Time and Stars

Gathering six of Poul Anderson's short stories from the early 1960s, this collection ranges from a robot too absorbed in literary criticism to work, to astronauts adrift in lunar orbit, to a bleak first-contact tale about the cost of being gifted, closing with humans returning to an Earth reshaped by machines they no longer recognize. Anderson's recurring interest, reason and duty tested against alien and mechanical logics beyond human control, runs through even the lighter entries. A representative slice of Anderson's prolific short fiction from the years surrounding his Technic History.