marlene

This book is fallaciously titled. If you are interested in an amalgamated mythology of all the earth's cultures, this book is for you. Otherwise prepare to be dowsed in rhetorical certainties strung together with a haphazard and tenuous thread of self-aggrandizing delusions. I enjoy mythology and religious history quite a bit. I would also consider myself open to all avenues of spiritual awareness. Unfortunately this book is shot through with so much contradiction and presumption as to make it unbearable in its presentation as historical fact and only menially enjoyable as this fiction it is. If you want some fool telling you how and why humans exist -- buy this. If you want history about secret societies and some authority on their beliefs -- go join one.
. . . or, at least, find a better book.

These stories were clearly written before we had much information concerning our solar system, that is to say written prior to 1965 or so. If you like classic stories of a habitable venus and populated mars than you will enjoy this. It is obvious that most of the stories must have been written at the outset of these authors careers and retain the charm of that novitiate stage. there is very little pretense in the tone of these stories and it is also endearing how clearly the speculative scientific knowledge of the period is displayed. What we demand in the plausibility of technological theory from today's science fiction makes no appearance in this anthology. The stories are created out of a time when 'the ether' and a jungle on Venus were just as conceivable as a bio-static solution to interstellar travel. While these stories may seem cliched at present that by no means negates the value they have in sci fi posterity or the much more timeless value of being entertaining thought provoking stories - just fun for everyone.