3 to the highest power

My copy is an Avon paperback from February 1968 that includes three novelettes. Back in 1968 this would have been a very handy book because the editor has included an index (bibliography) for each author detailing their fantasy and science fiction stories and novels and when and where they were

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published up through 1967 in the case of Ray Bradbury. He also writes a very nice, sometimes respectful, sometimes funny multi-page introduction for each author and story. Books can work as time machines and this one took me back to the late 40's 50's and 60's. The included stories are:

The Lost City of Mars • (1967) • novelette by Ray Bradbury originally published in Playboy
One Foot and the Grave • (1949) • novelette by Theodore Sturgeon originally published in Weird Tales
The Marginal Man • (1958) • novelette by Chad Oliver originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction

Several hours of enjoyment here. Ray Bradbury and Theodore Sturgeon of course are giants in the field. I was unfamiliar with Chad Oliver but in checking I see I have some of his stories in magazines and anthologies, primarily shorter stories in the 1950's.

I was initially quite interested in Bradbury's story because it is described as an extension of [The Martian Chronicles]. The story hasn't aged terribly well after 47 years. It was readable and it has all the elements and styling of a Bradbury tale, but it didn't quite make the jump to very good.

Sturgeon's piece is also recognizably his sort of thing - a darkish fantasy that is really a little twisted. The start had me momentarily off balance until I remembered that this was Sturgeon and of course it was going to be weird with "a touch of strange." Enjoyable in a warped way. If you have a fear of cloven hooves going click click you might beware. The eternities old war between good and evil rages on.

Chad Oliver's story I enjoyed most of all. Besides being a writer, he was an anthropologist, and the novella here is an anthropological science fiction story. On a world many light years away a survey ship lands with two men. It is a first contact and the hunting society they expected to find there is something very different. I felt like I was exploring and seeing this as the spacemen did and shared their wonder as the story played out. Quite enjoyable.

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