"Shot in the Dark" by Judith Merril

Shot in the Dark was Merril's first anthology, and was an excellent blend of mystery, fantasy, and science fiction, both contemporary (but remember the book appeared in 1950) and classic. It contains twenty-three stories from sf masters like Theodore Sturgeon, Leigh Brackett, Fredric Brown, Frederik Pohl (as James MacCreigh), Robert Heinlein, H.G. Wells, Catherine L. Moore and Henry Kuttner (as Lewis Padgett), Murray Leinster, William Tenn, Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, Philip Wylie, John Michel (as Hugh Raymond), as well as mainstream authors such as Margery Allingham, James Thurber, Edgar Allan Poe, Gerald Kersh, Stephen Vincent Benet, and Jack London. The cover by Herman E. Bischoff looks like a typical noir mystery genre painting, and I wonder what readers who were expecting Sam Spade thought when they got Sturgeon's The Sky Was Full of Ships, Brackett's The Halfling, Brown's Knock, and Bradbury's Mars is Heaven. It's a really excellent early anthology in a number of ways. (Craig, GoodReads)