Book 50: "The Best of A. E. Van Vogt Volume 1" by A. E. Van Vogt

'I've heard of these shops. They're places of infamy, against which the government of the empress will act one of these days. They're built in hidden factories, and then transported whole to towns like ours and set up in gross defiance of property rights. That one wasn't there an hour ago.'

Vault of the Beats
The Weapon Shop
The Storm
Juggernaut
Hand of the Gods
The Cataaaaa
The Monster

The author himself chose his best stories for this collection. Since they are arranged chronologically, the first volume contains seven stories from the early part of his career, all written in the 1940s.

My least favourite story was the first, and I almost didn’t bother reading the rest. Luckily they turned out to be much more to my taste, from "The Weapon Shops" which suddenly swerves off in an entirely unexpected direction, to the metal bar from nowhere that changes the world in "Juggernaut", and finishing with an unnerving tale of how the intelligence, speed of reaction and utter ruthlessness of man could prove a danger to alien civilisations throughout the galaxy even after a nucleonic storm has destroyed the whole human race and all other animal life on earth.