Subtitled "Some Personal Histories of Science Fiction Writers".
Edited by Brian W. Aldiss and Harry Harrison.
A collection of six autobiographical essays which give insight into how the contributors became involved with, and how they write, science fiction, as well as into their backgrounds. The title of the collection stems from Kingsley Amis' critical study of SF, New Maps of Hell.
"With a title's nod in the direction of Kingsley Amis, personal histories by some of the great SF map-makers, gratifyingly not so cosy as Dr Asimov makes his interrupting reminiscences: some good down-to-space stuff. Damon Knight seems the most gossipy and thin-skinned, Robert Silverberg the most defensive, while Alfred Bester is the most success-surprised. Messrs Pohl, Aldiss and Harrison are, as ever, benign: or is theirs the most revealing mask of all?"
"... a self-accounting of their life and work by some of science fiction's best names, was engagingly, sometimes bitchily, open... I love a good gossip."
"Are science fiction writers really as peculiar as this book makes out? Messrs Silverberg, Bester, Harrison, Knight and Pohl are a weird bunch - most claim to have had slightly disturbed childhoods ... Any collection of "personal histories" is bound to be a bit self-centred, but this bunch are so full of themselves that it is surprising they ever found time to write about anything else. This does not mean that the collection is of no interest - if you are a science fiction fan who has read anything by these writers you will probably want to read about them: after all, they have been the key figures in sf since the early 1950s. But if you expect their interest in sf to have much to do with the scientific world, then you will be disappointed."