Time and Stars

Not to be confused with Of Time and Stars.

Time and Stars ([ISBN unspecified] for original hardcover version) is a collection of science fiction short stories by Poul Anderson, published in 1964.

"Dangerous universe: Faced with machines that think by and for themselves, super-intelligent space beings bent on a suicidal course and a galaxy teeming with dangerous alien life, man had to invent new weapons, new defenses - or perish from the universe."

Contents

Source

• "No Truce with Kings": A war story set on a future, semi-primitive Earth with aliens
  • Original Appearance: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, June 1963
• "The Critique of Impure Reason": A robot will not work because it is infatuated with modern literature and literary criticism
  • Original Appearance: If, November 1962
• "Escape from Orbit": Astronauts stranded in orbit around the moon
  • Original Appearance: Amazing Stories, October 1962
• "Eve Times Four": Space traveler Lothario is stranded on a planet with three beautiful women
  • Original Appearance: Fantastic Science Fiction Stories, April 1960
• "Turning Point": A first contact story that gives a haunting portrait of the price of giftedness and the loss of innocence
  • Original Appearance: If, May 1963
• "Epilogue": A crew of humans return to Earth after a long absence, finding it has been taken over by a kind of transistor-based ecology of machines; a lack of understanding between the robots and the humans leads to tragedy
  • Original Appearance: Analog, March 1962

Literary significance & criticism

The collection was reviewed by Algis Budrys in the February 1965 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction.

External links

• Time and Stars title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• Time and Stars review at SF Reviews
• Time and Stars at Google Books