I enjoyed almost all of these. Highlights:
- Ann Warren Griffith’s “Captive Audience” imagines a world where the “Master Ventriloquism Corporation” makes all your ordinary household products play mandatory audible advertisements. “[E]arplugs were declared unconstitutional.”
- Mari Wolf’s “The First Day of Spring” considers how humans who have lived happily for generations on a self-contained “world” ship that feels much like a small town would react to visiting a real planet. It turns out they’ve lost their appetite for adventure.
- Evelyn E. Smith’s “The Agony of the Leaves” follows a very unfortunate man caught between the unwanted and jealous affections of two very demanding witches. I’ll admit I was shocked to learn that the protagonist’s job of “free-lance tea-taster” is a real thing. (Well, tea-taster is. Idk about the freelance part.)
- Alice Eleanor Jones’s “Miss Quatro” involves a strange woman who becomes beloved for her childcare services; she turns out to be trying to lure the children to serve as slaves in the beautiful but chilling world she comes from.
- Evelyn E. Smith’s “The Princess and the Physicist” is a quirky story about a planet whose god is highly involved in day-to-day life.
- Carol Emshwiller’s “The Piece Thing” is told from the perspective of a lost and confused alien seeking its mother, and finding a very unsympathetic human instead.
- Madeleine L’Engle’s “Poor Little Saturday” is an enchanting tale of a boy meeting a witch in an abandoned house in Georgia.
- Jane Roberts’s “The Red Wagon” postulates that reincarnation is real, and details the struggle of an individual not to forget his past lives during early childhood.
- Leigh Brackett’s “The Queer Ones” follows a small-town protagonist trying to figure out why a local boy has a very inhuman set of internal organs. He uncovers an alien operation that’s smuggling immigrants to Earth.
- Ruth M. Goldsmith’s “Moonshine” is a cute story about aliens abducting moonshiners.