Although Mack Reynolds has been a prolific science-fiction writer since 1950, having published more than fifty novels and collections as well as hundreds of short stories and articles, none of his works has proven permanently popular or achieved the status of a classic. Nevertheless, his works have circulated widely--appearing in Playboy as well as science-fiction magazines--and readers polled in Galaxy and If consistently selected him as their most popular writer. A recent collection of short stories, The Best of Mack Reynolds (1976), demonstrates that, at their best, his works are well crafted, entertaining, and provocative. Realizing early in his career that he could not compete with the scientific background and expertise of writers such as Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke, he chose instead to make the predominant theme of his work "social science--ethnology, archeology, and especially socio-economics." Judith Merril has remarked that "Mack Reynolds has put his trademark on...