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This Best of collection covers ten years of short stories, from 1957 and the simple days of Manhole 69 to 1967 and the strange complexities of The Day of Forever. Each story is briefly introduced by the man, and he also includes an introduction, in which he talks about the changes he saw in science fiction and where it has come to now (1977); agressive and exhuberant, ranging over the whole of time and space, science fiction talks back to the late twentieth century in its own language. Ironic then, that the cover of this Orbit paperback should have such a straight-faced sci-fi cover, harking back to a simpler age of space opera and blue alien planets, or perhaps it's a reminder to Ballard that he can't escape his roots; among the radical groundbreaking stories in this volume, you can find the deliciously generic Passport to Eternity. The cover art is uncredited, signed only with the initial "R". |
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