In nineteen ventures into the future, Mark Rich moves from a moving moment during human-alien contact, in "Across the Sky" ... to madcap conflict between Human and Vegetable, in the antic "Foggery" ... to a vision of life in Venusian orbit, in "The Apples of Venus" — the story SF giant Robert Silverberg called "science fiction in the classic mode, a contemporary version of the sort of work that makes old-timers speak with warm nostalgia of John W. Campbell's famous magazine Astounding Science Fiction of fifty years ago.