"The Veldt":  The parents' Happylife Home turns into a curse as the parents' indulgence of their children causes the children to transfer their loyalty to the almost magic nursery that entertains them rather than the parents who provide for them.

"Kaleidoscope":  A rocket's crew, dying in space after an accident destroys the rocket, considers their approaching death, and in so doing, reflects on what it means to have truly lived life, or failed to live it.

"The Other Foot":  Whites, after having destroyed their Earth in nuclear war, beseech the Blacks, who live on Mars, to let them immigrate, even if it means being their servants.  Common memories of a shared time cause the Blacks to magnanimously agree to live equally, even despite the old pain of Jim Crow.

"The Highway":  City dwellers in South America flee the nuclear war that just started, mourning the end of the world and terrified of the future.  But for the poor farmer in the middle of nowhere, life will continue just as it always has, whether or not the cities survive.

"The Man":  Hart, Captain of one of three exploration rockets, lands on on a planet a day after Jesus visited.  After finally being persuaded (only by their arrival) that it had not been one of the other two captains trying to steal his honors, Hart flies off to try to pursue Him.  "And when he has visited three hundred worlds and is seventy or eighty years old he will miss out by only a fraction of a second, and then a smaller fraction of a second.  And he will go on and on, thinking to find that very thing which he left behind here, on this planet, in this city--" presumably the peace of harmonious living that Jesus brought.

"The Long Rain":  The hard, incessant rain on Venus drives a party of soldiers who crash-landed insane, one by one, as they search for the Sun-huts (which have a warm, yellow sun-lamp in the middle, hot baths, tasty food, and good books).  After the first one was discovered to be destroyed by the inhabitants of Venus, only the lieutenant is able to persevere long enough to reach the second one.

"The Rocket Man":  A father who spends three months on rocket trips and three days at home returns, and despite his desire to stay with his family, and their attempts to keep him there, the lure of the stars calls him to his fatal final voyage into the sun.  Despite the mother having already considered the father effectively dead, the family avoids the day-star for a long time.

"The Fire Balloons":  An Episcopal priest and his embassy arrive on Mars and and, despite the desire of the rest of the delegation to go to the drinking sinners of the town, seek the conversion of the benevolent blue fire-spheres (which remind the priest of a certain type of holiday fireworks of his youth).  It turns out that the spheres were Martians who had figured out how to leave their bodies a long time ago and were now spirits who had no sin and so did not need conversion.

"The Last Night of the World":  Mankind apparently had come to the end of its time on earth, perhaps because of its tendency to ever-greater war, and the Powers That Be were ending it at midnight.  The last night is spent living a normal life, with a quiet goodbye at the end.

"The Exiles":  Authors of banned books about unscientific "mythology"--Poe, Lewis Carroll, Shakespeare, even Dickens (the spirits in A Christmas Carol did him in) are called to Mars as exiles as Earth begins burning their books.  They assault the first rocket, but are ultimately destroyed when the captain burns the last copies of their books upon landing.

"No Particular Night or Morning":  Hitchcock (probably not Alfred) goes more and more crazy as he demands that nothing can exist unless it is proven.  He takes a space ship to help him in this, but becomes further and further alone, as he can only prove another person's existence when they are with him.  He ends up with the logical conclusion--alone in space, suspended in nowhere, and with nothing that is provable, not even his own body.

"The Fox and the Forest":  Not even time travel to Mexico in 1938 enables a couple fleeing from service in the people-killing industry of the War in 2155 to escape the craftiness of the Police.  This was a particularly nice story, as it embodies both cleverness and inevitability, along with a unique look on time travel.

"The Visitor":  Exiles to Mars dying of an incurable disease each try to keep a newly arrived victim of the disease, who can ease their pain through his ability to mentally project images of home, for themselves, and in so doing, destroy that which the new man would have freely given to all of them.

"The Concrete Mixer":  Ettil, an draft-evading Martian, convinced that the invasion of Earth cannot succeed, is shamed into joining the invasion, and watches how Earth welcomes the invading army and subverts it with commercial pleasures.

"Marionettes, Inc.":  Braling is found to have purchased a duplicate of himself to replace himself in a stifling marriage so that he can finally take his dream vacation to Rio.  His friend Smith is inspired to buy a replacement to avoid incessant togetherness his wife wants.  Braling discovers that his duplicate has fallen in love with his wife and refuses to stay cooped up in his box, forcing Braling into it instead, while Smith discovers that his wife has already replaced herself.

"The City":  An ancient civilization ruined by our ancestors who fled to Earth built a city personified which patiently waits twenty millenia for our return to accomplish their revenge.

"Zero Hour":  A mother discovers too late that the game of Martian Invasion that the children had been consumed by was quite unlike her childhood games of war, in that it was the real thing.

"The Rocket":  A Gift of the Magi-like story where a poor junkyard owner whose family years for a ride on a space rocket spends his life savings on an unfunctional prototype rocket and enables his children to have the one rocket ride of their life.

These are quality stories, well-written and intruiging.  The writing probably deserves a 9, or at least 8.5, but his themes are just not timeless.  Or rather, they ought to be timeless, but the fear is so exaggerated that only in his time-period is society likely to be so far on the extreme.  Man seems to much more apt to regress to a blasé mean than he is to go to an unrecoverable extreme--the more severe the problem, the more the rest of the population is likely to try to fix it.  If we do ourselves in, it is the subtle, creeping problems that will most likely do it, not an obvious problem like blowing each other up.

Technically the writing is good.  The characterization is really good, and all the stories have some mystery of some sort, usually about the nature of the characters themselves that draws the reader in.  But emotionally the writing just misses.  Society has changed from under these stories, but the stories were too coupled to extremes, or potential, extremes in society to change with it.  Even where the theme is still relevant, it is still tied to the original cultural setting.  "The Veldt" is still chillingly relevant, for instance, but the Happylife Home parodies the specific advertising of labor-saving devices in the fifties, instead of embodying the ever-present desire to live a life of comfort.  Some of this is probably a occupational hazard of science fiction, but O' Henry (admittedly not a science fiction author) wrote specifically about early twentieth-century America and far from being obsolete, his stories are interesting, not only because of his insight into a portrayal of human nature, but also as an interesting window into a time most readers know little about.

Emotionally, too, we have a limit on the amount of tragic failure we can handle.  Yes, life has its pain and disappointments, and the occasional tragedy is a poignant illustration, but when 60% of the stories involve someone dying and only 18% are at all optimistic, well, people generally seem to like sunny climates better than ones where it rains all the time.¹

So between the complete failure to be timeless literature and the overly dismal outlook, I just can't rank this as high as the writing might deserve.

Illustrations	Tattoos that foretell the future, being animated stories.  (In a similar fashion as the wizarding portraits in Harry Potter have a life of their own)
Happylife Home	Automated house that is self-cleaning and has a kitchen table that makes fresh food on demand.
Happylife Nursery	Nursery responds to the thoughts of the children, becoming the setting that they are thinking about.  The line between virtual reality and actuality may be a little blurry...
Sun Dome	Warm, peaceful domes located in various convenient places around Venus to offer refuge from the incessant and insanity producing rain.  Have a sunlike lamp, warmth, baths, books, food, and everything you'd want after you came in out of the cold rain.
Venusian Rain	A heavy rain.  Causes things to decompose quickly, and too much exposure will cause your brain to ignore sensations in your limbs, ears, etc., causing numbness and deafness.  Ultimately causes craziness where you stand with your mouth open and drown.
Rockets	Standard form of long-distance travel.  "Take the afternoon rocket to Los Angeles"
Books	Somehow embody their creators and can the author and the author's creations become reality when persecuted.
Product of Marionettes, Inc	Artificial men (not really robots), but with a mind of their own, much as slaves want freedom.
The City	Mechanical creation designed to determine if a particular set of visitors is human, and if so, replace the contents of the bodies with machinery that dispenses a weapon of destruction upon return.