The Best of Judith Merril

No one projects herself more penetratingly into the psyche of the women of future centuries than Judith Merril. With the probe of her imagination, as precise and powerful as a space shot, she envisions the problems they will face and how those problems will try their souls: the mother whose newborn bears the effects of radiation; the girl in whose body a new race must begin; the women who must rule a generation-spanning search through space for new settling grounds; the woman who must be all women to the male crew of a space ship. No matter how mechanized our journeys into space become, inside the space suits we are human; and Judith Merril predicts we always will be. CONTENTS Introduction by Virginia Kidd 1. That Only a Mother (1948) 2. The Shrine of Temptation (1962) 3. Whoever You Are (1952) 4. Daughters of Earth (1952) 5. Stormy Weather (1954) 6. Dead Center (1954) 7. The Lady Was a Tramp (1957) 8. Wish upon a Star (1958) 9. The Lonely (1963) 10. Auction Pit (1946) poem 11. In the Land of Unblind (1974)