Customer Reviews (1)

Stories Of The Mind
"Beyond The Barriers of Space and Time" is an anthology by Judith Merril which focuses on the powers of the mind.There are nineteen stories included, as well as an introduction by Theodore Sturgeon, and a nice bibliography.This book was first published in November of 1954, and while most of the stories are from the 50s, there are stories from the 40s, 30s, 20s, and even one from 1872.Judith Merril also has chosen an interesting selection of authors, including some greats like Asimov, Dick and Bradbury; and she also makes some unusual choices such as Agatha Christie, Will Thompson, and J.C. Furnas.

There are too many stories to cover here in detail, but some of them are science fiction and some are fantasy.They deal with such mind powers as telepathy, hypnotism, materializations, precognition, telekinesis, and magic.Some of the stories of note are "Wolf Pack" by Walter M. Miller, Jr., "The Golden Man" by Philip K. Dick, "The Ghost of Me" by Anthony Boucher, and "The Wall around The World" by Theodore R. Cogswell, the last of which was nominated in 2004 for a Retro Hugo for novelettes first published in the year 1953.

Also of some interest is the story "Crazy Joey" by Mark Clifton and Alex Apostolides which introduces the main character of the Hugo award winning novel "They'd rather Be Right" (a.k.a. "The Forever Machine") by Mark Clifton and Frank Riley.You will also find stories here by John Wyndham, Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, Robert Sheckley, John Collier, and Katherine MacLean.All in all it is a very strong collection of stories, but not quite up to the level of some.A solid four star anthology and definitely worth picking up if you can find it.
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Product Description
Each year Tesseract Books chooses a team of editors from among the best of Canada’s writers, publishers and critics to select innovative and futuristic fiction and poetry from the leaders and emerging voices in Canadian speculative fiction. This is the anthology that started it all! Featuring fiction by Élisabeth Vonarburg and Hugo and Nebula award winning authors Spider Robinson, and William Gibson. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

A domestic look at the aftermath of an atomic bomb
A typical day in a Westchester suburb of New York for a family of four is shattered by a nuclear attack on New York City. Gladys is in the basement doing her laundry,her two daughters, Barbara and Ginny are at school, and her husband Jon has taken the train to Manhattan to his job when the bombs start to fall.

The following week's events are viewed from Gladys' viewpoint as she takes in the children's teacher, a discredited nuclear scientist critical of atomic bombs, and hides him and her Slavic maid Veda from the Civil Defense patrols who might see them as enemy spies or saboteurs.

Written in 1950 this is an early science fiction look at the after effects of a nuclear war. It was adapted the same year with a less provocative script as the television drama Atomic Attack, which was the television debut for Walter Matthau as the young doctor.

Judith Merril does a very good job or of presenting Gladys as the US stay-at-home mom of the post-WWII years facing a world turned upside down. I enjoyed reading the book and recommend it.

Basis for the television movie Atomic Attack!
I have not read this novel.However, I have seen the early television movie Atomic Attack!, which was based on this novel and is currently available on YouTube.Apparently, the movie was produced in 1950, the same year as this novel.This would seem to make the movie, and possibly this novel, one of the earliest mass-audience works to use the terms "hydrogen bomb" and "H-bomb."This kind of bomb was not successfully tested until 1 November 1952, so that in 1950 it was just a concept.

Nuclear Holocaust book by leftist
Also can be found on a different Amazon pageat:
Shadow on the Hearth by Judith Merril
Unknown Binding ASIN: B00005WTJZ

"A tense, prophetic novel of one woman's world -- after the bomb falls."

"Shadow on the Hearth is the story of Gladys Mitchell, a young, attractive Westchester housewife who, through hope and courage, successfully fought the chaos in the wake of an atomic war."

"...then the frantic terror, mounting slowly as the great mushroom cloud had mounted a few hours ago over New York Harbor."

Author's first novel

"Judith Merrill (b. 1923), a pen name for Josephine Juliet Grossman, was active in the Trotskyist movement in the late 1930s, and still ideologically influenced by it in the 1940s."
- Alan Wald in Encyclopedia of the left. Second edition. p. 726.

"The novel is unusual for the period in that it also emphasizes the necessity of opposing mindless Red-baiting."
- Paul Brians, Nuclear holocausts: atomic war in fiction, 1895-1984. p. 259.

Judith Merril was born Josephine Judith Grossman in Manhattan in 1923. She married for the first time in 1940 and adopted Merril as her legal last name in 1941. In 1948, she published her first science fiction short story, "That Only a Mother," in Astounding, a story which gained her a great deal of renown. Just two years later she published her first novel, Shadow on the Hearth, one of the few novels she was to write. In 1956 she started two things that went on to have great impact on science fiction: she helped organize the first Milford SF Writers Conference, and she edited the first of twelve annual Best SF anthologies for Dell. In 1968 she edited an influential anthology of British New Wave SF, England Swings SF, and later that year she moved to Canada as protest to the Vietnam War. She made a gift of her personal collection to the Toronto Public Library in 1970, founding the Spaced Out Library (which was later renamed the Merril Collection). In 1985 she edited the first volume of Tesseracts, which has become a successful series of Canadian short science fiction. She died in 1997 at age 74.

Nuclear Holocaust book by leftist
Also can be found on Amazon at:
Shadow on the hearth by Judith Merril
Publisher: Doubleday; 1st ed edition (1950) ASIN: B0007DW9TA

"A tense, prophetic novel of one woman's world -- after the bomb falls."

"Shadow on the Hearth is the story of Gladys Mitchell, a young, attractive Westchester housewife who, through hope and courage, successfully fought the chaos in the wake of an atomic war."

"...then the frantic terror, mounting slowly as the great mushroom cloud had mounted a few hours ago over New York Harbor."

Author's first novel

"Judith Merrill (b. 1923), a pen name for Josephine Juliet Grossman, was active in the Trotskyist movement in the late 1930s, and still ideologically influenced by it in the 1940s."
- Alan Wald in Encyclopedia of the left. Second edition. p. 726.

"The novel is unusual for the period in that it also emphasizes the necessity of opposing mindless Red-baiting."
- Paul Brians, Nuclear holocausts: atomic war in fiction, 1895-1984. p. 259.

Judith Merril was born Josephine Judith Grossman in Manhattan in 1923. She married for the first time in 1940 and adopted Merril as her legal last name in 1941. In 1948, she published her first science fiction short story, "That Only a Mother," in Astounding, a story which gained her a great deal of renown. Just two years later she published her first novel, Shadow on the Hearth, one of the few novels she was to write. In 1956 she started two things that went on to have great impact on science fiction: she helped organize the first Milford SF Writers Conference, and she edited the first of twelve annual Best SF anthologies for Dell. In 1968 she edited an influential anthology of British New Wave SF, England Swings SF, and later that year she moved to Canada as protest to the Vietnam War. She made a gift of her personal collection to the Toronto Public Library in 1970, founding the Spaced Out Library (which was later renamed the Merril Collection). In 1985 she edited the first volume of Tesseracts, which has become a successful series of Canadian short science fiction. She died in 1997 at age 74. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Beware of Your Treacherous Superiors!
Cyril Judd was the pseudonym adopted by Cyril M. Kornbluth (1923-1958) and Judith Merril (1923-1997) to write two books, the present one and "Mars Child" (aka "Outpost Mars" and "Sin in Space"), both were written in 1952.
Here we have a very representative novel of `50s science-fiction, comparatively short for present standards, only 200 pages of packed action stuff, no deep character development and action centered narration.It is nevertheless very readable and entertaining story.

Gunner Cade is a warrior educated and trained since boyhood in a monastic-style military order. Gunners fight Gunners in endless confrontations defending interests of their nations (called Stars), but astoundingly, Gunners may serve a Star for a while and then be assigned to another one, so their loyalties are to the Order and their Brothers.
Thru strange circumstances Cade ends into the Commoners world and one by one all his beliefs are demolished. He has to deal with a strange universe and choose his path according to his heart.

I wholeheartedly recommend this book to sci-fi lovers that will be able to appreciate a piece of epoch narration.

Reviewed by Max Yofre.

A Monk-Warrior on the Run!
Cyril Judd was the pseudonym adopted by Cyril M. Kornbluth (1923-1958) and Judith Merril (1923-1997) to write two books, the present one and "Mars Child" (aka "Outpost Mars" and "Sin in Space"), both were written in 1952.
Here we have a very representative novel of `50s science-fiction, comparatively short for present standards, only 200 pages of packed action stuff, no deep character development and action centered narration.It is nevertheless very readable and entertaining story.

Gunner Cade is a warrior educated and trained since boyhood in a monastic-style military order. Gunners fight Gunners in endless confrontations defending interests of their nations (called Stars), but astoundingly, Gunners may serve a Star for a while and then be assigned to another one, so their loyalties are to the Order and their Brothers.
Thru strange circumstances Cade ends into the Commoners world and one by one all his beliefs are demolished. He has to deal with a strange universe and choose his path according to his heart.

I wholeheartedly recommend this book to sci-fi lovers that will be able to appreciate a piece of epoch narration.
Reviewed by Max Yofre.

A Pulp Classic
Cyril Judd was the pen-name used by SF husband and wife writing team C. M. Kornbluth an Judith Merrill for this collaboration.

In the far-flung future, soldiers, called "gunners" live as members of monastic-like orders.They fight only other gunners, who serve other lords, and all serve the Emperor.Unknown to them, the general public follows their exploits with sports-fan-like fascination -- how many kills does this gunner have, etc.

Cade is an ordinary gunner, proud to serve.By a tremendous combination of coincidence and conspiracy, he is captured by the underground, who try to program him for their own purposes.He escapes, only to find himself a wanted man, branded a traitor, with all gunners ordered to kill him.

But along the way he meets this girl, see, and in his quest to find her, he finds himself involved in a DIFFERENT underground conspiracy, and the girl turns out to be the Emperor's neice, naturally, and before you know it we're on a rocketship to Mars to the secret rebel base and...

GUNNER CADE is great pulp SF.It has the sense of wonder, the rip-roaring plot, the "Oh, wow" moments, along with numerous pungent observations on government, religion, sex, etc.Written in 1952, it fulfills it's mission of entertainment magnificently.Kornbluth and Merrill were such talented writers; it's a shame they couldn't have written at a time when publisher would allow a SF writer 300 pages to fully flesh out a story (as opposed to today, when even marginal writers get 400 pages fo "Volume One of the Chronicles of Boredome Octology).

a little known masterpiece by c.m. kornbluth
The book is written under c.m. kornbluth's pen name. It concerns a fugitive "soldier" on the run from the empire.He has given his life to the empire and now he finds that he is a fugitive.With the help of an underground organization he finds more than what he bargains for thus entering a new phase in his life.A very easy read, fun, and a prime example of an excellent writer who died young. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Great book but might not last very long
This is a great collection of science fiction stories. I have read them all and even though I didnt like all of them and may never read them again, the diversity in the writing and subjects means that most people are likely to find something they like. As for the stories I do like, they are awesome and it was completely worth it to buy this book, especially for the price. My one complaint is that it is paperback and doesn't look very sturdy. It will probably fall apart before I'm done with it so I hope they don't discontinue it. ... Read more