is definitely for you!

[Jim Syler · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an excellent compilation of stories from the “Pulp era” of science fiction, when the standards for what constituted good science fiction were generally lower and broader than what came after. That doesn't mean that the stories were uninteresting! We have adventure, excitement, thought exercises, aliens and super science. It’s just that most of the stories have the feel of a Buck Rogers serial film, with an excited announcer breathlessly describing the next installment. The characterization, scientific accuracy, and general plausibility of the stories is far below today's standards (or those of even ten or twenty years later, for that matter), especially considering that this is supposedly the cream of the crop. Again, this does not mean that they are not enjoyable, or that there are no gems in the mix. “Tumithak of the Corridors,” “The Man Who Awoke," “The Moon Era,” and “Minus Planet,” among a few others, stand out as good stories in any era. As Asimov says in the Introduction: “The science fiction of the thirties seems, to anyone who has experienced the Campbell Revolution, to be clumsy, primitive, and naïve. The stories are old-fashioned and unsophisticated. All right, grant that they are all those things. Nevertheless, there was a rough-hewn vigor about them that sophistication has, to some extent, lost us.” This is an accurate characterization.

Plus, if you’re an Asimov fan, his autobiographical notes before and after every story are priceless. They serve as, essentially, a prequel to The Early Asimov and (even if you're not interested in Asimov himself) nicely contextualize the stories, through one reader’s eyes at least. Do note, if this affects your desire to read the book, that the stories were chosen not by popularity or general impression of quality, but by the degree of impact that they had on one particular eleven-to-seventeen year old boy named Isaac Asimov. So it’s possible that stories that would have seemed of higher quality to more adult eyes slipped through the cracks.

A note of caution, however: If you are upset by racism, sexism, or unconscious prejudice, you may wish to give this collection a pass, as it is rife with that sort of thing. Not every story is (blatantly; I don’t know that any pass the Bechdel test, and the only one written by a woman is perhaps the worst offender) guilty of this. As far as I'm concerned, they’re products of their times, and shouldn't be judged by the standards of ours. To do so merely deprives one of enjoyment without serving any useful purpose.

I had intended to review several of the individual stories, but on reflection it seems like few people would be interested enough to justify the effort. I’ve posted the notes I took in the Comments below.

[Celeste · Rating 3 out of 5]

An inconsistent collection, but with some stories worth digging for. In particular the two Tumithak stories by Charles R. Tanner I found immensely entertaining, and when I went online to see if the other two stories (post 1940, so outside the scope of this anthology) were available, I was thrilled to find that the author's estate have made all his stories publicly available at http://www.charlesrtanner.com/. Highly recommended.

Some of the stories are understandably dated, but others are just grossly reactionary and downright offensive to a modern audience. I'm thinking in particular of the two by Capt. S.P. Meek. It's a major stretch to consider them science fiction at all, merely sexist, racist and insipid adventure stories bracketed by a very lame sci-fi premise. Avoid.

I've never been a fan of Asimov. I haven't read much, but what I have read I found dry and unimaginative in its prose, even if the sci-fi ideas were interesting. So I never went back for more, and honestly have always wondered at why he's considered one of the "greats." His intros and autobiographical segments in this anthology have made me wonder that even more. He comes across as a fantastic egotist and a very narrow-minded critic.

Like all anthologies, there's going to be some good and some bad, but on the whole I found the Damon Knight collection of Science Fiction of the 30's to be more solid.

[Paul Hammer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great collection to read and a good survey of the pulp era.

[Aaron · Rating 5 out of 5]

My rating is probably skewed; I read this when I was still very young, because it was an ASIMOV book, and thus good. I remember that some of the stories were somewhat corny, but not which ones. the style of fiction is somewhat different than what is written now, and the fore- and afterwords were written with his characteristic voice.
A good book for those looking for long-lost tropes, anecdotes(I think) and some good, old-fashioned men-from-mars type sci-fi.

[Gfec · Rating 3 out of 5]

only 7 stories from complete offering in my book, a few really fine, other not so much, Heinlein´s "overtimed" acclaimed By his bootstraps (not a fun of so overarranged time travelling, but this is funny and sarcastic), Accursed galaxy and Tumithak´s 2 adventures worth read, others are average and forgettable

[Katherine · Rating 4 out of 5]

1/1/91. No library.