Category: Science Fiction – Books

The paths that lead us to different forms of literature are many and varied, but regardless of one’s interests, a singular and central factor may be happenstance.  Such, I think, was the origin – or at least a part of the origin! – of my interest in science fiction:  In my early teens, no more than 13 years of age; in eighth grade – I was browsing through racks of paperbacks in a bookstore (within a city at one time a center of coal-mining) when I chanced across Volume One of The Science Fiction Hall of Fame.  The book immediately attracted my attention.  With planets, stars, and “spacey”-sort-of-things framing the title, the minimalistic cover art elicited wonder about distant realms unexplored and unknown to man.    

So, I bought the book.  Though the tales therein varied immensely in literary style, plot, and theme, let alone the nature of their protagonists and secondary characters, all of them … well, most of them … well okay, at least some of them! … brought forth feelings of surprise, wonder, anticipation, and above all, the sense of the “new” and “unknown”.  Previously, I’d been exposed to science fiction and fantasy only a little bit.  This took the form of 50s and 60s-era B-movies on broadcast television, particularly a local TV station’s “Dialing for Dollars” show which aired at 4:30 P.M. which with slow predictability seemed to alternate “Tarantula“, “The Mole People“, “The Monolith Monsters“, “The Amazing Colossal Man“, and other black & white flicks on a regular basis.  Bookwise, in eighth grade I read H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds; his short, eerie and I think better tale despite its brevity “The Plattner Story” – which had a strangle ambiguous conclusion, and, a chilling and disturbing tale by Saki (the title of which I’ve long since forgotten) – which what I realize in several decades retrospect had subtle but distinctively erotic overtones – about an eerily intelligent cat with near-supernatural powers.  But, I didn’t realize that there were actually book-length collections of such tales until I discovered the Hall of Fame anthology.  

Volume one of The Science Fiction Hall Fall of Fame and its three successor volumes are still in my library, the titles in each book’s table of contents ranked with penciled-in stars.  Their covers are featured at this blog, too.

What I didn’t realize at the time (not that I thought much about it during junior high school!) was that the stories in the collection didn’t spontaneously arise from epistolary ether to randomly condense themselves onto the printed page.  Rather – and I only understood this much later – such stories were typically published in magazines, pulp and otherwise, and later assembled by editors and publishers into collections based on theme, subject, or the author who wrote them. 

And so, in that context, here are several such anthologies which I’ve read over the decades, whose covers are featured at WordsEnvisioned:  

Star Science Fiction ((One (1953), Two (1953), Three (1954), Four (1955), Five (1956), Six (1957), Magazine (1958), Star Short Novels (1954)) – all covers by Richard M. Powers

Isaac Asimov Presents the Year’s Great SF Stories (Volume 1 (1939) through volume 25 (1963))

World’s Best Science Fiction (1965 through 1971; covers by Jack Gaughan)

Donald A. Wollheim Presents the [given year’s] Annual World’s Best SF (1972 through 1990)

The Best of… (name of specific author)

The Best From Fantasy and Science Fiction (Third Series (1953) through Eighteenth Series (1972))

Of the above anthologies, those most significant to me have been Isaac Asimov Presents … (deep irony here, in that Asimov’s fiction leaves me colder than cold, albeit the series’ truly great strength is its time-span and comprehensiveness), The Best of... (gives one a real and clear flavor for the “world” created by any given author, let alone his literary style), and, The Best From Fantasy and Science Fiction, the selections for which are consistently strong and smartly chosen.  

But, there’s another anthology I’ve thus far overlooked, which now in late 2024 (!) commences with “this” and successive blog posts. 

That is, the anthology edited by Judith Merril and published by Dell (Delacorte) from 1956 through 1969, which appeared under titles following the pattern of “SF – The Year’s Greatest Science-Fiction and Fantasy“, to “(given number) Annual Edition – The Year’s Best SF“, to simply (with the final two) “SF“. 

A list of all the books in the series follows below.  This comprises title, date of publication, Dell book number, cover artist’s names, and date of publication of later editions of the same title, with alternate titles – if present – also listed.  The information’s primarily derived and simplified from data in the Internet Speculative Fiction Database, secondarily from other sources, like WorldCat.org, and of course, by examining my own copies of the books.  Immediately obvious is that the covers of the first five paperbacks in the series were created by Richard M. Powers – those for 1956, 1957, and 1961 are truly outstanding and immediately recognizable as products of his work – while the covers of subsequent editions were by a variety of artists.  And so, the titles:  

S-F: The Year’s Greatest Science-Fiction and Fantasy, May, 1956
Dell Book Number B103, cover by Richard M. Powers
Also…
Hardback, July, 1956, published by Gnome Press, cover by EMSH

SF: The Year’s Greatest Science-Fiction and Fantasy: Second Annual Volume, June, 1957
Dell Book Number B110, cover by Powers
Also…
Hardback July, 1957, published by Gnome Press, cover by W.I. Van der Poel (Washington Irving Van der Poel, Jr.)
Paperback, July, 1957, identical to June edition

SF: The Year’s Greatest Science-Fiction and Fantasy: Third Annual Volume, July, 1958
Dell Book Number B119, cover by Powers
Also…
Hardback July, 1958, published by Gnome Press, cover by W.I. Van der Poel (Washington Irving Van der Poel, Jr.)
Paperback, October, 1958, identical to July edition

SF: The Year’s Greatest Science Fiction and Fantasy: 4th Annual Volume, June, 1959
Dell Book Number B129, cover by Powers
Also…
Hardback, June, 1959, published by Gnome Press, cover by W.I. Van der Poel (Washington Irving Van der Poel, Jr.)

The Year’s Best S-F: 5th Annual Edition, January, 1961
Dell Book Number F118, cover by Powers
Also…
Hardback, September, 1960, published by Simon & Schuster, cover by H. Lawrence Hoffman
Paperback, May, 1961, identical to January edition
The Best of Sci-Fi 5, published by Mayflower, 1966, 1967, and 1969

6th Annual Edition: The Year’s Best S-F, June, 1962
Dell Book Number 9772, cover by Van Zwienen
Also…
Hardback, October, 1961, published by Simon & Schuster, cover by H. Lawrence Hoffman             
Paperback, December, 1962, identical to June edition
The Best of Sci-Fi, published by Mayflower-Dell, 1963

7th Annual Edition: The Year’s Best S-F, June, 1963
Dell Book Number 9773, cover by Brillhart
Also…
Hardback, December, 1962, published by Simon & Schuster, cover by Nick Musi
The Best of Sci-Fi, published by Mayflower-Dell, 1964

8th Annual Edition The Year’s Best S-F, June, 1964
Dell Book Number 9774, cover by unknown artist
Also…
Hardback, December, 1963, published by Simon & Schuster, cover by Lawrence Ratzkin
The Best of Sci-Fi No. 4, published by Mayflower-Dell, 1965 and 1967

9th Annual Edition: The Year’s Best SF, May, 1965
Dell Book Number 9775, cover by Three Lions
Also…
Hardback, The 9th Annual of the Year’s Best SF, published by Simon & Schuster, 1964 and March, 1965
9th Annual S-F, published by Mayflower-Dell, 1967, cover by Hoot von Zitzewitz
The Best of Science Fiction 9, published by Mayflower, 1970

10th Annual Edition: The Year’s Best S-F, December, 1966
Dell Book Number 8611, cover by Ziel
Also…
Hardback, 10th Annual Edition: The Year’s Best SF, published by Delacorte Press, 1965 and June, 1966, cover by G. Ziel
10th Annual S-F, published by Mayflower-Dell, 1967
The Best of Science Fiction 10, published by Mayflower, 1970, covered by David Davies

11th Annual Edition: The Year’s Best S-F, September, 1967
Dell Book Number 2241, cover by Ziel
Also…
Hardback, 11th Annual Edition: The Year’s Best S-F, published by Delacorte Press, 1966, cover by Ziel

SF: The Best of the Best, August, 1968
Dell Book Number 0508, cover by Adams
Also…
Hardback: SF: The Best of the Best, published by Delacorte Press, November, 1967
Hardback: SF: The Best of the Best, published by Rupert Hart-Davis, 1968

SF 12, June, 1969
Dell Book Number 7815, cover by Paul Lehr
Also…
Hardback, SF 12, published by Delacorte Press, August, 1968, cover by Carl Smith
The Best of Sci-Fi 12, published by Mayflower, September, 1970, cover by Josh Kirby

What of Judith Merril, the person?

Rather than here re-hash, summarize, re-summarize, let alone rinse and repeat Judith Merril’s story, this post concludes with numerous links pertaining to her biography, literary legacy, and the the ideological influences leading to (and from) her writing.  But, photographically speaking, here are five images of – or including – Judith.

The first two, below, are from Frederik Pohl’s 1984 memoir of his involvement in the world of twentieth=century science fiction, The Way the Future Was.  

“At the New York Metrocon, 1950“
Lester del Rey, Evelyn Harrison, Harry Harrison, Isaac Asimov, Judith Merril, the author, Poul Anderson, L. Sprague de Camp, P. Schuyler Miller

“Lunacon 1967, New York City“
Judith Merril, Arthur C. Clarke, L. Sprague de Camp, Hal Clement

The following three images are from the Toronto Star’s article of January 4, 2018 (linked below): “Sci-fi author Judith Merril and the very real story of Toronto’s Spaced Out Library”.  They’ve been enhanced with Photoshop (cropped and color-adjusted), and, the last two are accompanied by captions that appear in the original Star article.   

First: Judith Merril, probably 1969

Second, “Judith Merril poses in front of the collection in 1985. Courtesy Toronto Star Photograph Archive. (Innell, Reg)”

Third, “Science fiction writer Judith Merril in the Spaced-Out Library, then located at 566 Palmerston Ave., 1975. Courtesy Toronto Star Photograph Archive (Dick Darrell)”

The painting Ms. Merril so proudly (justifiably so!) displays is Edmund Emshwiller’s illustration for the cover of the March, 1958 issue of Venture Science Fiction, representing Algis Budrys’ “The Edge of the Sea“.  This example of EMSH’s work has all the hallmarks of his style, which is characterized by oft-extremely-intricate-to-complex detail, bright-but-not-overemphasized colors, and above all capturing the mood and essence of a story, as a single scene.  From a technical viewpoint, the original painting gives one an appreciation of the degree to which publishers and editors had to effectively “shrink” – as it were – an image to conform to the dimensions of digest-size covers.  Here’s how the cover looked (and looks) today in (and on) the actual magazine, sixty-six years later.  The colors have held up pretty well in (and on) this copy.

Here’s a snapshot of Judith Merril from James Gunn’s 1973 heavily illustrated history of science fiction, Alternate Worlds, which is replete with photos of then-prominent science-fiction writers and editors, all of which are reproduced in halftone.  Though no caption is associated with this or any other such illustration, the text on Merril’s name-tag reads: “FanFair”, suggesting that the picture was taken at a convention in the late 60s or early 70s.

Judith Merril died on September 12, 1997.  She had by then become a significant enough figure in literary, cultural, and perhaps even political circles for her obituary to merit appearance in The New York Times, where, written by Gerald Jonas, it was published on September 17.  Here it is:

Judith Merril, 74, Science-Fiction Editor and Writer

Judith Merril, one of the first female writers and editors to influence the direction of modern science fiction, died on Friday in Toronto, where she lived. She was 74.

During and just after World War II, Ms. Merril was the only woman associated with a group of young science fiction enthusiasts known as the Futurians, whose members included Isaac Asimov, James Blish, C.M. Kornbluth and Frederick [should be Frederik] Pohl. She and Mr. Pohl were married in 1949 and divorced in 1953.

At a time when science fiction was still dismissed as adolescent escapism by most academic critics, her first published story, in Astounding Science Fiction magazine in 1948, told of a mother’s devotion to a baby horribly deformed by radiation-induced mutation. Her 1950 novel about nuclear war, “Shadow on the Hearth”, was adapted for television under the title “Atomic Attack.”

~~~~~~~~~~

You can watch “Atomic Attack” below.  (Ooops, I mean the movie, not “an” atomic attack.  You know, like with real atomic weapons and stuff.)  It’s at MegaDude’s YouTube channel, uploaded on January 29, 2014, and originally televised on the Motorola Television Hour in 1954. 

~~~~~~~~~~

Ms. Merril, who was born Juliet [?!]  Grossman in New York City, adopted the name Judith Merril early in her career.  She had lived in Canada since 1968.

She edited a well-received series of anthologies of the best science fiction from 1956 to 1970. In these collections she championed a self-consciously literary approach that became known in the mid-60s as the New Wave. By choosing stories from outside the usual magazines, she helped to broaden the horizons of science fiction writing. As part of her campaign to shift the focus away from scientific hardware, she fought a spirited is losing battle to redefine the genre as “speculative fiction”.

Her 1968 anthology “England Swings SF” introduced many American readers to the experimental fiction of writers like Brain Aldiss and J.G. Ballard. One puzzled reviewer noted that stories like Ballard’s “Assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy Considered as Downhill Motor Race” were “closer to the world of Kafka and William Burroughs than to Asimov and Bradbury”.

Her donation to the Toronto Public Library of more than 50,0000 books and periodicals formed the basis of the Merril Collection of Science Fiction, Speculation and Fantasy, one of the major research libraries in the field.

An observation:  Something’s immediately noticeable about the text of the obit:  Other than nominally touching upon her age, place of residence at the time of her death, given name and date of birth, the obit is otherwise completely devoid of information about Merril “as a person”; her identity is almost completely defined by her work as a writer and editor, while even the most tangential mention of her relationships with family, friends, and colleagues – however simultaneously happy, mundane, unhappy, challenging, or complex and contradictory – is entirely absent.  Why?  Brevity?  The absence of such information at the time?  I’m particularly interested in the impetus for her change of name, and, the source of her adopted surname “Merril”, a topic which doesn’t seem to be directly addressed in any of the websites I consulted for this post … though the subject might (?) be touched upon in anthologies of her stories, biographical material, or her personal papers.  If I were to surmise a guess, perhaps the symbolic change in her identity connoted by a name change arose from a variety of factors and influences…

In any event, a cursory dive into Ancestry.com reveals the following about Judith and her immediate family…  Born on 1/21/23 in Manhattan, Judith Merril (given / actual name (Josephine) Judith S. Grossman) was the daughter of Samuel Schlomo / Shlomo (6/23/93-4/14/30) and Ethel Libby (Hurwitch) (8/15/88-12/11/60) Grossman.  She had an older brother Simcha, who, born on 1/21/19, passed away at the very young age of five in 1924.  Her father, born in Allentown, Pa., her mother, born in Russia, and brother are buried at the Knights of Liberty Cemetery in Woburn, Massachusetts, in the same family plot with her mother’s parents, Barnet and Miriam.  As for Judith’s own place of burial, that seems unknown.  

Getting back to the series, here’s the cover of the first volume: S-F: The Year’s Greatest Science-Fiction and Fantasy, otherwise known as Dell First Edition B103.

What’s in the Book?

Introduction: “S-F: The Year’s Greatest Science-Fiction and Fantasy”, Essay by Orson Welles

Preface: “S-F: The Year’s Greatest Science-Fiction and Fantasy”, Essay by Judith Merril

“The Stutterer”, by R.R. Merliss [Reuben Robert Merliss],
from Astounding Science Fiction, April, 1955

“The Golem”, by Avram Davidson,
from The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, March, 1955

“Junior”, by Robert Abernathy,
from Galaxy Science Fiction, January, 1956

“The Cave of Night” [Station in Space Universe series], by James E. Gunn,
from Galaxy Science Fiction, February, 1955

“The Hoofer”, by Walter M. Miller, Jr.,
from Fantastic Universe, September, 1955

“Bulkhead”, by Theodore Sturgeon,
from Galaxy Science Fiction, March, 1955

“Sense from Thought Divide” [Ralph Kennedy series], by Mark Clifton,
from Astounding Science Fiction, March, 1955

“Pottage” [The People series], by Zenna Henderson,
from The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, September, 1955

“Nobody Bothers Gus” [Gus series], by Algis Budrys,
from Astounding Science Fiction, November, 1955

“The Last Day of Summer”, by E.C. Tubb [Edwin Charles Tubb],
from Science Fantasy, February, 1955

“One Ordinary Day, with Peanuts”, by Shirley Jackson,
from The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, January, 1955

“The Ethicators”, by Willard Marsh,
from If, August, 1955

“Birds Can’t Count”, by Mildred Clingerman,
from The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, February, 1955

“Of Missing Persons”, by Jack Finney,
from Good Housekeeping, March, 1955

“Dreaming Is a Private Thing”, by Isaac Asimov,
from The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, December, 1955

“The Country of the Kind”, by Damon Knight,
from The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, February, 1956

“The Public Hating”, by Steve Allen,
from The Blue Book Magazine, January, 1955

“Home There’s No Returning”, by Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore,
from No Boundaries (book)

The Year’s S-F, Summation and Honorable Mentions
(S-F: The Year’s Greatest Science-Fiction and Fantasy), Essay by Judith Merril

What of the book, and books?

This question is difficult to answer, so I’ll answer it with the proviso that I’m working from memory, having read, skimmed, and otherwise perused the contents of each book in this series … roughly some five years ago.  Or, more.  Actually, what really sparked my interest in Merril’s series was (unsurprising, given the nature of this blog!) the superb cover art and overall design of the first five volumes.  “What great art!  Wow, the stories in these books must be equally great!”  Not so.  That assumption soon proved to be invalid, like judging a record (remember records?) by the album cover (remember album covers?).  Taken as a whole, while any volume in this series includes a nominal few good to truly excellent stories – “good” in a literary sense being highly subjective! – collectively, whether for any given volume, or the set as a whole, the content is nowhere near as predictably, reliably strong, as that featured in The Best From Fantasy and Science Fiction…, Isaac Asimov Presents…, or, World’s Best Science Fiction….  Likewise, while those three series (and the others mentioned above) maintained a consistent level of quality with each successive volume, the literary quality of the content of successive volumes of S-F… seemed to diminish gradually, and then steeply, through the history of the series, particularly after the first few volumes, the content changing from mostly short stories to a wide variety of very brief non-fiction essays covering a melange of topics, with works of science fiction interspersed.  I don’t know if this was because Merril’s skill as a writer did not – necessarily – translate to the realm of identifying and selecting the works of other writers; if reasons of copyright or other legal issues prevented the same story being shared for publication by and among anthologies issued by multiple, competing publishers; if Merril’s efforts, energy, and time were too thinly spread in the mutual realms of publishing and writing – both – to a degree that limited her time for and impeded the quality of SF…  

In terms of the stories in this first volume of S-F, listed above, those of which I have the strongest memory are “The Golem”, “Bulkhead”, “Pottage”, “One Ordinary Day, with Peanuts”, and “Home There’s No Returning”, the last of which I very recently (think August-2024-kind-of-recently) re-read in the Kuttner and Moore anthology, No Boundaries.  Of these five, “Bulkhead” was great – I’ve always liked Theodore Sturgeon’s work.  “The Golem”? – meh.  “Pottage” was wonderful, entirely typical of the universally high quality of the stories of Zenna Henderson, whose world of “The People” was crafted with logical consistency, built upon a backdrop of mystery (alas, never too deeply explored), pathos, wonder, and emotional power, all within a framework of moral clarity.

Still, even if mostly unimpressed, I’m glad I gave the series a shot, for it does represent one perspective of the the evolution of the genre from the late 50s through the mid-60s.  A literary direction about which I have remained unenthusiastic (though I discovered it a few decades after the awful and unjustifiably romanticized decade of the 60s had become a memory), but which deserves understanding nonetheless.

Here’s the paperback’s full cover, composited via Photoshop from individual scans of front, spine, and back.  You can see how (understandably!) Powers used the front “real estate” for the major elements of his painting, while leaving the spine and back as a backdrop of violet, green, and dark gray.

In hardcover..

Here’s the dust jacket of Gnome Press’s hardback edition, released in July of 1956, with great art by Edmund Emshwiller, which has a Richard Powers-ish “air” to it.  

A reference for you, a reference for you!

Judith Merril / (Josephine) Judith S. Grossman) , at…

… Wikipedia

… The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction 

… SF.Writer.com 

… The Internet Speculative Fiction Database 

… Fantastic Fiction 

… GoodReads

… Toronto Star (“Sci-fi author Judith Merril and the very real story of Toronto’s Spaced Out Library” – January 4, 2018) 

… Toronto Public Library (“The Buzz…About Books
100 Years of Judith Merril, Science Fiction Writer and Editor”)

… Toronto Public Library (“Local History & Genealogy
Merril Collection at 50: Stories from the Spaced Out Library”)

… Fancyclopedia3 

… Science Fiction and Other Suspect Ruminations 

… Project Gutenberg 

… Science Fiction Awards Database 

… SF Revu 

… Toronto Public Library (“Merril Collection of Science Fiction, Speculation & Fantasy”)

… SF Crow’s Nest (“Homecalling And Other Stories: The Complete Solo Short Stories Of Judith Merril (book review).”)

… Conelrad Adjacent (“Judith Merril’s Suburban Apocalypse”)

… Jack Coggins (“The New York Nexus and American science fiction in the Postwar Period”)

… Kirkus Reviews (“The Connections of Judith Merril)

… SF Mistressworks 

… The Future is Female! (Is human not good enough?)

… The Blog of Awesome Women 

… Canadian Literature (“Judith vs. Judy”)

… Marxists.org (“Women’s Lives on the Left: From Politics to Science Fiction”)

At the Internet Speculative Fiction Database…

All Series Titles

This Book’s Contents

Published Variants of This Book (Just two!)

…and, James Gunn’s book…

Gunn, James E. (with Introduction by Isaac Asimov) Alternate Worlds – The Illustrated History of Science Fiction, A&W Visual Library (by arrangement with Prentice-Hall, Inc.), Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1973

…and, yet another book…

Pohl, Frederik, The Way The Future Was: A Memoir, Ballantine Books, New York, N.Y., 1978

…and, even another book.

Rubin, Barry, Assimilation and Its Discontents, Random House, New York, N.Y., 1995