Astounding Science Fiction, August 1955 (British Edition) — page 126: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

124 ASTOUNDING SCIENCE FICTION selections by that veteran critic and writer, August Derleth. And—which may be partly a question of who gets first whack at a story—they don’t overlap. Both books, incidentally, offer bonuses this year: Bleiler-Dikty an index of their choices since the 1949 volume, Derleth with a list of all fantastic short stories published in American magazines in 1953. To collectors, that latter feature may be worth the price of the book, no matter what you think ou. Derleth’s taste in science fiction. That we are dealing entirely with differences in taste is shown by the fact that Derleth stars only one of the thirteen Bleiler-Dikty selections as ‘“‘out- standing” in his roster for the year. That is J. T. M’Intosh’s “‘One in Three Hundred.”” On the other hand, since he is also including fantasy with his science fiction, his choices represent more magazines. If I were buying only one anthology a year, I think I would be safe in waiting for the Bleiler-Dikty collection, and “1954” is no exception to the excellence of previous years. You may have stories you’d rather see here, but the editors apparently try to achieve balance along with excellence. Fritz Leiber is in twice, with as different tales as his grim ““A Bad Day for Sales”’ and his Saroyan-Bradbury vignette “The Big Holiday.’’ (Wasn’t Leiber in the field first? Maybe Bradbury is like him.) The others: Jack Vance’s “D. P!’’, the rather trivial Gordon Dewey-Max Dancey “The Collectors’; Joseph Shallit’s variation on a familiar theme in ‘‘Wonder Child’’; Walter M. Miller’s picture of man’s adaptation to Mars, “Crucifixus Etiam”; and William Morrison’s wryly humorous ““The Model of a Judge,” in which an alien judges an interplanetary cake-baking contest. With them: Richard Mathe- son’s disturbing ““The Last Day’’; Alfred Bester’s study of future psychosis, “Time is the Traitor’; Ward Moore’s subtle and memorable “‘Lot’’; a some- what over-stereotyped, tongue-in-cheek “Yankee Exodus,” by Ruth M. Goldsmith; and—from this magazine, like the Walter Miller story—‘‘What Thin Partitions,” by Mark Clifton and Apostolides. August Derleth’s choices, on the other hand, seem to me to hew more to old-line themes and treatment. To dispose of the pure fantasies first, in the collection of sixteen stories there are Ray Bradbury’s much-reprinted ““The Playground” ; Frederic Brown’s little comedy, “‘Rustle of Wings”’; a border- line case in Mildred Clingerman’s “‘Stickeney and the Critic’; and T. L. Sherred’s enjoyable “Eye for Iniguity’’; with James Blish’s “Testament of Andros” as a possible fifth if you assume a framework of reincarnation as the - explanation of its bewildering shifts in viewpoint. The science fiction segment of the collection then consists of John Anthony’s “The Hypnoglyph’’; R. Bretnor and Kris Neville’s farce of Cuddlypets, “Gratitude Guaranteed”; Arthur C. Clarke’s “The Other pe el another eee collaboration, neh ah with Mildred .