This collection features six of the author's science fiction stories - although as usual, they come across more as fantasy. The main feature of all is the creation of a weird and fantastical setting, with strange lifeforms, and the characterisation of the human protagonists - all men - is slim to non existent. That in itself was not a hindrance, but given the similarity of the stories, ultimately did not help to lift the mood.

The first two stories are connected, as they feature the crew of an interplanetary vessel which set off from Earth some years before. Most of the crew are slavish followers of the Captain, a man called Volmar, but three are more independent and, at the start of the first tale, when the voyage has lasted five years, have had enough of the insistence that the ship go on endlessly. They have failed in their effort to turn the ship around, and are about to be marooned on an alien world with very little to sustain them or use as defence. The bulk of the story is about the horrendous time they spend, beset by strange and inimical life forms.

In the second story, one of the former mutineers, now returned aboard at the end of the previous story, and Volmar explore another planet and run into hostile forces. Rather unrealistically, there are no hard feelings after the events of story one. This tale narrates their adventures until they are able to return to their ship.

Despite the fact that all of the characters in both stories are supposed to be intelligent and are scientists plus men of action (not sure how they would have time to combine the two careers), they spend their time being driven from one peril to another and do not use any of their purported intelligence to help themselves.

In the third story, a man who befriends the narrator eventually reveals himself as being from the future and offers to take the narrator there. The story then describes the downward spiral of the future humans - they have become very controlled, emotionless and technologically advanced, yet they have also enslaved Venusians (in Smith's fiction, both Mars and Venus have liveable climates and civilisations) and formed uncertain alliances with Martians. This situation unravels during the time that the narrator is present. One oddity is that radium is used as a temporary solution to one of the problems caused by the resident aliens, which would seem rather dangerous.

The fourth story is quite short and is narrated by someone who has been part of an expedition to Venus, which humans have attempted to colonise. It describes the horrific animal and vegetable life he encountered.

In the fifth story, two travellers in search of a legendary lost city are abandoned by their guides. Wandering in the desert, in search of water and a way back to civilisation, they come upon an invisible city inhabited by strange alien life forms.

The final story in the collection deals with a future war of America against Japan (this story, like the others in the collection, was published before WWII). While pursuing a Japanese spy in their rocket ship, two men pass through a "cloud" which is actually the gateway to a weird dimension where the laws of physics do not operate normally. They encounter various odd and frightening phenomena and creatures, and as in many of Smith's science fiction tales, have to rely on something outside themselves for rescue.

I wasn't very impressed by this collection as shown by the way that it took me over a month to read it. It is less varied than Smith's fantasy, which I definitely prefer, and the constant theme of describing strange alien phenomena and creatures, all hostile and never defeated by anything the humans in the story even think of doing, did become a bit monotonous after a while. So I can only rate this as a 2 star OK read. ( )