Rare Science Fiction


Rare Science Fiction is an anthology of science fiction short stories edited by Ivan Howard. It was first published in paperback by Belmont Books in January 1963. The collection has been translated into Portuguese.

Summary

The book collects eight short stories and novelettes by various science fiction authors. The stories were previously published from 1954 to 1959 in the Robert A. W. Lowndes-edited science fiction magazines Future Science Fiction, Science Fiction Quarterly, and Science Fiction Stories.

Contents

  • "Let's Have Fun"
  • "Do It Yourself"
  • "In Human Hands"
  • "Protective Camouflage"
  • "Asylum"
  • "Quick Freeze"
  • "Luck, Inc."
  • "Ripeness"

    Reception

called the anthology "a good and varied lot of eight stories" with "such gems as Alice Bullock's poignant little 'Asylum' or Milton Lesser's wry 'Do it Yourself,'" while noting that "the publisher has done his best to handicap the book with nonsensical cover claims," calling them "'prize-winning' stories" and claiming they were "'appearing for the first time in any book.'" He observed that "I can't recall that any of them ever won a prize, other than an editor's check," and that the de Camp contribution had in fact already appeared in his own collection A [Gun for Dinosaur and Other Imaginative Tales].