From a master of science fiction comes eight startling stories of time and space.

In “The Year of the Jackpot,” a statistician charts a curve of unusual happenings throughout the earth, only to find that his facts and figures prove the approach of the end of the world.

In “By His Bootstraps,” a man steps thirty thousand years into time and is trapped in the fourth dimension with three strange, yet oddly familiar, people.

In “Goldfish Bowl,” people disappear one by one, in great swirling balls of fire, and are held captive in space by beings of vastly superior intelligence.

Also in this collection of short stories originally published in 1959 are “Columbus Was a Dope,” “The Manace from Earth,” “Sky Lift,” “Project Nightmare,” and “Water Is for Washing.”