The Golden Age of Science Fiction – Volume II (Kindle Edition)

Last time out, I had a look at the first volume in a long-running (at least fifteen volumes) series of classic SF ebooks, The Golden Age of Science Fiction. Here’s the second volume of the series.

The Golden Age of Science Fiction – Volume II

• Warrior Race, by Robert Sheckley
• Advanced Chemistry, by Jack Huekels
• Spacewrecked on Venus, by Neil R. Jones
• The Martian, by A.R. Hilliard and Allen Glasser
• The Velvet Glove, by Harry Harrison
• Gambler’s World, by Keith Laumer
• Invasion, by Murray Leinster
• The Knights of Arthur, by Frederik Pohl
• The Missing Link, by Frank Herbert
• Sand Doom, by Murray Leinster

There are a few more familiar names in this volume than there were in the first. Robert Sheckley, Harry Harrison, Frederik Pohl, Murray Leinster, Frank Herbert and Keith Laumer are all pretty big names in the SF pantheon, and I’m familiar with Neil R. Jones through reading vintage SF magazines and novels (didn’t he appear in the Ace Doubles?). The name Jack Huekels rings a bell, although I can’t remember where from. And I’m not familiar with A.R. Hilliard and Allen Glasser at all.

As for the stories themselves, I daresay I’ve definitely read a few of these over the years. Some of the story titles definitely ring a bell – Warrior Race, Spacewrecked on Venus, The Velvet Glove, Gambler’s World, Invasion, The Knights of Arthur, The Missing Link and Sand Doom are all stories that I’m pretty sure I’ve read at some point in the distant past. But I’m afraid my memory has gone AWOL on me in recent years, and I can’t remember the details.

I read these stories a LONG time ago. I haven’t read Sheckley or Laumer in thirty-five years or more, and it’s been at least twenty-five years or more since I’ve read Leinster and Harrison, although they were big favourites of mine back in the day. Frank Herbert is someone I’m only familiar with through his DUNE novels, and I only ever read the first one or two of those, thirty-plus years ago.

Next up – The Golden Age of Science Fiction – Volume III

The Golden Age of Science Fiction – Volume I (Kindle Edition)

Last time out I was talking about my general experiences with reading SF using e-readers and electronic book formats on my computer. I’m going to start off discussing a lot of the books I’ve been reading, beginning with a series of SF short fiction anthologies called The Golden Age of Science Fiction. I’ve found fifteen volumes so far on the Amazon Kindle Store, although there may be more. Here’s a contents listing of the first of the fifteen volumes:

The Golden Age of Science Fiction – Volume I

• They Twinkled Like Jewels, by Philip Jose Farmer
• This Crowded Earth, by Robert Bloch
• Time and Time Again, by H. Beam Piper
• Time Enough At Last, by Lynn Venable
• Toy Shop, by Harry Harrison
• Two Timer, by Frederic Brown
• Watchbird, by Robert Sheckley
• Year of the Big Thaw, by Marion Zimmer Bradley
• The Sensitive Man, by Poul Anderson
• The Skull, by Philip K. Dick

This is a pretty impressive list of big-name SF&F authors. H. Beam Piper, Frederic Brown, Harry Harrison, Poul Anderson and Robert Sheckley were always among my favourite authors back in the day, and I almost certainly read most of their short fiction several decades ago. However, I can’t say I remember any of the stories in this anthology in any detail, with the exception of H. Beam Piper’s Time and Time Again, which is an old favourite of mine.

A few of the others, the titles at least, ring a bell – Harry Harrison’s Toy Shop and Frederic Brown”s Two Timer come to mind – but I can’t remember anything else about them. My poor old failing memory and the passing of the decades has consigned any recollection of them to the dustbin of history. Some of the other story titles sound vaguely familiar, and I probably did read some of them in anthologies or collections many years ago. But I can recall absolutely nothing about any of them except for the Piper story. Perhaps rereading a few of them will jog my memory. That usually works.

One of the authors, Lynn Venable, is a writer with whom I’m not familiar at all. However, I looked into her history, and she appeared in a few SF magazines back in the mid-20th Century. Apparently, she stopped writing (SF that is, not sure about writing in general) back in the 1970s. But one of the notable things that I found out about her is that one of her stories was adapted for the classic Twilight Zone television series back in the day. Indeed, it was one of the most famous episodes, the one in which mild, bespectacled bookworm Burgess Meredith was the only survivor of a nuclear war, and is delighted that he now has peace to read what he likes, with no nagging wife or co-workers to bother him. That is, until he drops his spectacles and smashes them (with no opticians left to make him another pair). If I’m not mistaken, the above story, Time Enough At Last, is the story upon which that episode is based. But I won’t know for sure until I read it.

Okay, next up it’s The Golden Age of Science Fiction – Volume II.

BEYOND THE BARRIERS OF SPACE AND TIME edited by Judith Merril

This time around, we have an SF anthology. This one is an oldie, from 1955, and is compiled and edited by Judith Merril, another of my favourite anthologists. This is the first Judith Merril anthology that I’ve featured on this blog, and most certainly won’t be the last.

TITLE: BEYOND THE BARRIERS OF SPACE AND TIME
EDITED BY: Judith Merril
CATEGORY:Short Fiction
SUB-CATEGORY:Anthology
PUBLISHER: Sidgwick and Jackson, London, 1955
FORMAT: Hardback, 1st Edition, 291 pages

CONTENTS:

• Introduction by Theodore Sturgeon
• Preface by Judith Merril
• “Wolf Pack” by Walter M. Miller, Jr. (short story, Fantastic, Sept/Oct 1953)
• “No One Believed Me” by Will Thompson (Saturday Evening Post, April 24, 1948)
• “Perforce to Dream” by John Wyndham (short story, Beyond Fantasy Fiction, Jan 1954)
• “The Laocoon Complex” by J. C. Furnas (Esquire, April 1937)
• “Crazy Joey” by Mark Clifton and Alex Apostolides (short story, Astounding Science Fiction, August 1953)
• “The Golden Man” by Phillip K. Dick (novelette, If Magazine, April 1954)
• “Malice Aforethought” by David Grinnell [Donald A. Wollheim] (short story, Fantasy & Science Fiction, Nov 1952)
• “The Last Seance” by Agatha Christie (short story, Ghost Stories, November 1926)
• “Medicine Dancer” by Bill Brown (short story, Fantasy Fiction, November 1953)
• “Behold It Was a Dream” by Rhoda Broughton (Temple Bar, November 1872)
• “Belief” by Isaac Asimov (novelette, Astounding Science Fiction, October 1953)
• “The Veldt” by Ray Bradbury (Saturday Evening Post, September 23, 1950)
• “Mr. Kincaid’s Pasts” by J. J. Coupling [John R. Pierce] (short story, Fantasy & Science Fiction, August 1953)
• “The Warning” by Peter Phillips (short story, Fantasy & Science Fiction, September 1953)
• “The Ghost of Me” by Anthony Boucher (short story, Unknown, June 1942)
• “The Wall Around the World” by Theodore R. Cogswell (novelette, Beyond Fantasy Fiction, September 1953)
• “Operating Instructions” by Robert Sheckley (short story, Astounding Science Fiction, May 1953)
• “Interpretation of a Dream” by John Collier (The New Yorker, May 5, 1951)
• “Defense Mechanism” by Katherine MacLean (short story, Astounding Science Fiction, October 1949)

This anthology is a 1st UK Edition, published in London by Sidgwick & Jackson, old stalwarts in the SF publishing field. It features nineteen stories by a wide assortment of authors, many of them pretty obscure. There is also an Introduction by Theodore Sturgeon, a Preface by Judith Merril, and a Bibliography at the back of the book.

The Bibliography erroneously lists the Anthony Boucher story (“The Ghost of Me”) as having appeared in the June 1942 edition of Astounding Science Fiction. It was the June 1942 edition of Unknown. I’ve done the usual with all of the stories that appeared in the SF&F magazines, giving their month and year of publication, and noting if the stories were short stories, novelettes, etc. But several of the stories were not published in the SF&F magazines, appearing instead in general mass media publications. In those instances, only the name of the magazine and the year of publication is listed.

Highlighting the stories from the regular SF&F publications of that era, there are a few familiar faces and stories, although many are also totally unfamiliar to me. There are some old favourites – Bradbury’s “The Veldt”, Asimov’s “Belief”, and Dick’s “The Golden Man” (an old childhood favourite of mine). There are also a bunch of unfamiliar stories from very familiar authors – Wyndham, Miller, Boucher, Sheckley, Clifton, Cogswell, Phillips, Wollheim (as David Grinnell) and MacLean. But the other stories are by totally unknown authors (to me, anyway). The stories may have appeared in the regular SF mags, but I’m afraid I’m totally unfamiliar with them and their authors (J. J. Coupling and Bill Brown).

In among the regular SF authors and magazines from that era, there are some real oddities. As I’ve already mentioned, there were several totally unfamiliar stories by unfamiliar authors, originally published in mainstream non-SF publications – John Collier (The New Yorker), J. C. Furnas (Esquire) and Will Thompson (Saturday Evening Post).

There is also a story from 1926 by Agatha Christie (“The Last Seance”), which is a strange one for an SF anthology, although many pre-1960s SF&F anthologies were often a varied mix of more cross-genre types of stories. Finally, there is another oddity which was first published way back in 1873, a story by Rhoda Broughton (“Behold It Was a Dream”). Broughton was the niece of J. Sheridan Le Fanu, and an accomplished author in her own right, although regretfully now mostly forgotten. The Bibliography completely omits the listing for this story, for some reason.

A very interesting anthology, and a bit of a strange mix. Should be a good read.

TRIPS IN TIME edited by Robert Silverberg

TITLE: TRIPS IN TIME – Nine Stories of Science Fiction
EDITED BY: Robert Silverberg
CATEGORY: Short Fiction
SUB-CATEGORY: Anthology
PUBLISHED: Wildside Press, 1977
FORMAT: Trade paperback, 152 pages.

Recently I bought a couple of nice old SF anthologies from Amazon UK. For my first proper post, I’ve decided to recommend one of those classic SF anthologies and list the contents. The first of the two is TRIPS IN TIME, edited by Robert Silverberg.

The anthology is a collection of quirky time travel stories, which span a thirty-five year period, the earliest being originally published in 1941, and the last in 1976. Here’s a listing of the contents:

• An Infinite Summer by Christopher Priest (1976)
• The King’s Wishes by Robert Sheckley (1953)
• Manna by Peter Phillips (1949)
• The Long Remembering by Poul Anderson (1957)
• Try and Change the Past by Fritz Leiber (1958)
• Divine Madness by Roger Zelazny (1966)
• Mugwump 4 by Robert Silverberg (1959)
• Secret Rider by Marta Randall (1976)
• The Seesaw by A. E. van Vogt (1941)

This looks like a very interesting anthology of short fiction. Some of these stories I remember well as old favourites (the Priest and Leiber), others I vaguely remember (Sheckley, Anderson, Zelazny, van Vogt, Silverberg), and the other two I’m not familiar with at all (Phillips, Randall).

Apparently this is a kinda/sorta “sister” anthology to an earlier one, VOYAGERS IN TIME (1967), which is a more traditional/typical collection of time travel tales. That’s the other paper book I mentioned, and I’ll get to that anthology once I’ve finished with this one. It will be nice to compare the two collections of short stories.

I’m looking forward to working my way through TRIPS IN TIME (however slowly, and most likely not in order of the contents listing), and will make a short progress report in this discussion thread as I finish each story.