Benchmarks

Over the years since 1965, Algis Budrys has emerged as the leading critic of mod-ern speculative fiction: insightful, ec-lectic, and notoriously uninhibited. "Benchmarks "collects the material that started it--all 54 Galaxy Bookshelf book-review columns Budrys created for the now-vanished "Galaxy Magazine. "Writ-ten for what was then the world's leading SF periodical, these legendary summa-tions and summary judgments coincided with the period when newsstand-borne science fiction and fantasy were evolving from pulp toward literature. Budrys' "Galaxy "reviews trace an incisive, some-times wickedly acerb path through that sparsely charted literary territory. Budrys defines his standards and his function in his own words: "A book should he good. A bird should fly. "Writers of imperfect, tousled books should be made aware that standards of breeding and grooming exist. I strive to fulfill that function."