On November 22, 1963, I was reading Great Stories of Space Travel in my High School Library when the announcement of President Kennedy being shot resulted in classes being cancelled and we were all sent home.
Tempo Books was the paperback line of Grosset & Dunlap. Great Stories of Space Travel was the 39th book in the Tempo series. It was published July 1963 and I bought a copy during that summer but didn’t get around to reading it until November 1963.
Great Stories of Space Travel collects eleven novelettes and short stories by mostly Big Name science fiction authors with a general introduction by Groff Conklin and his brief introductions to each story. The SF stories were previously published from 1942-1955 in various science fiction and other magazines.
I’d read several Groff Conklin SF anthologies before reading Great Stories of Space Travel and enjoyed them all. My favorite stories in Great Stories of Space Travel are Jack Vance’s “I’ll Build Your Dream Castle” and Eric Frank Russell’s humorous “Allamagoosa.”
Sometimes a book captures a moment in Time and I will never forget what I was doing on November 22, 1963. What were you doing on that date? GRADE: B+
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
- “Introduction” (Groff Conklin) — 7
- The Solar System
- “The Wings of Night” (Lester del Rey) — 11
- “The Holes Around Mars” (Jerome Bixby) — 33
- “Kaleidoscope” (Ray Bradbury) — 53
- “I’ll Build Your Dream Castle” (Jack Vance) — 65
- Beyond the Solar System
- “Far Centaurus” (A. E. van Vogt) — 87
- “Propagandist” (Murray Leinster) — 112
- “Cabin Boy” (Damon Knight) — 137
- “A Walk in the Dark” (Arthur C. Clarke) — 168
- “Blind Alley” (Isaac Asimov) — 180
- “The Helping Hand” (Poul Anderson) — 208
- “Allamagoosa” (Eric Frank Russell) — 240
I’ve probably read all these stories – but don’t remember them, seems my brain is getting old.
But I remember the day when I walked to university as usual and stopped at the newspaper display just before the university building to get the latest news as usual (couldn’t afford a newspaper) and there was a piece of paper put on the title page describing the case in headlines, nothing else.
Detailed info only got available the day after.
I was shocked because JFK was a sign of changing times from the christian fascist to the liberal.
In those days Germany was still ruled by the CDU, everything not agreeing with the bible and the catholic rules was forbidden: Homosexuality, abortion, sex before marriage and so on.
It took a very long time to change …
Wolf, it looks like the U.S. is heading into CDU territory…
About then, perhaps not long after, I was conceived. Since I was born 6 August 1964 CE.
I was 6 years old and living in England. They announced the assassination the next day in assembly, but by then it had been on the news. Five years later, on November 22, 1968, my family and I were flying to the U.S. to begin our new life as immigrants. So today marks my 56th anniversary of arriving in the United States.
I was in eighth grade, a routine Friday afternoon up to that moment, when the announcement was made over the PA system. I came down with the flu over the weekend and missed the news coverage of Oswald and Jack Ruby. On a happier note, that looks like a typically solid Conklin anthology.