27) Earth is Room Enough, by Isaac Asimov

Collection of Asimov’s stories from the first half of the 1950s, also two rather self-indulgent Gilbert and Sullivan pastiches about writing pulp sf. A lot of the stories are extended jokes; a lot of them revolve around intellectually gifted male protagonists in unhappy marriages. The most memorable is possibly “Jokester”, in which the source of all humour is revealed. I was surprised to realise that the first story, “The Dead Past”, another memorable one about visualising history, is also more than twice as long as any other in the collection; it is set in a near-future world where the government controls and licenses all scientific research, in what seems to be just a world-building detail which becomes vital to the plot. It’s all a bit 50s, but generally well done.