Each story is accompanied by commentary by the author, who gives details about his life and his literary achievements in the period in which he wrote the story, effectively amounting to a sort of autobiography for the years 1938 to 1949.

(The book was followed by Before the Golden Age in 1974 and Buy Jupiter and Other Stories in 1975, which also included autobiographical material.)

In an appendix to The Early Asimov, the author lists the first sixty stories he wrote in the late 1930s and 1940s.

In the commentary throughout the book, he notes that eleven of those stories were never sold and were eventually lost.

Lester del Rey recommended the collection, noting that, by design and necessity, it contained "stories the author knows are not his best."