Reviewer Villiers Gerson of The New York Times praised the anthology, saying "the overall excellence of the stories selected is a measure of Mr. Derleth's ability of an editor."[2]Groff Conklin noted that while Derleth's selection of older stories was sound, the more contemporary choices tended to be "tales of the weird, the supernatural or the fantastic" which did not "represent modern science fiction".[3]P. Schuyler Miller praised the anthology as a "fat but rather expensive collection truly representative of most of the growing pains of our young-old genre."[4]Boucher and McComas declared that "Derleth has succeeded admirably in his attempt to 'glance backward over the stream of science fiction,' bringing together the much discussed -- but too seldom read -- classics of the field" and "some of the best efforts of" contemporary writers".[5]Wilson Tucker, however, gave Beyond Time and Space a more lukewarm review, saying "Derleth has succeeded in compiling a record of science fiction through the ages -- if you like to keep such records".[6]Robert A. W. Lowndes challenged Derleth's claim to presenting a collection of stories associating contemporary science fiction with classical imaginative work, saying "if his anthology proves anything, [it] proves that there is no such connection to be made".[7]
