THE EDGE OF THINGS

Two novels and two novellas -- fantasies reflecting the impact of flight on one creative mind -- thus William Barrett at the close of his foreword, sums up what comprises this book. Here- in the air age -- is the magic that captured the reader a generation earlier, in The Brushwood Boy. Here for those who accept the inexplicable in extrasensory perception, in the unreported visions of pilots of the outer reaches, in the sensitive imagination of the best of science fiction -- is a group of stories that such readers will Iay claim to, as they touch ""the edge of things""....Flight from Youth touches on the mystery of a deliberate return from the realm of death to rebirth; The Destroyer, for this reader the least successful of the four, is the story of a youth of great gifts who cared only to follow his urge to destroy -- and thereby died four times; Velma is a sort of reverse of Blithe Spirit- and has great charm; and The Blue Sleep, perhaps the one that carries most conviction, is a story of an aviation engineer on the edge of the jet age- and of how his dream world brought reality into a wasted life. All good reading.