This collection includes a number of Blish's greatest stories, including several from his "Cities in Flight" sequence, the original novella of "A Case of Conscience," "Surface Tension," (voted as one of the best stories ever by the Science Fiction Writers of America) and his great werewolf story, "There Shall Be No Darkness." It also features an essay in which he dissects the New Wave-from the point of view of someone who understood and appreciated modernist literature--and two poems.