Showing posts with label literary history. Show all posts
Showing posts with label literary history. Show all posts

Friday, April 21, 2017

FFB: 100 Best Books books (and lists and such)

The other day, FFB founder and usual gatherer Patti Abbott was asking her social-media correspondents what she should look into for key works of fantasy fiction, since she felt that she hadn't done enough reading in that area. She received a lot of mostly good suggestions, in the way such things go, and I was reminded of all the works that exist, as books of recommendations and online lists of varying degrees of institutional and demotic weight, that try to scratch the same itch...and the books, certainly, are there to make a few bucks while serving their argumentation and illumination purposes as well.

 I'm also surprised, given that I'm a sucker for such volumes, that I've only "formally" addressed two of the (primarily) crime fiction volumes of this sort in FFB entries, H.R. F. Keating's Crime & Mystery: The 100 Best Books and David Morrell and Hank Wagner 's anthology Thrillers: 100 Must Reads, while mentioning others from time to time, such as Anthony Burgess's Ninety-Nine Novels and particularly Stephen Jones and Kim Newman's Horror: 100 Best Books, which, like the Morrell & Wagner is one of those which taps a hundred or so other writers to chose a single volume they'd like to highlight as one of a hundred that deserve inclusion. Sentiment plays a role at times, as does a certain desire on the part of some contributors to challenge the assumptions of the reader (Robert Bloch, for example, cited a now rather obscure book by a now rather overlooked writer, Alexander Laing's 1935 novel The Cadaver of Gideon Wyck; Robert McCammon brings in Walter Van Tilburg Clark's brilliant and harrowing western The Track of the Cat). The Newman and Jones book was eventually followed by Horror: Another 100 Best
Books, which as a second bite is if anything more interesting than the first, as most of the low-hanging classics were already dealt with in the first volume...allowing for the argument, in all senses, to move onto not only those inexcusably missing from the first volume but also more works that are more usually thought of as Not Horror, but fantasy, suspense fiction, science fiction, absurdist fiction and the like to be proposed in the horror context. 

 Seemingly, Michael Moorcock and James Cawthorn's Fantasy: The 100 Best Books would be the title we all should collectively have handed to Patti, along with the more narrowly-focused David Pringle volume, Modern Fantasy: The 100 Best Novels. The Moorcock and Cawthorn is a better selection of titles, in part due to the wider range of dates and not restricting itself to novels (though it does overrepresent novels), and including fewer items (while still including some) that are more historically important or interesting (and usually both) than remotely good by any stretch of critical consideration: several relatively minor writers get two selections in the Moorcock/Cawthorn while others are missing altogether, while Pringle, while including such worthies as R. A. Lafferty and William Kotzwinkle (and more Angela Carter than the other guys did), also finds room for the execrable work of  Stephen Donaldson and Robert Heinlein's at best half-assed Glory Road. M&C inexcusably leave out Borges; neither book includes any Italo Calvino or Jane Yolen or...

 But since these are all matters of taste, tempered by genuine desire (usually, at very least) to soberly assess the quality of the given work, and none can be considered a True Writ From On High except by the dullest among us (and, yet, sadly, too often they are treated thus, by the most institutional among us), as is clear when one also considers the similarly intended Modern Library rankings, between their editorial panel's choices of the 100 best fiction books  (with mostly selections that are hard to argue with, except in the rankings, and a few that are ludicrous or nearly so) and the popularity poll the Modern Library gathered votes for at the same time (many ludicrous choices, and some merely obviously the result of fannish enthusiasm game-rigging the votes, and a few choices that are notable for being rather better than some on the panel's list).  Flannery O'Connor and Thomas Pynchon made the Vox Pop list, along with trash from Rand, Hubbard and Bach, but didn't make the Expert List, which instead assures us that Winesburg, Ohio (interesting, but more groundbreaking than immortal) and Tropic of Cancer were more worthy than anything by any number of other, better writers, including O'Connor and Pynchon. Larry McCaffery and Radcliffe students were among those who came up with widely-circulated lists in response...McCaffery's was (mostly) better than the Expert list, the Radcliffe list slightly better on women writers but worse overall. 

 And, always, this is an ongoing discussion...and all cited are valuable reminders that one needs to know of, at least, all the items in each collection to have a true grounding in each field. For more of today's books, please see Patti Abbott's blog. Next week, I'll be hosting, while Patti and Megan Abbott wonder if they'll be walking away with with odd little Edgar Allan Poe busts, from the Mystery Writers of America annual convention. 




Posted by at 7 comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , , , ,

Tuesday, September 6, 2016

"The Labor Day Group" by Thomas Disch (and a rejoinder by George R. R. Martin)...An oddly timely 1980/81 codicil to the Humanist/Cyberpunk consideration from last Friday and the recent WorldCon fracas

One of the less well-rendered F&SF covers so far
On this day after Labor Day, around which had been the traditional annual weekend for the literary/fannish science fiction (and more) WorldCons before the more media-oriented Dragon*Con running the same weekends started making things Difficult, here's a reprint of an essay that Thomas Disch wrote as a Books column entry in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1980, published in the February 1981 issue, "The Labor Day Group," wherein he cited a group of writers who had emerged in the 1970s as writing work that stroked fannish sensibilities, and as a result were often the recipients of the Hugo and Nebula awards (the Hugos being awarded from membership polls at  the WorldCons)...as well as to some degree or another among the more popular writers of the decade. 

 Amusingly, the Disch review, which also includes a rave assessment of Gregory Benford's novel Timescape, is in the form of dealing with the three best of the year sf annuals published in 1980, devoted to the presumed best short fiction of 1979: those edited by Terry Carr (Ballantine/Del Rey), Gardner Dozois  (E. P. Dutton) (the early series of rather slim volumes, which he'd taken over from Lester Del Rey; Ace Books, then Dell, had been doing paperback reprints), and Donald Wollheim and Arthur Saha (DAW Books)...amusingly to me, anyway (quite aside from my fascination with BOTY volumes and their sometimes eccentric selections), since the example of Bruce Sterling's writing in Cheap Truth I quote in the Friday piece was also a BOTY review, for the first of the current series of fat volumes of sf edited by Dozois...and it, too, is at least as much an attempt to catalog schools of sf writers).  (The Disch link above is to the University of Michigan Press's site, which reprints the essay from their volume of Disch, On SF, without crediting F&SF nor fixing the typo introduced somewhere along the trail that renders Benford's short story "Time Shards" as "Lime Shards"...tasty, the latter, I'm sure, and no more sour than some other things.) (Gregory Feeley notes on FaceBook that the text as posted also mispells Judith Merril's name, with an extra L.)

The Disch essay, on publication, stirred no little controversy, including this response by George R. R. Martin, one of the writers Disch considered part of the group. (Martin in his rebuttal does note a factual error of Disch's, citing Connie Willis's "Daisy, in the Sun" as her first published story, or at least--rather more true--the beginning of her career...her "Santa Titicaca" in the magazine Worlds of Fantasy in 1970 was for some years her only published story; "Daisy" was more like her sixth.)

 And a year ago, on the F&SF site, publisher and former editor Gordon Van Gelder (utterly coincidentally 50 years old today) published links to a reprint of the Disch essay (perhaps since taken down at the request of the U Michigan Press) and to the Martin response as transcribed on his website...which post drew a comment from none other than David Truesdale, the short fiction reviewer who was rather famously ejected from the WorldCon last month after turning a panel discussion of short fiction today into a forum for his dislike of "PC bullies" in SF publishing today...an event that isn't quite prefigured by Truesdale's comment to Gordon (who coincidentally was a late arrivee to speak on that panel), but it comes close to being so...(further utter coincidence, or evidence of how small the sf community can be: some objected to Truesdale at the panel trying to use the recently late David Hartwell as an example of sf editor who agreed with Truesdale's resentment of perceived PC trends in sf, and one of Hartwell's more important projects had been the Timescape line he founded at Pocket Books, named for the Benford novel Disch praises highly).

 Literary history doesn't exactly repeat itself, but patterns do recur. This will come as news to almost no one, I'm sure...
Posted by at 3 comments:
Labels: , , , , , ,

Friday, September 4, 2015

FFB: THE STARCHED BLUE SKY OF SPAIN by Josephine Herbst (HarperCollins 1991), or a bohemian Leninist writer's progress and further education...

In its first half, as a collection of four essays, one never before published and two among the more famous items in The Noble Savage (Saul Bellow and co.'s first magazine project) and a third appearing in New American Review several years later (the Savage having been tamed into folding early on), this book can be frustrating even as it's rather easy to read. Josephine Herbst was a woman with a passion to write and a passion for justice, and one who had a sensible, nagging dissatisfaction with the log-rolling and willful blindness that being a member of any sort of Movement can require...at least, if one is going to have an easy time of it.  The larger sense of the frustration is perhaps unfair--when she glosses quickly over her interactions with many of the most clangorous writers of the 1920s (young Katherine Anne Porter, Ezra Pound, Ford Madox Ford, et al.), or her work with H. L. Mencken at The Smart Set or on unnamed pulp magazines (for all we are allowed to know, possibly including Black Mask) to get to an extended reminiscence of an end of summer sailing trip along the Maine coast, she is writing about what she wants to write about, and what was most important to her about the incompletely liberating young adulthood that had followed a good but not altogether pleasant childhood, one which had prepared her at least with desire to go forth and Do Great Things beyond the standard domestic life of Mid-American women of her time. (We learn that she was in university for three years before completely leaving her family's home, and that she spent time in France and Germany apparently in the '20s, but little more than that.) Rather less unfair is noting overindulgence in what Twain or Borges would call "Fine Writing," particularly in the first, unpublished essay, where a man's suspenders remind her of ladders and various colored stains are cited to no great end on a collection of her mother's correspondence...which much build-up is given about how Herbst dreaded and craved unsuspected revelations when she read the letters after her mother's death, but that thread of the narrative is almost immediately dropped, with not even a "ah, well, that turned out not to be the case" or something similar, as she moves onto other relatively quotidian matters. There is perhaps a reason no one chose to publish the first essay before the book's appearance, even though it does give an excellent sense of the time, just after the turn of the 20th Century, and the detailed account of a family vacation to visit the Pacific Ocean, for the Nebraska girl and her extended family, reminded me of similar passages in the autobiography of science fiction writer Jack Williamson, who had famously moved house as a child with his family via Conestoga wagon at about the same time. The practical feminism and unwillingness to accept the unacceptable her mother imbues her and her younger sister with is not the least of the gifts she's given in those years. She does very much get across the sense of how thrilling it was to see so many of her friends and peers energized by the new trends in literary and other arts, even when, for example, it was clear that some of the contributors to transition, the most famous of avant garde little magazines of the time, were simply aping the Joyce prose their work was published alongside. (And how it seemed both amusing and simply sensible that she and her peers might turn from writing something challenging for This Quarter or transition and then turn, without moderating their voices too terribly much, to work for such far more establishmentarian magazines as The Dial or American Mercury.)

  The latter two essays deal more with her adult experiences as a political radical and someone trying to do well with her art, while not choosing to write intentional propaganda, nor willing to parrot that which she is being instructed to say or write by those who Know Better, get to the heart of their matters more consistently and tellingly. You knew that Ernest Hemingway was a pampered  jackass (full stop) during his sojourn in the Spanish Civil War, literally feasting and partying while the Spaniards around him and not a few of the various temporary emigres were starving and rather more abruptly dying while actually conducting the war against Franco's Carlist, Fascist and related insurgents, and if you didn't, you need to read the title essay.  Herbst and her ex-husband had taken the kind of eye-opening trip Emma Goldman had not enjoyed decades previously to the USSR under the Leninists, and now the Stalinists by the time of Hebst's visit, and how (as Bakunin had put it back in his arguments with Marx) beating the people with the people's stick was not only visited on the Russian and other Soviet peoples but to those who sought to further the supposed champions of the proletariat. While they were in the orbit of the likes of Whittaker Chambers in the 1930s, and how that affected her attempt to do her part in US government work during World War II. 

 Herbst was an interesting figure and doesn't spare herself much as she recalls the keys events (and not so key ones, except to her personally) that were not only important to the cultural but the political tumult of her century, and her capacity to refuse to blindly commit to any cause is admirable...this imperfect book is yet another unfairly obscure at the present, in part because it will tweak both discredited and entirely too robust (Papa Hemingway cultism) causes she had a better opportunity to observe than nearly anyone else. 

 For more of today's books, please see Patti Abbott's blog. 
Posted by at 4 comments:
Labels: , , ,

Friday, July 10, 2015

FFB/M: GALAXY: THIRTY YEARS OF INNOVATIVE SCIENCE FICTION edited by Frederik Pohl, M. H. Greenberg and Joseph Olander (Wideview/Playboy Press 1980)...and the other US sf and fantasy magazines, along with the first issue of GALAXY, October 1950

The default assumption about sf in the 1950s is that it really kicked into gear with the introduction of Galaxy magazine with the October, 1950, issue. The further insistence is that Galaxy formed a triumvirate of elite magazines with the rather new The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (founded 1949) and Astounding Science Fiction, the magazine edited by John W. Campbell, Jr., the editor who'd done the most to encourage good sf in the 1940s...the most, but not by himself, and not to the exclusive degree he's usually credited with.  And there wasn't a trio of completely superior magazines for the decade, even if those three were the most consistently good in the first half of the decade (by decade's end, Astounding was sliding into what Campbell acolyte Algis Budrys called its Tin Age, and Galaxy had passed from being the dominant sf magazine in sales and influence into a pale shadow of itself, as founding editor H. L. Gold had basically had to turn over the magazine to his most assiduous contributor, Frederik Pohl, who spent years rebuilding; even F&SF was feeling a bit less distinctive than it had, after founding co-editor Anthony Boucher stepped down; Robert P. Mills, who had edited the impressive sibling magazine Venture Science Fiction, took over F&SF in time to publish "Flowers for Algernon" by Daniel Keyes, but his was not quite as pathbreaking an F&SF as his successors, particularly Avram Davidson and then Edward Ferman, would offer in the 1960s).

Back in 1937, Street & Smith editors F. Orlin Tremaine and Desmond Hall were being kicked upstairs...founding editors of Mademoiselle and inheritors of Harry Bates's Astounding Stories when it was bought by their employers from a failing pulp chain, Clayton. As they were put in charge of the magazine group, they made good choices in hiring successors: Betsey Blackwell and John Campbell. Both helped revolutionize their respective magazine genres (and both remained editors, through the Street & Smith sale to Conde Nast, and on till 1971).  For its part, Astounding was already the best-selling sf magazine shortly after founding in 1930, where Harry Bates slanted his magazine toward rococo adventure (Amazing would outsell it for a while by the late 1940s, as would Startling, Galaxy and, for at least one issue, Fantastic not long after; the corporate clout of S&S and, later, Conde Nast would help ASF in later years); Tremaine and Hall had upgraded the magazine, featuring a lot of adventure fiction as well but also offering a fair amount of pop-science articles and accompanying "thought-variant" stories, some of the most important of these written by young engineering student John Campbell, who was also writing adventure fiction and science articles under his own name, and the more quiet and speculative stories as "Don A. Stuart."  He turned out to be an inspired choice to serve as the Astounding (ASF) editor, further improving the general tenor of how sf was written in the magazines, striving even more than the Tremaine/Hall issues to feature what Campbell suggested might read like contemporary fiction of the future.  Campbell introduced some of the most important writers in the field (and helped others, such as Clifford Simak and Jack Williamson, and H. L. Gold, find new modes) and was only beginning, in 1950, to demonstrate some boredom with editing the magazine, and a desire to explore "fringe science" in ASF's fiction as well as articles that would become more pronounced over the course of the 1950s. By the late 1940s, some of the best and most innovative sf was appearing in other magazines on a more frequent basis...though the reputation and standing Campbell had achieved in the 1940s made it difficult for fans and some readers to wrap their heads around the concept that All That Was Best about sf wasn't necessarily invented at Campbell's desk. This tendency has persisted. Part of the reason Galaxy would loom so large in fandom in the early 1950s was that at first it was allowing many of the best of the ASF writers to explore themes and approaches that were no longer, or never had been, welcome at Astounding; in the annotations in the Pohl anthology, Budrys notes that his joy at working as editorial assistant at Galaxy was, at first, that it was almost--almost--like helping produce another issue of ASF every month...but when it became clear that editor Gold had different ideas of what he wanted to do with Galaxy than to simply run a more diverse ASF, young Budrys was puzzled, even hurt...and eventually dismissed from his job there. "And high time," Budrys states.

 A large part of what Gold wanted to do with Galaxy was to make the magazine's fiction accessible to readers who hadn't been sf readers all their lives...he wanted to draw in Stephen Vincent Benet and Aldous Huxley and George Orwell and Philip Wylie readers, and even readers who wouldn't specifically seek out their sort of non-coterie sf, but did like the Jack Finney as well as John O'Hara or Conrad Aiken kind of writing that could be found in magazines such as Collier's and The Saturday Evening Post. Campbell had made some similar noises, but his kind of sf still catered to the "insider," who either had read or was ready to read as much previous "in-group" sf as possible, and whose ideas of story construction tended to resemble those of Rudyard Kipling or H. G. Wells more than Flannery O'Connor's.  Galaxy wasn't quite as kind to self-conscious literary exploration as was F&SF (which in its turn was very much like a fantasticated version of its stablemate, Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, in focusing on good prose and reprints from outside the "genre" tradition mixed with new material with similar earmarks), but was certainly interested in new and different ways to offer exciting and often satirical fiction...not least with the technically sophisticated fiction Alfred Bester was publishing with them in the early 1950s. Ray Bradbury, who had never been too natural a fit at ASF, was very much so at both F&SF and, to only a slightly lesser extent, Galaxy. And Galaxy was a natural home for the ex-Futurians, whom, as I'd mentioned last week, often tried (even as young and green writers and editors) to take the innovations of John Campbell's magazine one step further in the direction of mordancy and general literary sophistication, in their own 1940s magazines...and were a natural source of fiction by 1950 even for ASF, but really started to flower in Galaxy.

 Galaxy's first decade in PDF format.

 Hence, much of what is most striking about the 1980 retrospective anthology, Galaxy, which saw print even as Galaxy the magazine was about to fold, after years of decreasingly adept financial management:  
    Galaxy ed. Frederik Pohl, Martin H. Greenberg & Joseph D. Olander (Playboy 0-87223-568-8, 1980, $10.95, 465pp, hc, cover by Tommy Soloski) [a terrible cover, but one which does illustrate Damon Knight's "To Serve Man"...the source of the Twilight Zone episode]
    subtitle: Thirty Years of Innovative Science Fiction .
(index courtesy the Homeville/Locus indices)

As one reads over the contents list of this anthology, those who know what Galaxy published might be surprised at how many of the most famous stories are missing; that was intentional on the part of the editors, who were hoping to highlight some of the best of the less-famous fiction the magazine offered. And there is some attempt to reflect the work of each editor of the magazine (Pohl was de facto editor from about 1958, when Gold was dealing with various health and welfare setbacks, through 1969, with help in his last years from Judy-Lynn Benjamin, later J-L Del Rey), but the last three editors by 1980, John J. Pierce, Hank Stine and Floyd Kemske, don't have any selections in the book...Galaxy was in steep decline by Pierce's editorship, though, for example, he was able to publish Pat Murphy's second story and a "lost" Cordwainer Smith novelet, as completed by his widow. Gold, Pohl, Ejler Jakobssen and the latter's second (after Benjamin/Del Rey left) assistant and successor, James Baen (later of Ace, Tor and Baen Books) are the editors whose terms are represented above.  The "Galaxy Book Shelf" essay is an abbreviated form of one of Budrys's most famous for the magazine, detailing some of his adventures in the days after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., and what that event, and its aftermath, meant for the world...and to what degree sf helped shape the perceptions of that event and similar ones.  Budrys notes US Rep. Gerald Ford was in a photo Budrys arranged for a trade industry group at one point in the events detailed, and certainly Ford eventually was embroiled in some of the sort of crisis Budrys was treating with here. The stories collected tend to range from the engagingly readable to the brilliant; some of the memoirs are a bit thin or even a little enigmatic without some prior knowledge, but others help provide just that background, not least the accounts of just how demanding an editor Gold was. 
edited by Jerome Bixby;
"Bradbury * Poul Anderson* St. Clair" and a
lead novella by Alfed Coppel, later notable for
mildly sfnal suspense novels such as 34 East.

 But, as I hope to suggest in the balance of the essay as planned, Galaxy, and even Galaxy and F&SF and ASF together,  had nothing like a lock on the best of sf and fantasy published even in the magazines on the newsstands with them, nor even the most sophisticated...as, for example, Mary Gnaedinger featured a story by André Maurois in the October 1950 issue of Famous Fantastic Mysteries (even as F&SF ran a different story in their Summer issue), Graham Greene's "The End of the Party" was in the first issue of Damon Knight's Worlds Beyond, and the semi-professional salvage-market magazine Fantasy Book published its best issue early in 1950, featuring the first story by Paul "Cordwainer Smith" Linebarger, "Scanners Live in Vain"...this alongside magazines all over the field featuring notable early stories by Jack Vance, Poul Anderson, Margaret St. Clair, John D. MacDonald, Kris Neville and others. 

 This was an impressive time for the sf and fantasy magazines, the end of the 1940s and the beginning of the new decade; even with the warning signs such as an early "Dianetics" article by L. Ron Hubbard in Campbell's Astounding, and science columnist Willy Ley forced by the publisher for his first Galaxy column to deal with "flying saucers," things would get even better before they got worse....

for more prompt and less foolhardily ambitious (than this one was meant to be, but isn't, yet) FFB entries today, please see Patti Abbott's blog

 The previous FFB entry about the similar Worlds of If anthology, from a similar team, and a TriQuarterly retrospective, as well...
Posted by at 14 comments:
Labels: , , , , ,

Monday, April 6, 2015

supplement to the context-setting for WHO KILLED SCIENCE FICTION?--short sf in the 1950s.

Among the anthologies that have mined the increasing post-WW2 sophistication in sf and fantasy magazines (and related media the magazine writers would publish with), one of the most impressive series has been the Great SF Stories: [year] retro-annuals Isaac Asimov and M. H. Greenberg edited (with input from Barry Malzberg and others) beginning in the latest 1970s...which give a good sense of how much good work was being spread to a wide variety of magazines and original anthologies over the decade--contemporary Year's Best annuals from the 1950s follow, and another latest-1970s retro-anthology, with some overlap between the various volumes, but this rather lengthy data-gather does give some sense of the ferment of the decade:

 Indices courtesy the Locus Indices; "CNB" is Locus cofounder/editor Charles N. Brown):

 Isaac Asimov Presents the Great SF Stories: 11 (1949) ed. Isaac Asimov & Martin H. Greenberg (DAW 0-87997-918-6, Mar ’84 [Feb ’84], $3.50, 317pp, pb) Anthology of 15 stories from 1949 with notes Asimov. This series offers an excellent historical survey of the sf field. Recommended. (CNB)


Isaac Asimov Presents the Great SF Stories: 12 (1950) ed. Isaac Asimov & Martin H. Greenberg (DAW 0-87997-953-4, Sep ’84 [Aug ’84], $3.50, 319pp, pb) Anthology of 18 classic stories.
  • 9 · 1950 Introduction · Martin H. Greenberg · in
  • 13 · Not with a Bang · Damon Knight · ss F&SF Win/Spr ’50
  • 19 · Spectator Sport · John D. MacDonald · ss Thrilling Wonder Stories Feb ’50
  • 26 · There Will Come Soft Rains · Ray Bradbury · ss Colliers May 6 ’50
  • 34 · Dear Devil · Eric Frank Russell · nv Other Worlds Science Stories May ’50
  • 70 · Scanners Live in Vain · Cordwainer Smith · nv Fantasy Book #6 ’50
  • 105 · Born of Man and Woman · Richard Matheson · vi F&SF Sum ’50
  • 109 · The Little Black Bag · C. M. Kornbluth · nv Astounding Jul ’50
  • 138 · Enchanted Village · A. E. van Vogt · ss Other Worlds Science Stories Jul ’50
  • 154 · Oddy and Id [“The Devil’s Invention”] · Alfred Bester · ss Astounding Aug ’50
  • 170 · The Sack · William Morrison · ss Astounding Sep ’50
  • 190 · The Silly Season · C. M. Kornbluth · ss F&SF Fll ’50
  • 205 · Misbegotten Missionary · Isaac Asimov · ss Galaxy Nov ’50
  • 221 · To Serve Man · Damon Knight · ss Galaxy Nov ’50
  • 230 · Coming Attraction · Fritz Leiber · ss Galaxy Nov ’50
  • 244 · A Subway Named Mobius · A. J. Deutsch · ss Astounding Dec ’50
  • 260 · Process · A. E. van Vogt · ss F&SF Dec ’50
  • 267 · The Mindworm · C. M. Kornbluth · ss Worlds Beyond Dec ’50
  • 281 · The New Reality · Charles L. Harness · nv Thrilling Wonder Stories Dec ’50
Isaac Asimov Presents the Great SF Stories: 13 (1951) ed. Isaac Asimov & Martin H. Greenberg (DAW 0-88677-058-0, Jul ’85 [Jun ’85], $3.50, 337pp, pb) Anthology of the best of 1951 plus an introduction about the year in the world and in sf. An excellent anthology. The whole series is highly recommended. (CNB)
  • ix · Introduction · Martin H. Greenberg · in
  • 1 · Null-P · William Tenn · ss Worlds Beyond Jan ’51
  • 15 · The Sentinel [“Sentinel of Eternity”] · Arthur C. Clarke · ss Ten Story Fantasy Spr ’51
  • 27 · The Fire Balloons [“‘In This Sign...’”] · Ray Bradbury · ss Imagination Apr ’51
  • 48 · The Marching Morons · C. M. Kornbluth · nv Galaxy Apr ’51
  • 83 · The Weapon · Fredric Brown · ss Astounding Apr ’51
  • 88 · Angel’s Egg · Edgar Pangborn · nv Galaxy Jun ’51
  • 130 · Breeds There a Man...? · Isaac Asimov · nv Astounding Jun ’51
  • 171 · Pictures Don’t Lie · Katherine MacLean · ss Galaxy Aug ’51
  • 193 · Superiority · Arthur C. Clarke · ss F&SF Aug ’51
  • 206 · I’m Scared · Jack Finney · ss Colliers Sep 15 ’51
  • 222 · The Quest for Saint Aquin · Anthony Boucher · ss New Tales of Space and Time, ed. Raymond J. Healy, Holt, 1951; F&SF Jan ’59
  • 244 · Tiger by the Tail · Alan E. Nourse · ss Galaxy Nov ’51
  • 253 · With These Hands · C. M. Kornbluth · nv Galaxy Dec ’51
  • 274 · A Pail of Air · Fritz Leiber · ss Galaxy Dec ’51
  • 291 · Dune Roller · Julian May · nv Astounding Dec ’51
Isaac Asimov Presents the Great SF Stories: 14 (1952) ed. Isaac Asimov & Martin H. Greenberg (DAW 0-88677-106-4, Jan ’86 [Dec ’85], $3.50, 352pp, pb) Anthology of stories from 1952. Recommended. (CNB)

Isaac Asimov Presents the Great SF Stories: 15 (1953) ed. Isaac Asimov & Martin H. Greenberg (DAW 0-88677-171-4, Dec ’86 [Nov ’86], $3.50, 352pp, pb) Anthology of 17 stories first published in 1953 plus a summary of the year in and out of sf plus remarks on the various writers. Recommended (CNB).
  • 9 · Introduction · Martin H. Greenberg · in
  • 13 · The Big Holiday · Fritz Leiber · ss F&SF Jan ’53
  • 24 · Crucifixus Etiam · Walter M. Miller, Jr. · ss Astounding Feb ’53
  • 48 · Four in One · Damon Knight · nv Galaxy Feb ’53
  • 86 · Saucer of Loneliness · Theodore Sturgeon · ss Galaxy Feb ’53
  • 102 · The Liberation of Earth · William Tenn · ss Future May ’53
  • 123 · Lot [David Jimmon] · Ward Moore · nv F&SF May ’53
  • 155 · The Nine Billion Names of God · Arthur C. Clarke · ss Star Science Fiction Stories #1, ed. Frederik Pohl, Ballantine, 1953
  • 164 · Warm · Robert Sheckley · ss Galaxy Jun ’53
  • 176 · Impostor · Philip K. Dick · ss Astounding Jun ’53
  • 194 · The World Well Lost · Theodore Sturgeon · ss Universe Jun ’53
  • 216 · A Bad Day for Sales · Fritz Leiber · ss Galaxy Jul ’53
  • 224 · Common Time · James Blish · ss Science Fiction Quarterly Aug ’53
  • 250 · Time Is the Traitor · Alfred Bester · nv F&SF Sep ’53
  • 277 · The Wall Around the World · Theodore R. Cogswell · nv Beyond Fantasy Fiction Sep ’53
  • 308 · The Model of a Judge · William Morrison · ss Galaxy Oct ’53
  • 322 · Hall of Mirrors · Fredric Brown · ss Galaxy Dec ’53
  • 331 · It’s a Good Life · Jerome Bixby · ss Star Science Fiction Stories #2, ed. Frederik Pohl, Ballantine, 1953

Isaac Asimov Presents the Great SF Stories: 16 (1954) ed. Isaac Asimov & Martin H. Greenberg (DAW 0-88677-200-1, May ’87, $3.50, 350pp, pb) Anthology of 17 stories from 1954.
  • 9 · 1954 Introduction · Martin H. Greenberg · in
  • 13 · The Test · Richard Matheson · ss F&SF Nov ’54
  • 34 · Anachron · Damon Knight · ss If Jan ’54
  • 54 · Black Charlie · Gordon R. Dickson · ss Galaxy Apr ’54
  • 72 · Down Among the Dead Men · William Tenn · nv Galaxy Jun ’54
  • 100 · The Hunting Lodge · Randall Garrett · nv Astounding Jul ’54
  • 138 · The Lysenko Maze · Donald A. Wollheim · ss F&SF Jul ’54
  • 151 · Fondly Fahrenheit · Alfred Bester · nv F&SF Aug ’54
  • 174 · The Cold Equations · Tom Godwin · nv Astounding Aug ’54
  • 203 · Letters from Laura · Mildred Clingerman · ss F&SF Oct ’54
  • 211 · Transformer · Chad Oliver · ss F&SF Nov ’54
  • 227 · The Music Master of Babylon · Edgar Pangborn · nv Galaxy Nov ’54
  • 258 · The End of Summer · Algis Budrys · nv Astounding Nov ’54
  • 289 · The Father-Thing · Philip K. Dick · ss F&SF Dec ’54
  • 304 · The Deep Range · Arthur C. Clarke · ss Star Science Fiction Stories #3, ed. Frederik Pohl, Ballantine, 1954
  • 315 · Balaam · Anthony Boucher · ss 9 Tales of Space and Time, ed. Raymond J. Healey, Holt, 1954
  • 332 · Man of Parts · Horace L. Gold · ss 9 Tales of Space and Time, ed. Raymond J. Healey, Holt, 1954
  • 349 · Answer · Fredric Brown · vi Angels and Spaceships, Dutton, 1954
Isaac Asimov Presents the Great SF Stories: 17 (1955) ed. Isaac Asimov & Martin H. Greenberg (DAW 0-88677-256-7, Jan ’88 [Dec ’87], $3.95, 349pp, pb) Anthology of 14 sf stories.
  • 333 · Dreaming Is a Private Thing · Isaac Asimov · ss F&SF Dec ’55
Isaac Asimov Presents the Great SF Stories: 18 (1956) ed. Isaac Asimov & Martin H. Greenberg (DAW 0-88677-289-3, Aug ’88 [Jul ’88], $4.50, 366pp, pb) Anthology of 15 sf stories from 1956.
  • 9 · Introduction · Martin H. Greenberg · in
  • 13 · Brightside Crossing · Alan E. Nourse · nv Galaxy Jan ’56
  • 35 · Clerical Error · Mark Clifton · nv Astounding Feb ’56
  • 75 · Silent Brother · Algis Budrys · ss Astounding Feb ’56
  • 96 · The Country of the Kind · Damon Knight · ss F&SF Feb ’56
  • 111 · Exploration Team [Colonial Survey] · Murray Leinster · nv Astounding Mar ’56
  • 161 · Rite of Passage · Henry Kuttner & C. L. Moore · nv F&SF May ’56
  • 203 · The Man Who Came Early · Poul Anderson · nv F&SF Jun ’56
  • 230 · A Work of Art [“Art-Work”] · James Blish · nv Science Fiction Stories Jul ’56
  • 248 · Horrer Howce · Margaret St. Clair · ss Galaxy Jul ’56
  • 261 · Compounded Interest · Mack Reynolds · ss F&SF Aug ’56
  • 276 · The Doorstop · Reginald Bretnor · ss Astounding Nov ’56
  • 286 · The Last Question · Isaac Asimov · ss Science Fiction Quarterly Nov ’56
  • 300 · Stranger Station · Damon Knight · nv F&SF Dec ’56
  • 327 · 2066: Election Day · Michael Shaara · ss Astounding Dec ’56
  • 344 · And Now the News... · Theodore Sturgeon · ss F&SF Dec ’56
Isaac Asimov Presents the Great SF Stories: 19 (1957) ed. Isaac Asimov & Martin H. Greenberg (DAW 0-88677-326-1, Feb ’89, $4.50, 350pp, pb) Anthology of 15 stories from 1957 plus commentary. This long-running anthology series is an excellent way to look at the sf field year by year. Recommended. (CNB)
  • 9 · Introduction · Martin H. Greenberg · in
  • 15 · Strikebreaker [“Male Strikebreaker”] · Isaac Asimov · ss Science Fiction Stories Jan ’57
  • 33 · Omnilingual · H. Beam Piper · nv Astounding Feb ’57
  • 89 · The Mile-Long Spaceship · Kate Wilhelm · ss Astounding Apr ’57
  • 103 · Call Me Joe · Poul Anderson · nv Astounding Apr ’57
  • 149 · You Know Willie · Theodore R. Cogswell · ss F&SF May ’57
  • 157 · Hunting Machine · Carol Emshwiller · ss Science Fiction Stories May ’57
  • 167 · World of a Thousand Colors · Robert Silverberg · ss Super Science Fiction Jun ’57
  • 187 · Let’s Be Frank · Brian W. Aldiss · ss Science-Fantasy #23 ’57
  • 199 · The Cage · A. Bertram Chandler · ss F&SF Jun ’57
  • 215 · The Education of Tigress McCardle · C. M. Kornbluth · ss Venture Jul ’57
  • 229 · The Tunesmith · Lloyd Biggle, Jr. · nv If Aug ’57
  • 281 · A Loint of Paw · Isaac Asimov · vi F&SF Aug ’57
  • 285 · Game Preserve · Rog Phillips · ss If Oct ’57
  • 305 · Soldier [“Soldier from Tomorrow”] · Harlan Ellison · nv Fantastic Universe Oct ’57
  • 335 · The Last Man Left in the Bar · C. M. Kornbluth · ss Infinity Science Fiction Oct ’57
Isaac Asimov Presents the Great SF Stories: 20 (1958) ed. Isaac Asimov & Martin H. Greenberg (DAW 0-88677-405-5, Feb ’90 [Jan ’90], $4.95, 351pp, pb, cover by Robin Hidden) Anthology of 12 stories from 1958 plus commentary. This series is one of the best surveys of the modern sf short story. Recommended (CNB).
  • 9 · Introduction · Martin H. Greenberg · in
  • 13 · The Last of the Deliverers · Poul Anderson · ss F&SF Feb ’58
  • 29 · The Feeling of Power · Isaac Asimov · ss If Feb ’58
  • 41 · Poor Little Warrior! · Brian W. Aldiss · ss F&SF Apr ’58
  • 49 · The Iron Chancellor · Robert Silverberg · nv Galaxy May ’58
  • 77 · The Prize of Peril · Robert Sheckley · ss F&SF May ’58
  • 99 · Or All the Seas with Oysters · Avram Davidson · ss Galaxy May ’58
  • 111 · Two Dooms · C. M. Kornbluth · na Venture Jul ’58
  • 167 · The Big Front Yard · Clifford D. Simak · na Astounding Oct ’58
  • 229 · The Burning of the Brain · Cordwainer Smith · ss If Oct ’58
  • 243 · The Yellow Pill · Rog Phillips · ss Astounding Oct ’58
  • 259 · Unhuman Sacrifice · Katherine MacLean · nv Astounding Nov ’58
  • 297 · The Immortals [Dr. Russell Pearce] · James E. Gunn · nv Star Science Fiction Stories #4, ed. Frederik Pohl, Ballantine, 1958
Isaac Asimov Presents the Great SF Stories: 21 (1959) ed. Isaac Asimov & Martin H. Greenberg (DAW 0-88677-428-4, Jun ’90 [May ’90], $4.95, 347pp, pb, cover by Robin Hidden) Anthology of 14 stories from 1959.
...and one sees how relatively restricted the markets for good fiction were by the end of the decade...and even Asimov could find no first-rate short fiction from 1959 in Astounding, which was about to become Analog...Sturgeon's "The Man Who Lost the Sea" was in Foley's Best American Short Stories for its year.

Isaac Asimov Presents the Great SF Stories #22 (1960) ed. Isaac Asimov & Martin H. Greenberg (DAW 0-88677-465-9, Feb ’91 [Jan ’91], $4.50, 351pp, pb, cover by Angus McKie) Anthology of 11 stories from 1960 plus commentary.

--Meanwhile Everett Bleiler and Ted Ditky, eventually with ever greater input from Earl Kemp, produced the first best-of annual in sf:
    The Best Science-Fiction Stories: 1952 ed. Everett F. Bleiler & T. E. Dikty (Fredrick Fell, Aug ’52, $2.95, 284pp, hc)
    In England as The Best Science Fiction Stories: Third Series.
    Best Science Fiction Stories and Novels: 9th Series ed. T. E. Dikty (Advent:Publishers, 1958, hc)
And here's Judith Merril's annual, which from the start promised to offer both sf and fantasy:
    SF:’57: The Year’s Greatest Science Fiction and Fantasy ed. Judith Merril (Gnome Press LCC# 56-8938, 1957, $3.95, 320pp, hc)
    • 9 · The Man Who Liked Lions · John Bernard Daley · ss Infinity Science Fiction Oct 1956
    • 25 · The Cosmic Expense Account · C. M. Kornbluth · nv F&SF Jan 1956, as “The Cosmic Charge Account”
    • 51 · The Far Look · Theodore L. Thomas · nv Astounding Aug 1956
    • 81 · When Grandfather Flew to the Moon · E. L. Malpass · ss The Observer Jan 2 1955, as “Return of the Moon Man” by Samson Darley
    • 88 · The Doorstop · Reginald Bretnor · ss Astounding Nov 1956
    • 98 · Silent Brother · Algis Budrys · ss Astounding Feb 1956
    • 119 · Stranger Station · Damon Knight · nv F&SF Dec 1956
    • 146 · Each an Explorer · Isaac Asimov · ss Future #30 1956
    • 161 · All About “The Thing” · Randall Garrett · pm Science Fiction Stories May 1956, as “Parodies Tossed”
    • 164 · Put Them All Together, They Spell Monster · Ray Russell · ss Playboy Oct 1956
    • 173 · Digging the Weans · Robert Nathan · ss Harper’s Nov 1956
    • 181 · Take a Deep Breath · Roger Thorne · ss Tiger 1956
    • 187 · Grandma’s Lie Soap · Robert Abernathy · ss Fantastic Universe Feb 1956
    • 206 · Compounded Interest · Mack Reynolds · ss F&SF Aug 1956
    • 220 · Prima Belladonna [Vermilion Sands] · J. G. Ballard · ss Science-Fantasy #20 1956
    • 235 · The Other Man · Theodore Sturgeon · na Galaxy Sep 1956
    • 290 · The Damnedest Thing · Garson Kanin · ss Esquire Feb 1956
    • 298 · Anything Box · Zenna Henderson · ss F&SF Oct 1956
    • 313 · The Year’s S-F, Summation and Honorable Mentions · Judith Merril · ms
--and here's Barry Malzberg and Bill Pronzini's 1979 take on some of the then-overlooked work from the 1950s:
Posted by at 4 comments:
Labels: , , ,
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)