Reading the stories in this book is like visiting childhood friends whom you've never quite forgotten. These are stories from the dawn of science fiction's Golden Age, when authors were first beginning to shrug off the handicap of space opera, and were beginning to tackle serious science fiction.

The anthology is respectfully edited by Frederik Pohl, who is a grandmaster in his own right. As he states in his introduction, he's had the pleasure of working with many of the authors featured in the first book. His respect and admiration of these individuals comes through in his introductions to each section.

Many of these stories first appeared in the major pulp magazines of the 30s and 40s, and it's a testament to the authors' abilities -- and those of their editors -- that the stories have held up so well over time.

Heinlein's "Year of the Jackpot" does particularly well. A statistician records ever escalating patterns of strangeness and realizes that a catastrophic adjustment is about to occur. The story works just as well in our present as it did in Heinlein's.

Fritz Leiber's "Sanity" -- about the last sane man in the world and his plan for dealing with the lunatics around him -- is timeless, as is Jack Williamson's "With Folded Hands." In that story, robots arrive on Earth with orders to keep humanity from hurting itself. Humanity welcomes them with open arms... until they realize that the robots will keep them from doing anything remotely dangerous including driving, cooking and even needlepoint.

Some stories do show their age. Heinlein's great futuristic highways -- in which the roads move, but the people don't -- seems a little overly optimistic now. The days of having atomic bombs on the moon (Heinlein again, this time in "The Long Watch") are less of a threat.

Our present may have caught up with and -- in some cases surpassed -- the futures featured in these stories; this doesn't make them any less compelling. The book represents an excellent opportunity for younger readers to learn about science fiction's origins while giving older ones a chance to reminisce with old friends.