A thinking person's collection of eight science fiction short stories by Blish first published in various magazines between 1953 and 1959.

Tomb Tapper • (1956) • novelette
King of the Hill • (1955) • shortstory
Common Time • (1953) • shortstory
A Work of Art • (1956) • novelette
To Pay the Piper • (1956) • shortstory
Nor Iron Bars (expanded) • (1957) • novelette
Beep • (1954) • novelette
This Earth of Hours • (1959) • novelette

Some of these stories are dated in various ways, such as the first one, 'Tomb Tapper', dealing with the recovery of a crashed Soviet rocket fighter that apparently just dropped a nuke on the east coast of America. I thought 'Tomb Tapper' was among the best of this collection as was 'A Work of Art' which was about the resurrection, in a way, of the composer Richard Strauss in the year 2161.

Although the subjects or story content may be dated, the writing approaches the subjects in a much more intelligent and thoughtful manner than one might expect from '50's science fiction. These are mostly "hard" science fiction tales, and several are loosely related. Overall I liked this collection, although there are a couple weaker stories mixed with the strong ones. ( )

The "Cold War" and time travel mechanisms are the themes of this cluster of Short stories from between 1953 and 1959. It seems that "Tomb Tappers" was the most interesting to me. These early works are not Blish's best writing. ( )