Read All SF Published That Year: What Year Would You Pick?

[Extollager]

Suppose you were going to read all the principal science fiction magazines, all the sf paperback releases of the usual publishers, and all the hardcover sf releases from the principal publishers for one given year: what year would you choose?

I'm not going to define too strictly what I mean by "principal," but with regard to magazines I mean to exclude fanzines and the more obscure magazines. I'll leave it to you to decide whether you want to interpret "principal publishers" to include specialty presses such as Shasta, Gnome Press, etc.

The intended emphasis is on reading, not owning.

And you have to read it all. If you choose 1950 (Asimov's Pebble in the Sky and I, Robot) you have to read all those issues of Planet Stories too.

 

[Fried Egg]

An interesting question but I'm sure I don't know enough about what was released in any given year to make an informed decision. I think I would need to arrange all the SF I have read by original publication year and then see which year looked the best...

 

[J Riff]

Mercy... we'd need a list of the top 500 books each year, and mags etc. ... probably some year in the 40s.