Customer Reviews

Detour to Otherness

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This book has been out for a year now...how is it no one has got around to reviewing it yet? This is a republished and embiggened version of the 1960's paperback best of collections of Kuttner & Moore (and where possible to distinguish, of one or other of them). The contents are in the Book Description above, but there is no point repeating all 24 listings in full. There are some Hogben stories, some Galloway Gallegher, and a whole bunch of classic sci-fi and horror stories. Most of these works were written in the early-mid 1940's, but you would not know it to read them - they are of all types, from horror to think-piece sci-fi, with some post-apocalyptic stuff and set in "our" 1940's world, or in various futures through a glass darkly.

There is a huge range of work here, told in several styles: from serious think-piece sci-fi about evolution and the future of humanity, to the hilarious Hogben tales, to the superb Galloway Gallegher stories. There is usualy a hint - or more than a hint - of dystopia here, and often none more chilling than in the background of the Galloway stuff. Thought-transference, AI takeovers of humanity, leprechauns...and a wartime story involving a baby, a gorilla and Nazi spies which is just a great romp from start to finish. There is something here for everyone, assuming if you like classic sci-fi in a short story format.

Having read some earlier Kuttner and Moore, I am surprised by the focus on children and childhood in a lot of these stories - that might be a common theme, and I will simply note that as far as I know they were in fact childless, and leave it at that. Certainly the stories are aimed at adults - its quite dark in places, complex, and not at all YA. The only thing missing from the collection as a whole is a representation of blood & thunder space opera, which both Kuttner & Moore were able to write in spades. That's a lack remedied in a separate volume, Thunder in the Void out from Haffner Press later in 2011, or in any number of paperback collections published over the last 50 years.