These five SF tales have more of a literary background than most of their brethren and make up a collection whose appeal is for the solid follower rather than the casual reader. There's the decision not to let humans continue their supremacy; the western formula is applied to wild blue yonder doings; a life is turned back and the time line retrogresses along Faustian lines; there is the clash between men and machines. Planetaria and palaces background action and imagination.