Swordsmen in the Sky

• "Swordsman of Lost Terra" (from Planet Stories v. 5, no. 3, Nov. 1951) (Poul Anderson)
• "The People of the Crater" (from Fantasy Book v. 1, no. 1, Jul. 1947) (Andre Norton)
• "The Moon That Vanished" (from Thrilling Wonder Stories v. 33, no. 1, Oct. 1948) (Leigh Brackett)
• "A Vision of Venus" (from Amazing Stories v. 8, no. 8, Dec. 1933) (Otis Adelbert Kline)
• "Kaldar, World of Antares" (from The Magic Carpet Magazine v. 3, no. 2, Apr. 1933) (Edmond Hamilton)

Charles Saunders, writing on blackgate.com, called the book "something of a harbinger of the sword-and-sorcery boom that was only a few years away from beginning." Of the contents, he praised the Anderson and Brackett pieces as "classics in the sense that they continue to fascinate with each re-reading, even though they were first published in 1951 and 1948, respectively," the Norton, a lost race tale, as "a slight cut below the Brackett and Anderson entries, but a large cut above most tales of its type," and the Hamilton as "a rip-roaring interstellar thriller ... with forerunners to the Star Trek matter transporter and the Star Wars light-saber," while noting "the plot relies too much on howling coincidences." He finds only the Kline piece deficient; "[i]n comparison with the other stories in Swordsmen, this one is a squib — almost a “Cliff’s Notes” condensation of the genre."^[2]

John ONeill, also on blackgate.com, characterized it as "hugely influential," a book that "looms large for SF and fantasy fans of the 60s and 70 [as] the first true science fantasy anthology in the sp[i]rit of Edgar Rice Burroughs."^[3]