FFB: Anthony Boucher: BEST FROM F&SF, 5TH SERIES; Allen J. Hubin: BEST DETECTIVE STORIES OF THE YEAR, 1971; Richard Poirier: O. HENRY AWARDS 1962

More firsts, for me...the first volumes I picked up of The Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction series of anthologies, taken from the magazine Boucher co-founded in 1949 after a gestation period of some years, pulled off a rack in a second-hand store in Nashua, New Hampshire (a battered SF Book Club edition with no jacket); the first of the Dutton Best Detective Stories volumes I read, from the Nashua library, where I also found the first O. Henry Awards volume I would pick up, from the nice stacks of both series I would find (though I lived in Londonderry, NH, that town's library was tiny and run by irritable staff; Nashua's, which my father lied my way into borrowing privileges for, was the promised land by comparison). (courtesy ISFDb):

The Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction, Fifth Series, edited by Anthony Boucher (Doubleday, 1956) 

7 • Introduction (Best from F&SF 5) • (1956) • essay by Anthony Boucher 

9 • Imagine: A Proem • (1955) • poem by Fredric Brown (aka Imagine) 

10 • You're Another • (1955) • novelette by Damon Knight 

44 • Survival • (1955) • poem by Carlyn Coffin 

45 • This Earth of Majesty • (1955) • short story by Arthur C. Clarke 

59 • Birds Can't Count • (1955) • short story by Mildred Clingerman 

68 • The Golem • (1955) • short story by Avram Davidson 

74 • 1980 Overtures • (1955) • poem by Winona McClintic 

 75 • Pottage • [The People] • (1955) • novelette by Zenna Henderson 

113 • The Vanishing American • (1955) • short story by Charles Beaumont 

125 • Created He Them • (1955) • short story by Alice Eleanor Jones 

136 • Silent, Upon Two Peaks . . . • (1955) • poem by Anthony Boucher  [as by Herman W. Mudgett] 

four vignettes: 

138 • Too Far • (1955) • short story by Fredric Brown 

140 • A Matter of Energy • (1955) • short story by James Blish 

142 • Nellthu • (1955) • short story by Anthony Boucher

144 • Dreamworld • (1955) • short fiction by Isaac Asimov 

146 • One Ordinary Day, with Peanuts • (1955) • short story by Shirley Jackson 

157 • The Glass of the Future • (1955) • poem by Anthony Boucher [as by Herman W. Mudgett ] 

158 • The Short Ones • (1955) • novelette by Raymond E. Banks 

181 • The Last Prophet • (1955) • short story by Mildred Clingerman 

190 • Botany Bay • (1955) • short story by P. M. Hubbard 

194 • A Canticle for Leibowitz • [Saint Leibowitz] • (1955) • novelette by Walter M. Miller, Jr. 

220 • Lament by a Maker • (1955) • poem by L. Sprague de Camp 

221 • The Doctrine of Original Design • (1955) • poem by Winona McClintic 

222 • Pattern for Survival • (1955) • shortstory by Richard Matheson 

226 • The Singing Bell • [Wendell Urth] • (1955) • short story by Isaac Asimov 

245 • The Last Word • [Claude Adams] • (1955) • short story by Chad Oliver and Charles Beaumont

 --It should be noted that "This Earth of Majesty" was a title that won a readers' contest F&SF put up, since Boucher was unsatisfied with Clarke's preferred title, "Refugee"--about the first member of the British Royal Family in space. F&SF had published it as simply "?" so as to announce the You Title It contest. The concentration of brilliant work here is pretty croggling. Any book that includes Beaumont's "The Vanishing American," Knight's "You're Another," Clingerman's clever and charming "Birds Can't Count" and the Avram Davidson (perhaps the most famous story in the book, after the Walter Miller, the first of the stories that would be reworked into the novel of the same name) and the Shirley Jackson (and what I think was P. M. Hubbard's first F&SF contribution), while also offering such happy diversions as Matheson's "Pattern for Survival" and Brown's intensely jokey vignette (a shapeshifting man/buck forcefully pursuing a doe cries, "But, my deer, think of the fawn you'll have!"), is simply waiting to blow out your doors and windows. Certainly did mine. (And it's also interesting, to me, that at least both "The Vanishing American" and "One Ordinary Day..." can be cited as not actually f or sf...but fine and close enough for only the most foolish to kick up a fuss...) 

Best detective stories of the year, 1971. 25th annual collection. Edited by Allen J. Hubin (Dutton 1971) (Courtesy WorldCat)  

Wit's end / Michael Harrison -- 

The big stretch / Clayton Matthews -- 

The businessmen / Michael Zuroy -- 

The leakage / Frank Sisk -- 

The system / Michael Gilbert -- 

The lord of Central Park / Avram Davidson -- 

 Death and the compass / Jorge Luis Borges -- 

Dr. Ox will die at midnight / Gerald Kersh -- 

The verdict / Lawrence Treat -- 

We spy / Clark Howard -- 

The Andrech Samples / Joe Gores -- 

The theft of the loco loot / Edward D. Hoch -- 

Coins in the Frascati Fountain / James Powell-- 

Mrs. Twiller takes a trip / Lael J. Littke -- 

Cain's mark / Bill Pronzini. --

A couple of volumes after Boucher, in his last editorial post, had assembled his last, Allen Hubin, otherwise probably best known for The Armchair Detective magazine, produces what might've been his best entry during his fine tenure with this annual. Or maybe it's just nostalgia...but, whether or not because it was the first volume I picked up, this was also a mind-blowing book, and I'm impressed by how many of these folks remain vital contributors to the crime-fiction literature, even when they themselves are no longer with us. Any anthology featuring Davidson's "The Lord of Central Park" has already proven its editor a person of sound judgment and sterling taste. (Edward Hoch would succeed Hubin as editor, for the last Dutton and the subsequent Walker volumes. The Dutton series never had particularly elaborate covers...) 

Prize Stories 1962: The O. Henry Awards edited by Richard Poirier, Doubleday 1962 (Fawcett 1963) (Courtesy Random House)

First Prize Katherine Anne Porter: Holiday (The Atlantic Monthly, December 1960) 

Second Prize Thomas Pynchon: "Under the Rose" (The Noble Savage, No. 3) Third Prize Tom Cole: "Familiar Usage in Leningrad" (The Atlantic Monthly, July 1961) 

Thomas E. Adams: "Sled" (The Sewanee Review, Winter 1961) 

Mary Deasy: "The People with the Charm" (The Yale Review, Autumn 1960) Shirley Ann Grau: "Eight O'Clock One Morning" (The Reporter, June 22, 1961) John Graves: "The Aztec Dog" (The Colorado Quarterly, Summer 1961) Maureen Howard: "Bridgeport Bus" (The Hudson Review, Winter 1960-61) David Jackson: "The English Gardens" (Partisan Review, March-April 1961) Miriam McKenzie: "Deja Vu" (New World Writing, No. 18) 

Reynolds Price: "The Warrior Princess Ozimba" (The Virginia Quarterly Review, Summer 1961) Shirley W. Schoonover: "The Star Blanket" (The Transatlantic Review, Spring 1961) 

David Shaber: "Professorio Collegio" (Venture, Winter 1960-61) 

John Updike: "The Doctor's Wife" (The New Yorker, February 11, 1961) 

Thomas Whitbread: "The Rememberer" (The Paris Review, Summer-Fall 1960) 

I knew Porter's work already (and it's amusing that the Fawcett paperback was quick to try to sell itself on the strength of Ship of Fools), and had heard of Pynchon, but hadn't yet read his work, before digging into this, which would be (re?-)incorporated into V. for book publication after its appearance here, and in the Saul Bellow magazine it was taken from. I'm not sure why this was the first volume of the O. Henry Awards series I picked up...perhaps it was the Porter story getting the top slot, or the prevalence of Atlantic stories particularly, since I was already fond of The Atlantic Monthly (far more fond of it in those years, 1978 through the early '80s, than I am of the current inpulpation). Certainly my first encounters with Grau and Price (RIP; as with Joe Gores, a recent loss) as well, and probably one of the first with Updike.

Please see Evan Lewis's blog for more citations of today's "Forgotten" Books entries...Evan is this week's substitute host for the roundelay while Patti Abbott is on retreat in Nixonian realms.