Showing posts with label textbooks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label textbooks. Show all posts

Friday, January 12, 2018

FFB/M: FANTASY: THE LITERATURE OF THE MARVELOUS, edited by Leo P. Kelley (McGraw-Hill 1973); ALFRED HITCHCOCK'S MYSTERY MAGAZINE, August 1964, edited by Richard Decker, with Victoria S. and Ned Benham, G. F. Foster and Patricia Hitchcock (HSD Publications)

As with the Leo P. Kelley high-school-targeted textbook in the same Patterns in Literary Art series I dealt with last week, the Fantasy companion is an interesting mix of chestnuts and some classics, with a fair amount of relatively obscure material (in 1973 and today) including a story by Kelley himself...but even more than the Supernatural volume, or the earlier Themes in Science Fiction anthology published the previous year, this one strikes me as assembled off the top of his head, featuring as it does two stories by Gahan Wilson (wrapped around the John Collier entry, no less), no fewer than four reprinted from Harlan Ellison's notable (and in 1973 very much in-print) anthology Dangerous Visions (1967), and two stories by August Derleth (for all that one is among the "posthumous collaborations" Derleth would spin out from fragments of manuscripts left among H. P. Lovecraft's papers at the time of the latter's death--as always, Derleth writing for and as himself is superior). And exactly two folktales are included...both out of collections of Irish folklore from the third decade of the 1800s...definitely giving the impression of Kelley pulling things off his shelf and putting this together rather hastily, or at least with less considered judgment than he demonstrates with the other two volumes. Also notable is the amount of arguable science fiction in this fantasy volume, particularly given his juxtaposition of potentially opposing camps of sf and fantasy in his preface. Kelley does manage to include stories by two of the more brilliant and multifarious women writers of our time in this one, however, if only two: Carol Emshwiller and Josephine Saxton.

 Meanwhile, the Hitchcock's issue, coincidentally one dated with the month I was born, is otherwise a fairly typical issue of this magazine in the shank of its time as the independent "second" magazine in the English-language crime-fiction market (Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine being the best-selling and most traditionally respected in those years, and most years before and since; the second publisher of EQMM, Davis Publications, founded around the purchase of Queen's in 1958, would buy AHMM in 1976), and as such it suggests a few thoughts about the magazines in the field and AHMM's place among them.

 Contents: courtesy the Contento/Locus Index to Anthologies, with links to ISFDB as well:

    (McGraw-Hill 0-07-033502-8, 1973, $3.96, 305pp, tp) 

One can suspect the degree to which Kelley saw some of these stories in the same venues I would, aside from Dangerous Visions:  a number were collected in Judith Merril's Year's Best Science-Fantasy/Speculative Fiction anthologies of the latter '50s into the latter '60s (it's probably not altogether irrelevant that DV arose from the ashes of an anthology Ellison commissioned from Merril when he was editing the Regency Books paperback line), while others probably were, rather sapiently, plucked from other anthologies, including probably Playboy's series of books collecting their fiction. As is the John Collier classic collected here only more so, David Ely's "The Academy" is outre but not actually fantasy by most definitions, for all that it was adapted for a mildly effective Night Gallery tv series segment. Any book that includes such stories as Davidson's "Or All the Seas with Oysters" and Bloch's "The Cheaters" and Finney's "Of Missing Persons" isn't actually cheating the young readers who might've been assigned this text, and the likes of Hensley's "Lord Randy", while also barely fantasy if at all, does have a built-in appeal to young readers. That the surreal Emshwiller and the similarly edge-of-science-fiction Asimov  stories might be brought together in this context is actually pretty useful, even if this book thus doesn't become a compilation of consistently brilliant work it might've been. George Malko in, and Jack Vance or Shirley Jackson or Joan Aiken or Jorge Luise Borges or Fritz Leiber or Muriel Spark or Margaret St. Clair not in, is a somewhat eccentric choice, and one wonders what specifically drove it.

Barry Malzberg somewhere once made an offhanded joking reference to, close paraphrase, "a plot stupid enough to sell to Hitchcock's" in the HSD years, and the desire to feature twist endings as a default did lead AHMM to offer some pretty damned dense semi-idiot plots. Richard Deming's "Escape Routes" (this one, as opposed to the other one, as Douglas Greene is careful to help us distinguish) is an unfortunate example of this...a fleeing criminal accidentally hijacks another fleeing criminal's car and loot...and, knowing that the other fleeing criminal had a risky plan of escape from his own current perplex, decides to go ahead and impersonate the second criminal and steal the latter's false identity and escape plan, rather than contenting himself with stealing the considerable cash and car and making his own way to a no-extradition haven.  It's cute, and has good detail, but is indicative of a weakness for this kind of story that it's also the lead story for the issue. Jack Ritchie's "Captive Audience" is more clever, if relatively slight, in its tale of a kidnapping survivor who gets to bite back at his former captors, including supposed friends. Jonathan Craig's "Bus to Chattanooga" is rather better yet, for all that it posits a rather too stereotypical abusive situation for its backwater young woman and her adoptive, thuggish uncle...her means of getting around this, however, are reasonably well thought out and the story makes emotional sense as well, however much we might wish it didn't, even given she wins in the the end.  Arthur Porges's story is part of a series of his, and in one of his default modes--it's another update on Sherlock Holmes, and the kind of notional story Porges would also tend to write in his science-fictional work, where there is a simple but baffling problem that can be addressed by some technological know-how...an approach that can make for amusing, but usually rather light at best, fair-play detection or dealing-with-the-aliens kinds of story...Porges was usually a bit better in fantasy contexts, where his cleverness with this kind of gimmick lent itself to even greater wit and charm, as with his relatively famous deal-with-a-minor-demon story "$1.98". Ed Lacy lives down to my expectations with his story, marginally better than what I've seen from him elsewhere (in marginal magazines), but also referring to whites and "natives" in the Caribbean...when he means whites and blacks, as opposed to actual native nation folk. I somewhat idly wonder if there's any familial connection between Jonathan and Douglas Craig. 

AHMM was the Other consistently good-paying short crime fiction market in the 1960s, along with Queen's; I gather The Saint Mystery Magazine as well as knowing Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine and the dying Manhunt were rather less well-funded and thus less generous; not sure about the London Mystery Selection and John Creasey's, but this was also a period where crime fiction might appear, for very good money indeed, in not only The Saturday Evening Post and Playboy still, but also Cosmopolitan or The Ladies Home Journal...even if a sale to the UK Argosy or Strand were somewhat more attainable goals...one could make decent-enough money from at least AHMM and EQMM. The talent gathered in those issues, even if not always working to its fullest extent, remains pretty impressive. 

Posted by at No comments: Links to this post
Labels: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Friday, January 5, 2018

FFB: THE SUPERNATURAL IN FICTION edited by Leo P. Kelley (McGraw-Hill 1973); THE ILLUSTRATED BOOK OF SCIENCE FICTION LISTS by Mike Ashley (Virgin Books 1982; Cornerstone Library/Simon & Schuster 1983)

Two good examples of painless education in fantastic fiction publishing, even if neither was given quite the support they could have used. Leo P. Kelley, as far as I know, was never a teaching academic, but nonetheless was tapped by McGraw-Hill to edit three volumes in their 1970s textbook series Patterns in Literary Art; they issued this one along with Fantasy: The Literature of the Marvelous (also 1973) and Themes in Science Fiction (1972), all three interesting selections of classics, chestnuts and amusing choices of a more unlikely sort, but not unreasonably so. Kelley was primarily a speculative fiction writer, while also an advertising copywriter for most of his daily bread, from 1955 into the early 1970s, and in later years turned most of his fiction-writing attention to western novels. Mike Ashley has been a notable anthology editor, in historical fiction, crime fiction and other matter as well as sf and fantasy, but might be even better known as an historian of sf and fantasy, crime fiction and also of fiction magazine publishing generally; he has also been active in local politics in his native England. Ashley's book of lists, by no means focused exclusively on sf but very much also on fantasy and horror, was first published in Britain a  year before its (I suspect) rather less-well-copyedited and -produced US edition (I've never seen the UK original), and after his first major work on the history of sf magazines had been published in both countries. Ashley's colleagues Malcolm Edwards and Maxim Jakubowski would offer The Complete Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy Lists (reprinted in the US as The SF Book of Lists) in 1983, theirs published in both countries in the same year, thus putting the two books head to head in their US editions. Both the Edwards/Jakubowski book and the further Kelley texts might be discussed in future FFB essays as I dig them back out of storage boxes; the McGraw-Hill series included at least one other volume of considerable fantastic-fiction interest, Heaven and Hell edited by Joan D. Berbrich. Both books are much of their time, as commercial properties...the Kelley an example of the new freedom and diversity in literature-textbook publishing aimed at high school and younger college students in the 1970s particularly, the Ashley and its companion volume part of the wave of books, including several  direct sequels to the immensely popular The Book of Lists (1977) assembled by Irving Wallace and his daughter Amy Wallace and son (who reverted to the pre-Ellis Island version of the family name) David Wallechinsky; Amy Wallace would be among the many to produce more specific Books of Lists, including compiling (with Dick Manitoba) The Official Punk Rock Book of Lists (2007) and (with Scott Bradley and Del Howison) The Book of Lists: Horror (2008). 

From ISFDB:
As noted above, a rather good mix of inarguable classics, those recognized by most readers and those recognized by those knowledgeable in horror and related fields, along with some interesting but more obscure items, including the rather opportune inclusion of one of Kelley's own stories. (Well, for writing  the discussion questions he appends to each of the entries in the book, certainly there's no better authority on "The Dark Door"...) Even the Lanier "Brigadier Fellowes" story is one of the less dull examples of that series. The notion of the "haunted house of Man's mind" would sound a bit less ponderously sexist, if not much less ponderous, in 1973, but even then the utter lack of women contributors to this volume might've been a matter for some discussion. 

Far more inclusive, even given the thus slightly misleading title, the Ashley compendium is good-natured, careening cheerfully from the factual to the arguably factual to the utterly opinionated (including sever writers' choices of their own best, and in Isaac Asimov's case also his worst, work and those other writers most influential on them and/or the larger literary world). For all that it is illustrated, the reproduction is sometimes poor, exclusively in black and white in the text of the book (color printing in 1983 still not as comparatively inexpensive  as it is today), giving some of the author photographs an almost cartoonish look and the cover reproductions muddy, and the headers to most lists, while rather well set-off from the rest of the text, are also at times poorly copy-edited or typo'd: Richard Lupoff's "Alternative Hugos" list is carefully revised incorrectly into "Alternative Heroes" in both the header on its page and in the rather detailed, but page-number-free, table of contents. Nonetheless, these examples of bad publishing practice don't detract too much from the enjoyment of the arguments one can have with the choices made (Baird Searles's selection of the best fantasy films seems much more sound to me than his selection of the best sf films, for example), the parameters accepted (in selecting the most valuable collectors' items among published books, for example) and the like, while also enjoying the assessments of those not so often heard from even in these days of the clickbait list and databases of opinion, such as Mary Elizabeth Counselman's choices of notable Weird Tales stories, or even Robert Bloch's selection of the best Lovecraft fiction. Not a few of the factual matters discussed have since been superseded, of course (tallies of awards won, largest sales figures, most issues of magazines published) , but that is inevitable, in a book such as this published when there was no quickly-accessibe web, and magazines and fanzines, and newsletters and newspapes when they would cover such matters, were the only sources for this kind of information...thus the vogue for this kind of book.

One kind of list where a blog has a Definite advantage...even given these would not be my choices, even from the artists in question (well...maybe the Brown Startling cover...), and I wish di Fate had given a bit of description of why he chose these particular works: 

Vincent di Fate's 10 favorite fiction magazine covers:

Astounding Stories, December 1934: Howard V. Brown:

  Astounding Science Fiction, October 1939, Hubert Rogers:

 Startling Stories, November 1939, Howard V. Brown:

Astounding Science Fiction,  May 1951, Hubert Rogers:

 Space Science Fiction, September 1952, Earle K. Bergey:

 Astounding Science Fiction, October 1953, Kelly Freas:

 Analog, September 1962, Yura "George" Solonevich:

Analog, May 1966, John Schoenherr:

Analog, December 1967, John Schoenherr:

 Analog, July 1975, John Schoenherr:

Both books worth seeking out, and inexpensive, from the usual sources. 

ISFDB lists the three Kelley anthologies in the Patterns in Literary Art series (and the Contento/Locus Index lists only the fantasy and the sf volumes), but the Berbrich anthology Heaven and Hell is detailed among the indices I've seen only in WorldCat and derivative services:

General introduction.

Heaven and hell and all that: 
Cynewulf. The last judgment. 
Parkes, F. E. K. African heaven. 
Lester, J. Stagolee. 
Maier, H. What price heaven? 
Goldin, S. The last ghost. 
Laurance, A. Chances are. 
Priestley, J. B. The gray ones. 
Levertov, D. The dead.

The paths of good and bad intention: 
France, A. Our lady's juggler. 
Winslow, J. M. Benjamen burning. 
Straley, D. B. The Devil grows jubilant. 
Tolstoy, L. How the Devil redeemed the crust of bread. 
Beerbohm, M. The happy hypocrite. 
Davidson, J. A ballad of hell.

Bargains with the Devil: 
Anonymous. Ballad of Faustus. 
Benet, S. V. The Devil and Daniel Webster. 
Arthur, R. Satan and Sam Shay. 
Masefield, J. The Devil and the old man. 
Collier, J. Thus I refute Beelzy. 
Elliot, B. The Devil was sick. 

Reward and retribution: 
Bierhorst, J. The white stone canoe. 
Johnson, J. W. Go down, Death! 
Dante. The Inferno. 
Irving, W. The Devil and Tom Walker. 
Hesiod. Right and wrong. 
Frost, R. A masque of reason. 

And here's the cover of the UK original of the Ashley volume:

For more of today's books, please see Patti Abbott's blog.
Posted by at 2 comments: Links to this post
Labels: , , , , , , , ,

Friday, December 29, 2017

FFB: The Scott, Foresman Invitations to Personal Reading Program edited by Helen Robinson, et al.

I've written before about the Scott, Foresman reading/literature textbooks that my various schools, public and private, used through my elementary through high school education (1970-1982), in Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire and Hawaii. (They had the Dick and Jane first-grade franchise in the '60s, and were ubiquitous, obviously, in later grades as well.) I remember the first actively psychotic teacher I had, a second-grade reading teacher who egregiously resented my ability to read before entering her class, growing volubly vexed with me when I wrote in the answers in the blank spaces in the text assuming that was what we were meant to do.) Among the supplementary materials Scott, Foresman offered were editions of various selected children's and YA books that they published in uniform "framed" cover-format as above and below, though in various sizes--the books were more or less in the dimensions of the original editions, and reprinted the original covers, except with no dust jackets and printed-on-the-boards images of those original front covers. I don't have them to hand, but as I recall them they didn't make an attempt to reprint the back covers or flap copy.
The list at the end is the set that was available for browsing and reading in my fifth grade and sixtth grade classroom at Nathan Hale Elementary School in Hazardville, CT. (The examples above might've been pitched to a slightly younger set of readers, with a Jean Craighead George early reader that I've never seen...while I do clearly remember her powerful Newbery Award-winner Julie of the Wolves and My Side of the Mountain. (We had one classroom with one teacher for all but some art classes at that small school at that time, and the same teacher for both fifth and sixth grades, and nearly the identical population in the classroom in those two years. We were also, probably unfortunately but conveniently, divided by our perceived ability as readers, with a half-doze of us on the students' left side of the classroom the sophisticated readers, using as our textbooks Scott, Foresman's Vistas (in fifth grade) and Cavalcades (in sixth)...the intermediate readers, making up most of the class, had another text (title forgotten) and sat in the middle of the classroom; and the ten or so of the struggling readers sat on the right, and used the Open Highways volumes for their grades. Scholastic Book Services and Dell Yearling paperbacks, among some others, were available for the kids to read during "open reading" periods or indoor recess, in shelves at the back of the room...I dipped in more than most, I think, even among the "advanced" readers. 
Among those which mad the strongest impression were Henry Reed’s Journey by Keith Robertson, the first of Robertson's Reed and Midge Glass novels I read and the second in the series (I recall that a chapter from Henry Reed's Baby-Sitting Service had been included in one of textbooks), Harold Courlander's collection of mythlore and folktales from around the world Ride with the Sun, and the handsomely illustrated edition of "The Charge of the Light Brigade"...though I now remember, looking at this list, that I definitely read the Newbery-winning Across Five Aprils and The Twenty-One Balloons from this set, and North to Freedom, the Danny Dunn books (that one doesn't stand out in memory) and Sea Pup Again (interesting the degree to which they didn't feel the need to include the first novels in a given series). Pretty sure I read James Kjelgaard's Stormy, as well, having already read his Big Red and a few others (at least a few of those among the paperbacks on the same shelves)... Kjelgaard having been a prolific writer for adults, in the slick magazines and higher-paying pulps, as well, who died young, after illness...Robert Bloch helped him shape up some of his last work for publication, when he was simply too ill to produce final drafts. 

To what extent did your classrooms have their own collections of books when you were in elementary grades, and did you have any fond memories of those collections...in addition to any libraries your school also maintained? (We had a library at that Enfield, Connecticut school...Hazardville having been absorbed by Enfield some decades before...which was in 1973 already a "media center" instead...the first thing I remember taking out from there was an audiocassette dramatization of Dracula...which my brother, then aged two, gleefully recorded over in part while playing around with the inexpensive cassette player/recorder I had at that time.).

The Scott, Foresman Invitations to Personal Reading Program set we had in my 5th/6th grade classroom:


Adventures in Many Lands

Henry Reed’s Journey by Keith Robertson

The Minnow Leads to Treasure by A. Philippa Pearce

The Singing Cave by Ellis Dillon

“What Then, Raman?” by Shirley Aroroa


Science and Nature

The Giant Golden Book of Biology by Gerald Ames and Rose Wyler

Jets and Rockets and How They Work by William P. Gottlieb

The Peaceful Atom by Bernice Kohn

Sea Pup Again by Archie Binns

Stormy by James Kjelgaard


Biography and Historical Fiction

Across Five Aprils by Irene Hunt

America’s Ethan Allen by Stewart Holbrook

From the Eagle’s Wing by Hildegarde Swift

Trace Through the Forest by Barbara Robinson

Tree in the Trail by Holling C. Holling


Legends, Myths, and Other Tales

The Golden Treasury of Myths and Legends adapted by Anne T. White

Ride with the Sun edited by Harold Courlander


Science Fiction and Fantasy

Bob Fulton’s Amazing Soda-Pop Stretcher by Jerome Beatty, Jr.

The City Under the Back Steps by Evelyn S. Lampman

Danny Dunn, Time Traveler by Jay Williams and Raymond Abrashkin


Books Too Good to Miss

Mr. Twigg’s Mistake by Robert Lawson

North to Freedom by Anne Holm

The Story of Design by Marion Downer

The Twenty-One Balloons by William Pene du Bois


Poetry

The Charge of the Light Brigade by Alfred Lord Tennyson

The Moment of Wonder edited by Richard Lewis
For more of today's books, please see Patti Abbott's blog.
Posted by at 2 comments: Links to this post
Labels: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Friday, September 10, 2010

FFB: FANTASY: SHAPES OF THINGS UNKNOWN, edited by Edmund J. Farrell, Thomas E. Gage, John Pfordresher & Raymond J. Rodrigues (Scott, Foresman 1974)



From the Contento indices:



Fantasy: Shapes of Things Unknown ed. Edmund J. Farrell, Thomas E. Gage, John Pfordresher & Raymond J. Rodrigues (Scott, Foresman 0-673-03409-7, 1974, 384pp, tp); Textbook, in The Man [sic] in Literature Program [hello 1974].

Cover · Dream · Joan Miro (interior art uncredited and apparently in the public domain, aside from an uncredited panel from a Marvel Thor comic)
Unit 1: The Seen and the Unseen
9 · Thus I Refute Beelzy · John Collier · ss Atlantic Monthly Oct ’40
15 · The Laocoön Complex · J. C. Furnas · ss Esquire Apr ’37
28 · The Blue Lenses · Daphne du Maurier · nv Ladies Home Journal May ’59
68 · Harvey · Mary Chase · play, 1943
Unit 2: Children of the Devil
149 · Mrs. Amworth · E. F. Benson · ss Hutchinson’s Magazine Jun ’22
165 · Gabriel-Ernest · Saki · ss The Westminster Gazette May 29 ’09
173 · O Ugly Bird! [John] · Manly Wade Wellman · ss F&SF Dec ’51
190 · The Green Scarf · A. M. Burrage · ss The London Magazine Aug ’26
Unit 3: Beast and Creeping Things
209 · Born of Man and Woman · Richard Matheson · vi F&SF Sum ’50
213 · The Fly · George Langelaan · nv Playboy Jun ’57
249 · Talent · Theodore Sturgeon · ss Beyond Fantasy Fiction Sep ’53
258 · Heartburn · Hortense Calisher · ss The American Mercury Jan ’51
Unit 4: Powers and Abilities
271 · The High Divers · Jack Conroy · vi
274 · Pecos Bill · Phil Squires · ss Legends and Tales of the Old West, 1962
280 · The Portable Mrs. Tillson · Whitfield Cook · ss Story, 1937
291 · The Man with English · Horace L. Gold · ss Star Science Fiction Stories #1, ed. Frederik Pohl, Ballantine, 1953
301 · Free Dirt · Charles Beaumont · ss F&SF May ’55
Unit 5: Signs and Wonders
313 · The Chaser · John Collier · ss New Yorker Dec 28 ’40
317 · The Masque of the Red Death · Edgar Allan Poe · ss Graham’s Lady’s and Gentleman’s Magazine May, 1842
324 · Prey · Richard Matheson · ss Playboy Apr ’69
337 · The Horn of Plenty · Vladimir Grigoriev · ss Galaxy Dec ’69
354 · The Magic Shop · H. G. Wells · ss The Strand Jun ’03
366 · Discussion Questions · Misc. · ms
377 · Biographies of Authors · Misc. · bg
383 · Pronunciation Key · Misc. · ms
384 · Index of Authors and Titles · Misc. · ix

This is my first textbook entry in the "Forgotten" Books roundelay, although some of my other choices over the last two and a half years have been used as texts in courses in various venues. Despite a certain potted quality about most of them, I've loved good literature anthology texts all my literate life, and collected them as I came across them for sale as a child, usually for small change in library and tag sales, and at the five-and-dimes such as WT Grant's (where the textbooks were usually in the 3/$1 bin rather than the 4/$1 bin with the Lancer paperbacks in the mid-'70s). Scott, Foresman was a leading publisher of elementary and high-school textbooks in the US in the 1970s, probably the leading publisher of the literature textbooks, and how many other books were so widely thrust upon public-school students, at least, yet so easily forgotten after they were turned back in at the end of the school year (leading to a brisk trade in queries to information librarians and occasionally booksellers, along the lines of "It was a story about a horrible car-crash, that turned out to be a test..." (I can identify this widely-reprinted story "spoiled" thus for you at the end of the entry...another widely-reprinted story in the same sort of venue was Donald Westlake's allegorical sf "The Winner," from Harry Harrison's Nova 1 anthology of original sf stories).

Liberal and well-funded school districts might well've taken this and other volumes in the "Man in Literature Program" for junior or senior-high cirricula...I certainly would've enjoyed seeing what my classmates would make of the classroom discussion questions as this, for Hortense Calisher's "Heartburn": "Briefly summarize the circumstances by which Dr. Retz acquired the small animal in his chest. By what circumstances can he be relieved of it?" As it was, I first read Bradbury's "All Summer in a Day," Alan Nourse's "Brightside Crossing," and Clifford Simak's brilliant "Desertion" in my 7th-grade Scott, Foresman text, though the class only went through the Bradbury, after three previous years going through the Scott, Foresman "elite" series of Cavalcades, Ventures and Vistas in another state's elementary school...they also published the irregular set of hardcover editions of "free reading" books we had in the classroom, including Keith Robertson's Henry Reed's Journey and Harold Courlander's Ride with the Sun, which I have briefly reviewed previously.

Meanwhile this is a fine selection of chestnuts and a few odd surprises, the umpteenth anthologization at least of such work as the Benson (whose Mapp and Lucia novels of manners would not yet have had their revival by 1974, and his brilliant horror fiction was still what he was best remembered for) and the Colliers and the Langelaan, with the Sturgeon, Du Maurier, Wellman and Gold not quite in the same league (each of those writers having more-anthologized stories) but all fine choices, and the Saki, Poe and Wellman impeccable choices except for the weak protest that these stories by them were almost ineluctable by any literate youngster. Well, persistent literate youngster. That kid probably wouldn't've had much other chance to read "Prey" or "Free Dirt," though, however much they might enjoy their creators' work on Twilight Zone repeats or horror or suspense film broadcasts...and the inclusion of such "outliers" as Harvey and the tall-tale retold among the other fantasies seems valuable to an old eclecticist such as myself. I'm sorry that reading texts these days probably aren't allowed to be as adventurous today (Texas's more retrograde folks do indeed lead the way), as I will enjoy acquainting myself with the few unfamilar stories in this volume, which arrived in today's mail, such as the Furnas and the apparently very obscure Conroy item, and rereading the plethora of familiar stories, almost all first read by the age I'd be assigned this book.

Meanwhile, this seems an opportune point to mention two recent retrospectives (contents detailed at the end of the post), by our surviving veteran annual horror anthologists:



Darkness: Two Decades of Modern Horror, edited by Ellen Datlow and The Mammoth Book of the Best of the Best New Horror (the UK title differs slightly but is no more wieldy), edited by Stephen Jones. Both cover twenty-year periods, Datlow's the two decades after she was first on the jury for the World Fantasy Award and the next year co-edited the first of her Year's Best Fantasy and Horror volumes (my first published fiction, "Bedtime," she was kind enough to shortlist in the 1995 volume). Jones's book is more directly keyed to his annual Best New Horror, which he began, initially co-editing with Ramsey Campbell, with their 1990 volume...he takes one story from each volume so each of the twenty years is represented by a story; Datlow's book is less worried about having each year repressented, which is probably the richer if less systematic approach; John Pelan's enormous retrospective of 20th Century short horror fiction, forthcoming from Cemetery Dance Publications, is probably going to be not Quite the volume(s) it could be, in part because he is rigorously holding to a schedule of each year represented by one story and no writer having more than one story in the two volumes...the greatest error this forces, by me, is exclusion of Fritz Leiber's "Smoke Ghost," almost certainly the single most influential short horror story of the century in English...and some other questionable, if usually good, choices as Robert Bloch's representation by the relatively cheerful fantasy "That Hell-Bound Train" (his "Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper" is almost certainly the most plagiarized horror story published in English in the last century...though it wouldn't be my choice to represent him, either...perhaps "Sweets to the Sweet" among so many other candidates), or the inclusion of a number of what I'd call suspense stories, such as Joe Lansdale's triumphant "Night They Missed the Horror Show," rather than supernatural stories.


The ISFDB and Contento also have the following sf companion to the Fantasy book indexed (I have to wonder how many other volumes in the Not-Woman in Literature series there were):
Science Fact/Fiction ed. Edmund J. Farrell, Thomas E. Gage, John Pfordresher & Raymond J. Rodrigues (Scott, Foresman 0-673-03407-0, 1974, 394pp, tp)
ix · Science Fiction: Before Christ and After 2001 · Ray Bradbury · in *
3 · The Gun Without a Bang [as by Finn O’Donnevan] · Robert Sheckley · ss Galaxy Jun ’58
9 · Crabs Take Over the Island · Anatoly Dnieprov · ss International Science Fiction Jun ’68
26 · All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace · Richard Brautigan · pm The Pill vs. the Springtown Mine Disaster, 1968
27 · EPICAC · Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. · ss Colliers Nov 25 ’50
33 · R.U.R. · Karel Capek · pl, 1921
80 · The Human Factor · David Ely · ss The Saturday Evening Post Nov 16 ’63
90 · The Thinking Machine · Isaac Asimov · ar Science Digest Dec ’67
93 · Misbegotten Missionary · Isaac Asimov · ss Galaxy Nov ’50
105 · Elegy · Charles Beaumont · ss Imagination Feb ’53
112 · Aesthetics of the Moon · Jack Anderson · pm
115 · Constant Reader · Robert Bloch · ss Universe Jun ’53
126 · Who’s There? · Arthur C. Clarke · ss New Worlds Nov ’58
130 · We’ll Never Conquer Space · Arthur C. Clarke · ar Science Digest Jun ’60
137 · The Sack · William Morrison · ss Astounding Sep ’50
152 · Mariana · Fritz Leiber · ss Fantastic Feb ’60
156 · I Always Do What Teddy Says · Harry Harrison · ss EQMM Jun ’65
163 · The Man Who Could Work Miracles · H. G. Wells · ss The Illustrated London News Jul, 1898
177 · Echoes of the Mind · Arthur Koestler · ar Esquire Aug ’72
183 · The Reluctant Orchid [Harry Purvis (White Hart)] · Arthur C. Clarke · ss Satellite Dec ’56
191 · Founding Father · Isaac Asimov · ss Galaxy Oct ’65
196 · The Wound · Howard Fast · ss The General Zapped an Angel, Morrow, 1970
205 · The Sound Machine · Roald Dahl · ss New Yorker Sep 17 ’49
215 · Love Among the Cabbages · Peter Tompkins & Christopher Bird · ar Harper’s Nov ’72
223 · Puppet Show · Fredric Brown · ss Playboy Nov ’62
231 · Random Sample · T. P. Caravan · vi F&SF Apr ’53
234 · On the Wheel · Damon Knight · ss Nova 2, ed. Harry Harrison, Walker, 1972
239 · Orbiter 5 Shows How Earth Looks from the Moon · May Swenson · pm The Southern Review, 1969
240 · The King of the Beasts · Philip José Farmer · vi Galaxy Jun ’64
242 · UFO Detective Solves ’em All—Well Almost · Philip J. Hilts · ar The Washington Post, 1973
247 · The Good Provider · Marion Gross · ss F&SF Sep ’52
251 · A Sound of Thunder · Ray Bradbury · ss Colliers Jun 28 ’52
261 · Who’s Cribbing? · Jack Lewis · ss Startling Stories Jan ’53
267 · The Third Level · Jack Finney · ss Colliers Oct 7 ’50; F&SF Oct ’52
271 · Speed · Josephine Miles · pm, 1960
272 · The Inn Outside the World · Edmond Hamilton · ss Weird Tales Jul ’45
284 · On the Relativity of Time · Wolfgang Pauli · ar, 1949
286 · Relativity Wins Again · Anon. · ar Science Digest Jan ’72
287 · A Matter of Overtime · Anon. · ar Time Mar ’69
289 · There Will Come Soft Rains · Ray Bradbury · ss Colliers May 6 ’50
295 · The Forgotten Enemy · Arthur C. Clarke · ss King’s College Review Dec ’48
301 · Earthmen Bearing Gifts · Fredric Brown · vi Galaxy Jun ’60
304 · The Ifth of Oofth · Walter Tevis · ss Galaxy Apr ’57
312 · Electronic Tape Found in a Bottle · Olga Cabral · pm, 1971
313 · Brace Yourself for Another Ice Age · Douglas Colligan · ar Science Digest Feb ’73
317 · The Census Takers · Frederik Pohl · ss F&SF Feb ’56
322 · Disappearing Act · Alfred Bester · ss Star Science Fiction Stories #2, ed. Frederik Pohl, Ballantine, 1953
337 · Bulletin · Shirley Jackson · vi F&SF Mar ’54
340 · Autofac · Philip K. Dick · nv Galaxy Nov ’55
359 · Toward the Space Age · William Stafford · pm, 1970
360 · Spaceship Earth · R. Buckminster Fuller · ar, 1969
364 · Biographies of Authors · Misc. · bg
366 · Science-Fiction Awards · Misc. · ms
378 · Pronunciation Key · Misc. · ms
379 · Discussion Questions · Misc. · ms
394 · Index of Authors and Titles · Misc. · ix

and...the contents of the Datlow and Jones and Pelan books noted above:

Darkness Table of Contents (Tachyon Publications)
Trade paperback / 424 pp. / March 2010 / 978-1-892391-95-7

Jacqueline Ess: Her Will And Testament by Clive Barker
Dancing Chickens by Edward Bryant
The Greater Festival of Masks by Thomas Ligotti
The Pear-Shaped Man by George R.R. Martin
The Juniper Tree by Peter Straub
Two Minutes Forty-Five Seconds by Dan Simmons
The Power and the Passion by Pat Cadigan
The Phone Woman by Joe R. Lansdale
Teratisms by Kathe Koja
Chattery Teeth by Stephen King
A Little Night Music by Lucius Shepard
Calcutta, Lord of Nerves by Poppy Z. Brite
The Erl King by Elizabeth Hand
The Dog Park by Dennis Etchison
Rain Falls by Michael Marshall Smith
Refrigerator Heaven by David J. Schow
---- by Joyce Carol Oates
Eaten (Scenes from a Moving Picture) by Neil Gaiman
The Specialist’s Hat by Kelly Link
The Tree is My Hat by Gene Wolfe
Heat by Steve Rasnic Tem
No Strings by Ramsey Campbell
Stitch by Terry Dowling
Dancing Men by Glen Hirshberg
My Father’s Mask by Joe Hill

The Best of the Best New Horror contents:
Robinson Publishing, UK • tp • £9.99 ISBN: 978-1-84901-304-8; Running Press, USA • tp • $13.95 ISBN: 978-0-7624-3841-9
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
EDITOR'S FOREWORD Stephen Jones
INTRODUCTION: BETTERING THE BEST Ramsey Campbell
1989 NO SHARKS IN THE MED Brian Lumley
1990 THE MAN WHO DREW CATS Michael Marshall Smith
1991 THE SAME IN ANY LANGUAGE Ramsey Campbell
1992 NORMAN WISDOM AND THE ANGEL OF DEATH Christopher Fowler
1993 MEFISTO IN ONYX Harlan Ellison
1994 THE TEMPTATION OF DR STEIN Paul J. McAuley
1995 QUEEN OF KNIVES Neil Gaiman
1996 THE BREAK Terry Lamsley
1997 EMPTINESS SPOKE ELOQUENT Caitlín R Kiernan
1998 MR. CLUBB AND MR. CUFF Peter Straub
1999 WHITE Tim Lebbon
2000 THE OTHER SIDE OF MIDNIGHT: ANNO DRACULA, 1981 Kim Newman
2001 CLEOPATRA BRIMSTONE Elizabeth Hand
2002 20TH CENTURY GHOST Joe Hill
2003 THE WHITE HANDS Mark Samuels
2004 MY DEATH Lisa Tuttle
2005 HAECKEL'S TALE Clive Barker
2006 DEVIL'S SMILE Glen Hirshberg
2007 THE CHURCH ON THE ISLAND Simon Kurt Unsworth
2008 THE NEW YORK TIMES AT SPECIAL BARGAIN RATES Stephen King
INDEX TO TWENTY YEARS OF BEST NEW HORROR
I: Index by Contributor
II: Index by Title
III: Contents of Previous Omnibus Editions

The Century's Best Horror Fiction
edited by John Pelan ISBN: 1-58767-080-1
Table of Contents
1901: Barry Pain -- The Undying Thing
1902: W.W. Jacobs -- The Monkey's Paw
1903: H.G.Wells -- The Valley of the Spiders
1904: Arthur Machen -- The White People
1905: R. Murray Gilchrist -- The Lover's Ordeal
1906: Edward Lucas White -- House of the Nightmare
1907: Algernon Blackwood -- The Willows
1908: Perceval Landon -- Thurnley Abbey
1909: Violet Hunt -- The Coach
1910: Wm Hope Hodgson -- The Whistling Room
1911: M.R. James -- Casting the Runes
1912: E.F. Benson -- Caterpillars
1913: Aleister Crowley -- The Testament of Magdelan Blair
1914: M. P. Shiel -- The Place of Pain
1915: Hanns Heinz Ewers -- The Spider
1916: Lord Dunsany -- Thirteen at Table
1917: Frederick Stuart Greene -- The Black Pool
1918: H. De Vere Stacpoole -- The Middle Bedroom
1919: Ulric Daubeny -- The Sumach
1920: Maurice Level -- In the Light of the Red Lamp
1921: Vincent O'Sullivan -- Master of Fallen Years
1922: Walter de la Mare -- Seaton's Aunt
1923: George Allen England -- The Thing From--"Outside"
1924: C.M. Eddy, Jr. -- The Loved Dead
1925: John Metcalfe -- The Smoking Leg
1926: H.P. Lovecraft -- The Outsider
1927: Donald Wandrei -- The Red Brain
1928: H.R. Wakefield -- The Red Lodge
1929: Eleanor Scott -- Celui-La
1930: Rosalie Muspratt -- Spirit of Stonhenge
1931: Henry S. Whitehead -- Cassius
1932: David H. Keller -- The Thing in the Cellar
1933: C.L. Moore -- Shambleau
1934: L.A. Lewis -- The Tower of Moab
1935: Clark Ashton Smith -- The Dark Eidolon
1936: Thorp McCluskey -- The Crawling Horror
1937: Howard Wandrei -- The Eerie Mr Murphy
1938: Robert E. Howard -- Pigeons from Hell
1939: Robert Barbour Johnson -- Far Below
1940: John Collier -- Evening Primrose
1941: C.M. Kornbluth -- The Words of Guru
1942: Jane Rice -- The Idol of the Flies
1943: Anthony Boucher -- They Bite
1944: Ray Bradbury -- The Jar
1945: August Derleth -- Carousel
1946: Manly Wade Wellman -- Shonokin Town
1947: Theodore Sturgeon -- Bianca's Hands
1948: Shirley Jackson -- The Lottery
1949: Nigel Kneale -- The Pond
1950: Richard Matheson -- Born of Man & Woman
1951: Russell Kirk -- Uncle Isiah
1952: Eric Frank Russell -- I Am Nothing
1953: Robert Sheckley -- The Altar
1954: Everil Worrell -- Call Not Their Names
1955: Robert Aickman -- Ringing the Changes
1956: Richard Wilson -- Lonely Road
1957: Clifford Simak -- Founding Father
1958: Robert Bloch -- That Hell-Bound Train
1959: Charles Beaumont -- The Howling Man
1960: Fredric Brown -- The House
1961: Ray Russell -- Sardonicus
1962: Carl Jacobi -- The Aquarium
1963: Robert Arthur -- The Mirror of Cagliostro
1964: Charles Birkin -- A Lovely Bunch of Coconuts
1965: Jean Ray -- The Shadowy Street
1966: Arthur Porges -- The Mirror
1967: Norman Spinrad -- Carcinoma Angels
1968: Anna Hunger -- Come
1969: Steffan Aletti -- The Last Work of Pietro Apono
1970: David A. Riley -- The Lurkers in the Abyss
1971: Dorothy K. Haynes -- The Derelict Track
1972: Gary Brandner -- The Price of a Demon
1973: Eddy C. Bertin -- Like Two White Spiders
1974: Karl Edward Wagner -- Sticks
1975: David Drake -- The Barrow Troll
1976: Dennis Etchison -- It Only Comes Out at Night
1977: Barry N. Malzberg -- The Man Who Loved the Midnight Lady
1978: Michael Bishop -- Within the Walls of Tyre
1979: Ramsey Campbell -- Mackintosh Willy
1980: Michael Shea -- The Autopsy
1981: Stephen King -- The Reach
1982: Fritz Leiber -- Horrible Imagings
1983: David Schow -- One for the Horrors
1984: Bob Leman -- The Unhappy Pilgrimage of Clifford M.
1985: Michael Reaves -- The Night People
1986: Tim Powers -- Night Moves
1987: Ian Watson -- Evil Water
1988: Joe R. Lansdale -- The Night They Missed the Horror Show
1989: Joel Lane -- The Earth Wire
1990: Elizabeth Massie -- Stephen
1991: Thomas Ligotti -- The Glamour
1992: Poppy Z. Brite -- Calcutta Lord of Nerves
1993: Lucy Taylor -- The Family Underwater
1994: Jack Ketchum -- The Box
1995: Terry Lamsley -- The Toddler
1996: Caitlín R. Kiernan -- Tears Seven Times Salt
1997: Stephen Laws -- The Crawl
1998: Brian Hodge -- As Above, So Below
1999: Glen Hirshberg -- Mr. Dark's Carnival
2000: Tim Lebbon -- Reconstructing Amy

For more of this week's book selections, please see Patti Abbott's blog for the roundup of links and guest suggestions.

****spoiler bit from above****

"Test" by Thedore L. Thomas, from F&SF, April 1962, and reprinted at least twenty times, I'd guess. I recall seeing it in the Xerox Publications classroom magazine Read, for example, ca. 1977.
Posted by at 16 comments: Links to this post
Labels: , ,
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)