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Venus is a Man's World

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William Tenn was a popular writer for the science fiction magazines of the 1940s and 50s, noted mainly for his humor. This excellent anthology collects eight of his stories, including his most famous piece, "The Brooklyn Project." These stories were originally published between 1947-1956, in magazines including Galaxy, Planet Stories and Fantastic Universe.

The earliest story in this collection, "Ricardo's Virus," shows that Tenn could write a suspenseful piece of outer-space adventure with interesting aliens and a well-imagined planetary ecology. The other seven stories are all humorous, and the best of them show Tenn's gift for deadpan but acerbic satire. He satirizes American democracy ("Null-P"), governmental obsession with secrecy ("Project Hush"), the national-security excesses of the McCarthy era ("The Brooklyn Project," "Of All Possible Worlds") and sexual politics ("Venus Is a Man's World"). "The Brooklyn Project" is also one of the best explorations of the common science fiction theme of time travel to the past inadvertently affecting the present, a theme Tenn also plays with in "Me, Myself and I" and "Of All Possible Worlds." If you are not familiar with Tenn's science fiction, this is an excellent place to start.