This is a pretty long and comprehensive collection of good SF from 1963 (384 pages, so you’re definitely getting a lot). I enjoyed most of these stories and breezed through this on the Amtrak to and from visiting home. My mom also enjoyed the chunk she read while I was home, so it’s intergenerationally approved. However, nothing in here really blew me away and it all felt pretty standard and not hugely boundary pushing or subversive. Sometimes you do just need to read some classic aliens in space stories and that’s good enough.
Standouts for me included “The Great Nebraska Sea” by Allan Danzig, a fun thought exercise about the consequences of a massive tectonic plate shift in the middle of America; “The Jewbird” by Bernard Malamud, a very pointed story about self-hatred and anti-Semitism; and “The Ming Vase” by E. C. Tubb, which I had read in another collection at some point but remains a good piece about Cold War tensions and psychic powers.
I did also wish there was more said about each author, as I felt that the interstitial blurbs Merril put between the stories were very broad and didn’t give me much context for the stories. Still, it distracted me during a long trip and was pleasant overall so no real complaints from me. As a note, the title of the book on the cover and then the title on the top of all the pages are different, so I went with the inside title since it is easier to write down.