2006 books
75) Howard Fast, A Touch of Infinity, 1974
One wouldn't normally associate the late Howard Fast with SF, his most famous Roman novel Spartacus later being turned into the 1960 film by Stanley Kubrick, but in his short preface to this collection he says the first story he ever sold was SF and that he always found it to be "the best means of saying what I want to say". Many of these stories lean more towards fantasy, and I don't know what other SF he had written but he had a knack, certainly, as well as particular kind of nudge-and-a-wink wit, and a way of concluding his short stories in a very unexpected but also, somehow, logical fashion. In some settings he was clearly writing with a grin while at others he comes across with deadly seriousness, and he usually talks to the reader with the ease of a good narrator. Enjoyable and light, but also sometimes surprisingly intense.