At Last, January Friday's "Forgotten" Books and More: the links to the reviews, texts and more

This long-delayed January books and more, unfairly (or sometimes fairly) neglected, or simply those the reviewers below think you might find of some interest (or, infrequently, you should be warned away from); certainly, most weeks we have a few not at all forgotten titles...if I've missed your review or someone else's, please let me know in comments. Thanks. More catching up to come soon...

Patricia Abbott: Dirty Work by Larry Brown;  "Something is Out There" by Richard Bausch, Murdaland #1, 2007, edited by Michael Lagnas; The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver; "How Old, How Young", The New Yorker, 1 July 1967, edited by William Shawn, and From the Terrace by John O'Hara; "The Big Thing at the End" by Patrick O'Leary; "A Short Guide to the City" by Peter Straub (from Houses Without Doors, Dutton 1990); "The Last Long Ride of El Canejo" by Ace Atkins (from Damn Near Dead 2 edited by Bill Crider); The Chill by "Ross Macdonald" (Kenneth Millar); "Listener" by Antonya Nelson (from the Chicago Tribune, 1988)

Bob Adey: Broomsticks over Flaxborough by Colin Watson

Mike Ashley: Amazing Stories, 1926-1984, edited by Hugo Gernsback, T. O'Connor Sloane, Ray Palmer, Howard Browne, Paul Fairman, Cele Goldsmith Lalli, Joseph "Ross" (Wrzos), Harry Harrison, Barry Malzberg, Ted White, Elinor Mavor, George Scithers, and Patrick Price

Mark Baker: Design for Murder by Carolyn Hart; Blood Alone by James R. Benn

Brad Bigelow: Catch a Brass Canary by Donna Hill; 1970s convergences of science fiction and contemporary/mimetic fiction; The King and the Queen by Ramón J. Sender; Crotchets in the Air, or an (Un)Scientific Account of a Balloon Trip by John Poole; The Ride to Khiva by F. C. Burnand

Mike Blake: Alias Basil Willing by Helen McCloy

Les Blatt: Halfway House by "Ellery Queen" (Frederic Dannay and Manfred B. Lee); 4:50 from Paddington (aka What Mrs. McGillicuddy Saw) by Agatha Christie; A Maigret Christmas and Other Stories by Georges Simenon (translated by David Coward); Unusual Suspects: Selected Non-Fiction by Joseph Goodrich; Some Die Eloquent by Catherine Aird; The Lake District Murder by "John Bude" (Ernest Elmore)

Joachim Boaz: Of All Possible Worlds by "William Tenn" (Philip Klass); 2020 Best Vintage Reads in sf novels, short stories and related matter; Infinity One edited by Robert Hoskins

John Boston: The Year's Best SF: Tenth Annual Edition edited by Judith Merril; Amazing Stories, February 1966, edited by Joseph "Ross" (Wrzos) and Sol Cohen

Ben Boulden: Double Feature (fka Enough) by Donald Westlake

Brian Busby: A Gift to Last by Gordon Pinsent and Grahame Woods; The Bells of St. Stephen's by Marian Keith

Susanna Calkins: Canary by Duane Swierczynski

Steve Carper: Diane and Leo Dillon, and Leo Dillon's solo illustration

Doug Cohen: Realms of Fantasy, February 1997, edited by Shawna McCarthy

Bill Crider: Don't Ever Love Me by Octavus Roy Cohen

Liz Dexter: If Morning Ever Comes and The Tin Can Tree by Anne Tyler

Scott Edelman: Alison Wilgus

Martin Edwards: The Plague Court Murders by "Carter Dickson" (John Dickson Carr); "John Le Carré", RIP; Whistle Up the Devil by Derek Smith; Stephen Levinson and Katherine Whitrhorn, RIP; Murder at the Pageant by Victor Whitechurch

Peter Enfantino and Jack Seabrook: Warren horror comics, March/April 1974; Batman comics: July 1981; Warren horror comics and The Spirit, April 1974

Barry Ergang: The Clock Strikes Thirteen by Herbert Brean; 

Will Errickson: The Kitty Telefair gothic novels by Florence Stevenson; Guy N. Smith, RIP; Manstopper by "Douglas Borton" (Michael Prescott); Platforms by John R. Maxim

José Ignacio Escribano: Death from a Top Hat by Clayton Rawson; The Judas Window by "Carter Dickson" (John Dickson Carter); Nine Times Nine by "Anthony Boucher" (William White); The Chinese Orange Mystery by "Ellery Queen" (Frederic Dannay and Manfred B. Lee); Locked Doors; The Buckled Bag; and Miss Pinkerton (aka The Double Alibi) by Mary Roberts Rinehart 

Curtis Evans: Run to Death by "Patrick Quentin" (Richard Webb and Hugh Wheeler); A Guilty Thing Surprised by Ruth Rendell; Puzzle for Fiends by "Patrick Quentin"; The James Joyce Murder by "Amanda Cross" (Carolyn Gold Heilbrun)

Barry Gardner: From Potter's Field by Patricia Cornwell

Doug Greene: A Killing in Xanadu by Bill Pronzini; The Mystery of Lovers' Cave by Anthony Berkeley (Cox)

"Olman Feelyus": Le Chat du Rabbin by Joann Sfar; The Two-Headed Serpent by Paul Fricker, Scott Dorward and Matthew Sanderson

Paul Fraser: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, February 1972, edited by Edward L. Ferman; "Coming of Age in Karhide" by Ursula K. Le Guin (first in New Legends edited by Great Bear and M. H. Greenberg, 1995); "The Secret Place" by Richard McKenna (from Orbit 1, edited by Damon Knight); Year's Best SF (1986) edited by David Hartwell

Cullen Gallagher: If the Coffin Fits and The Case of the Bearded Bride: Day Keene in the Detective Pulps, Volume 4 (edited by David Laurence Wilson) by "Day Keene" (Gunnard Hjertstedt)

Barry Gardner: From Potter's Field by Patricia Cornwell

Dana Gould: Anne Serling (daugher of Rod Serling, niece of Robert Serling)

Doug Greene: A Killing in Xanadu by Bill Pronzini; The Mystery at Lover's Cave by Anthony Berkeley (Cox)

Aubrey Hamilton: Skeleton Key by Lenore Glen Offord; Murder in Melbourne by Dulcie Gray (Dulcie Denison); Juror Number Eleven by "Terry Devane" (Jeremiah Healey); The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware; Left-Handed Death by Richard Hull; Statute of Limitation by Steven Havill; There is a Reason for Everything by E. R. Punshon

Bev Hankins: Sidney Chambers and the Shadow of Death by James Runcie; Crimson Snow edited by Martin Edwards; The Floating Admiral by the Detection Club: Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, G. K. Chesterton; Victor L. Whitechurch; Margeret and G. D. H. Cole; Henry Wade, "John Rhode", Milward Kennedy, Ronald A. Knox, Freeman Wills Crofts, Edgar Jepson, Clemence Dane, and "Anthony Berkeley"; Why Maidens Mourn by C. S. Harris; Death and the Dutch Uncle by Patricia Moyes; Mr. President, Private Eye edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Francis M. Nevins, Jr.; Dead as a Dodo by Jane Langton; Hallowed Murder by Ellen Hart; Raffles by E. W. Hornung

Rich Horton: James Sallis stories; Territory by Emma Bull; How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe by Charles Yu; The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford; Cheerful Weather for the Wedding and An Integrated Man by Julia Strachey; Allen Steele stories; Kitty Norville novels by Carrie Vaughn; Three stories by "Idris Seabright" (Margaret St. Clair): "An Egg a Month from All Over", The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, October 1952, edited by "Anthony Boucher" (William White) and J. Francis McComas; "The Man Who Sold Rope to the Gnolls", F&SF, October 1951, as above; "Short in the Chest", Fantastic Universe, July 1954, edited by Leo Margulies; "The Star Pit" by Samuel Delany, Worlds of Tomorrow, edited by Frederik Pohl 

Paul Herman: Black Mask, October 1936, edited by Joseph T. Shaw

Jerry House: Ghostly Tales by Wilhelmina FitzClarence; Plague from Space (aka The Jupiter Legacy; revised as The Jupiter Plague) by Harry Harrison; "Old Lady Mary" by Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant (Blackwood's Christmas Annual, 1883, edited by William Blackwood); The Avenger: Justice Inc. by "Kenneth Robeson" (Paul Ernst) (The Avenger magazine, September 1939; Popular Library, 1972); "The Great Carbuncle" by Nathaniel Hawthorne (The Token and Atlantic Souvenir, 1837); Did She Fall? by Thorne Smith; "The Dance on the Beefsteak" by E. F. Benson, Temple Bar, September 1902, edited by Arthur Ransome; John W. Campbell, Jr. interviewed by Fred Lerner, The Printed Word, WKCR Radio, 1962; Death in a Top Hat by Clayton Rawson; "The Red Face of Feerish Ali" by John Francis Dwyer, Collier's, 9 March 1912, edited by Norman Hapgood; Queen Cleopatra by Talbot Mundy

Kate Jackson: The Anthony Boucher Chronicles: 1942-47 edited by Francis M. Nevin: review part one; part two; Straw Man by Doris Miles Disney; Reservation for Murder by June Wright; Golden Age Detective fiction and its legacy; The Red Right Hand by Joel Townsley Rogers; She Wouldn't Say No by Delano Ames; Death at Broadcasting House by Val Gielgud and Holt Marvell; New-t0-me writers first read in 2020; The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie; The Perfect Alibi by Christopher St John Sprigg; 5 Sprigg mysteries ranked

Randy Johnson: Black is the Color by John Brunner    

Tracy K: Black Robe by Brian Moore; "The Cross of Lorraine" by Isaac Asimov, Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, May 1976, edited by "Ellery Queen" (Frederic Dannay); stories from Home Schooling by Carol Windley; The Hollow by Agatha Christie; Do Not Murder Before Christmas by "Jack" Iams (Samuel Iams); "The Carol Singers" by "Josephine Bell" (Doris Bell Ball), The Illustrated London News, Christmas 1963, edited by Hugh Ingram; Murder for Christmas by Francis Duncan

Colman Keane: Blood Moon by Ed Gorman; XXX Shamus by "Red Hammond" (Anthony Neil Smith); Castle in the Air by Donald E. Westlake; Exiles: An Outsider Anthology edited by Paul Brazill; The Nudger Dilemmas by John Lutz

Joe Kenney: Valley of the Assassins by "Ian McAllister" (Marvin Albert): Dagger #1: The Centaur Conspiracy by "Carl Stevens" (Raymond Obstfeld); Trips by Ellen Sander; The Adjusters #4: The Glass Cipher by "Peter Winston" (?Jim Bowser)

George Kelley: Stiff News by Catherine Aird; (The) Star King by Jack Vance; Born of the Sun edited by Mike Ashley; Murder By Experts by "Anthony Gilbert" (Lucy Malleson); The Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction (1st Series, by default) edited by Anthony Boucher and J. Francis McComas; Wizards edited by Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois; Surface to Air by Gerard Villiers

Rob Kitchen: Empires of the Sky by Alexander Rose; City of Jackals by Parker Bilal; 2020 reads

Kate Laity: Ride the Pink Horse by Dorothy B. Hughes; Curious Toys by Elizabeth Hand; Conviction by Denise Mina

B.V. Lawson: Mystery on the Queen Mary by "Bruce Graeme" (Graham Montague Jeffries); I Start Counting by Audrey Erskine Lindop; The House at Balnesmoor (aka A Few Small Bones) by Hugh C. Rae

Xavier Lechard: the continuing divide between English- and French-language mysteries; 10 best of 2020

Des/D. F. Lewis: Report from the Interior by Paul Auster

Evan Lewis: It Rhymes with Lust by Drake Waller, Matt Baker, and Ray Osrin (a chapter a day--post series at this link in parentheses); "The Pit and the Pendulum" slightly adapted from the short story by Edgar Allan Poe and illustrated by Everett Raymond Kinstler, Nightmare comics (Ziff-Davis),  Fall 1952

Steve Lewis: Adventures in Time and Space (aka Famous Science Fiction) edited by Raymond J. Healy and J. Francis McComas (part 1); (part 2); (part 3); (part 4); "Death of the Flute" by Arthur J. Burks (All Detective Magazine, April 1933, edited by Carson Mowre); The Fourth Side of the Triangle by "Ellery Queen" (in this case, Avram Davidson, working from an outline by Frederic Dannay); "Summa Mathematica" by Sean Doolittle (from Crime Spree, edited by Sandy de Luca, 2001); "The Charity Case" by Robert Lopresti, Black Cat Mystery Magazine, November 2020, edited by Carla Coupe and John Gregory Betancourt; Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, December 1966, edited by "Ellery Queen" (Frederic Dannay); The Death at Yew Corner by Richard Forrest; The Lady Killers by Alan Riefe; SF Yearbook 1967, edited by Helen Tono; "Slated to Die" by Erle Stanley Gardner, Argosy, 11 January 1936, edited by Frederick Clayton?; Crimes Past by "Mary Challis" (Lana Hutton Bowen-Judd, aka "Sara Woods"); "The Opposite Number" by Jacob Hay, Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, December 1966, edited by "Ellery Queen" (Frederic Dannay)

Library of America: "Positive Obsession" by Octavia Butler, Essence, May 1989, edited by Susan L. Taylor; "The Last Passenger Pigeon" by (Ms.) Gene Stratton-Porter, Good Housekeeping, August 1924, edited by William Bigelow; "A Date with Conrad Green" by Ring Lardner (Sr.), Liberty, 3 October 1925, edited by John Neville Wheeler

Leslie Klinger and Lisa Morton: "The Old Nurse's Story" by Elisabeth Gaskell, Household Words, Christmas 1852, edited by Charles Dickens

Barry N. Malzberg: The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie; New American Review/American Review, edited by Theodore Solotaroff

Gideon Marcus: Paingod and Other Delusions by Harlan Ellison

Todd Mason: Orbit 3 edited by Damon Knight; New American Review #3 edited by Theodore Solotaroff;  Rod Serling's Night Gallery Reader edited by Carol Serling, M. H. Greenberg and Charles Waugh

Neeru: A Clubbable Woman by Reginald Hill; A Gathering of Friends by Ruskin Bond; The Man Who Could Not Shudder by John Dickson Carr

Steven Nester: The Big Clock by Kenneth Fearing;  Crisscross by Harmon Henkin

Jess Nevins: cyberpunk and proto-cyberpunk; cyberpunk MA thesis bibliography

Juri Nummelin: The Boss's Daughter by Mark Clements; Racket Babe by Ken Kane (covers possibly NSFW, etc.)

Matt Paust: "The Gun" by Ed Gorman, from Confederacy of the Dead edited by Richard Gilliam, Martin H. Greenberg and Edward Kramer (1990); "You Must Remember This" by Robert Coover, Playboy, January 1985, fiction editor Alice Turner/edited by Hugh Hefner; Shakespeare's Dark Lady by John Hudson; Secret Warriors, Psychic Spies by Roger Mannon

James Reasoner: Strange Stories, December 1940, edited by Mort Weisinger; Giant Western, April 1952, edited by ?; So Fair, So Evil by "Paul Connolly" (Tom Wicker); Code of Vengeance by Ennis Willie; The Manhunt Companion by Jeff Vorzimmer and Peter Enfantino; Shootout at Sioux Wells by Cliff Farrell;  North Fork to Hell by Dan Cushman; War Dog, written by Alan Hebden, illustrated by Cam Kennedy and Mike Western; serialized in Battle Action, 1879-80; Seven Footprints to Satan by A. Merritt

L. J. Roberts: The Greenway by Jane Adams

Gerard Saylor:  The White Mountains by "John Christopher" (Christopher Youd)

Jack Seabrook: "The $2,000,ooo Defense" by Harold Q. Masur, Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, May 1958, edited by "Ellery Queen" (Frederic Dannay); "Safety for the Witness" by John De Meyer, The Saint Detective Magazine, March 1955, edited by Hans Stefan Santesson

Andi Schechter: No Human Involved by Barbara Saranella

Victoria Silverwolf: Fantastic Stories, January 1966, edited by Joseph "Ross" (Wrzos) and Sol Cohen; Worlds of Tomorrow, March 1966, edited by Frederik Pohl

Dan Stumpf: My Own Murderer by Richard Hull

G. W. Thomas: Horror and Crime Fiction writers in Mike Shayne's Mystery Magazine, for the most part as edited by Charles Fritch

Kevin Tipple: El Camino del Rio by Jim Sanderson; The Adventures of Quinn Higgins, Boy Detective: The Quest for the Lost U-Boat by Douglas Quinn; The Troubleshooter by Austin S. Camacho

David Vineyard: Isle of the Snakes by Robert L. Fish

SSW: "Feast for Small Pieces" by Hailey Piper

 "Feast for Small Pieces" is a fantasy that is this close to being a straightforward conte cruel, a story as well as a purgative. A woman finds herself the object of the "affections" of a variety of horrible men, and she finds a use for them...in helping to heal the women (and girls) around her.  Published in June 2019 in Sandra Ruttan's online The Bronzeville Bee (alas, folded), it is the lead story in the 2020 volume of The Year's Best Hardcore Horror, edited by Randy Chandler and Cheryl Mullenax. 

Yes, I'm dipping back into annuals of recent vintage again---I'm feeling too far out of touch. 

The Piper story involves a woman who seems, even more than most, to inspire a certain kind of mopey predation in certain kinds of men, who, as noted in the story, when writers or other sorts of artists, choose to see or at least metaphorize her as the Belle Dame Sans Merci or the Vampiress etc., when for the most part she's simply the woman trying to get through her day, buying groceries or riding the subway (the story was sparked by a particularly striking example of a man who refused to take no, thanks for an answer from a woman he was trying to pick up on the train, as observed by Piper). However, our protagonist has a certain use for such men, when they become particularly obstreperous. 

George Kelley has selected "Houston, Houston, Do You Read?" by "James Tiptree, Jr." (Alice Sheldon) as his choice of short story this week, and that story has a certain kinship with this one, except that this one doesn't quite imply all men are predators...and the Sheldon kind of does. (There is too much evidence, of course, that entirely too many men, at very least, can be and are; and Sheldon more than Piper lived through the times when entirely too often this was widely considered more a feature than a deadly virus.) Piper's protagonist isn't quite gentle with her conquests, but perhaps a bit more nuanced in how she deals with them than were the women in Sheldon's future, as can befit a story that has the Sheldon as a previous model. Among many others. 

As far as I know, in English anyway, this is the youngest of four annuals digging explicitly into horror that are still producing new volumes, with Ellen Datlow, Stephen Jones and Paula Guran editing the other three (though publisher changes have driven some beginning-again with numbering for Datlow and Guran). 

For more of today's stories, please see Patti Abbott's blog.

FFB/SSW: THE SEVENTH GALAXY READER edited by Frederik Pohl (Doubleday 1964); THE BEST FROM FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION, 14th Series, edited by Avram Davidson (Doubleday 1965); SWORD & SORCERY ANNUAL edited by Sol Cohen (and Cele Goldsmith Lalli) (Ultimate Publications 1975); PERCHANCE TO WAKE: YET MORE SELECTED STORIES FROM SCIENCE FANTASY edited by John Boston and Damien Broderick (Surinam Turtle Press 2016)

the final cover painting by Hannes Bok

Lee Brown Coye

Agosta Morol

The Shock of the New...

Fantasy and sf in the fiction magazines devoted to them trended ever more sophisticated from their introduction in the US and UK in the 1920s and '30s, and in other English-language countries (though most other Anglophone countries usually featured simply local editions of the US or UK magazines), till by the 1950s the good ones averaged on par with the run of more sophisticated 

Virgil Finlay

commercial and little magazines. Hugo Gernsback reprinted the likes of H. G. Wells, Jules Verne and Edgar Allan Poe in his early issues of his pioneering (in 1926) Amazing Stories, which was otherwise largely built, at first, on a tradition of notional technology anecdotes in his early electronics magazines.  (But Gernsback was also happy to feature an Edgar Rice Burroughs "John Carter of Mars" story for the only 
issue of his Amazing Stories Annual). F. Orlin Tremaine innovated as successor to Harry Bates and the latter's Astounding Stories of Super Science; John W. Campbell Jr. refined and continued those advances away from standard pulp adventure, and had the title changed from Tremaine's Astounding Stories to Astounding Science-Fiction, and then eventually to Analog (which it remains today);  Sam Merwin, Jr. likewise in the latter '40s  into the '50s improved on the efforts of his predecessors (at Thrilling Wonder Stories and Startling Stories, the latter-day versions of Gernsback's second set of sf magazines), Dorothy McIlwraith's Weird Tales (where she widened that magazine's remit beyond the kind of neo-gothic horror and purple overstatement that her predecessors favored, even as impressive as Farnsworth Wright's best editorial work had been), and even the young Frederik Pohl, at his promising magazines Astonishing Stories and Super-Science Stories, demonstrating their initially 19-year-old editor's  quick learning curve but also his openness to  the larger literary world, and as the most financially sound and widely-read of the magazines edited by the young lions of the Futurian Society of New York, a fan/ aspiring pro group of writers, editors, artists, agents and more who included a large number of the most notable conscious artists in fantastic fiction, albeit all still very young in the 1930s and '40s. Judith Merril, freelancing anthologies and establishing the second, and often controversial, sf and fantasy best-of-the-year annual, Donald Wollheim, at Avon Books, then Ace Books, then DAW Books, Robert Lowndes, at Columbia Publications and other low-budget publishers, and Larry Shaw in magazines and at Lancer Books, were among the other most prominent editors among the Futurians.

And so, as the new magazines of the 1950s entered the scene, including the four magazines represented in this review essay, the bend toward increasing literary excellence and ambition was already established ...the best of the new magazines, and the best work in the field published in the 1950s, was able to match the standards of fiction published in any other forum on a consistent basis, even given there was still a fair amount of relatively trivial and weak fiction also made available, as in every other field of fiction as well. By the early/mid '60s, the groundwork laid by the increasing urbanity and prose facility of fiction published in magazines such as Galaxy, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Fantastic: Stories of Imagination, and Science Fantasy had been building steadily on the good work of and in the previous issues of the same magazines, and not a few other allied periodical titles and anthologies of new work, and book publishers open to novels of ambition, at least fitfully... was resulting in some of what is collected in the books, and one special retrospective magazine issue, we consider here.

The four editors, or the three editors and a small cluster of editors at Science Fantasy in the early/mid-'60s the fiction collected here springs from, were doing, under some stressful limitations and not always fully successfully, some of the most important editorial work in fantastic fiction of their time. Frederik Pohl, officially the editor of Galaxy and its recently-acquired sibling If from 1962, had been responsible for an increasing amount of the editorial work behind the scenes since the late '50s, as Pohl's literary agency and Galaxy founding editor H. L. Gold were both facing extreme difficulty. Pohl had been a key supporter of Gold, as agent and as a contributor of fiction, from the magazine's founding in 1950, and was unsurprisingly tapped to serve.  Galaxy and If under his initial official editorship faced tough times; one strategy he took to help the magazines weather slowing sales was to buy a certain amount of acceptable-to-good fiction at a new low rate of payment for stories, 1c/word, then immediately afterward begin editing more selectively, seeking better work at Galaxy's initial 1950 rate of three cents per word...and mix the better work in with the readable till reader support could be, he hoped, regained.

At The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, or F&SF, increasingly frequent contributor Avram Davidson was asked in 1962 to become its fourth editor, and third solo editor, the first in that position to not have been either a co-founder or an old hand around the magazine. Davidson as editor was often seen as willing to explore eccentricity even more than had predecessors Robert P. Mills and founding editors "Anthony Boucher" and J. Francis McComas, but he managed to publish a considerable amount of pathbreaking fiction; he remains my favorite of the editors of the magazine, in a very impressive field. 

Similarly, Cele Goldsmith (later married and signing herself Cele Lalli, and later yet Cele Goldsmith Lalli) had joined the magazine staff at Ziff-Davis in the mid '50s with the primary task of editing a short-lived magazine called Pen Pals which was devoted to just that, facilitating new mail correspondents. She was also tasked with assisting the ever-more nonchalant fiction magazine editor on staff, Howard Browne, who had been founding editor of Fantastic, but whom increasingly spent his on-the-clock time at the offices writing his own fiction for publication elsewhere. Goldsmith didn't know very much about fantasy or sf as fields, but was the conscientious presence on the staff, as Browne was succeeded by an old writing colleague of his, and founding editor of  If, Paul W. Fairman, if anything even more oblivious to the quality of the magazine he was barely editing. Goldsmith would comb through the "slush pile" of unsolicited manuscripts, and found as a result, among other work, what would be Kate Wilhelm's first published story, which Fairman disinterestedly published along with the fiction he bought unread from his five "regulars": Robert Silverberg, Harlan Ellison, Milton Lesser (before he legally changed his name to Stephen Marlowe), Randall Garrett and Henry Slesar, a very talented quintet who were not usually offering their best work to an editor who wanted manuscripts on-time and unproblematic much more than he wanted them good. Others, including Fairman himself, would also contribute, particularly for some special issues devoted to wish-fulfillment fantasy that led up to a short-lived spinoff magazine called Dream World. Goldsmith learned a lot about what to do and more of what not to.

All of these items have been packaged on the cheap--standard practice at Doubleday in the '60s when not dealing with their "lead titles", and Ultimate and Surinam Turtle Press were and are all but one-person shops, Ultimate a retirement job for publisher Sol Cohen and STP kind of an avocational project of Richard Lupoff's.

The Seventh Galaxy Reader ed. Frederik Pohl (Doubleday, 1964, $3.95, 247pp, hc) Cover: Roger Zimmerman

Introduction · Frederik Pohl · in

For Love · Algis Budrys · nv Galaxy Jun 1962

Come Into My Cellar · Ray Bradbury · ss Galaxy Oct 1962

The Tail-Tied Kings · Avram Davidson · ss Galaxy Apr 1962

Crime Machine · Robert Bloch · ss Galaxy Oct 1961

Return Engagement · Lester del Rey · ss Galaxy Aug 1961

Earthmen Bearing Gifts · Fredric Brown · vi Galaxy Jun 1960

Rainbird · R. A. Lafferty · ss Galaxy Dec 1961

Three Portraits and a Prayer · Frederik Pohl · ss Galaxy Aug 1962

Something Bright · Zenna Henderson · ss Galaxy Feb 1960

On the Gem Planet [Casher O’Neill] · Cordwainer Smith · nv Galaxy Oct 1963

The Deep Down Dragon · Judith Merril · ss Galaxy Aug 1961

The King of the City · Keith Laumer · nv Galaxy Aug 1961

The Beat Cluster · Fritz Leiber · ss Galaxy Oct 1961

An Old-Fashioned Bird Christmas · Margaret St. Clair · nv Galaxy Dec 1961
The Big Pat Boom · Damon Knight · ss Galaxy Dec 1963

The Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction: 14 ed. Avram Davidson (Doubleday, 1965, hc; 251pp, $4.50) Cover: Tom Chibbaro

• Introduction · Avram Davidson · in
• Sacheverell · Avram Davidson · ss F&SF Mar 1964
• Trade-In · Jack Sharkey · ss F&SF Jun 1964
• The Illuminated Man · J. G. Ballard · nv F&SF May 1964
• A Bulletin from the Trustees of the Institute for Advanced Research at Marmouth, Mass. · Wilma Shore · ss F&SF Aug 1964
• Automatic Tiger · Kit Reed · ss F&SF Mar 1964
• The Court of Tartary · T. P. Caravan · ss F&SF Dec 1963
• Touchstone · Terry Carr · ss F&SF May 1964
• Thaw and Serve · Allen Kim Lang · ss F&SF Jan 1964
• Nada · Thomas M. Disch · ss F&SF Aug 1964
• Into the Shop · Ron Goulart · ss F&SF Apr 1964
• A Rose for Ecclesiastes · Roger Zelazny · nv F&SF Nov 1963
• Olsen and the Gull · Eric St. Clair · ss F&SF Sep 1964
• Dark Conception · Louis J. A. Adams · ss F&SF Nov 1964
• The Compleat Consumators · Alan E. Nourse · ss F&SF Apr 1964
• The House by the Crab Apple Tree · S. S. Johnson · nv F&SF Feb 1964
• The Girl with the Hundred Proof Eyes · Ron Webb · ss F&SF Jul 1964
• Fred One · James Ransom · ss F&SF Apr 1964

Sword & Sorcery Annual [1975] ed. Sol Cohen (75¢, 132pp, digest, cover by Steve Fabian)

• 4 · Queen of the Black Coast [Conan] · Robert E. Howard & L. Sprague de Camp · nv The Coming of Conan, Gnome 1953; lightly edited by de Camp from the story of the same name (Weird Tales May 1934).
• 24 · L. Sprague de Camp: Sword and Satire · Sam Moskowitz · bg Amazing Stories Feb 1964
• 34 · The Pillars of Chambalor [Brak] · John Jakes · ss Fantastic Mar 1965
• 50 · Master of Chaos [Earl Aubec] · Michael Moorcock · ss Fantastic May 1964
• 64 · The Mirror of Cagliostro · Robert Arthur · nv Fantastic Jun 1963; adapted from Arthur’s TV script “The Prisoner in the Mirror” broadcast on Thriller 5/23/61.
• 94 · The Cloud of Hate [Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser] · Fritz Leiber · ss Fantastic May 1963
• 107 · The Masters · Ursula K. Le Guin · ss Fantastic Feb 1963
• 127 · Horseman! · Roger Zelazny · vi Fantastic Aug 1962 

• Perchance to Wake: Yet More Selected Stories from Science Fantasy
• Editors: Damien Broderick, John Boston 
• Date: 2016-01-19 ISBN: 978-1-60543-874-0 [1-60543-874-X]
• Publisher: Surinam Turtle Press; Price: $20.00; Pages: 259 Cover design by Fender Tucker

• 11 • Introduction (Perchance to Wake) • essay by Damien Broderick
• 17 • Bring Back a Life • (March 1965) • novelette by John T. Phillifent [as by John Rackham]
• 39 • Vashti • (May 1965) • novella by Thomas Burnett Swann
• 75 • The Wall • (November 1965) • short story by Josephine Saxton
• 83 • Beyond Time's Aegis • (November 1965) • novelette by Brian Stableford and Craig A. Mackintosh [as by Brian Stableford and Craig Mackintosh]
• 113 • The Circulation of the Blood • (March 1966) • novelette by Brian W. Aldiss [as by Brian Aldiss] [appeared a few months earlier in an anthology, Window on the Future, edited by Douglas Hill]
• 143 • You and Me and the Continuum • (March 1966) • short story by J. G. Ballard
• 153 • The Run • (May 1966) • short story by Christopher Priest
• 163 • Corfe Gate • [Pavane] • (July 1966) • novelette by Keith Roberts
• 219 • Stop Seventeen • (November 1966) • short fiction by Robert Wells
• 229 • Mantis • (January 1967) • short fiction by Chris Boyce

--More to come...

For more of today's Short Story Wednesday entries, please see Patti Abbott's blog...

SHORT STORY WEDNESDAY: HANGING BY A THREAD edited by Joan Kahn (Houghton Mifflin 1969)

• Editor: Joan Kahn
• Date: 1969
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
• Price: $7.95
• Pages: xx+604
• Format: 
  hc
• Type: ANTHOLOGY

index from ISFDB, slightly augmented

• ix • Foreword (Hanging by a Thread) • poem by Ogden Nash
• xv • Introduction (Hanging by a Thread) • essay by Eudora Welty
• 1 • The Scorched Face • (1925) • novelette by Dashiell Hammett
• 37 • The Murder of Arnold Rothstein • (1932) • essay by Russel Crouse
• 51 • The Splintered Monday • (1966) • short story by Charlotte Armstrong
• 69 • The Mysterious Occurrence at Lambeth • (1855) • novelette by G. P. R. James
• 93 • The Guest • (1952) • short story by Albert Camus (translated by Justin O'Brien)
• 107 • The Sandyford Mystery • (1935) • essay by William Roughead
• 142 • The Grandstand Complex • (1935) • short story by Horace McCoy
• 153 • The Other Place • (1952) • short story by Robert Borger
• 158 • The Blue Hotel • (1898) • novella by Stephen Crane
• 187 • "Other Than a Good One" • (1947) • essay by Joseph Henry Jackson
• 217 • The Hashish Man • (1910) • short story by Lord Dunsany
• 222 • The True Story • (1939) • short story by Dylan Thomas
• 226 • The Manhattan Well Murder • (1872) • essay by E. S. Gould
• 238 • The Way Up to Heaven • (1954) • short story by Roald Dahl
• 251 • The Haunted and the Haunters • (1919) • novelette by Edward Bulwer-Lytton (variant of The Haunted and the Haunters; or, The House and the Brain 1859)
• 287 • Escape from the Bastille • (1850) • essay by Jean Henry Latude
• 295 • Miss Holland's Elopement • (1936) • essay by Edmund Pearson
• 306 • The Peasant Girl • (1956) • short story by Algis Budrys
• 327 • A Strange Murderer • (1923) • short story by 
  Максим Горький^?
   [as by Maxim Gorky]
• 335 • Lost Hearts • (1895) • short story by M. R. James
• 345 • A Marriage Tragedy • (1858) • novella by Wilkie Collins
• 402 • The Sea Raiders • (1896) • short story by H. G. Wells (variant of The Sea-Raiders)
• 413 • The Waste Land • (1961) • short story by Alan Paton
• 417 • The Death of Agrippina, The Mother of Nero • (1860) • essay by Tacitus (as translated by George Long)
• 423 • Beheaded in Error • (1965) • short story by unknown; translated from the Ching-pen t'ung-hsu hsaio-shuo by Gene Z. Hanrahan
• 437 • A Manner of Legacy • (1933) • short story by Donn Byrne
• 450 • A Sort of Genius • (1937) • essay by James Thurber
• 464 • Funny the Way Things Work Out • (1963) • short story by John D. MacDonald
• 476 • Captain John Porteous • (1824) • essay by uncredited
• 484 • The End • (1962) • short story by Jorge Luis Borges (translation of El fin 1953;  translated by Anthony Kerrigan)
• 488 • Operation Enticement • (1952) • novelette by Henry Cecil
• 518 • To the South Sea Islands • (1950) • essay by Thor Heyerdahl
• 532 • Cambric Tea • (1925) • short story by Marjorie Bowen
• 552 • A Ghost of a Head • (1852) • short story by Charles Rabou (trans. of Le ministère public 1832) [as by Anonymous]
• 563 • A Winter's Tale • (1949) • novelette by Helen Eustis
• 588 • The Murder at the Towers • (1929) • short story by Evoe (Edmund George Valpy Knox) [as by E. V. Knox]
• 596 • Biographical Notes (Hanging by a Thread) • essay by Mary McGinn

Even at this late date, it's difficult to label the anthologies of Joan Kahn as obscure, given her importance throughout her career as an editor of crime fiction, most famously at Harper and Row, and not trivially at the end of her career at St. Martins. But it might well be that the significance of her career as a novel and otherwise publisher's editor has tended to overshadow her double-handful of anthologies aimed at adult and YA readers, as good and eclectic as they could be--she was one of the few who regularly mixed in not only historical fiction and classics of formerly contemporary mimetic and adventure fiction with the more straightforward crime and horror fiction in her suspense-oriented anthologies, but would also include true-crime and some other historical accounts...not too many other anthologists of her day would include Tacitus in translation cheek by jowl with Helen Eustis and John D. MacDonald. Nor any of these mixed in with an excerpt from Thor Heyerdahl and Kon-Tiki. In some ways, what we have here is a very fat, well-bound magazine issue, sans ads or illustration. 

I liked, thus, the Kahn anthologies I read when in my second decade, but not as much as I loved somewhat similarly eclectic (but usually fiction-only, aside from introductions, afterwords, notes on the texts and contributors) anthologies from the likes of Robert Arthur or Harold Q. Masur (often ghosting their work for Alfred Hitchcock-branding), Bill Pronzini, Barry Malzberg, the early years of Martin H. Greenberg, and such prolific editors of anthologies mostly for young readers as Helen Hoke, Betty M. Owen, Seon Manley and Gogo Lewis, and the energetic (and relatively uneven, perhaps as a result) editor for adults and younger readers Peter Haining and, also published in the US by Taplinger ahead of other imprints, the less prolific and perhaps thereby more consistent Hugh Lamb...but there were always reasons to be glad one had a Kahn anthology in one's hands or at least on a convenient shelf. 

And yet this one escaped me altogether in those years, despite my snapping up any anthology likely to contain actual horror fiction (as opposed to all those annoying, ill-written John Canning and similar "true weird tales" volumes of tripe...as enjoyable an early, sleazy read as Emile Schurmacher's Strange Unsolved Mysteries was). It's just arrived today, and in it is only the second short story I've managed to stumble across from Henry Cecil [Leon, his apparent full legal name, used in his primary career as a judge]...after reading his "Proof" when I was 8yo in Kathleen Lines's The House of the Nightmare and Other Eerie Tales (itself including a slightly annoying short set of "true" supernatural tales among its pages, but forgiven)...if I like this crime story, as I take it to be, nearly as much as the matter-of-fact horror story that is "Proof", I shall be forced to finally make a serious effort to find his own books all these decades later. 

The familiar stories here, such excellences and happy memories as Jorge Luis Borges's "El fin"/"The End", James Thurber's "A Sort of Genius", the Hammett and even the more endlessly reprinted than actually good Bulwer-Lytton (Lines titled her next YA horror anthology for it) are mixed in with the promise of Algis Budrys's early sf story, from Astounding Science Fiction during his years in John Campbell's stable and his first volume of short stories, The Unexpected Dimension (which I belatedly read half of before it went into a storage box for the changing of one apartment for another), the very dimly familiar Wells and Crane stories (skimmed? seen/heard adapted? had to return the library book before I got to them? did I simply miss, say, the Bowen or the McCoy in not seeking out their collections?) and all the others...

It's an odd telescopic trip through some of my earliest and latest reading. I'm glad to have it. 

Please see Patti Abbott's blog for more of this week's Short Story Wednesday items.