Chief among the offerings is the title piece, which is an intense story about an ecological disaster, whose time has come around again. Up from the Bottomless Pit presents an alternate 70s nightmare, set in a world where demand for oil has become so great, that oil companies abandon caution in their efforts to extract more of the black gold. The result is a hole in the ocean floor, from which gushes an all but unstoppable torrent of crude oil. This quickly creates a deadly danger to life on Earth, as the vast slick spreads out, and begins to affect our fragile ecology. Some of the concepts here, and certainly the characterisation, are of their time. Others are way ahead of the curve, quality writing that delivers lessons which still have relevance. It is very easy to see a point in our not too distant future, where Big Oil's rampant greed takes that one step too far, and as a result cannot control what happens. As always with Farmer stories, the plots are well drawn, and the key scenes driven home with the cold sharpness of a stiletto. Some parts of Up from the Bottomless Pit are quite harrowing, yet delivered in such an economical fashion as to shame authors who prefer a more gratuitous approach. Farmer's technique reveals he had the foresight and ability to adopt a less is more strategy, long before anyone had even thought of the phrase.

One point I must make clear is that Up from the Bottomless Pit and Other Stories is not strictly science fiction. In fact, almost all of the works presented here fall into the category of Farmer's mainstream speculative fiction. Every story has something to say, even if one or two show their age. "The Essence of the Poison," "The Face That Launched a Thousand Eggs," "The Light-Hog Incident" and "I Still Live!" are all titles to entice the reader into Farmer's intricate thought processes. New readers should not start here, as this is not the best introduction to Farmer, or the best he has to offer. What it is, is a quirky collection of the author's more oddball works, and as such is well worth adding to your bookshelf.