Sci-fi and Heroic Fantasy discussion

so, what's your pick for the best all-time short story collections? a few of mine:

The Nebula Award Stories (annual)
The Hugo Winners series

The SF Hall of Fame series (Silverberg and Bova) as picked by the SFWA

Dangerous Visions (Harlan Ellison)
Again, Dangerous Visions (Harlan Ellison) these are two of the BEST ever

The Great SF Stories series (Asimov and Greenberg) - this was a 25 book series, the eds. devote 1 book to the best SF of the year starting with 1938 and start working up.

im also a fan of "The Best of _____" series put out by Del Rey books in the 70s and 80s....in that series one author got the whole book for his best all-time short work.

what's your list of great collections?

I'm another fan of the "Dangerous Visions" books. Ellison & another great SF writer collaborating on a story is just too good. Bloch & Ellison's Jack the Ripper stories were particularly memorable.

One of my favorite collections was Tomorrow's Children: 18 Tales Of Fantasy And Science Fiction. Edited by Asimov, few of the stories were new to me even when I first read it, but it does collect the very best between two covers.

Not exactly a short story collection, but the Wild Card series edited by George R.R. Martin has quite a few & is another wonderful collaborative effort by some of the best in the business.

Can't possibly have a list of anthologies without one of the greatest short story collections of all time, the classic:


I, Robot by Isaac Asimov

As immoral as they are, we are stuck with the three laws of robotics.


Number two on my list is the aforementioned:

Dangerous Visions edited by Harlan Ellison


And the combined collection of Le Guin's short stories is awesome:

The Wind's Twelve Quarters by Ursula K. Le Guin

Science Fiction Hall of Fame Volume 1 (both halves) is still my all-time favorite.

Asimov and Greenberg did one called 100 Great Short Science Fiction Stories, then Greenberg followed up with 101 Great Science Fiction Stories...both were made up of short-short stories of less than 2k words each. That's my favorite form, and they are both great collections, but suffer from missing some of Frederick Brown's best, he was a master of the form (he was left out due to contract issues)

I looked over my bookshelves (the physical ones) and spotted two series of anthologies that must be favorites of mine, or how would I explain so many of them? (Whenever I see "best" I usually substitute "favorite", because otherwise I don't know what "best" means.)

Thieves' World edited by Robert Asprin (and Lynn Abbey)
I think this was the original multi-author shared world anthology series, with different authors writing the adventures of denizens of the city of Sanctuary. Contributors included Joe Haldeman, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Poul Anderson, John Brunner, CJ Cherryh, Diana Paxson, and Andrew Offut.

Sword and Sorceress edited by Marion Zimmer Bradley
This was a themed collection from MZB, the requirement being fantasy stories starring female character(s) (no restriction on the author's gender.) The franchise has continued, though less regularly, following MZB's passing in 1999.


I'm suggesting these more for their series than for any one individual book in that series.

The Ellison short story books where he collaborated with other authors that I liked so much was Partners in Wonder, not Dangerous Visions as I was thinking. Happened to see it this morning. Sorry, old memory.

i enjoyed his collections of essays The Glass Teat and The Other Glass Teat, in which Harlan calls the TV indrudtry on the carpet...also Harlan had a wonderful 50 year resprective collection out a few years a go, cant rember the title

My favorite single author non, "best of" collection of genre work is Casey Agonistes and Other Science Fiction and Fantasy Stories. I also have a huge fondness for the Tor Double series that published 2 stories (novelette / novella length) together.

As it happens, I just started reading Jo Walton's Among Others, and its protagonist, Mori, believes quite strongly that the best short story collection of all time is:


The Wind's Twelve Quarters by Ursula K. Le Guin

I surely am not going to argue with her.

Omnibus of Science Fiction, 1952 ed. Groff Conklin

The Tor Double Novels series are also great. I bought many of these as they were being released.

Science Fiction: Classic Stories from the Golden Age of Science Fiction compiled by Asimov, Waugh and Greenberg

These are the ones that immediately come to mind.

Tor double series...anyone rember the Ace double series?

I have a few Ace doubles. I picked one up about two months ago: The Space Barbarians, Mack Reynolds/ The Eyes of Bolsk, Robert Lory. Eyes is pretty awful, but haven't read the Reynolds story, yet.

The Tor range was inspired by the Ace but I have not seen or read any of the Ace doubles - I might look to get one or two online just for interests sake.

Winds Twelve Quarters is superb - I also enjoy her Buffalo Gals collection.

Pump Six and Other Stories by Paulo Bacigalupi also is well worth looking out as is Magic for Beginners by Kelly Link.

my favourite's are:

The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick 4: The Minority Report - a couple of very good short stories in here. I plan to get all 5 of his short story books.

The Sentinel - a book of excellent stories from Sir Arthur.

Should have included:

Legends edited by Robert Silverberg (1998)

Another massive star-studded anthology.

Contains the Wheel of Time prequel novella "New Spring" by Robert Jordan (since expanded into a full-fledged WoT novel, New Spring). It also contains an original SoIaF by George RR Martin, an Earthsea story by Ursula Le Guin, a Discworld story by Pratchett, a Majipoor by Silverberg, a Riftwar story by Feist, a Sort of Truth story by Goodkind, and a Dark Tower story by King.

Spooky1947 wrote: "It is what the header says....

The anthology series I am most fond of is The Best of.... series done by Baltantine (I probably slaughtered the spelling)...at least the version I was familiar with came from them in paperback...this was no best of the year series. They each picked and author...they had volumes for Fredric Brown, Henry Kuttner, C. L. Moore, Lester del Rey, and on and on with the big names. And you were hard pressed to find a stinker of a story in the bunch. I ran into these around my Golden Age for such things (that'd be around 12 years old) and it introduced me to so many of the great SF stories from the past...it's the anthology series that made me a fan for life.

If anyone has a list of all the authors included in this series, please share it...I'm trying to find them all, but darn if I know who all was included.

James Blish's Star Trek anthologies go even futher back for me, I can rember having to spend my WHOLE ALLOWANCE to get just one of those over-priced (a whole 75¢...the nerve!!) and oh so thin paperbacks. I use to read them aloud to my great grandmother, and I am sure she was board to tears...

So, what's your fav?..."

Spooky1947 wrote: "so, what's your pick for the best all-time short story collections? a few of mine:

The Nebula Award Stories (annual)
The Hugo Winners series

The best anthology I have read is
http://www.amazon.com/Road-Science-Fi...

Great collection of classics.

The Road to Science Fiction ed. by james gunn IS a good series...not only some good stories, but Gunn's commentary alone is worth the price of admission...good call Haunui!!!

Harlan Ellison, Dangerous Visions

I always loved Road to Science Fiction too. The cover art on 'From Heinlein to Here' is pretty great..

Again, Dangerous Visions because I missed the first.

Noor wrote: "I liked Iterations and other Stories by Robert J Sawyer. It has some good ones in it."

Outstanding collections from just one author:

The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick 2: We Can Remember it for You Wholesale and The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick 3: Second Variety by Philip K. Dick.

Axiomatic by Greg Egan.

Warm Worlds and Otherwise by James Tiptree Jr.

From These Ashes: The Complete Short SF of Fredric Brown by Fredric Brown.

The Instrumentality of Mankind by Cordwainer Smith

My favorites are Dangerous Visions, Thieves' World, and Legends. I couple others that I liked are:
The Flashing Swords Series of five books. Four or five sword and sorcery short stories were included in each volume. I have read Flashing Swords! #1 and Flashing Swords! #5: Demons and Daggers.
The Seven Deadly Sins of Science Fiction was also interesting.

Gary wrote: "My favorites are Dangerous Visions, Thieves' World, and Legends. I couple others that I liked are:
The Flashing Swords Series of five books. Four or five sw..."
The Flashing Swords series were great. For ages, they were hard to find in second-hand bookstores but I slowly captured them all. Now with Amazon-- perhaps not as hard, but also not nearly as much fun as browsing stacks of used books