Essential Anthologies

[BAYLOR]

The Essential Ellison A 50 Year Retrospective This one is a must have.

 

[Extollager]

I don't know how widespread this usage is, but I distinguish between anthologies (gatherings of stories by multiple authors) and collections (compilations of stories all by the same author).

 

[dask]

All anthologies are collections but not all collections are anthologies, sort of.

 

[hardsciencefanagain]

Just stating the obvious (again):most Groff Conklin Omnibuses will fit the bill
Definitionwise("essential": still Dangerous Visions,as a good representation of what has been written in that timeperiod.even if you might not like all of
the stories in it.
Second astounding:Nightfall,Thunder&Roses,Late night Final,Witches of Karres,Last enemy,Eternity Lost
That's a pretty solid,hefty book

 

[Frost Giant]

Anthonology by Piers Anthony was a good one.

 

[pambaddeley]

The 'Out of this World' anthology series published for children and edited by Amabel Williams Ellis and Mably Owen were a great introduction to adult SF stories, from the local public library.

 

[galanx]

The Norton Anthology of Science Fiction has a lot of great stories, but...

it's not what a Norton Anthology is supposed to be, which is the generally acknowledged "Greatest" of some particular field. If it was sold as "Ursula K. LeGuin's Selection" or something like that, no problem. In this case, the editotial slant is too great to let it fulfill its avowed purpose as (essentially) a student's guide.

It's as if the Norton Anthology of English Literature was edited by a follower of T.S. Eliot or F.R. Leavis, leaving out most of Shakespeare and Milton except for a few sonnets and other short poems.

 

[psikeyhackr]

Whatever it it, it must have Godwin's The Cold Equations, Asimov's Nightfall, and Heinlein's It's Great to Be Back.

psik

 

[J-Sun]

Whatever it it, it must have Godwin's The Cold Equations, Asimov's Nightfall, and Heinlein's It's Great to Be Back.

psik

I got curious and it seems no anthology has all three but, if two and a half outta three ain't bad:

The Ascent of Wonder: The Evolution of Hard SF (1994), ed. David G. Hartwell & Kathryn Cramer has "The Cold Equations" and "It's Great to Be Back" and makes up for the omission of "Nightfall" by including Asimov's "The Last Question," as well as his "Waterclap" and "The Life and Times of Multivac."

The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume One (1970), ed. Robert Silverberg has "The Cold Equations" and "Nightfall" and makes up for the omission of "It's Great to Be Back" by including Heinlein's "The Roads Must Roll." Modern Science Fiction (1974), ed. Norman Spinrad and A Science Fiction Reader (1973), ed. Harry Harrison & Carol Pugner also include the two, but no Heinlein at all. (In fairness, both were originally paperbacks and (IIRC - maybe remembering wrong) Heinlein (or his associates) had odd reprint policies, so maybe they didn't have a choice. Still, the Harrison does not look especially good and the Spinrad, while excellent, mostly enjoys the softer side.)

Interestingly, no anthology includes "Nightfall" and "Back." If you substitute SFHOF's "Roads," then Adventures in Time and Space (1946, aka Famous Science-Fiction Stories), ed. Raymond J. Healy & J. Francis McComas and Great Science Fiction Stories (1964), ed. Cordelia Titcomb Smith also qualify. Neither include "Cold," but Adventures couldn't, being eight years too early. It very likely would have if it could have. Smith doesn't have that excuse, though.

I'd say the SFHOF and Adventures and, with reservations, Ascent all qualify and, also with reservations, maybe even Modern SF.

 

[psikeyhackr]

I got curious and it seems no anthology has all three but, if two and a half outta three ain't bad:

LOL

Glad to know that I have maintained my reputation as an insufferable elitist asshole.

psik

 

[psikeyhackr]

I got curious and it seems no anthology has all three but, if two and a half outta three ain't bad:

Further thought forces me to conclude that an Arthur C. Clarke story should be in the mix. So Rescue Party is it:

Rescue Party - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

- Chapter 1

psik

 

[Bick]

LOL

Glad to know that I have maintained my reputation as an insufferable elitist asshole.

psik

Ha ha!
Funnily enough I don't think any of those three would be in my top 5, so I see your 'elitist asshole' rep, and raise you with a "different for the sake of it" rep

 

[J-Sun]

Further thought forces me to conclude that an Arthur C. Clarke story should be in the mix. So Rescue Party is it

Ascent of Wonder has three Clarkes including "The Star" but not that one. The SFHOF has "Nine Billion Names of God." And, again, Adventures is too early (simultaneous, anyway) as Clarke didn't become a filthy pro until after the Golden Age, strictly speaking, in 1946. The anthology you linked to for "Rescue Party" looks pretty darned good. Another good one for that is Conklin's A Treasury of Science Fiction which also includes his "Loophole" and has your Heinlein requirement of "It's Great to Be Back," though it's still too early for Godwin. Also, it commits the high crime of neglecting the Good Doctor but we'll forgive it for its other qualities.

 

[psikeyhackr]

Whatever it is, it must have Godwin's The Cold Equations, Asimov's Nightfall, and Heinlein's It's Great to Be Back.

Further thought forces me to conclude that an Arthur C. Clarke story should be in the mix. So Rescue Party is it:

Since science fiction is often portrayed as the literature of ideas and I think that i a good reason for reading it I should justify those stories. Not allSF qualifies as idea stories, some are just entertaining romps but those are no better than Westerns or Mysteries or Ghost Stories if that is what the reader likes. Like it or not good SF writers are forward looking and the future is coming at us fast and furious.

I first read The Cold Equations in late grade school or early high school. I was sure some way to save the girl would be discovered by the end. When I finally finished I was horrified, shocked and then pissed off. I was mad for at least a month. What kind of asshole would write that? But the idea is that the universe does not care. We have to figure it out and deal with it. If we getit wrong....Fukushima!

Nightfall is an Astounding Story. It operates on a social-psychological and an astronomical level. In part it presents the Tom Godwin theme of "The Universe don't care". But it also has societie's accepted norms and people's inability to cope outside those norms.

It's Great to Be Back is another social norms story, but it deals with Darwinian norms that we create. But this is real and can be tested by looking upthe criteria for Mercury astronauts in the 60s. They had to have 130 IQs or higher. So if we have Moon bases and space colonies whatkindof peoplewillbe sent. Do you want to be in a space ship with a dummy that might push the wrong button?

Rescue Party is curious for me in that it was one of the 4 SF stories assigned in my 4 years of high school. The others were 1984, Brave New World and Fahrenheit 451. The 'Literary types' pick the same ones over and over. I had already read Rescue Party. RP is differnt in that the aliens are not invading but are trying to save humanity instead. But then "Humans' are so GREAT we don't need saving. This is another ego trip for humanity story like so many others where we beat invading aliens that have superior technology. "Independence Day"
Similar to Childhood's End in some ways.

psik

 

[Bick]

Very nicely argued for those stories, psik. And I should qualify my earlier banality by adding that I do like the stories you picked very much. I'm not sure what three stories I think should be in a best anthology (my memory being a bit shocking regards short stories) but of stories I've read in the last few years, I might pick:
There Will Come Soft Rains - Ray Bradbury
Billenium - J.G. Ballard
Flowers for Algernon - Daniel Keyes

 

[psikeyhackr]

There Will Come Soft Rains - Ray Bradbury

Another great story I read in late grade school years. I think I nearly cried when I finished that.

I was 10 years old during the Cuban Missile Crisis. But I do not recall a thing about it. I don't know if any adults I was around at the time noticed either. But by the timeIwas 12 I was reading sci-fi about nuclear war and post-apocalyptic nuclear war stories so I finally understood what the consequences of the Cuban Missile Crisis couldhave been. The Long Tomorrow by Leigh Brackett is the one that sticks in my memory the most. But the Zeitgeist of today seems to be that we a passed the risk of nuclear war but the weapons are still there.

The story is still relevant but I don't think many will take it as seriously as they should.

psik

 

[Emphyricist]

I'm not sure the point of including single-author collections in this thread; they really depend on whether you like that particular author and if you like them you'll be able to find them regardless. I suppose that an exception might be writers whose short work is too prodigious to encompass the better part or whole of it in one or two volumes. Jack Vance and Larry Niven, for example. Subterranean Press published best-of collections for both of them, and they're good introductions if you aren't familiar with them. (I already knew that I liked Jack Vance, but with Larry Niven I realized I mostly liked the Gil Hamilton, Beowulf Shaeffer, and Draco Tavern stories, with the others even in that "best of" collection being a mixed bad.)

1. The Good Old Stuff edited by Gardner DuZois. Before I read it, I thought that I didn't like space opera, because I had a constricted view of what space opera is. As it turns out, I like a certain subtype of space opera: the planetary romance, and this is chock full of great adventure stories on alien planets (though I'd question classifying H. Beam Piper's "Gunpowder God" as a space opera story, it's still a great story). He also has a collection called The Good New Stuff. I've only read two stories of it and they impressed me rather less.

2. The Science Fiction Century edited by David G. Hartwell. The idea of this book is to present a representative selection of science fiction over the twentieth century. So it includes a number of stories by authors I hadn't even heard of (the best was "The King and the Dollmaker" by Wolfgang Jeschke. Unfortunately, it seems like where possible the authors tried to include lesser-known stories by better-known authors. The H.G. Wells story was one which I hadn't read, and with good reason apparently. I was also disappointed in the choice for Jules Verne (I forget what it was now), and it was one that I'd already read.

3. The Big Book of Science Fiction edited by Jeff and Ann Vandermeer. This is a big, cheap book edited on newsprint, which tries to cover basically the whole history of SF. It includes a number of stories which would not have been thought of as SF in their time, and the story selection is generally pretty good. I've yet to read a story by an author I already liked which disappointed me, and it's how I discovered that W. E. B. DuBois wrote science fiction.

4. 50 Short Science Fiction Tales edited by Isaac Asimov. A collection of what Asimov calls short-shorts, many truly impressive and none (except possibly Asimov's own contribution) disappointing.

5. Songs of the Dying Earth edited by George R. R. Martin. A collection of stories written in tribute to Jack Vance's Dying Earth series, it introduced me to Kage Baker (whose work I've still been meaning to read), and I enjoyed almost all of the stories, though I was disappointed in the ending of one which tried to be a prequel to "Liane the Wayfarer."

6. Robert Silverberg Presents the Great Science Fiction Stories (1964), edited by Martin H. Greenberg and some other schmuck. This was supposed to be the start of a whole series from NESFA press but only ended up with one volume. Nonetheless it introduced Gordon Dickinson and Wyman Guin to me as authors worth investigating further, and every story in it is an amazing one.

I also find Frederick Pohl's taste in the anthologies that he edited to be really good, except that he had a tendency to include things that aren't short stories, something I'd rather he didn't do. For the SFWA Grandmasters anthologies he included a lot of nonfiction in rather limited space (so Jack Williamson, for example, had "With Folded Hands" which of course I'd already read, one non-fiction piece, and one short story). For another anthology which I forget the title of (but the standout was Mack Reynolds' "Among the Bad Baboons", he included novel excerpts. I wish that I could find a listing of all the anthologies Pohl has ever edited (he was prolific in that regard and most of them are out of print) because if he ever edited an anthology which was only short fiction, I'm sure it would rank among my favorites.

 

[Randy M.]

Not sure how complete it is, but if you scroll down you can find a sizable list of anthologies edited by Pohl at ISFDB

Randy M.

 

[picklematrix]

Rediscovery of man, by Cordwainer Smith is a great collection.

 

[BAYLOR]

Rediscovery of man, by Cordwainer Smith is a great collection.

Absolutely