The title story is the tale of an old space mariner reflecting upon his planet of birth.

According to an acknowledgement at the beginning of the book, the phrase "the green hills of Earth" is derived from a story by C. L. Moore.

Boucher and McComas described the collection as "an outstanding book", noting that the "slick" stories published in non-genre magazines included "classics in a new form".

[1] P. Schuyler Miller noted that most of the contents were "simple stories of human reactions".

This article about a collection of science fiction short stories published in the 1950s is a stub.