50 Short Science Fiction Tales - Isaac Asimov and Groff Conklin

It's what the title says, although Asimov and Conklin are the editors, rather than the sole authors (although Asimov does contribute one story to the mix). Most of the stories were originally published in other places, probably science fiction magazines of the 1950s, and are being reprinted here.

All the stories are short, ranging from two to maybe 8 pages at the max. So if one of them does tickle your fancy, you're on to the next in no time. A lot of them fall into the twist ending category. You know, "the invading aliens are actually Earthlings" kind of thing. But if you only have a few pages to tell the whole thing, I guess messing with the audience expectations is one way to handle it. Some of the others are in the ironic punishment vein, like H.B. Hickey's "Hilda". Some of them are going for laughs, although I'd say Fritz Leiber's "A Bad Day for Sales" is fairly dark humor.

So there's a variety, some stories more optimistic about humanity, several more pessimistic about our greed and stupidity. You get the stories where we see humanity in the future, and it's turned out OK (or humans in the future are looking back at their ancestors' actions with bewilderment). And you get the ones where humanity is gone in the future, or it sure looks like that's the way it's going.

I enjoyed Heinlen's "Columbus Was a Dope" story, because it feels pretty accurate about people in general (if not so much about Columbus himself). There are people who push forward, want to see new frontiers, and there are people who don't, comfortable where they are. And among the ones who don't, there will be those who understand and appreciate the people who take the risks and go forward, and those who think it's just stupid. And that won't change.

'One minor misfortune of the winnowing process may be mentioned: A beautiful Australian actress, whose clarity of diction (in either form) and linguistic talent strongly recommended her, proved to metamorphose not into the European wolf (Canis lupus), but into the Tasmanian (Thylacynus cynocephalus); and Professor Garou, no doubt rightly, questioned the effect upon the Martians of her marsupial pouch, highly esteemed though it was by connoisseurs of such matters.' from Anthony Boucher's "The Ambassadors"