THE BEST FROM FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

A royal rummaging around takes over from the space opera and the gadget story to select from Defoe and Dickens, via James Stephens and on to Oliver La Farge and H.F. Heard, among others, tales of the eerie and unworldly, the gay and the scientific. Beasts collecting humans to eat; international crisis; pink elephants and minor miracles; demons and a deaf child with preknowledge; angry dead men and topology; voodoo and a dumb student; a trick fictioneer and a rat that could speak; a psychologist psyched; outer space philately; old times in a new age -- each with an introduction that places the story in this ever-widening field. Superior.