Following publication of his nonfiction examination of modern SF in 1960, New Maps of Hell: A Survey of Science Fiction, author and critic Amis teamed up with another novelist and critic, Robert Conquest, to produce a series of anthologies of short works which they felt defended their claims about the genre against reviewers who dismissed the very idea of mature readers having an interest in the future or in space travel. The books were published first by Gollancz in the UK, then by Harcourt, Brace & World in the US. The first four US volumes rearranged their contents. Berkley paperback reprints of the US volumes are shown in the photo; the paperback of the first volume drops three stories, by Barr, Berryman, and MacLean.

The editors made a point of using only one story per author, across the five books.