Dating back to June of 2017 (oh my!), I’ve now updated this post to show a much (much) better copy of the Anthony-Boucher-edited The Best From Fantasy and Science Fiction -Seventh Series. The image of my “original” copy, with the previous unknown owner’s home-made label on the spine, is displayed at the bottom of the post.
Having read this volume several years ago, by this point in time (late 2024) I cannot recall each story in detail, but it’ll suffice to say that this volume, truly like others in the series (well, at least through the late 1960s) continued the high quality of previous books in the series. The stories that stand out in my memory at this point are Ward Moore’s “Adjustment”, Robert F. Young’s “Goddess in Granite”, and, Fritz Leiber’s “The Big Trek”.
The few stories by Young that I’ve read have been excellent. Highly original in plot and setting, there’s nothing extraneous to his text, and his characters – while like most science fiction protagonists not entirely “three dimensional” in personality and background – are nevertheless distinct and individuated, manifesting change in belief, attitude, and self-understanding by a given story’s conclusion. One thing I’ve noticed – albeit I’ve not read either of the two collections of his stories! – is that a central element of his tales seems (seems…) to be the nature of relationships … relationships in all their complex aspects … between men and women. And, women and men. Certainly this is true for “Goddess in Granite”, which is a deeply disturbing and ironic tale of the evolution of one man’s attitudes towards and relationships with women, in senses both abstract and very (very; emphatically so) physically real. While not necessarily a likeable chap, the development and maturation of the protagonist’s character is intriguing; the story heavily (very; again emphatically!) laden with symbolism. In a contemporary, early twenty-first-century parlance, “Goddess in Granite” might well be deemed a “blue pill to red pill” (to black pill?) conversion story. But, its meaning goes deeper.
Meanwhile, Fritz Leiber’s “The Big Trek” is a light, brief, and charming tale, typical of the level of imagination inherent to Leiber’s oeuvre. It merited colorful cover art by Edmund Emshwiller which perfectly mirrored the setting and central event of the story.
“The Wines of Earth”, by Idris Seabright, September, 1957
“Adjustment“, by Ward Moore, May, 1957
“The Cage”, by Bertram Chandler, June, 1957
“Mr. Stilwell’s Stage”, by Avram Davidson, September, 1957
“Venture to the Moon”, by Arthur C. Clarke, from Fiction #49, December, 1957
“Expedition”, by Frederic Brown, February, 1957
“Rescue”, by G.C. Edmondson, June, 1957
“Between The Thunder and The Sea”, by Chad Oliver, May, 1957
“A Loint of Paw”, by Isaac Asimov, August, 1957
“The Wild Wood”, by Mildred Clingerman, January, 1957
“Dodger Fan”, by Will Stanton, June, 1957
“Goddess in Granite”, by Robert F. Young, September, 1957
“Ms. Found in a Chinese Fortune Cookie”, by Cyril M. Kornbluth, July, 1957
“Journey’s End”, by Poul Anderson, for this volume
“The Big Trek”, by Fritz Leiber, October, 1957
“In Memoriam: Fletcher Pratt”, poem by James Blish, October, 1957
“Yes, but”…”, poem by Anthony Brode, September, 1957
“The Horror Story Shorter by One Letter Than the Shortest Horror Story Ever Written”, by Ron Smith, July, 1957
“Lyric for Atom Splitters”, poem by Doris Pitkin Buck, for this volume
Referentially Speaking…
… Internet Speculative Fiction Database
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