GATES TO TOMORROW

The introduction occupies barely more than two pages; otherwise this is just another anthology — containing twelve stories united by their open-faced messages and generally unproblematical styles. The quality, however, is anything but consistent, ranging downward from Bradbury's "Naming of Names," the obvious star here, through Sheckley's clever metamorphoses in "Shape," Laumer's bluffing contest "Ultimatum," and Anderson and Dickson's "Sheriff of Canyon Gulch," in which extra-terrestial teddy bears and reptiles fight it out in a style copied straight from our cowboy and Indian movies. At the lower end of the scale, however, Laumer's honest freeholder fends off a "Plague" of stupid, grasping welfare recipients determined to settle on his land, Kahn's "Command" is a thoroughly obvious treatment of the problem of a psychotic aboard a spaceship, and Frank Belknap Long's nightmare of a "Flame Midget" is as tired as its 1936 copyright date suggests. Donaldy's tenth grade high school English class supposedly tested and approved the selections, but it's a good bet that even younger classes will want a more exotic mixture.