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Publisher: Delacorte Press
Date of Publication: 1968
Binding: hardcover
Edition: first Printing
Condition: Very Good/Good
Description: 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall Science Fiction Copyright date 1968, First Printing. Black and maroon cover over boards with black and maroon lettering on the front and on the spine on a silver background. No tears bent pages. Previous owners stamp on the inside flyleaf. Light pink tint to the top page edges. Judith Merrill's annual collection of S-F, now going into its 12th year, is the most popular and distinguished anthology in the genre. Dust Jacket, no tears, bent flaps, nor is it price clipped. Light wear to the edges, and to the head and toe of the spine. Bright clean text, with a tight binding. A solid book.<
Date of Publication: 1968
Binding: hardcover
Edition: first Printing
Condition: Very Good/Good
Description: 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall Science Fiction Copyright date 1968, First Printing. Black and maroon cover over boards with black and maroon lettering on the front and on the spine on a silver background. No tears bent pages. Previous owners stamp on the inside flyleaf. Light pink tint to the top page edges. Judith Merrill's annual collection of S-F, now going into its 12th year, is the most popular and distinguished anthology in the genre. Dust Jacket, no tears, bent flaps, nor is it price clipped. Light wear to the edges, and to the head and toe of the spine. Bright clean text, with a tight binding. A solid book.<
384 pages, Hardcover
First published August 1, 1968
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About the author
Judith Merril
172 books48 followersJosephine Juliet Grossman
aka Cyril Judd (with C.M. Kornbluth)
Judith Josephine Grossman (Boston, Massachusetts, January 21, 1923 - Toronto, Ontario, September 12, 1997), who took the pen-name Judith Merril about 1945, was an American and then Canadian science fiction writer, editor and political activist.
Although Judith Merril's first paid writing was in other genres, in her first few years of writing published science fiction she wrote her three novels (all but the first in collaboration with C.M. Kornbluth) and some stories. Her roughly four decades in that genre also included writing 26 published short stories, and editing a similar number of anthologies.
aka Cyril Judd (with C.M. Kornbluth)
Judith Josephine Grossman (Boston, Massachusetts, January 21, 1923 - Toronto, Ontario, September 12, 1997), who took the pen-name Judith Merril about 1945, was an American and then Canadian science fiction writer, editor and political activist.
Although Judith Merril's first paid writing was in other genres, in her first few years of writing published science fiction she wrote her three novels (all but the first in collaboration with C.M. Kornbluth) and some stories. Her roughly four decades in that genre also included writing 26 published short stories, and editing a similar number of anthologies.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
August 6, 2021
This is the twelfth and final annual volume of Merril's series of anthologies in which she presented her picks of the best sf of the previous year, which was 1966 this time. She mixed selections from sources such as Cavalier, The New Yorker, Transatlantic Review, Argosy, The Antioch Review and other such high literary outlets with both traditional and New Wave oriented genre publications like Orbit, New Worlds, F & SF, Analog, and Worlds of Tomorrow. The authors include Harvey Jacobs, Donald Bartheleme, John Updike, William Burroughs... and J.G. Ballard, Hilary Bailey, Brian W. Aldiss, Sonya Dorman... and Fritz Leiber, Kit Reed, R.A. Lafferty, Katherine MacLean, Carol Emshwiller... My favorite stories were The Star-Pit by Samuel R. Delany and Light of Other Days by Bob Shaw.
July 9, 2009
Judith Merril was a great anthologist whose middle name was "inclusive" and whose annual best-of collections - this one was the last - were one of the the points at which the counterculture fused with science fiction. JM was open to every idea which came zinging along, and in those heady days, they zinged and zonged and zunged with alacrity, every day a whole bunch of new ones. In this volume you get Tuli Kupferberg (he was a Fug), Donald Barthelme (so this is where I first ran into him), John Updike (?!), R A Lafferty (always weird and wonderful), Gunther Grass, Thomas Disch (late and lamented), Samuel Delaney, a bunch of regular sf types, and JG Ballard who at that point (1968) was doing his "compressed novels" stuff, the one here being "You: Coma : Marilyn Monroe". I lapped all this stuff up and then staggered off to see an incomprehensible Pasolini film, like "Pigsty" - ah yes, Judith, I remember it well.
JM writes : "A satisfactory solution at last for my abbreviation-in-search-of-an-extension? SF : Speculative Fabulation".
JM writes : "A satisfactory solution at last for my abbreviation-in-search-of-an-extension? SF : Speculative Fabulation".
February 13, 2012
Judith Merril was, in my opinion, the best of the science fiction editors producing collections during the twentieth century. Like the rest of her anthologies, this is very good, containing not only fiction by both genre and non-genre writers but also poetry and, of course, her own introductory essay.
May 16, 2017
What a fabulous anthology. I can imagine myself at the age of fourteen picking up this book because of the spaceship on the cover. And then being very disappointed at the lack of spaceships, or indeed very many stories that were recognisably science fiction. Merril in her introduction talks about different interpretations of the acronym "SF", before settling on "Speculative Fiction", and this seems a very good description of the stories in here.
Compiled in 1968 (a few years before my fourteen year old self might have found it), many of the stories in this American anthology would qualify as "new wave". And it includes stories by those new wave luminaries JG Ballard and Brian Aldiss. Ballard actually gets two stories in here; "The Cloud Sculptors of Coral D" and "You: Coma: Marilyn Monroe". The first of these is recognisable prose fiction although in an almost archetypally Ballardian vein. "You: Coma: Marilyn Monroe" is experimental, consisting of a set of headed paragraphs of terse, at times almost abstract, text, from which you can discern the outline of a story. It also has typically Ballard obsessions, mass media, madness and obsession.
This book is full of treasure. There is a very short story by John Updike about dinosaurs who seem rather like middle-class North Americans in their preoccupations. There's a weird piece called Gogol's wife by an Italian writer, Tommaso Landolfi. There's a terrific story by Samuel R Delany at the back of the book (and this one actually does have spaceships). For me personally, the best thing was finding a book of this vintage where I think I've read no more than one or two of the stories before elsewhere - Bob Shaw's "Light of Other Days", and "Cloud-Sculptors of Coral D" rang a bell.
This is a great anthology; fifty years on from its original publication, it seems unlikely that more than five or six of the pieces in here would be classified as "science fiction" at all.
Compiled in 1968 (a few years before my fourteen year old self might have found it), many of the stories in this American anthology would qualify as "new wave". And it includes stories by those new wave luminaries JG Ballard and Brian Aldiss. Ballard actually gets two stories in here; "The Cloud Sculptors of Coral D" and "You: Coma: Marilyn Monroe". The first of these is recognisable prose fiction although in an almost archetypally Ballardian vein. "You: Coma: Marilyn Monroe" is experimental, consisting of a set of headed paragraphs of terse, at times almost abstract, text, from which you can discern the outline of a story. It also has typically Ballard obsessions, mass media, madness and obsession.
This book is full of treasure. There is a very short story by John Updike about dinosaurs who seem rather like middle-class North Americans in their preoccupations. There's a weird piece called Gogol's wife by an Italian writer, Tommaso Landolfi. There's a terrific story by Samuel R Delany at the back of the book (and this one actually does have spaceships). For me personally, the best thing was finding a book of this vintage where I think I've read no more than one or two of the stories before elsewhere - Bob Shaw's "Light of Other Days", and "Cloud-Sculptors of Coral D" rang a bell.
This is a great anthology; fifty years on from its original publication, it seems unlikely that more than five or six of the pieces in here would be classified as "science fiction" at all.
April 16, 2024
Just terrible. Most of the stories in this collection were abysmal, barely holding my interest. It's very avante garde stuff that is not always science fiction, and much of it is written so pretentiously. The worst part is the bits of commentary form the editor that precede each story. It's like the editor is a space alien who is still learning how to communicate with humans. I'm pretty sure the editor and most of the writers were high while writing much of this.
On the plus side, a couple of the stories and one of the poems early on were decent.
On the plus side, a couple of the stories and one of the poems early on were decent.
January 7, 2018
A classic anthology! Shows how sf/science fiction/speculative fiction is part of and a reaction to the times in which it is written, in this case the tumultuous mid-nineteen-sixties. Both expands and breaks down genre barriers: sf writers are there with literary authors. A prime example of the art of the anthology.
April 11, 2026
From the late 60's, these are rather "experimental" Sci Fi stories. Don't follow the traditional arcs; actually many of them were hard to read. I didn't really enjoy them much.
August 7, 2015
1) "You had to plug in; everybody that mattered was plugged in. It was our bond, our solace and our power, and it wasn't a matter of being distracted, or occupying time. The sound was what mattered, that and the fact that fat or thin, asleep or awake, you were important when you plugged in, and you knew that through fire and flood and adversity, through contumely and hard times there was this single bond, this common heritage; strong or weak, eternally gifted or wretched and ill-loved, we were all plugged in."
2) "'About this police business,' I said.
'You don't mind if I kip here tonight,' she said. 'I'm beat.'
'I don't mind,' I said. 'Want to hop in now? We can talk in bed.'
She took off the mac, kicked away her shoes and hopped in.
I took off my trousers, shoes and socks, pulled down my sweater and blew out the candles. I got into bed. There was nothing more to it than that. Those days you either did or you didn't. Most didn't. What with the long hours, short rations and general struggle to keep half clean and slightly below par, few people had the will for sex. Also sex meant kids and the kids mostly died, so that took all the joy out of it. Also I've got the impression us English don't breed in captivity. The Welsh and Irish did, but then they've been doing it for hundreds of years. The Highlanders didn't produce either."
3) "While I float on the taut line, the horizon between light and dark, where it's so easy, I begin to sense what is under the costumes: staggering down the street dead drunk on a sunny afternoon with everyone laughing at you; hiding under the veranda because you made blood come out of Pa's face; kicking a man when he's in the gutter because you've been kicked and have to pass it on. Tragedy is what one of the Terrans called being a poet in the body of a cockroach."
2) "'About this police business,' I said.
'You don't mind if I kip here tonight,' she said. 'I'm beat.'
'I don't mind,' I said. 'Want to hop in now? We can talk in bed.'
She took off the mac, kicked away her shoes and hopped in.
I took off my trousers, shoes and socks, pulled down my sweater and blew out the candles. I got into bed. There was nothing more to it than that. Those days you either did or you didn't. Most didn't. What with the long hours, short rations and general struggle to keep half clean and slightly below par, few people had the will for sex. Also sex meant kids and the kids mostly died, so that took all the joy out of it. Also I've got the impression us English don't breed in captivity. The Welsh and Irish did, but then they've been doing it for hundreds of years. The Highlanders didn't produce either."
3) "While I float on the taut line, the horizon between light and dark, where it's so easy, I begin to sense what is under the costumes: staggering down the street dead drunk on a sunny afternoon with everyone laughing at you; hiding under the veranda because you made blood come out of Pa's face; kicking a man when he's in the gutter because you've been kicked and have to pass it on. Tragedy is what one of the Terrans called being a poet in the body of a cockroach."
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews