Back in the 1960s, I discovered Groff Conklin’s Science Fiction anthologies. Conklin wrote excellent introductions to the stories he selected. And I pretty much enjoyed all the stories Conklin included in his various anthologies.
Groff Conklin’s Minds Unleashed, 1970 (aka, Giants Unleashed, 1965) is a good example of a Groff Conklin SF anthology: Big Name writers rub shoulders with lesser known writers. Heinlein, Clarke, Asimov, Clarke, and Anderson are well represented by quality stories. Lesser known writers like Richard Ashby, Edward Grendon, and Laurence Manning provide thought-provoking stories.
My favorite story in this anthology is Murray Leinster’s “The Ethical Equations.” Leinster specialized in First Contact stories and “The Ethical Equations” is one of his best. An alien spaceship enters our Solar System. The Space Patrol debates whether they should destroy the ship. After a young Patrol officer investigates the alien space ship, he finds the alien crew in suspended animation. And the young officer comes up with a clever, counter-intuitive solution.
I also liked J. T. McIntosh’s “Machine Made.” This story was published in 1951 and explores the idea of Artificial Intelligence. Very prophetic!
I’ve read over a dozen Groff Conklin SF anthologies and enjoyed them all. I suspect you would, too! GRADE: B+
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
“Microcosmic God” by Theodore Sturgeon (Astounding Science-Fiction, April 1941) — 3
“Commencement Night” by Richard Ashby (Astounding Science Fiction, August 1953) — 33
“The Deep Range” by Arthur C. Clarke (Argosy (UK), April 1954) — 59
“Machine Made” by J. T. McIntosh (New Worlds #10 Summer 1951) — 69
“Trip One” by Edward Grendon (Astounding Science Fiction, July 1949) — 83
“Venus Is a Man’s World” by William Tenn (Galaxy Science Fiction, July 1951) — 91
“Good-Bye, Ilha!” by Laurence Manning (Beyond Human Ken, 1952) — 115
“Misbegotten Missionary” by Isaac Asimov (Galaxy Science Fiction, November 1950) — 125
“The Ethical Equations” by Murray Leinster (Astounding Science Fiction, June 1945) — 143
“Misfit” by Robert A. Heinlein (Astounding Science-Fiction, November 1939) — 161
“Genius” by Poul Anderson (Astounding Science Fiction, December 1948) — 185
“Basic Right” by Eric Frank Russell (Astounding Science Fiction, April 1958) — 217
Must have read most of those stories in the 60s/70s.
Fond memories!
Wolf, back in the 1960s, anthologies like MINDS UNLEASHED were common. Not so much any more.
Nice choice. Good review. Makes you want to read some of them.
Jeff, reading these wonderful SF writers acts like a Time Machine for me: it takes me back to 1960s!
I can’t remember the name of it but a hefty anthology edited by Conklin was one of my introductory volumes when I joined the SFBC in the late Fifties. Of course I didn’t know at the time that most of the stories were classics, but I’m pretty sure they were.
Michael, that Groff Conklin anthology was OMNIBUS OF SCIENCE FICTION originally published by Crown in 1952 and brought out by the Science Fiction Book Club a year later. Here’s the Table of Contents to jog your memory:
Introduction” (Groff Conklin)
“John Thomas’s Cube” (John Leimert) TR
“Hyperpilosity” (L. Sprague de Camp)
“The Thing in the Woods” (Fletcher Pratt and B. F. Ruby)
“And Be Merry …” (Katherine MacLean)
“The Bees from Borneo” (Will H. Gray)
“The Rag Thing” (David Grinnell)
“The Conqueror” (Mark Clifton)
“Never Underestimate …” (Theodore Sturgeon) AD
“The Doorbell” (David H. Keller) AD
“A Subway Named Mobius” (A. J. Deutsch) OM TR
“Backfire” (Ross Rocklynne)
“The Box” (James Blish) AD
“Zeritsky’s Law” (Ann Griffith)
“The Fourth Dynasty” (R. R. Winterbotham)
“The Color Out of Space” (H. P. Lovecraft) OM TR
“The Head Hunters” (Ralph Williams)
“The Star Dummy” (Anthony Boucher) OM TR
“Catch That Martian” (Damon Knight) AD
“Shipshape Home” (Richard Matheson) TR
“Homo Sol” (Isaac Asimov) OM
“Alexander the Bait” (William Tenn)
“Kaleidoscope” (Ray Bradbury) OM TR
“”Nothing Happens on the Moon”” (Paul Ernst) TR
“Trigger Tide” (Norman Menasco)
“Plague” (Murray Leinster) OM TR
“Winner Lose All” (Jack Vance)
“Test Piece” (Eric Frank Russell) OM
“Environment” (Chester S. Geier) AD
“High Threshold” (Alan E. Nourse) TR
“Spectator Sport” (John D. MacDonald) OM AD
“Recruiting Station” (A. E. van Vogt) AD
“A Stone and a Spear” (Raymond F. Jones) TR
“What You Need” (Lewis Padgett (Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore))
“The Choice” (Wayland Hilton-Young) AD
“The War Against the Moon” (André Maurois)
“Pleasant Dreams” (Ralph Robin) TR
“Manners of the Age” (H. B. Fyfe) TR
“The Weapon” (Fredric Brown) OM TR
“The Scarlet Plague” (Jack London) TR
“Heritage” (Robert Abernathy)
“History Lesson” (Arthur C. Clarke) OM
“Instinct” (Lester del Rey) OM
“Counter Charm” (Peter Phillips)
And “Grinnell” was Donald Wollheim.
I read a lot of Conklin’s anthologies back in the 60’s, although this one doesn’t look familiar. A lot of the stories here I remember reading in other collections.
Steve, this edition changed the name of the original GIANTS UNLEASHED anthology to MINDS UNLEASHED. Same stories and introductions. Just a new cover and a higher price.
My junior high school was part of the Teenage Book Club (TAB) network. Every month, the class received a newsletter-style catalog of books available to buy. The teacher collected the orders and money, send them in, and a week or two later, the box of paperbacks arrived for distribution. The first book I bought that way, in fact the very first I ever bought, was TEN GREAT MYSTERIES, an excellent collection of Edgar Allan Poe stories edited by Groff Conklin and published by Scholastic Book Services. Conklin included a short, perceptive introduction with each story. His other Poe collection for SBS, EIGHT TALES OF TERROR, was equally fine. Both titles went through several printings at least into the 1970s. I still see copies every now and then in used book stores.
Fred, same here. I was a part of TAB, too, and bought paperbacks every month from them. I even bought those Conklin Poe collections! Great stuff!
As you both probably remember, TAB was a program of Scholastic, when their primary cash cow was still their classroom magazines such as LITERARY CAVALCADE, but the paperbacks caught up fast.
Todd, Scholastic Books struck publishing gold when it published HARRY POTTER when over a dozen publishers turned it down!
Scholastic was already ridiculously rich, not least from the lock they had on school sales, and such previous bestsellers as GOOSEBUMPS and CLIFFORD THE BIG RED DOG books, consistent moneymakers over time…but being the US POTTER publishers sure didn’t hurt them, in being one of the megacorporations still standing in publishing now.
I like the idea that Fred’s junior high had. It might have introduced me to some genres I never tried.
Patti, TAB required a teacher to supervise the book selection by the students and collect the money for the books. Some teachers were willing to do this…others didn’t.
The school also had to sign off…and the teachers were given (rather paltry) bribes and premia to do the scutwork–one of the bennies for my junior-high teachers in Londonderry, NH, was a mm pb of Doctorow’s RAGTIME, which she already had and so gave her new copy to me. (To be clear, that one might’ve been from Xerox’s copy [koff] of Scholastic’s program…Xerox didn’t publish their own books, but bought [presumably in bulk] copies of Grosset and Dunlap Tempo paperbacks and other youth-skewing lines for their offers, supplementing, as Scholastic did with their magazines, their acquired classroom magazine READ). I’m mildly surprised Philly’s schools resisted, Patti. I bought from the Arrow Book Club (younger-yet Scholastic) in my Hazardville, CT school, as well.
Todd, Diane offered her students the Scholastic Books Program. In return for putting together book orders and collecting the money, Scholastic gave her free books that she used in her classroom.
I see George’s edition of the Conklin under consideration was a Tempo pb…
Some of these comments about reading in high school reminded me that I was not even introduced to science fiction until I was nineteen and met my first husband. I remember reading Harlan Ellison and Theodore Sturgeon at that time (among others), and mostly short stories I think.
Tracy, Science Fiction short stories were the “meat-and-potatoes” of the genre until Frank Herbert’s DUNE became a best seller. Then, publishers were willing to take the risk to publish SF novels. Now, I would say the genre is dominated by paperback and hardcover novels.
George, they were Always willing to publish novels…the collections and anthologies did better than the average run of short-fiction books in other fields (and popular stars could always place any sort of book), but DUNE and STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND and 2001 helped build up the larger audience for sf novels, and by the ’70s, the explosion in fantasy novel sales and reliable waves of blockbuster sf films meant the big money and attention was focused on sf novels…the increasing consolidation of publishers into conglomerate hands by the ’90s didn’t help anthologies’ prospects much…
Todd, the transition from SF anthologies to SF novels (and Fantasy novels) developed hand-in-hand with successful SF and Fantasy movies and TV shows. STAR TREK paperback novels and STAR WARS hardcovers and paperbacks sold well, too.
But, to reiterate, the publishers were always happy to have novels…even when, like Ace, they published novellas as “double-novels”…novels had already established themselves as the dominant form in fiction book publishing generally (and not unwelcome in magazines, but particularly book publishing) even before mid-century and the first emergence of sf lines from non-specialist small presses.
Todd, but as the publishing tale of DUNE proves, most publishers in the 1960s really didn’t understand Science Fiction and dismissed most of it as “Sci-Fi” stuff. Once DUNE and Heinlein’s novels started to sell millions of copies, the whole focus on SF changed. STAR TREK and STAR WARS were game-changers, too.
Will Jenkins /”Murray Leinster” (still the only instance where a guy with a Welsh name took on a vaguely Jewish-sounding pseudonym in the early decades of the 20th C for some of his work?) not only worked the first contact angle otherwise (most famously with “First Contact”, where things got uglier) but also anticipated the McIntosh, with “A Logic Named Joe” in the ’40s….which might’ve been furthered from E. M. Forster’s “the Machine Stops” in the ‘2os…
Manning had been a Big Name in the early days of magazine sf.
In a vague way I knew “Grendon” was a pseud, too, but didn’t remember the Real Guy (who managed to live for more than a century, and was busy for at least some of that): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_LeShan
Todd, nice investigative work on “Grendon”!
Todd, Will Jenkins wrote some nifty Westerns, but he will be know for his “Murray Leinster” stories and novels. Wondrous works!