So, I had this book when I was about 6. I lost it around when I turned 8, (parents found it, and lets just say they weren't fans of SF) and haven't seen it since. Lately I've been wishing I could let my own kids read it, so I'm hoping for either some ID's on any of the stories, or the entire anthology.
The hardcover book I had came with a dust jacket (which didn't survive long under my tender mercies). The book itself was predominantly orange. The title almost certainly had the words science fiction, and possibly even for kids or children, and collection in it. But, that isn't a strong memory, so I cannot attest to that one.
There were a number of stories in this anthology (yes yes, I know that's redundant) but I can only think of enough information about a few of them to describe the stories.
In no particular order.
A story about two robots stranded on a planet due to two enemy ships fighting and then crashing, one has two heavy duty limbs, the other has 4 more flexible lighter duty limbs, from enemy factions. The humans (and aliens) are dead, and once the robots realize they do not have sufficient firepower to hurt each other through their integral shields.
Soon they slowly begin playing a game that involves throwing rocks, and sort of make friends with each other.
Another story is about a mutiny on a star ship, where they force the captain to record all the possible voice commands to the ship computer, but they lack the "voice prints" to make new things, and once they have spaced him, they realize that him always addressing the computer very politely e.g. "Computer, please engage the port thrusters." vs "Computer, engage the port thrusters."
The mutineers then realize that without those commands they are also totally screwed.
Another story is three young boys playing a sort of mishmash game with various bats and racquets hitting a baseball around an alley. Then one kid gets sucked into a wormhole and dumped into some kind of interstellar gladiator pit, being forced to fight this giant scaly and scary looking guy who is wielding a big sword and spiked balls in chains. Kid realizes its a low G world, and that he's surprisingly strong compared to the other beings there.
When its the kid's turn, runs and dodges until the alien gladiator throws one of the spiked balls at him, and then uses the little sword they gave him to hit it back as hard as he can. Very David and Goliath. Alien falls, kid gets sent back to his point of origin with a broken scimitar looking alien sword as a souvenir.
The last one I can recall for sure (although IIRC its one of the first stories in the anthology).
Pilot gets in trouble, and compounds his trouble by jumping in his fighter and going awol. While he's out in the asteroid belt thinking things over, he realizes an entire armada of the enemy fleet is sneaking through the belt to launch a massive surprise attack on Earth.
He doesn't know what he can do about it, communications aren't an option (Sorry I don't recall why, but I was a kid). He ends up setting up his fighter to release every piece of firepower it has in one volley, targeted at one of the largest ships in the center of the very tight stealthy formation. Its implied that sending this much firepower all at once might destroy his own ship in the process. The blast destroys the big ship, and then the blast waves end up creating a chain reaction of other ships being destroyed, resulting in the entire invading fleet being destroyed.
That's all the stories I am sure were in that anthology. Any help identifying either the stories, or the entire anthology would be appreciated.
