(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...)
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.
11 comments:
Another mind-bogging posting, Todd! You're right about that Table of Contents for BEST FROM F&SF, 5th Series. THE MAGAZINE OF F&SF attracted the best talent writing at the time and it sure shows here. I had forgotten Richard Poirier edited that O. HENRY AWARD volume. Poirier was one of my favorite literary critics.
Thanks, George...weird that I should think this morning of these three anthos, and then learn of Price's death. (And I try to use sparingly my ability to bog men's minds...it gets a bit messy.)
And a bit of Poirier's 2009 NYT obit:
Richard Poirier, a prolific and populist cultural critic who founded a literary journal, Raritan: A Quarterly Review, and who was a founder of Library of America, the nonprofit publisher of American classics, died in Manhattan on Saturday. He was 83.
Before founding Raritan, Mr. Poirier was an editor of Partisan Review, and he also edited anthologies, including several editions of “The O. Henry Prize Stories,” the annual collection of the best contemporary short stories; and a two-volume compilation, “American Literature.”
I've read almost all of Richard Poirier's literary criticism, Todd. It's readable and sensible, something you can't say about most contemporary lit cit. I liked the early Reynolds Price novels.
http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2010/07/21/reading-raritan/
...is a thoughtful remembrance. I'm trying to remember if I read some of his work early on, beyond introductions and headnotes...I certainly would pick up a odd issue of RARITAN from time to time in the last decade or so.
The first paragraph:
Richard Poirier taught English at Rutgers for some forty years (he died last summer), and he often argued that teaching students how to read, as distinct from teaching them how to be good citizens, or political activists, is the only thing literature professors are really good for, or qualified to do. In an essay he wrote in 1970, he suggested that “literary study can...be made relevant to life not as a mere supplier of images or visions, but as an activity; it can create capacities through exercise with the language of literature that can then be applied to the language of politics and power, the language of daily life.”
Great line-ups. And I learned a new word: croggling. At least, I expect to learn it, once I find a dictionary that has it. It ain't in my Funk and Wagnalls.
Fan-speak for something so startling (and/or impressive) that it leaves one at a loss for words.
"But, my deer, think of the fawn you'll have!"
Why, oh why is SF full of people who think puns are funny? Maybe it works better in context. But I felt a distinct elbow in my ribs as I read that line.
It does, largely because the punster is a cad who is punished both for that and his caddishness generally...and it comes at the near-climax of a rapid-fire series of jokes in the vignette. Contrast the Asimov vignette, which falls over sideways since it is merely a joke set-up that leads to a less clever pun that even that (close paraphrase: He was trapped in a skiffy nightmare scenario, a world dominated by Giant Aunts.)
And because they all read Carroll and Lear, and Shakespeare...
Hi Todd,
Been lurking on your blog occasionally. Thought you might be interested in our documentary about Charles Beaumont. It features interviews with Richard Matheson, William F. Nolan, Ray Bradbury and so on. We have two versions - details on our website: http://www.jasunni.com
Thanks,
Sunni
Thanks for the tip, Sunni...I'll take a look.
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