Best Story in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume One, 1929–1964 (Unabridged Version)

Ok then, this one occurred to me earlier:

Cakes (one) and lidless pasties for Zelazny's rose gatherer (12)

We don't have those cakes over here but I gotcha.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Daniel Keyes “Flowers for Algernon” 1959

gtfo

What part of that is boggling your mind?

I'm just surprised it beat Bester in particular, but then I haven't read it since 6th grade

It's a pretty great story, but no it's not better than Bester. It's probably the most widely read thing in there though.

progris riport - wtf?

ok dudes this poll inspired me to get this book... i hadn't read most of these. just read "scanners die in vain"—what a sick story! the imaginary in it is just amazing... the Great Pain... habermanization... the spaceship lined with live oysters (!!)

i was actually kind of into the weapon shop one, mostly because it made such a huge left turn from the whole rural-paradise-spoiled-by-modernity thing i thought it was going for...

so ya this is cool

one thing about "the weapon shop" that deserves credit is the sense of optimism ... compare to the usual misanthropy of libertarian fiction and/or "humanist" sci fi like asimov or bradbury.

politically speaking i think the scariest story in here might actually be "the little black bag". or maybe that's just harmless "nerds take over the world" / "teh stupids are taking over the world" wish-fulfillment for sci-fi readers.

collections like this make is just so painfully obvious that sci-fi as a genre took a wrongp-turn sometime in the last 50 years.

i think it was when someone (george lucas? gene roddenberry?) realized that sci-fi + cartoons + tv shows + movies + toy merchandising = big bucks

i don't even bother going into the sci-fi section of chain bookstores anymore since i know that it's going to be 90% licensed crap

i'm going to rep for this collection over the one in this poll:

http://www.amazon.com/World-Turned-Upside-Down/dp/1416520686

C.L. Moore, "Shambleau" (1933)
John W. Campbell, Jr. (writing as Don A. Stuart), "Who Goes There?" (1938)
A.E. Van Vogt, "Black Destroyer" (1938)
Lee Gregor, "Heavy Planet" (1939)
P. Schuyler Miller, "Spawn" (1939)
Ross Rocklynne, "Quietus" (1940)
Chester S. Geier, "Environment" (1944)
Arthur C. Clarke, "Rescue Party" (1946)
Theodore Sturgeon, "Thunder and Roses" (1947)
C.M. Kornbluth, "The Only Thing We Learn" (1949)
Wyman Guin (writing as Norman Menasco), "Trigger Tide" (1950)
Jack Vance, "Liane the Wayfarer" (1950)
Fritz Leiber, "A Pail of Air" (1951)
Michael Shaara, "All the Way Back" (1952)
Poul Anderson, "Turning Point" (1953)
Robert Ernest Gilbert, "Thy Rocks and Rills" (1953)
Tom Godwin, "The Cold Equations" (1954)
Fredric Brown, "Answer" (1954)
Robert Sheckley, "Hunting Problem" (1955)
L. Sprague de Camp, "A Gun For Dinosaur" (1956)
Isaac Asimov, "The Last Question," (1956)
H. Beam Piper, "Omnilingual" (1957)
Robert A. Heinlein, "The Menace From Earth" (1957)
Gordon R. Dickson, "St. Dragon and the George" (1957)
Christopher Anvil, "The Gentle Earth" (1957)
Murray Leinster, "The Aliens" (1959)
Rick Raphael, "Code Three" (1963)
James H. Schmitz, "Goblin Night" (1965)
Keith Laumer, "The Last Command" (1967)

I'd go for the Penguin Science Fiction Omnibus -
http://www.amazon.com/Penguin-science-fiction-omnibus/dp/0140031456

Sole Solution - Eric Frank Russell
Lot - Ward Moore
The Short-Short Story of Mankind - John Steinbeck
Skirmish - Clifford Simak
Poor Little Warrior! - Brian W. Aldiss
Grandpa - James H. Schmitz
The Half Pair - Bertram Chandler
Command Performance - Walter M. Miller
Nightfall - Isaac Asimov
The Snowball Effect - Katherine MacLean
The End of Summer - Algis Budrys
Track 12 - J. G. Ballard
The Monkey Wrench - Gordon R. Dickson
The First Men - Howard Fast
Counterfeit - Alan E. Nourse
The Greater Thing - Tom Godwin
Built Up Logically - Howard Schoenfeld
The Liberation of Earth - William Tenn
An Alien Agony - Harry Harrison
The Tunnel Under the World - Frederik Pohl
The Store of the Worlds - Robert Sheckley
Jokester - Isaac Asimov
Pyramid - Robert Abernathy
The Forgotten Enemy - Arthur C. Clarke
The Wall Around the World - Theodore R. Cogswell
Protected Species - H. B. Fyfe
Before Eden - Arthur C. Clarke
The Rescuer - Arthur Porges
I Made You - Walter M. MillerJr.
The Country of the Kind - Damon Knight
MS Found in a Chinese Fortune Cookie - C. M. Kornbluth
The Cage - Bertram Chandler
Eastward Ho! - William Tenn
The Windows of Heaven - John Brunner
Common Time - James Blish
Fulfillment - A. E. van Vogt

in a penguin vein, the slug lords will be interviewing brian aldiss himself as a one-off special for resonance FM, probably some time in february

Fab!

Have finally sourced myself a full copy of the subject of this poll. Will look for that World Turned Upside Down too (I have a stupid foible of not buying things from Amazon).

it's from baen books which somewhat mysteriously offers the first seven stories free on its website but provides no direct link for ordering the physical object!!

collections like this make is just so painfully obvious that sci-fi as a genre took a wrong-turn sometime in the last 50 years.

In Dreams, a celebration of the 7-inch single in all-original sci fi and horror fiction, is a great modern collection, which should also appeal to ILM nerds.

> I have a stupid foible of not buying things from Amazon

it's not on amazon.uk anyway.

ONE of those collections must contain a story about an alien behind a two-way mirror. anyone? 8)

The Lost In Space Episode With Michael J Pollard As The Boy Who Lived On The Other Side Of The Mirrors

Don't know if he was technically an alien though, or if that was based on a short story. Was probably original.

this was the first meeting between earth and some other alien race that could provide some technology or medicine or whatever. they would hand it over and help out but only on the condition that the earthlings didn't see the aliens (perhaps they were shy). hence the two way mirror*. only the earthling got curious and wanted to peek and finally managed it by shining a bright light, er, somewhere (alien side?). only the alien was wise to it and all he caught was a glimpse of a tail.

details sketchy, was a book rescued from (and later replaced onto) a pile destined for a jumble sale about 20+ years ago. was another story about a man being kept as a zoo animal. another which rested on you thinking the narrator was human but, surprise, no.

*or is it a one-way mirror, that makes more sense

^ that is exactly childhood's end by arthur c clarke. ** mild spoilers ** it only happens 1/3 of the way through, the aliens really are benign and helpful (well, in the sense that they're guiding humanity to a higher plane of evolution which only the children will reach, everyone else dies and planet destroyed); the reason they don't want to be seen is 'cause they look just like devils (but the reason our image of devils is like that is because of jungian collective unconscious pre-figurative reversal causality racial memory).

actually it was probably the short story which he later extended into childhood's end, called...

... "Guardian Angel", which, I believe, does just deal with the events in your post, none of the higher plane of evolution stuff.

^ only found out about the short story today, coincidentally, or i might have been more helpful earlier.

cheers ledge

a quick google says that it appears in 'the sentinel' which is on the shelf at home, 90 miles away. and a copy of other places. could've sworn it was a multi-author collection though.

"The Sentinel" sounds right. Don't forget that David Bowie wrote the song "Oh! You Pretty Things" based on Childhood's End.

World Turned Upside Down at alibris.co.uk from less than 3 quid:

http://www.alibris.co.uk/booksearch?qwork=8344110&matches=58&wquery=baen&cm_sp=works*listing*title

Brill, I've got it! I normally use abebooks but alibris looks really good, will keep 'em bookmarked.

worst cover ever.

"Arena" and "First Contact" are both just rather pulpy. Obviously influenced by the war, there's just a shred of a "war is stupid" theme in the first which could have been developed much more; but the fatalist xenophobia in the second I just find bizarre.

couldn't disagree more about "first contact"; the whole point of it is a sort of anti-xenophobic humanism, about the difficulty of negotiating co-existence! i mean the whole strand about the crewman who befriends the alien crewman seems almost too blatantly an argument AGAINST xenophobia!

ok, sure, the "lol we spent all the time telling dirty jokes!" payoff. But that only works as a contrast to the background of the whole story, in which apparently "the only safety for either civilisation would lie in the destruction of one of both of the two ships here and now." Maybe not xenophobic as such, but kinda confrontational, and certainly fatalistic. I just didn't buy it - shit was never a problem in star trek!

the whole point of the dilemma is to get AROUND that! it's an interesting logic problem and really, dude beats the "we're all the same thing" almost to death, dwelling on their sense of humour, their sympathetic expressions, how they really WANT to be friends. i can't for the life of me imagine how you'd consider the story's POV to be xenophobic in the slightest. or fatalistic; they do solve the problem in the end!

Yeah they solve it but to me it's a non-problem! I don't get why they are so paranoid - that's the word, of course! - "We can't trust 'em so we'd better kill 'em". I know he argues it well, I just find it hard to imagine that's what it would come down to.

Also the story unwrites itself - if it is a genuine problem and that is the only solution, then, bingo! We have it! Problem will never occur!

well it's not meant to be a treatise on human-alien relations; it's a story with a logic puzzle at the heart of it that gets satisfyingly solved by the end. QED!

man its a good life is such a scary fuckin story

first encountered it thru the twilight zone episode which makes it creepier cuz the kid looks like a normal kid and not some purpley monster like in the story

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y176/edwardiii/to_the_corn_field.png

eep!

is that billy mumy? ha, it is. later of Lost In Space and Babylon 5.

I read that story for the first time last night btw. Yes it was v. good. I liked the purpleness.

the purpleness is *GOOD*

I think this thread -or rather it's faulty predecessor- got started because of that episode being mentioned on Taking Sides: The Twilight Zone vs. The Outer Limits

Recently got a hold of a copy of some giant anthology called The Space Opera Renaissance. Looks interesting, but so far all I've (re)read is the great three-pager "Zirn Left Unguarded, The Jenghik Palace in Flames, Jon Westerly Dead" by Robert Sheckley, which I understand the Sluglords have done.

Purple monster? The kid was a normal kid in the print story, too! Are there alternate versions of this anthology running around with main characters being replaced by purple monsters? There was a non-descript monstery kid thing in “Born of Man and Woman” but I don't remmber him being purple.

read it again! he's never described, physically, but it's strongly implied that he has a monstrous appearance, and there's lots of mentions of his 'purplish gaze'

Maybe Bixby had a kid with a really big birthmark on his face.

Incidentally s1ocki have you read R.A. Lafferty's "Ginny Wrapped in the Sun"? It's another very good version of the Monstrous Child story, maybe a better story than Bixby's, albeit with a debt to it. In fact everybody should just read as much Lafferty as they can get hold of, dude was fabulous.

o rly!

never heard of it!

any collections you would recommend?