pick"Crucifixus Etiam" by Walter M. Miller Jr is the final story, and a case of leaving the best until last.
Manue Nanti is a Peruvian manual worker in a work team terraforming Mars. His high-altitude physiology needs less expensive support to breathe the thin Martian atmosphere, but this results in irreversible biological changes that make a return to earth at the expiry of his five year contract unlikely.
If there's such a thing as ⬇️
"Make no mistake. A man may hate and be strengthened and ennobled by it. Let us by all means hate oppression and injustice, hate greed and the cruelty of ignorance and fear. Hatred, so cultivated, is a precious thing - but tend it well. Multiplied too rapidly, dropped carelessly in too fertile soil, allowed to cross with ignorant prejudice, blind self-seeking, it may bloom at last into death and destruction for us all. ⬇️
pick"The Gnarly Man" by L. Sprague de Camp
I love stories about Neanderthals surviving into the present, and this is a good one about an immortal hominin whose current "undercover" identity is Coney Island sideshow curiosity "Ungo-Bungo". He unwisely breaks cover when approached by anthropologist Dr. Matilda Saddler, and faces the possibility of the re-extinction of his species.
pick"Who Shall I Say is Calling?" by August Derleth
Maryla and her brother drive by chance past a country house where they see a masquerade party in progress. Deciding to gatecrash, they are readily accepted as attending in the guise of Count and Lady Dracula, despite not being in costume! ??♂️??♀️
Derleth's dialogue is archly humourous, and the reader's suspecting more than the partygoers about the nature of the siblings is delicious ?
"my ambition is to get
my time as a cockroach shortened for
good behaviour and be promoted
to a revenue officer
it is not much of a step up but
i am humble
i never ran across any of this
ectoplasm that sir arthur
conan doyle tells of but it sounds
as if it might be wonderful
stuff to mend broken furniture with
archy"
- ghosts by Don Marquis
pickMargaret St. Claire, writing as Idris Seabright, was one of a few women writing SF in the '50s, a sexist, male-dominated industry that clearly influenced her story, "An Egg a Month from All Over".
George Lidders is a creepy incel type who women warn their young daughters away from. Since his mother's death, his only occupations have been "pretty unpleasant" fantasies about women, and his Egg A Month subscription, which provides enthusiasts with ⬇️
pick1st story, "The Big Contest" by John D. MacDonald was written & set during the '50s UFO Craze. The frame story has the usual loafers of a Midwestern town lounging on the street & musing about recent saucer sightings. Old Hobe Traike regales the gathering with a rambling account of a big local contest during the 1911 Spitting Craze (??♂️), and the peculiar winner, Woolmutt. How does this relate to UFOs? "Sit down, shut up, & I'll tell ya." ??
While I'm making progress with the August #ClassicLSFBC book, Earth Abides, I'm taking time out with a 1954 anthology of "science fantasy" stories, including such SF luminaries as H.G. Wells, Fritz Leiber, L. Sprague de Camp, Algis Budrys & August Derleth. There's also the Asimov "Robot" story "Liar" that the CLSFBC read earlier this year: it's cool to read it in its first book incarnation.
Also, I luurrrve the retro cover art by Rafael DeSoto ?
Human? | 
The book as a whole is varied and generally of an above average standard. The clunkers were a lesser offering from H.G. Wells, and one by John Collier that was both the wrong kind of humour for me, and too far over the racist line for me to make allowances for its age. These two aside, excellent stuff 4⭐ 3mo