FRIDAY’S FORGOTTEN BOOKS #716: THE BEST FROM FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION, 22nd SERIES Edited by Edward L. Ferman

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Cover artwork by Patrick Woodroffe

Edward L. Ferman changed the format of The Best From Fantasy and Science Fiction with the 22nd volume. All the previous volumes consisted of short stories and novelettes. But in The Best From Fantasy and Science Fiction, 22nd Series Ferman includes other material that could be found in a typical issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Ferman includes a brilliant Algis Budrys book review/essay on the history of Science Fiction. Ferman also includes “Competition” samples from the many readers who participated (I could do without them). He includes Baird Searles’s movie review column and an essay, “Thinking About Thinking” by Isaac Asimov who wrote dozens of science essays for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction during those years.

My favorite story in this volume is John Varley’s “In the Bowl” where a wayward geologist encounters a brilliant young girl on Venus and the pair embark on a search for valuable blast jewels. I also enjoyed Robert Bloch’s comic “A Case of the Stubborns” where Grandpa refuses to believe he’s dead. Richard Cowper’s “The Hertford Manuscript,” a time-travel tale to the Plague Years proves harrowing.

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

17 thoughts on “FRIDAY’S FORGOTTEN BOOKS #716: THE BEST FROM FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION, 22nd SERIES Edited by Edward L. Ferman”

  1. Steve A Oerkfitz

    A lot of good stories here. The Cowper (underrated writer), Tom Reamy (died way too young), Tiptree, Bloch, Russ, Varley. They could have left out all the competition essays and put in another story instead.

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  2. Jerry House

    The Cowper, Russ, Varley, Tiptree, Reamy., and Kornbluth/Pohl are each worth the price of admission alone. Add to that some of my favorite writers — Wellen, Bretnor, Bloch, Wellman — as well as the new critical pieces and you have another winning F&SF anthology. I like the Competition (and had a few entries published later on), finding it both smart and funny.

    A few years after this one, I stopped reading F&SF on a regular basis. I let my subscription lapse because various issues were coming in horribly torn, or just not coming in at all (probably the fault of my local post office at the time; the same was happening with other subscriptions I had), and copies were increasingly hard to find on the newsstands. Stupid me!

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    1. george Post author

      Jerry, I stopped renewing my subscriptions to Science Fiction magazines in the late 1970s. Once I got married and Patrick and Katie arrived, I had little reading time. When Diane went on unpaid Maternity Leave, I was working three jobs.

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  3. Todd Mason

    Well, Jerry, my copies of ALFRED HITCHCOCK’S MYSTERY MAGAZINE coming through the mails in New Hampshire and Hawaii were often beaten to death in the late ’70s and early ’80s, so unless your local postal workers were taking some long lunches and daytrips, I suspect more of the blaime goes to the sorting and handling equipment in the fulfillments houses and national mail chain. I got one cover only in a plastic bag in Kailua, toward the end of my subscription. I was quick to take F&SF on their Kraft envelope subscription offers in the early ’80s, which they still offer today (Penny Press has something similar for their four fiction magazines, and perhaps/probably for the word-puzzle magazines, too).

    I’ve only had one Competition entry published so far (a limerick), but I particularly have enjoyed them over the years as well, even when the results could lean into the relatively obvious jokes.

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      1. Todd Mason

        Thaanks. Ah, it wasn’t a limerick…it was a haiku, inspired by Kate Wilhelm’s WHERE LATE THE SWEET BIRD SANG.

        All my professionally-published poetry is haiku in English.

  4. Todd Mason

    The Liz Hufford story is both an excellent John Collier-esque fantasy and one of the few stories she’s published in the fantastica media over the decades (I reviewed an issue of legal procedural stories a while back that included a similarly good story by Hufford). And this volume is generally one of Ferman’s best of a good lot during his editorship. (The Hufford story, among other relevant stuff: https://socialistjazz.blogspot.com/2015/10/ffb-workers-write-tales-from-courtroom.html

    Ace should’ve been ashamed to have slapped that hideous cover on their paperback edtion, and almost as offensive, the martyrdom of trees in producting almost large-print paperbacks (not that my eyes these years would complain too much about that). Rather sad that this was the last of the fairly regular, by this time biannual, Doubleday best-ofs…they became far more occasional after this, and usually keyed 5-year anniversaries or specialized anthologies (best horro fiction from, etc….sadder yet, the fine and hefty BEST FANTASY STORIES FROM volume was only published by remainder publshers.

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    2. george Post author

      Todd, I agree with you on the hideous ACE Books cover on THE BEST FROM FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION, 22nd SERIES. There’s no cover artwork credit. But, the hideous cover does fit with the HALLOWEEN theme this week!

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      1. Jeff Smith

        That art is by Patrick Woodroffe, who usually did much better. I really like his cover for the Avon edition of Jack Vance’s GRAY PRINCE.

      2. george Post author

        Jeff, thanks for the identification of the cover artist for THE BEST FROM FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION, 22nd SERIES! Like you I love Patrick Woodroffe’s artwork on the AVON edition of Vance’s GRAY PRINCE!

      3. Todd Mason

        It looks, in closer inspection, like a close-up on a detail from the painting (which has no relevance to any story I remember from the book). Considering the blurbing on the book stresses the excellence of F&SF as a magazine, the rest of the packaging probably shouldn’t resemble revenge on the blurb-writer (and the book).

      4. george Post author

        Todd, as much as ACE Books of this era featured lurid cover artwork, the bland Doubleday covers became more and more boring.

    3. Todd Mason

      And my memory is falling completely into disrepair. There were two more in the Doubleday regular series…though they had slipped to essentially every three years, in most cases…and the D-day covers were bad, but still not as bad as this last Ace cover.

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