Up until [the publication of A Canticle for Leibowitz] Miller had been regarded, in Sam Moskowitz's words, as "the perennially promising author." An engineer-turned-writer, he had published some forty-odd stories in the major science fiction magazines in the Fifties; several were chosen for anthologies, sometimes of the best stories in the field, but many of his tales are rather conventional and far from distinguished. "The Darfsteller," a story about a human actor struggling quixotically to compete in an age of automated stage plays, won for him a "Hugo" in 1955 for the previous year's best novelette, but he was not able to publish a collection of stories until after the success of his novel. The first collection, Conditionally Human (1962), combines "The Darfsteller" with two other novelettes, demonstrates his proficiency with fiction of medium length dealing with serious intellectual and emotional themes, and shows a generally prosaic and sometimes plodding...