SF Anthologies – Page 2

SCIENCE FICTION OF THE THIRTIES edited by Damon Knight

TITLE: SCIENCE FICTION OF THE THIRTIES
EDITED BY: Damon Knight
CATEGORY: Short Fiction
SUB-CATEGORY: Anthology
PUBLISHER: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., Indianapolis/New York, 1975
FORMAT: Hardback, 1st Edition, 464 pages

CONTENTS:

Foreword by Damon Knight
\”Out Around Rigel\” by Robert H. Wilson (1931)
\”The Fifth-Dimension Catapult\” by Murray Leinster (1931)
\”Into the Meteorite Orbit\” by Frank K. Kelly (1933)
\”The Battery of Hate\” by John W. Campbell, Jr. (1933)
\”The Wall\” by Howard W. Graham, Ph.D. (1934)
\”The Lost Language\” by David H. Keller, M.D. (1934)
\”The Last Men\” by Frank Belknap Long, Jr. (1934)
\”The Other\” by Howard W. Graham, Ph.D. (1934)
\”The Mad Moon\” by Stanley G. Weinbaum (1935)
\”Davey Jones\’ Ambassador\” by Raymond Z. Gallun (1935)
\”Alas, All Thinking\” by Harry Bates (1935)
\”The Time Decelerator\” by A. Macfadyen, Jr. (1936)
\”The Council of Drones\” by W. K. Sonnemann (1936)
\”Seeker of Tomorrow\” by Eric Frank Russell and Leslie T. Johnson (1937)
\”Hyperpilosity\” by L. Sprague de Camp (1938)
\”Pithecanthropus Rejectus\” by Manly W. Wellman (1938)
\”The Merman\” by L. Sprague de Camp (1938)
\”The Day is Done\” by Lester del Rey (1939)

What SF Master Damon Knight has done for Science Fiction of the Thirties is to plough his way through hundreds of classic \”pulps\” from the 30\’s, mining them for a few of the forgotten gems from that era, and picking out the best of them for this anthology. He has reappraised the best of the tales from the 1930s SF magazines, with the added condition that his choices are stories which have rarely, some of them never, been published before in SF anthologies. And it\’s a real thrill to read these stories, particularly for a jaded old fan like me who thought he\’d read all the good old stuff worth reading.

Reading the short but fascinating Foreword to this anthology, we come to understand that Knight had been a life-long critic of the stories in the pulps, but had undergone a recent change of heart. Sturgeon\’s Law (\”Ninety Percent of Everything is Crud\”) applies to the pulps just as much as it does to everything else, and it is the ten percent of stories which are not crud which make it worth persevering, and wading through the crap, to find the diamonds in the rough. And these stories are all good \’uns. Damon Knight, former unrelenting critic of the \”pulps\”, is a hard taskmaster, and his standards are VERY high.

So, given that I\’ve read a LOT of vintage SF, how has he done? The good news is that I\’m totally unfamiliar with at least six of the authors in this anthology. The rest of them are names that I know, but the real surprise is that I have never read most of these stories before. I\’m familiar with only THREE out of the eighteen stories – Weinbaum\’s \”The Mad Moon\”, Campbell\’s \”The Battery of Hate\” and Bates\’ \”Alas, All Thinking\” (all of which I read many, many years ago) – which is a pretty amazing strike rate for Knight and the stories that he has chosen here. He has really come up with the goods, producing an anthology of stories that few SF readers will have seen before.

Most modern SF anthologies showcasing stories from \”the old days\” have long since started to reprint the same classic stories over and over again, so an avid SF fan would very likely have read most of them before. As good as many classic SF stories are, it becomes a bit tiring and disheartening to see them in every other anthology – \”The Cold Equations\” and \”It\’s a Good Life\” are two examples of classic SF stories that come to mind. I have these two in so many old anthologies that I could scream every time I see them in yet another. I love these stories to bits, but too much of a good thing, etc…

Which raises the question: if Damon Knight could find these forgotten gems, surely there are many, many more in those SF magazines, just waiting for some adventurous researcher and editor to find them? And now that Damon has sadly passed on from us, to that great everlasting Science Fiction Convention in the Sky, who is willing to step into his giant shoes and continue to unearth these hidden treasures of the past? Or do hardcore fans like me have to continue ponying up exorbitant amounts of money for the old SF magazines or rare, out-of-print anthologies from the dim and distant past, in order to unearth more forgotten SF gems?

SF editors need to start using a bit of imagination and initiative, as in \”Great story, but it\’s been published a zillion times before. How\’s about something that hasn\’t been published before?\”. I know that great editors of the past (and present) have produced many excellent anthologies of vintage SF. Editors like Groff Conklin, Terry Carr, Isaac Asimov, Martin H. Greenberg, Gardner Dozois, Brian W. Aldiss, Mike Ashley, and many others have produced some amazing anthologies over the years. But many of the classic editors/anthologists have now sadly passed on, and we have a dire need for newer editors to come forward and take up the gauntlet, to continue the great work that Damon Knight and the other great editors of the past have done to unearth the forgotten SF treasures of the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s and 1950s. Sure, I\’d be the first to say that we need new authors producing great new SF. But we should also never, EVER forget the old masters.

So what\’s my verdict of Science Fiction of the Thirties? Overall, I think this is an excellent anthology. Taking into account that these are NOT modern literary SF masterpieces, and that the stories are 1930s pulp SF tales, churned out at a few cents per word, it\’s amazing that ANY of them were any good. But some were real beauts. Even for as low grade a market as the \”pulps\”, many talented writers took extreme pride and joy in their work, and went way beyond the line of duty, producing something much more than the miserly word rates they were being paid could ever merit. Damon Knight has uncovered a few of those forgotten gems for us and put them together in this very nice anthology. For someone like myself, who is a huge fan of finding good old SF stories that I haven\’t read before, this type of book is just right up my alley.

I wish there were a few more volumes of anthologies containing similarly rare old SF magazine stories out there. Here\’s hoping that someone will continue on with the good work of finding classic stories from the \”pulps\” that we haven\’t read before. I, for one, will be eagerly watching out for more.

PLANETS OF WONDER edited by Terry Carr

TITLE: PLANETS OF WONDER – A TREASURY OF SPACE OPERA
EDITED BY: Terry Carr
CATEGORY: Short Fiction
SUB-CATEGORY: Anthology
PUBLISHER: Thomas Nelson Inc., Nashville, Tennessee, 1976
FORMAT: Hardback, 1st Edition, 189 pages, ISBN: 0-8407-6526-6

CONTENTS:

Introduction by Terry Carr
\”Dust of Gods\” by C. L. Moore (Weird Tales, August 1934)
\”We Guard the Black Planet!\” by Henry Kuttner (Super Science Stories, November 1942)
\”The Veil of Astellar\” by Leigh Brackett (Thrilling Wonder Stories, Spring 1944)
\”Kingdoms of the Stars\” by Edmond Hamilton (Amazing Stories, September 1964)

This is one of my favourite SF anthologies, edited by one of the best anthologists out there, Terry Carr. It\’s also a pretty short one, at only 189 pages, with only four stories, but what stories they are.

What we have here are four of the genuine Classic Space Opera adventures from days gone by, one from the 1930s, two from the 1940s and one from the 1960s. Even more importantly, all of these stories were authored by four of the greatest proponents of that sub-genre of SF, Henry Kuttner, C. L. Moore, Leigh Brackett and Edmond Hamilton. These two great husband and wife author teams of the Thirties and Forties, are among my favourite SF writers of that era, and I\’ll read pretty much anything written by the four of them. Kuttner, Moore and Brackett, in particular, are three of my favourite SF authors ever.

This is a gem of an anthology, with four great stories and an excellent introduction by Terry Car. I reckon that it\’s been out of print for many years, but it would be well worth tracking down in used book stores. I wish that far more old anthologies like this would again be made available in electronic format for the Kindle, Nook and various other eReader devices out there, For the enjoyment of newer generations of SF readers, who have never seen these old classics before.

Poor kids. They don\’t know what they\’re missing!

BEACHHEADS IN SPACE edited by August Derleth

TITLE: BEACHHEADS IN SPACE
EDITED BY: August Derleth
CATEGORY: Anthology
SUB-CATEGORY: Short Fiction
FORMAT: Hardback, 224 pages
PUBLISHER: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1954 (Originally published in the US in 1952 by Pellegrini & Cudahy).

That\’s the various general details, here\’s a listing of the contents:

\”Beachhead\” by Clifford D. Simak (1951)
\”The Years Draw Nigh\” by Lester del Rey (1951)
\”Metamorphosite\” by Eric Frank Russell (1946)
\”Breeds There a Man…?\” by Isaac Asimov (1951)
\”And the Walls Came Tumbling Down\” by John Wyndham (1951)
\”The Blinding Shadows\” by Donald Wandrei (1934)
\”The Metamorphosis of Earth\” by Clark Ashton Smith (1951)

This is an interesting old anthology, edited by another of my favourite SF anthologists, August Derleth. The theme of this anthology, according to the book\’s jacket blurb, is \”invasion from another world, or counter-attack from Earth against the planets\”.

I haven\’t read this one in many years, maybe twenty-five years or more, but I remember that it was a favourite of mine way back in the day, and it still has a special place on my bookshelves. Obviously my memories of the individual stories are vague after all this time, and I don\’t remember all of them clearly, and a couple of them not at all. But the ones that I do recall really liking are Clifford D. Simak\’s very clever short story \”Beachhead\” (AKA \”You\’ll Never Go Home Again!\”, first published in Fantastic Adventures, July 1951), Eric Frank Russell\’s excellent novella \”Metamorphosite\”, (from Astounding, December 1946), and Clark Ashton Smith\’s scary and unusual alien invasion SF/Horror novelette \”The Metamorphosis of Earth\” (Weird Tales, September 1951).

I also remember liking Lester del Rey\’s \”The Years Draw Nigh\” and Isaac Asimov\’s \”Breeds There a Man…?\”, although for some reason I remember a lot less about them than I do about the Russell, Simak and Smith stories. I don\’t recall anything at all about the Wyndham and Wandrei stories. I\’m surprised about not remembering the Wyndham story, as I\’m usually a big fan of his writing.

But as good as my recollections are of the Simak and Smith stories, the stand-out story for me in this anthology has always been Eric Frank Russell\’s classic \”Metamorphosite\”, which I recall having a huge impact on me back when I was a young guy in my twenties. I don\’t think this story is in any of my other anthologies (and I have zillions of the darned things!), so I reckon it hasn\’t been reprinted very often. It\’s far, far too many years since I last read it, and indeed this entire anthology, so it\’s long overdue for a re-read. I\’ve already started on the Simak story, and, so far, it\’s at least as good as I remember it, if not better. If the rest of the stories hold up as well as this one is doing, I\’m going to really enjoy reading this anthology again.

Please take note that this is the 1954 UK edition, which is different from the original 1952 US hardcover edition, published by Pellegrini & Cudahy. Apparently all editions aside from the original hardcover edition have been \”butchered\” in some way, missing stories, etc. This UK edition is missing the Introduction and seven of the stories from the US edition. Also note that John Wyndham has two stories in the original US edition, one under his usual John Wyndham pseudonym, and the other as John Benyon.

Here is the full Contents Listing of the original 1952 US edition:

Introduction by August Derleth
\”The Star\” by David H. Keller, M.D.
\”The Man from Outside\” by Jack Williamson
\”Beachhead\” by Clifford D. Simak
\”The Years Draw Nigh\” by Lester del Rey
\”Metamorphosite\” by Eric Frank Russell
\”The Ordeal of Professor Klein\” by L. Sprague de Camp
\”Repetition\” by A. E. van Vogt
\”Breeds There a Man…?\” by Isaac Asimov
\”Meteor\” by John Beynon
\”And the Walls Came Tumbling Down\” by John Wyndham
\”Blinding Shadows\” by Donald Wandrei
\”The Metamorphosis of Earth\” by Clark Ashton Smith
\”The Ambassadors from Venus\” by Kendell F. Crossen
\”To People a New World\” by Nelson S. Bond

For lovers of old-style, classic SF short fiction, this anthology would be right up their alley. If you can actually find it, that is. As it\’s such an old book, it\’s obviously long out of print, and you\’ll have to hunt through used book stores to find this anthology. But it\’ll be well worth the trouble it takes to find it, as are any other anthologies edited by August Derleth.

After all these years, I think I\’ll actually make a major effort to get off my butt and track down the longer original US hardcover edition, which I didn\’t even realize was different/longer until I recently read the Wikipedia entry on the anthology.

Highly recommended, particularly the original US hardcover edition.

ON OUR WAY TO THE FUTURE edited by Terry Carr

[W]e\’ve certainly got an interesting anthology here, an oldish one from 1970. It\’s also the first anthology posting (but definitely will not be the last) on this blog from another of my favourite SF anthologists, Terry Carr.

TITLE: ON OUR WAY TO THE FUTURE
EDITED BY: Terry Carr
CATEGORY: Short Fiction
SUB-CATEGORY: Anthology
PUBLISHER: Ace Books, New York, 1970
FORMAT: Paperback, 253 pages.

CONTENTS:

Introduction by Terry Carr
Greenslaves by Frank Herbert (1965)
A Better Mousehole by Edgar Pangborn (1965)
Ballenger\’s People by Kris Neville (1967)
King Solomon\’s Ring by Roger Zelazny (1963)
Sundance by Robert Silverberg (1969)
Be Merry by Algis Budrys (1966)
Under the Dragon\’s Tail by Philip Latham (1966)
A Taste for Dostoevsky by Brian W. Aldiss (1967)
Cyclops by Fritz Leiber (1965)
Goblin Night by James H. Schmitz (1965)

This anthology isn\’t restricted to a single theme, as were the two Robert Silverberg anthologies in my previous posts, and is more of a general multi-theme \”ten science fiction adventures in tomorrow\” kind of thing, charting our journey into infinity, our way into the future. There\’s a wider variety of stories here by big-name SF authors, stories which, up until the time of publication, had never appeared in paperback before.

As usual, I\’ll continue working my way through the stories in this, and the previous anthologies, completely at random, in a totally haphazard fashion, pretty much as the whim takes me and when I get free time to do so. I usually just lift a book, any book, from the \”to read\” stack, and read any story that takes my fancy. Next time, I might do the same, but with a completely different anthology, and so on.

I don\’t have any real system for reading, but usually pick my favourite authors first, then work my way down to least favourite (or authors I haven\’t encountered before), The main postings themselves are more for providing general overall information about the various anthologies and individual author collections, but will also be interspersed with posts on the individual stories as and when I have read them.

VOYAGERS IN TIME edited by Robert Silverberg

[I]n my last SF Anthologies post I commented that I\’d recently bought a couple of nice old SF anthologies from Amazon UK. I made a few comments about the newer of the two anthologies, TRIPS IN TIME and gave a contents listing for it. Here\’s the same routine for the second anthology, which was published ten years earlier, but can be considered a \”companion\” anthology, from a thematic viewpoint, since both books contain short stories about time travel. This one is VOYAGERS IN TIME, edited by Robert Silverberg.

TITLE: VOYAGERS IN TIME – Twelve Stories of Science Fiction
EDITED BY: Robert Silverberg
CATEGORY: Short Fiction
SUB-CATEGORY: Anthology
PUBLISHER: Meredith Press, New York, 1967
FORMAT: Hardcover, 243 pages.

This anthology is a collection of more traditional (but still fun) time travel stories than those in TRIPS IN TIME. The stories in this one span a thirty year period, the earliest originally published in 1937, and the last in 1967. Here\’s a listing of the contents:

The Sands of Time by P. Schuyler Miller (1937)
…And It Comes Out Here by Lester del Rey (1950)
Brooklyn Project by William Tenn (1948)
The Men Who Murdered Mohammed by Alfred Bester (1964)
Time Heals by Poul Anderson (1949)
Wrong-Way Street by Larry Niven (1965)
Flux by Michael Moorcock (1963)
Dominoes by C. M. Kornbluth (1953)
A Bulletin from the Trustees by Wilma Shore (1964)
Traveler\’s Rest by David I. Masson (1965)
Absolutely Inflexible by Robert Silverberg (1956, revised version 1967)
THE TIME MACHINE [Chapter XI, XII – part] by H. G. Wells (1895)

This looks like another very interesting anthology of short fiction. Silverbob certainly does know how to put together a good anthology of stories. Again, some of them I remember well (Wells, Bester, Tenn, and Moorcock), others I vaguely remember (Miller, del Rey, Anderson, Niven, Kornbluth and Silverberg), and the last two I\’m not familiar with at all (Shore, Masson).

As I\’ve already said, this is a kinda/sorta \”sister\” anthology to the later TRIPS IN TIME (1977), which is a more unusual and quirky collection of time travel tales. I\’ve already read several of the stories in TRIPS IN TIME, but now I\’ve started reading some of the stories in VOYAGERS IN TIME as well. I\’m dipping in and out of both books, and it will be nice to compare the two anthologies when I\’ve finished both of them.

As usual, I\’m working my way through the stories in both books slowly, as and when I get free time to do so, and not in any kind of order. I\’ll just pick stories at random, usually with favourite authors first and working my way to least favourite or least familiar. Once I\’ve finished I\’ll start posting comments on individual stories (with the exception of the excerpts from The Time Machine, as I\’ll be reviewing the novel at some point), and comments on the two anthologies as a whole.

VOYAGERS IN TIME edited by Robert Silverberg

In my last post I commented that I\’d recently bought a couple of nice old SF anthologies from Amazon UK. I made a few comments about one of the anthologies, TRIPS IN TIME and gave a contents listing for it. Here\’s the same routine for the other anthology, which was published ten years earlier, but can be considered a \”companion\” anthology, from a thematic viewpoint, since both books contain short stories about time travel. The second of the two anthologies is VOYAGERS IN TIME, edited by Robert Silverberg.

The Sands of Time by P. Schuyler Miller (1937)
…And It Comes Out Here by Lester del Rey (1950)
Brooklyn Project by William Tenn (1948)
The Men Who Murdered Mohammed by Alfred Bester (1964)
Time Heals by Poul Anderson (1949)
Wrong-Way Street by Larry Niven (1965)
Flux by Michael Moorcock (1963)
Dominoes by C. M. Kornbluth (1953)
A Bulletin from the Trustees by Wilma Shore (1964)
Traveler\’s Rest by David I. Masson (1965)
Absolutely Inflexible by Robert Silverberg (1956, revised version 1967)
THE TIME MACHINE [Chapter XI, XII – part] by H. G. Wells (1895)

TRIPS IN TIME edited by Robert Silverberg

[R]ecently I bought a couple of nice old SF anthologies from Amazon UK, both edited by Robert Silverberg. The first of the two is:

TITLE: TRIPS IN TIME – Nine Stories of Science Fiction
EDITED BY: Robert Silverberg
CATEGORY: Short Fiction
SUB-CATEGORY: Anthology
PUBLISHED: Wildside Press, 1977
FORMAT: Trade paperback, 152 pages.

The anthology is a collection of quirky time travel stories, which span a thirty-five year period, the earliest being originally published in 1941, and the last in 1976. Here\’s a listing of the contents:

An Infinite Summer by Christopher Priest (1976)
The King\’s Wishes by Robert Sheckley (1953)
Manna by Peter Phillips (1949)
The Long Remembering by Poul Anderson (1957)
Try and Change the Past by Fritz Leiber (1958)
Divine Madness by Roger Zelazny (1966)
Mugwump 4 by Robert Silverberg (1959)
Secret Rider by Marta Randall (1976)
The Seesaw by A. E. van Vogt (1941)

This looks like a very interesting anthology of short fiction. Some of these stories I remember well as old favourites (the Priest and Leiber), others I vaguely remember (Sheckley, Anderson, Zelazny, van Vogt, Silverberg), and the other two I\’m not familiar with at all (Phillips, Randall).

Apparently this is a kinda/sorta \”sister\” anthology to an earlier one, VOYAGERS IN TIME (1967), which is a more traditional/typical collection of time travel tales. That\’s the other paper book I mentioned, and I\’ll get to that anthology once I\’ve finished with this one. It will be nice to compare the two collections of short stories.

I\’m looking forward to working my way through TRIPS IN TIME (however slowly, and most likely not in order of the contents listing), and will make a short progress report in this discussion thread as I finish each story.