The World Turned Upside Down [Paperback]

Eric Flint (Author), James Baen (Author), David Drake (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 26, 2006

Publisher Jim Baen joins two of his top authors to collect the stories which made them SF readers in their youth and fitted them to make major impacts on the SF field today. The quality of the stories in this huge volume compares favorably with that of any collection in the past fifty years--there's been nothing of equal size and quality since Groff Conklin's Omnibus of Science Fiction in 1952. Nevertheless the selection wasn't through some would-be objective standard but rather by a deliberately subjective process: these are the stories which, when the editors read them, turned their worlds around. Each story was picked because of the emotional charge it gave one or more of the editors on first reading. The story sources range from Analog to Weird Tales, the first appearances from the early '30s to the mid '60s. Many were written by the greatest names in the SF field. These are stories that made the editors think and feel. They will do the same for you.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Emulating You've Got to Read This (1994), this sizable collection consists of stories that influenced famous writers during their upbringings. The difference is that this is a genre anthology and the influenced authors in question are the editors; these are their personal favorites. Given those limitations, the chosen tales are varied and entertaining, and the work of relative unknowns as well as late, great genre veterans. The enduring classics include Arthur C. Clarke's "Rescue Party," featuring aliens who scour Earth for survivors before the sun goes nova; John W. Campbell's "Who Goes There?" which inspired the Hollywood monster flick The Thing; and Isaac Asimov's "The Last Question," which speculatively traces the evolution of computer intelligence into the far future. One surprising entry is an early sf tale on interstellar exploration by Pulitzer Prize-winning historical novelist Michael Shaara. With the emphasis on pulp sf from the 1940s and '50s, fans get to discover some lost gems among the forgotten (and remembered) classics. Carl Hays
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

About the Author

David Drake was attending Duke University Law School when he was drafted. He served the next two years in the Army, spending 1970 as an enlisted interrogator with the 11th armored Cavalry in Viet Nam and Cambodia. Upon return he completed his law degree at Duke and was for eight years Assistant Town Attorney for Chapel Hill, North Carolina. He has been a full-time freelance writer since 1981. Besides the bestselling Hammer's Slammers series, his books for Baen include With the Lightnings and its sequel Lt. Leary, Commanding, Ranks of Bronze, Starliner, All the Way to the Gallows, Redliners, and many more. His most recent novels are Paying the Piper, a new Hammer's Slammers novel, and The Far Side of the Stars, the latest in the popular Lt. Leary series.

Jim Baen has been the editor of Galaxy magazine, of Ace Books, of Tor Books, and has for two decades helmed Baen Books, a powerhouse in science fiction publishing and the world's leading publisher of military science fiction.

Eric Flint's impressive first novel, Mother of Demons (Baen), was selected by SF Chronicle as one of the best novels of 1997. His next solo novel, 1632, sold out its first hardcover printing and went back to press almost immediately, and received enthusiastic critical praise. With David Drake he has written five popular novels in the Belisarius series. Flint has also begun a highly-praised fantasy adventure series, so far comprising The Philosophical Strangler and Forward the Mage. Flint received his masters degree in history from UCLA and was for many years a labor union activist. He lives in East Chicago, IN, with his wife.

Product Details

• Paperback: 752 pages
• Publisher: Baen (May 26, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1416520686
• ISBN-13: 978-1416520689
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.7 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,305,572 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

The Army took David Drake from Duke Law School and sent him on a motorized tour of Viet Nam and Cambodia with the 11th Cav, the Blackhorse. He learned new skills, saw interesting sights, and met exotic people who hadn't run fast enough to get away.

Dave returned to become Chapel Hill's Assistant Town Attorney and to try to put his life back together through fiction making sense of his Army experiences.

Dave describes war from where he saw it: the loader's hatch of a tank in Cambodia. His military experience, combined with his formal education in history and Latin, has made him one of the foremost writers of realistic action SF and fantasy. His bestselling Hammer's Slammers series is credited with creating the genre of modern Military SF. He often wishes he had a less interesting background.

Dave lives with his family in rural North Carolina.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A big pile of great stuff you've probably read already, February 8, 2005

By 

HaloJonesFan (San Jose, CA, USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The World Turned Upside Down (Hardcover)

I'm conflicted about how to review this, because--on the one hand--I'd read a good three-quarters of the stuff in it before (in some cases, quite a long time before.) On the other hand, there was some new stuff, and the "liner notes" for each story were often interesting. You could probably put together a very good literature class around the stories in this volume.

On the gripping hand...riffing on classic sci-fi is a bit pretentious.

Anyway...as with most compilations of early sci-fi, this is a good selection of famous short stories. If you're looking for a book to get someone started on science fiction (or trying to give some culture to someone who buys John Ringo for the covers) then you couldn't go far wrong with "World Turned Upside-Down". Be warned, though, that the content in some of the stories is a rather PG-13 (and some of them involve themes that younger kids simply won't get.)

19 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Classic science fiction stories, June 18, 2005

By 

Geoffrey A. Landis "author and scientist" (Berea, OH USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The World Turned Upside Down (Hardcover)

From the title and the cover painting, you would expect this to be alternate history, but the cover and title are extremely misleading. It is, in fact, an anthology of old "classic" science fiction stories. Two of the three editors of this compilation--Drake, and Flint-- are two of the most popular authors at Baen books, and Jim Baen, of course, is the publisher. The stated purpose of the collection is to showcase works that "turned the world upside down" for the editors-- the science fiction stories that shaped and focussed their thinking at a young age. So the book gives you a window to see what the classic SF influences were on (at least some of) the works that Baen Books publishes. Each story comes with an introduction or afterward (or both), by one of the three editors, explaining why this story was selected, and how it "turned the world upside down" for them. The stories range from 1933 ("Shambleau") to 1967 ("The Last Command"). Some have been highly reprinted; others never before in book form.
With that said, the quality of the stories is amazingly erratic. Some of them are genuine SF classics. Some of them are feel-good stories, fun plots but not well written. A handful of the stories are simply awful: "Code Three," for example, by justly-forgotten author Rick Raphael, is bad in almost every possible way: unbelievable society, wooden characters, no noticible plot, laughable speculation. Even this, though, is in its way a useful reminder not to look at the past with gilded glasses-- it wasn't all wonderful, some of it was forgettable indeed.
Overall, a good addition to a library of old classics of sf.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Not Free SF Reader, August 3, 2007

By 

Blue Tyson "- Research Finished" (Legion clubhouse) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The World Turned Upside Down (Paperback)

The three editors in this case have put together a selection of stories that influenced them as kids, some are obscure, some most definitely not. Certainly an interesting bunch, and definitely no junk here.

Rescue Party - Arthur C. Clarke
The Menace from Earth - Robert A. Heinlein
Code Three [Clay Ferguson] - Rick Raphael
Hunting Problem - Robert Sheckley
Black Destroyer [Beagle] - A. E. van Vogt
A Pail of Air - Fritz Leiber
Thy Rocks and Rills - Robert Ernest Gilbert
A Gun for Dinosaur [Reginald Rivers]
Goblin Night [Telzey Amberdon] - James H. Schmitz
The Only Thing We Learn - C. M. Kornbluth
Trigger Tide - Wyman Guin
The Aliens - Murray Leinster
All the Way Back - Michael Shaara
The Last Command [Bolo] - Keith Laumer
Who Goes There? [as by Don A. Stuart] - John W. Campbell, Jr.
Quietus - Ross Rocklynne
Answer - Fredric Brown
The Last Question - Isaac Asimov
The Cold Equations - Tom Godwin
Shambleau [Northwest Smith] - C. L. Moore
Turning Point - Poul Anderson
Heavy Planet [with Frederik Pohl] - Lee Gregor
Omnilingual - H. Beam Piper
The Gentle Earth - Christopher Anvil
Environment - Chester S. Geier
Liane the Wayfarer [Dying Earth] - Jack Vance
Spawn - P. Schulyer Miller
St. Dragon and the George [Jim Eckert] - Gordon R. Dickson
Thunder and Roses - Theodore Sturgeon


An alien survey ship is surprised to find that the Earth system sun is going nova well ahead of schedule, and gets in trouble itself when it goes to look for people to save and can't find signs of life, until much later.

3.5 out of 5


The cozy friendship between two teenage would be spaceship designers on the moon is interrupted when a well built actress from Earth arrives from a holiday, utilising both their services as guides.

4 out of 5


Future traffic policing is a 24 hour a day live in your vehicle job for these officers. Their banter is very entertaining.

3.5 out of 5


Alien scouts go for gruesome merit badge.

3 out of 5


A ship's crew lands on a planet and meets an alien with extraordinarily dangerous abilities.

3.5 out of 5


A dark star interloper rips the earth out of its orbit, and everything freezes. One family finds a way to construct a shelter to survive the freezing.

3.5 out of 5


A man and his mutant bull rebel against their society's liking for violence.

3.5 out of 5


History full of blowing stuff up and big fat fibs.

3.5 out of 5


Secret agent man gadget sabotage predictions.

3.5 out of 5


For friendly encounters, get rid of the xenophobic psychos.

4 out of 5


Aggressive sleepers may be waiting.

3.5 out of 5


A Bolo is a cybernetic supertank, basically. In this story, an old inactive one comes to life.

3 out of 5


A discovery of a lifeform buried in the Antarctic ice causes serious problems for an isolated research team.

5 out of 5


Crow not as smart as it looks.

3.5 out of 5


Computer god.

3 out of 5


Immortal humans breed too fast for the universe.

4 out of 5


Kid is a waste of oxygen.

5 out of 5


Shoot vampire gorgon women, don't ask them in for dinner.

4.5 out of 5


Assimilating smart people is key.

4 out of 5


Tough conditions for deadly conflict.

3.5 out of 5


Archaelogists working on the extinct Martian civilisation discover a different sort of Rosetta stone.

4.5 out of 5


Alien invasion couldn't stand the weather.

4 out of 5


The city can change people, and also learn 'em.

3 out of 5


Stuff is not very likely, especially spores from space making a mangod facsimile.

3.5 out of 5


Human, dragon and knight team-up vs the bad guys.

3.5 out of 5


With everything nuked, limitation, hope and waiting is all that can be done.

4.5 out of 5