Featuring one of the most lackluster covers in Science Fiction history, Damon Knight’s One Hundred Years of Science Fiction (1968) manages to redeem itself with some wonderful stories.

Back in 1968, Damon Knight was just beginning his career as an editor (while still writing short stories and novels from time to time). These 21 stories hardly accurately represent 100 years of Science Fiction–where are Heinlein, Van Vogt, Edmond Hamilton, Leigh Brackett, and a dozen other major SF writers?

But any anthology that includes Fritz Leiber’s “Sanity” and Theodore Sturgeon’s “The Other Celia” has the Right Idea.

Damon Knight sprinkles in classic stories like “The Ingenious Patriot” by Ambrose Bierce and “With the Night Mail” by Rudyard Kipling. But the focus of this anthology is the 20th Century. My only quibble is that after his “INTRODUCTION” Damon Knight doesn’t introduce the individual stories which would have enhanced the reader’s understanding how and why these particular stories and writers were selected to represent a century of Science Fiction. How many of these stories do you recognize? GRADE: B+

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

INTRODUCTION by Damon Knight. — 7
I. WORLDS OF TOMORROW
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL by Rudyard Kipling — 13

Mr. Murphy of New York by Thomas McMorrow — 52

New Apples in the Garden by Kris Neville –68

Sanity by Fritz Leiber — 79

II. ALIENTS, ON EARTH AND ELSEWHERE

The Shapes by J. H. Rosny aine — 97

The Other Celia by Theodore Sturgeon — 122

Black Charlie by Gordon R. Dickson — 139

III. OTHER DIMENSIONS

A Subway Named Möbius by A. J. Deutsch — 157

The Man Who Came Early by Poul Anderson — 173

The Other Now by Murray Leinster — 198

IV. MUTANTS AND MONSTERS

Whatever Happened to Corporal Cuckoo? by Gerald Kersh — 213

The Mindworm by C. M. Kornbluth — 238

Nobody Bothers Gus by Aegis Budrys — 251

V. MARVELOUS INVENTIONS

The Ingenious Patriot by Ambrose Bierce — 267

The Equalizer by Norman Spinrad — 269

Splice of Life by Sonya Dorman — 278

Business As Usual, During Alterations by Ralph Williams — 285

VI. THE MYSTERIOUS UNIVERSE

The Man Who Could Work Miracles by H. G. Wells — 311

The Quest for St. Aquin by Anthony Boucher — 327

The Nine Billion Names of God by Arthur C. Clarke — 345

The Voices of Time by J. G. Ballard — 352