In praise of Alpha 1 My family has owned this book since 1970. It's a 1st edition, which doesn't matter much 'cuz it's been out of print since 1970, too. I'm not sure where For A Breath I Tarry was originally printed; not even the book says. Suffice it to say it is a killer anthology, and The Moon Moth is damn near as good as For A Breath I Tarry. But not nearly as haunting. Honesty psyched to see a bunch more exposure for this tale. Roger Zelazny lived next door to family friends growing up. I'd see him at parties. Totally cool guy. I'd interested an animator into helping me turn this story into a film at one point, and started going after the rights, but then he got conscripted and his dad died. One of these days. It's a tale that needs a wider audience. I'm psyched to help it find one, even if it's only in a small way.
The science fiction field has a long history of original anthology series, including Frederik Pohl’s Star series for Ballantine Books in the 1950s… What the field does not have though is a long history of reprint anthology series other than best-of-the-year series… Apparently Robert Silverberg felt the same way, since in 1970 he released Alpha One, the first volume of 9 devoted to stories he felt were either neglected, or deserved renewed attention.
Equally good is Roger Zelazny’s “For A Breath I Tarry.” I think it is safe to say that Zelazny’s burst of stories from 1965 through 1968 are as outstanding a four-year creative period as that of any sf writer ever. This story takes place in the distant future when humans are extinct, and two ancient machines continue their task of maintaining the Earth. But they are competing for the role of being sole guardian, a struggle which involves Frost, another machine which was created by one of the competing machines named Solcom during a period of unprecedented solar flareup which made it temporarily mad. Frost develops a deep interest in the extinct humans, and sets out to learn as much about them as possible in the hopes of understanding them. This story has all the mythic overtones which Zelazny did better than anybody else, while also being an absorbing story.