Back in September 2018, motivated by James Wallace Harris, I embarked on rereading the 25-volume The Great SF Stories series edited by Isaac Asimov and Martin H. Greenberg (you can check out the beginning post here). My plan was to reread and review a volume each month and I managed to stay on schedule for the next two-and-half years.
Now, I’m back to reread and review the 25-volume The Best From Fantasy and Science Fiction series. I plan to replicate the one-volume review per month model so this project will be completed in 2023.
This first volume is unique for its inclusion of non-SF writers like Daniel Defoe, Charles Dickens, and Oliver LaFarge. The early issues of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction regularly reprinted “classic” stories by famous authors.
Here are some of my favorite stories from this anthology:
“Elephas Frumenti” and “The Gift of God” are Gavagan’s Bar stories which L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt wrote over the years to the delight of readers. If you like tall tales, you’ll enjoy these shaggy dog stories.
“Old Man Henderson” takes place in a future when Venus and Mars have been colonized, and exotic animals have been imported to the Earth from these planets. Henderson is a retired astronaut, the first man to set foot on the moon, but, instead of being a revered hero, everyone in town is sick of hearing his story of the moon landing and he lives alone, avoided by everyone. Kris Neville illustrates the ephemeral aspects of Fame.
“Dress of White Silk” by Richard Matheson shows the nightmare results of a child’s actions. Matheson would return to this theme in some of his later stories.
As you might suspect, several of these stories are dated. But Boucher and McComas provided material to a growing readership in these genres. A good beginning! GRADE: B
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Introduction by Anthony Boucher & J. Francis McComas — ix
Huge Beast” (1950) by Cleve Cartmill; — 3
“John the Revelator” (1951) by Oliver La Farge; — 12
“Elephas Frumenti” (1950) by L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt; — 27
“The Gift of God” (1950) by L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt; — 33
“The Friendly Demon” (1726) by Daniel Defoe; — 40
“Old Man Henderson” (1951) by Kris Neville; — 45
“The Threepenny-Piece” (1913) by James Stephens; — 58
“No-Sided Professor” (1947) by Martin Gardner; — 68
“The Listening Child” (1950) by Margaret St. Clair [as by Idris Seabright]; — 82
“Dress of White Silk” (1951) by Richard Matheson; — 94
“The Mathematical Voodoo” (1951) by H. Nearing, Jr.; — 100
“Hub” (1951) by Philip MacDonald; — 120
“Built Up Logically” (1949) by Howard Schoenfeld; — 126
“The Rat That Could Speak” (1860) by Charles Dickens; — 139
“Narapoia” [Dr. Manly J. Departure]” (1948) by Alan Nelson; — 145
“Postpaid to Paradise” (1940) by Robert Arthur; — 153
“In the Days of Our Fathers” (1949) by Winona McClintic; — 170
“Barney” (1951) by Will Stanton; — 178
“The Collector” (1951) by H. F. Heard; ” — 181
“Fearsome Fable” (1951) by Bruce Elliott — 214
I used to read these as a teenager but I don’t think I read this one. Doesn’t look like one of the better volumes. Nothing here that has become a classic in the field.
I did read the Tales From Gavagan’e Bars stories and enjoyed them. And I am a big fan of Margaret St. Clair. The next couple volumes would have better known stories by Jack Finney, Zenna Henderson, Alfred Bester, Philip Jose Farmer, Manly Wade Wellman and Ward Moore and less reprints.
Steve, you’re right about the trajectory of THE BEST FROM FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION series. It does get better (I’m rereading Volume 3 right now).
“Dress of White Silk” is one of Matheson’s most famous early stories; “Postpaid to Paradise” is a notable and widely anthologized Robert Arthur story; “Built Up Logically” and “The No-Sided Professor” are treasured still by at least a coterie, if probably an aging one!
But F&SF started, as did EQMM (its model) as almost as much a reprint as new-fiction magazine by design.
As of right now, my plan is to retire in May of 2023. I’ll look forward to your monthly reviews of these volumes, knowing that each volume is bringing me closer to a time when I won’t be getting up at 4:30 every morning. Read on, George!
Deb, when you retire you will still be getting up at 4:30. Only now you’ll be getting a start on all the books that George reviews!
True that. Even though I can sleep as long as I want now, I find myself getting up at 6 most days.
Jeff, on frosty mornings like this one, the allure of staying under our warm sheets and blankets is enticing.
Jerry, when I retired I found that I easily broke the habit of waking up early. Now, I “sleep-in” to about 8 A.M.
Deb, you’ll be surprised at how quickly the months fly by! I don’t miss getting up early and driving to work. Especially, on mornings like today when the wind chill temperature is ZERO!
After years of getting up at 4:30 I now get up between 9 and 10. There is nothing to do at 6 in the morning. I don’t feel like reading that early or watching a movie. I find I do my best reading between 11 at night and 3 in the morning. Even when I was working I never went to bed before 11. A habit I got years ago when you didn’t have recording devices and the best tv shows were on at 10.
Steve, my son is a Night Owl and loves to work well into the night. I, on the other hand, start to get tired around 9 P.M. and head for bed around 10 P.M.
I get up at 6 and spend a couple of hours on the computer, checking the newspapers and blogs. I make breakfast at 8 (when Jackie gets up). I go to bed at 11.
During my TV GUIDE/PBS.org career, I tended to work from 10a to 10p a whole damned lot of the time. Small blessing to avoid the rush hour, and a smaller one that I was on O/T a whole lot of that time.
I loved the early issues of F&SF with its emphasis on literate writing. There’s not a clunker in the book, although the Defoe and the Dickens were dated when Boucher and McComas published them. Their reprint policy introduced many SF readers to authors and stories they may have missed or may not have been readily available to readers in the early 50s. Favorites here include the Nearling, Arthur, Seabright, Matheson, and de Camp/Pratt.
Jeff, I noticed some writers who I categorized as “mystery” writers–Philip MacDonald and H. F. Heard–wrote Science Fiction, too.
Well, Boucher had deep roots and McComas some in CF…part of why they were tapped to do F&SF at Mercury.
None of these stories are familiar to me, and only about half of the authors. In 1950 my interest in SF was 5-6 years away. By the time I started reading F & SF in the 60s, I’d mostly stopped reading the other magazines.
Michael, I started reading THE MAGAZINE OF FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION in the Sixties, too. Later, I went back and bought issues from the 1950s because I loved the cover artwork…and the stories.
I’m also a fan of the Gavagan’s Bar stories, having read their collection. (Of course, several other authors have done similar things – Arthur C. Clarke, Spider Robinson to name two.)
Jeff, bar tales is a genre in and of itself. You point out some of the more famous ones–Clarke’s Tales from the White Hart and Robinson’s Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon–but my favorite series is Sterling Lanier’s The Peculiar Exploits of Brigadier Ffellowes. I’m also fond of the Jorkens stories of Lord Dunsany.
Don’t know the Lanier but I have read several volumes of Dunsany’s Jorkens stories.
Jeff, the Lanier stories were published between 1968 and 1971 in THE MAGAZINE OF FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION so they should be showing up in some of the later volumes of this series.
I love a good club story, but I never had much patience for Lanier…compared to, for example, Robert Arthur’s and those by his contemporaries and predecessors…
Never was much of an F&SF fan, preferring Astounding and Galaxy. I’m also a fan of the Gavagan’s Bar stories, having read the collection, and have read other bar stories. Was buying some to do a survey/review but never got to it.
Rick, I’d like to read your bar stories survey/review!
reading here, it seems I don’t have a lot of the books I need.
There were several anthologies of sf and fantasy bar stories called something like Tales from the Spaceport Bar.
I have a complete collection of F&SF and have read some of the 1949-50 issues, but very few of these stories, which seem to be more from the 1951 issues.
Jeff, I had complete runs of GALAXY, WORLDS OF TOMORROW, and fragmented runs (maybe 10-12 years) of AMAZING, FANTASTIC, and IF. They all reside at SUNY at Buffalo’s Special Collections now. I did buy copies of THE MAGAZINE OF FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION when I came across them. I hope you enjoy my monthly posting of reviews of THE BEST FROM FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION series.
and never any Astounding?
Rick, a teacher in the Junior High School I went to gave me a shopping bag of ASTOUNDINGs that his father read and enjoyed. So, I had about 50 or 60 to read.
Yes, I’ve read TALES FROM THE SPACEPORT BAR (1987). Now I see there was a second book called ANOTHER ROUND AT THE SPACEPORT BAR (1992).
Gavagan’s bar is also one of my favourite series, generally de Camp.
But I have to admit again that I forgot most stories – though when you give me a hint I might remember.
Can you get sick from reading too much? 🙂 🙂
Wolf, reading is like breathing for me!
This volume is quite rare and expensive to buy now. But I do have all the issues it covers, so I should try to read these stories. However, I was able to find a copy of #3 and started reading it. Maybe I’ll be finished by March when you report on it. I’m still working my way through The Great SF Stories. I just started #18.
Jim, thank you again for inspiring these rereading/reviewing projects! I used Interlibrary loans to borrow Volume 1 and Volume 2. I own all the rest of the series. You have a lot of good reading ahead with THE GREAT SF STORIES VOLUMES 18-25!
I have never gotten around to volume 1…but have managed to run into most of these stories over the decades…and Defoe and certainly LaFarge have “dropped in” to the fantasticated from time to time…and quite a lot of Dickens’s work is fantasy and horror, not least a novella about a certain miser and his very bad night.
I admire your stamina for these collection series, George.
This one looks like a lacklustre collection from a lacklustre period (I rated several as mediocre or worse, including the Dafoe and Dickens, and I’m surprised he didn’t include Matheson’s “Born of Man” Bretnor’s “The Gnurrs Come from the Voodvork Out”, Bradbury’s “The Exiles”, and Porges “The Rats–as well as several other stories–instead. It does give you a good idea of the “mixed bag-ness” of those early issues though.
IIRC, the magazine improved considerably from the end of 1952 when they started using longer SF stories.
Paul, you’re exactly right. THE GREAT SF STORIES series by Asimov and Greenberg started off slowly, too. The quality of the stories improved as time went on. I agree with you on the longer stories in future issues of THE MAGAZINE OF FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION. I also enjoyed the serials from that era especially Heinlein’s DOOR INTO SUMMER.