Sprague de Camp's New Anthology

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The main difficulty in editing an anthology like this one is that it is never long enough. All the time there is the necessity to select, to reject, to differentiate between stories according to some standard of value. With the work of Sprague de Camp there is so much material from which to choose that I feel I must give reasons for this particular selection. But there is no difficulty about that. I chose these stories because I think that they entertain.

Some stories make you think. They make you think so much that you begin to forget they are stories and start to believe their messages. Which may be a good thing. Or a bad thing.

And there have been so very many collections of "serious" stories—I edited one myself—that 1 feel something in a lighter vein will be welcome. It is so easy for people to think that science fiction deals only with death and destruction and doom. It does not.

This book proves it. For here we have some of the cream of science fiction humour. Sprague de Camp can, when he wishes, exhibit the pertness of Parker, the whimsy of Wodehouse, the baloney of Benchley and the nuttiness of Nash; and when it comes to jabberwocky he can stand without shame beside Lewis Carroll. Yet through it all runs a warm murmur of human kindness reminding us of the stories of O. Henry—a criterion of true humour.

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