The Best from Fantasy & Science Fiction: A 40th Anniversary Anthology

October 1949 saw the launching of The Magazine of Fantasy (the name was changed to Fantasy & Science Fiction with the second issue), which quickly established itself as the premier journal of literary SF and fantasy and has maintained that position for 40 years under five editors. This is the 25th ``best of'' volume, the first in six years, and it's a knockout. Fritz Leiber has contributed a beautifully written adventure of Gummitch the intelligent cat, this time in an encounter with a veterinarian who turns out to be a witch (``The Cat Hotel''). ``Judgment Call'' by John Kessel is an eerie, evocative tale of a minor-league ballplayer who gets a needed lesson in humility from an alien creature passing as a beautiful bar pickup. George Alec Effinger's ``The Aliens Who Knew, I Mean, Everything '' is an amusing shaggy-doggish story of a benevolent invasion of Earth. Damon Knight's ``The God Box'' is a gemlike short-short of instant nirvana, and ``Salvador'' is one of Lucius Shepard's better political fictions set in Central America. Harlan Ellison has contributed an interesting introduction. (Oct.)