I got this slightly-battered hardcover from an online seller. It's an anthology by C. L. Moore. (I love the anecdote that she was introduced to SF author Henry Kuttner by none other than H. P. Lovecraft, with whom both of them corresponded. The two married and sometimes wrote together under different pseudonyms.)

This collection has a mix of SF and fantasy, and includes a lovely afterword by the author. My favorite stories here (though I enjoyed them all):

"Shambleau," perhaps her best-known tale, has a science-fiction tone, and features spacefaring adventurer Northwest Smith falling under the spell of a lovely alien girl whose... talents... are addictive in the extreme. I remember reading this one when I was in high school, and it's stuck with me all this time. (There's an amusing note in the afterword about the origins of this story, including the names of the characters; Northwest's Venusian sidekick Yarol was named as an anagram of the author's typewriter!)

"The Bright Illusion" is, surprisingly, a love story, though it deals with beings from species so very different that they can't look at each other without horror. But warring gods have found a way to send one consciousness, garbed in the appearance of the other race, as an emissary - but the gods didn't anticipate a spiritual connection that would transcend the utterly alien.

"Black God's Kiss" is a high-fantasy tale introducing the tough warrior-woman Jirel; here, her city has been defeated and she's the captive of a grinning, bearded beast of a man who's delighted to find that this deadly warrior is a woman underneath the armor. Jirel swears desperate vengeance and makes her way into what seems to be Hell itself to get it, with descriptions of landscapes and creatures that are Lovecraftian in the best sense - and, of course, the bargain has a terrible price.

"No Woman Born" is a lovely, bittersweet story about a great dancer/singer/actress who's been so horribly burned that her entire body has been replaced with a cybernetic shell. The story strikes a balance between examining the nature of her new self and the psychology of a life as a brain-in-a-box, with only sight and hearing available to her as senses. Her trusted manager and the brilliant but fragile scientist who has crafted her new form are both worried about whether she'll break under the strain of being so very different, but she's insistent that she will perform again...

"Vintage Season" opens with a rather Bradbury-esque feel, where a man notices that the people who've rented his house for the next week are just a bit... alien; then a bidding war erupts for custody of the house, as another band of not-quite-human visitors demands it for themselves. As to why this particular house is so important - ah, that's the crux of the matter; I guessed some of it before one of the visitors revealed it to the main character, but as the details unfolded it added layers to the whole situation. Lovely and chilling!

[There's a TV Tropes page on her and her work.]

I'm adding this to the To the Stars SF bookbox; hope someone enjoys it!

*** Released for the 2019 Science Fiction release challenge. ***

Received in the To the Stars: A Science Fiction Bookbox

I have decided to put this book in the box for someone else to enjoy.

Released back into the To the Stars: A Science Fiction Bookbox

Please enjoy!

Removed from the sci-fi bookbox so I can get familiar with this author. Thanks!!

This book is going traveling again in the current Science Fiction Only bookbox. I enjoyed many of the stories in this volume of classic sci-fi. The Bright Illusion and Vintage Season were two of the tales I liked the most. Sometimes classic sci-fi can be wonderful and sometimes it is too dated. I thought these stories were charming and inventive.

Bookcrossing is the practice of leaving a book in a public place for someone else to "catch". Why? Cuz books just wanna have fun! Enjoy the serendipity and head over to the bookcrossing.com website to let me know you caught this book!

Bookcrossing is family-friendly and a great hobby 😀

I'm taking this from erishkigal's Science Fiction Only Bookbox. I know I've read of few of these before, but not an entire "best of" collection.

I'm returning this to erishkigal's Science Fiction Only Bookbox, having read it while the bookbox was with me.

When the depression hit, Catherine Lucille Moore left college and took a job as a typist; she published using her initials to conceal her writing from her employer. Her wordy descriptions and superlative vocabulary are in some ways typical of the golden age of pulp genre fiction. All the stories in this collection were first published in the digest-sized science fiction, fantasy, and horror magazines of the 1930s and 1940s. But her writing can be distinguished from most of that era, in that it deals with emotions and the nature of erotic love (in a very traditional dominant male/submissive female context). After marrying fellow science fiction writer Henry Kuttner in 1940, almost all of their stories were collaborations. This retrospective collection of her most famous work was put together with her consent by Lester del Rey in 1977. I’ve read a few of these before, but not curated like this into the sequence of her writing career.

My favorite stories were No Woman Born, Vintage Season, Shambleau, and The Bright Illusion. My least was Greater Than Gods. If you are interested in my thoughts on each specific story, go to my goodreads review. But I recommend reading them for yourself first.

Taken from the box. I've read some of Moore's work, and I think some of these stories, but not all of them.

Sent to the winner of the sci-fi sweepstakes. It's a box of books, so hopefully they will find something they like and pass the rest on.

I read this, but haven't had a chance to write a real JE. To be honest, I was planning to keep it longer and re-read it because I enjoyed it so much! Hopefully it will continue to make future readers happy.

Your amazing box made it here safely. Thank you very much for all of the amazing looking science fiction.

I have not read C.L. Moore before, so this is a delving into a new author for me. I enjoy the pulpy golden age of science fiction so this will be a very fun book to continue reading. So far I have read Shambleau and am not disapointed.

All of the stories in this collection were good. However, the ones that stood out to me most were Shambleu, Black Thirst, No Woman Born, Daemon, and Vintage Season. It's been awhile since I have read a collection as engaging as this one. Thanks for sending it my direction.

Left on a bench inside the doors.