The Best Of John Wyndham, 1951-1960

by John Wyndham, Angus Wells (Editor), Leslie Flood (Introduction)

comprising:

Pawley's Peepholes (1951)
The Red Stuff (1951)
And the Walls Came Tumbling Down (1951)
Dumb Martian (1952)
Close Behind Him (1952)
The Emptiness of Space (1960)

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Short Stories

159 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1973

About the author

John Wyndham Parkes Lucas Beynon Harris was the son of a barrister. After trying a number of careers, including farming, law, commercial art and advertising, he started writing short stories in 1925. After serving in the civil Service and the Army during the war, he went back to writing. Adopting the name John Wyndham, he started writing a form of science fiction that he called 'logical fantasy'. As well as The Day of the Triffids, he wrote The Kraken Wakes, The Chrysalids, The Midwich Cuckoos (filmed as Village of the Damned) and The Seeds of Time.

Reviews

[Darryl Sloan · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Best of" is a bit of a misnomer here. A true "best of" collection would be the stories published in the earlier collections "Jizzle" and "The Seeds of Time." In fact, two stories from the latter ("Dumb Martian" and "Pawley's Peepholes") make it into this volume, and they are the strongest ones. If the others had matched it in quality, I would have rated this a solid 4/5. Further damage is done by the inclusion of the "The Emptiness of Space" from "The Outward Urge" - which makes no sense, as all the stories in that volume constitute a family saga, each one building on the previous.

There are only six stories here, and if you're a Wyndham fan who already owns "The Seeds of Time" and "The Outward Urge," there's only three new tales here for you.

What we really have is a posthumously published collection that seeks to add to the available Wyndham canon - which a die-hard fan like me loves, regardless. But it's improperly titled and it short-changes the buyer on new content.

[Redsteve · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not an impressive collection. Most of the stories were "meh," although I did like "Dumb Martian" and "Close Behind Him" well enough.