I want to get back into book postings, so you'll be seeing more of this stuff.

The Science fiction Hall of Fame, Volume I contains some horrible stories. For something that is supposed to have the best pre-1970 scifi, there are some really trashy works - stuff that is either just plain horrible or maybe was interesting at the time but wouldn't be now due to scientific advances (such as that story from the 1930s about meeting little green men on Mars...lol).

However, this will introduce me to some authors who bring up relevant and interesting ideas about how science will affect peoples' lives. The ones whose stories I enjoyed so far are Campbell, Sturgeon, van Vogt, Clifford Simak, Bradbury, Clarke, Jerome Bixby, Tom Godwin, Damon Knight, Daniel Keyes, and Zelazney.

I especially like Bradbury's "Mars is Heaven!" story. Questions and spoilers below:

- if the captain imagined his family back into being simply because he thought about it, did he also make his family murderers just by imagining it? Or were they illusions created by Martian technology, designed to kill him all along?

- if the world that the Earthmen found is fake and imagined, then why didn't it disappear when they died? Or did it just live on in concept, a la Raw Shark texts?

- I love how he brings up this idea of rugged, professional spacemen having the weak spot of their own families. Pretty much every human would have this weak spot because we have dual identities, i.e. the professional work identity of someone (if their job is an astronaut) and the personal familial identity of someone. Perhaps Bradbury is pointing out that our humanity (what makes us "human" in a more-than-biological sense) will always hold us back from being perfect scientific explorers or objective beings.