These vintage science fiction stories were carefully chosen to represent every planet, except Earth, in the solar system (including Vulcan, which doesn’t exist, and Pluto!) and were all credible rather than completely fantastical. The writing style was not always interesting but the concepts were. I liked how each story had an introduction which examined that planet in fact and fiction, including a illustration of how large or small the Sun would appear if you were on that planet, compared to on Earth. There was also a short biography of each author.

‘Sunrise on Mercury’ by Robert Silverberg

‘The Hell Planet’ by Leslie F Stone

‘Foundling on Venus’ by John and Dorothy De Courcy

‘The Lonely Path’ by John Ashcroft

‘Garden in the Void’ by Poul Anderson

‘Desertion’ by Clifford D Simak

‘How Beautiful with Banners’ by James Blish

‘Where No Man Walks’ by E R James

‘A Baby on Neptune’ by Clare Winger Harris and Miles J Breuer

‘Wait it Out’ by Larry Niven

The only stories I found very memorable were ‘The Lonely Path’, in which explorers on Mars discover the purpose of an ancient tower; and ‘Garden in the Void’, a story of a symbiosis on an asteroid. The stories by Simak and Blish were familiar as I’d read them before. This will probably be the last book I’ll read in the British Library Science Fiction series, as the writing style isn’t as good as the concepts and I find them a bit of a chore to read, only discovering an occasional gem.

Stories first published between 1929 – 1968. This book published in 2020.