She had somehow gotten pregnant during their stay, and she's worried the baby won't survive the intense pressure of hyperdrive. The first, "The Wind People" by new-to-me author Marion Zimmer Bradley, is an atmospheric slow-burner that takes place in the far future on an uninhabited, forested distant planet, where a ship from Earth crash-lands, and one woman decides to stay behind once the crew eventually gets the ship patched up. There were two stories here that made this anthology worth reading, however. Bloch's dream-like "The Thinking Cap," about a writer who's new-found cure for writer's-block has a rather unfortunate price, was clever, but ultimately forgettable. Machen's early, hugely influential weird novella "The Great God Pan" definitely belongs in a book entitled Demon Lovers and Strange Seductions, but here we're only given an 18-page excerpt. "A Touch of Strange" by the usually reliable Sturgeon was another I'd read before, a tale of love between a human and a mermaid, and it's definitely strange, and somewhat touching, but was one of the lesser stories from the same-titled collection of his where I'd first read it. Fredric Brown has a short, 1-page experimental story called "Too Far" that's nothing but a series of puns that, yes, goes a bit "too far." Enjoyable, but nothing special. I do enjoy Le Fanu's ghost stories when I'm in the mood, but it was a chore keeping my eyes open through this or retain anything I was reading, even though it's not a long story. Le Fanu's blend of historical fact and faerie folklore that opens the book, "Ultor de Lacy," did nothing for me when I first read it 20 years ago, and little more now. This 1971 anthology was a bit of a mixed bag for me.
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