 Indeed, this story and its sequels (collected in "Men, Martians and Machines") may be considered an early example of the science fiction subgenre in which a spaceship is crewed by a multi-ethnic, mixed human/non-human, complement (cf.the much later "Star Trek").Russell also appears to have originated the colloquial initialism "MYOB" for "mind your own business", which appears frequently in the novella ""... And Then There Were None"" ("Astounding", June 1951) and in the novel "The Great Explosion" based upon it.