I grew up reading Astounding which was the most popular science fiction magazine of the Fifties and Sixties. This collection from the early 1990s brings together some of the most famous short novels Astounding published over the years. Poul Anderson’s fine “Introduction” provides a survey of the role of Astouonding in the history of Science Fiction. If you’re a fan of classic SF, this is an excellent collection of iconic works.
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
“Introduction” by Poul Anderson
“Sucker Bait” by Isaac Asimov
“The Stolen Dormouse” by L. Sprague de Camp
“The Fifth-Dimension Tube” by Murray Leinster
“The Shadow Out of Time” by H. P. Lovecraft
“Bindlestiff” by James Blish
“We Have Fed Our Sea” by Poul Anderson
Very nice collection of novellas, a form I have a lot of time for (when you can find them) – thanks George
Sergio, ASTOUNDING used to specialize in short novels and novellas. This collection brings together some of the best.
Nice collection. I’ve read them all, in the source digest, but this would be a good paperback to have.
Rick, inexpensive copies of THE BEST OF ASTOUNDING CLASSIC SHORT NOVELS are available on the Internet. I found this copy in a thrift store for a quarter.
Actually, ASTOUNDING wasn’t the bestselling sf magazine of the ’50s, at least the first half…STARTLING STORIES briefly led the field, and then GALAXY outsold ASTOUNDING and everything else (except at least one FANTASTIC) for several years…as GALAXY faltered, ASTOUNDING with firmer financial support from Street & Smith, and then Conde Nast, regained the biggest sales figures and kept them nearly throughout the Conde Nast years, even after the title switch to ANALOG in 1960; ASIMOV’S outsold it for a year or so before Conde Nast sold it to ASIMOV’S’s publishers Davis Publications. (AMAZING had been the sales leader during the Shaver mystery hysteria in the latter ’40s, and FANTASTIC’s earliest issues did well, and of course most obviously the “Spillane” issue outsold every other fiction magazine extant, afaik…even the first MANHUNT issues with Spillane were probably not quite as successful, with a less established publisher behind them and the fact that their actual Spillane story was dolloped out in ridiculous, LIBERTY magazine-tiny installments.
Sergio, there are a fair amount of novellas about of all sorts…the Penny Press magazines and F&SF, and the little magazines, have relatively fat issues these days to make more room for them, and epublishers certainly love them…
But this does look like a fine antho.
Todd, thanks for the info! I remember a digest called VENTURE (late 1959s and early 1960s) that featured a complete novel every issue.
Yup…the Edward Ferman version of VENTURE (at the turn of the ’70s) was devoted to the format. The Robert P. Mills version (latest 1950s) was more notable as the most sexually engaged (and otherwise dangerously visionary) magazine of its period (a lot of the best Theodore Sturgeon and Algis Budrys work of that time–also the first magazine to have a regular column by Isaac Asimov). Both were good magazines that were reabsorbed into F&SF (where Asimov, of course, continued his column).
SATELLITE SF (late 1950s) also was a digest attempt to follow the STARTLING format of a long novella leading every issue. And, of course, a stablemate of the then-new MIKE (originally MICHAEL) SHAYNE MYSTERY MAGAZINE…publisher Leo Margulies had worked at Standard Magazines/Better Publications, the house that had published STARTLING and the rest of the Thrilling group of pulps, and had focused their efforts on their paperback imprint Popular Library as the pulps died.
Todd, I was a fan of MSMM, SATELLITE, VENTURE and the more conventional digests like GALAXY, WORLDS OF TOMORROW, IF, and all those others…gone for many years now. It was a Golden Age, but I didn’t realize it at the time.