It’s unfortunate that I’m coming to this after the very unsatisfactory collection of “fantasy” stories (Asimov never wrote fantasy: he wrote satire), because this was another disappointment.
The book is half short stories and half non-fiction, for random reasons, and the non-fiction half is random writings for the first half and reflections on writing science fiction in the second half.
This latter portion is interesting enough, and so are the stories, some more than others, as it’s to be expected and with no particular merit to the titular one. Humorous tales (“Battle-Hymn” and the prophetic “Fault-Intolerant”) are mixed with dead-serious ones of great merit (“Hallucination”, “Kid Brother”), so you’ll never know what to expect, and that’s one of the collection’s demerits.
Plus, what’s “Cal” doing here, and not with the “fantasy” collection? Oh, I know. Because it has a robot and it would destroy the presumption that the stories featuring George and Azazel are somehow fantasy.
The essays in the middle section have some interesting features, such as the one on Psychohistory, but “Women and Science Fiction” made me want to throw the book across the room.
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