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

Feel like this thread should be moved to I Love Books or retired in favor of the other rolling thread, but I still kind of like this thread and feel it has a purpose.

haha i dimly remember reading that asimov anecdote in one of his other books. that guy must have been the most lovable bad public speaker ever.

He basically brags about it in I, Asimov. Well, he describes it differently. How he was a highly paid, much in-demand public speaker who could get the crowd eating out of the palm of his hand in no time flat and was uncannily able to stop on a dime at exactly the appointed hour within reference to a watch or clock.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pU-QExgydz0

Just reread - okay listened to the audiobook of - the novel version of Flowers of Algernon, and gotta say it still packs a punch, extremely well thought through and executed.

Aargh, sleepy fat fingers onto small screen, I really pulled a Charlie Gordon that time, Flowers for Algernon

How do they do the bit on audio where he goes punctuation berserk? That's my favourite bit.

This poll result surprises and confuses me.

Like is “Flowers for Algernon” something other than an exploitative bit of premise?

It's a well-done tearjerker at least, the more poignant for sure if you know or are someone with cognitive struggles---duh everybody in some way---guess it got some points for novelty when first published (not many stories about "slow" people then) but the deeper or more lingering (than novelty) impression, via unusual aspect of subject (also in there: experimental treatments which work, but only for a while---and it was published after and amid all these well-publicized treatments for "curable" conditions).

So exploitation is also part of its subject---is he in some way better off for this experience, at least in terms of a few, increasingly and perhaps mercifully dimming memories---?

How do they do the bit on audio where he goes punctuation berserk? That's my favourite bit.

There is one plausible interpretation in which one could think of it as a story that is relevant to anyone who has not necessarily been surgically altered but whose intellectual development has outstripped their emotional -and also, Keyes/smart Charlie states, spiritual- development.

Okay, the narrator pauses for every comma in the first and last sentence of that Progress Report.

xpost yeah was thinking along those lines and others re someone with cognitive struggles---duh everybody in some way-

Yeah, I probably should have said I was agreeing with what you were saying.

The movie was okay, wasn't it? Been a long tyme since I've seen it, but Cliff Robertson was prob okay, and it had Charlie going to a go-go, strobe lights, girls in white boots---tryin' to get those crazy kids back in the seats, but then why wouldn't he, go Charlie go! (Soundtrack by Ravi Shankar, for Charlie's messed-with karma.)

Dunno, haven't seen since we watched in ninth grade English class, although I did just read Daniel Keyes impression of it in his memoir Algernon, Charlie and I: A Writer's Journey. But hey, I see that somebody put Charly on youtube for the nonce.

Robert Silverberg edited a collection including several of these, with essays of analysis and appreciation for each - a book I loved, and thoroughly recommend.
https://www.amazon.com/Robert-Silverbergs-Worlds-Wonder-Exploring/dp/0446513695

Yeah that book is great. I have an ebook of it under an alternate title, Science Fiction 101: The Craft of Science Fiction.

Which reminds me that another audiobook I recently enjoyed was Brian Aldiss’s Non-Stop. (The first chapter of “Hothouse” is in that Silverberg collection)

Prior to World of Wonder, Silverberg also edited the Science Fiction Hall of Fame anthologies that this poll is based on. IIRC, Silverbob massaged the poll results a bit to get a good overall spread of authors, types of story, eras, etc. His choices are generally excellent, tho' I can't quite understand his enthusiasm for Blish's 'Surface Tension', which I find pretty dull (might well have been more remarkable in 1952 of course).

I have these British editions:

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51uqgQy-FPL._SX303_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51o%2BZk-ARSL._SX296_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

"Surface Tension" amazes me now, or not too long ago when I finally read it in the VanderMeers' accurately titled The Big Book of Science Fiction. Entirely possible that I'm at 1952 levels of appreciation, not to mention comprehension (I was an All-American tot then, bred on U-235-fortified mother's milk). Great cover pix, thanks! Also thanks to yall for mention and endorsements of those Silverb essays.

You know, James M, it seems that there is also a recent audiobook of the very book that is the subject of this poll, and in that case the reader of the shorter version of “Flowers for Algernon” really goes to town delivering each and every inflection in the section in which Charlie is infected with punctuation intoxication.

Someone with musical skills should sample that to make the next Avalanches single.

Indeed.

Linking this for the images, which you need to scroll down to see:
https://auxiliarymemory.com/2017/12/19/science-fiction-hall-of-fame-volume-one/

How do you think that punctuation hiccuping Charlie does compares with the chanting of the Scientific People in The Stars My Destination, James?

The mind boggles.

I know there's at least one UK edition of 'The Stars My Destination' that helpfully deformatted all the weird typography, putting it into regular paragraphs and ruining the effect.

Recently there have also been audiobooks of Volume IIA and now Volume IIB. Also found this review by Theodore Sturgeon:
https://www.nytimes.com/1973/04/22/archives/if.html

Finally, came across some interesting comments out there by James Gunn, in which he references Volume II, about why the novelette is the ideal length for sf, but they are buried in google books links so am not going to link.

Not the screenwriter, James Gunn, but the sf writer and academic.

Curious about his anthology series, The Road To Science Fiction, but seems hard to get a hold of.

It seems like at least half of these have been adapted into TV/movies. Weird that Mimsy would be the most recent one.

I only have volume three of the Gunn series, 'From Heinlein to Here', covering the period 1940 to 1977. Good selection of stories, lots of crossover with other the Hall of Fame anthologies as you might expect; don't remember the surrounding editorial matter being that compelling, but would need to revisit to confirm.

Have recently worked my way through a couple of volumes of Hugo Award winning stories edited by Asimov, covering the periods 1955 to 1967. Again, some crossover with these anthologies. With your indulgence (or without), here are my rankings:

The Darfstellar - Walter M Miller 6/10
Allamagoosa - Eric Frank Russell 7/10
Exploration Team - Murray Leinster 7/10 (not the best story in these collections, but the one that most seemed like it would most make a great movie - giant mutated bears! hordes of horrible alien creatures!)
The Star - Arthur C Clarke 8/10
Or All the Seas With Oysters - Avram Davidson 6/10
The Big Front Yard - Clifford D Simak 7/10
The Hell-Bound Train - Robert Bloch 5/10
Flowers for Algernon - Daniel Keyes 8/10 (the ideas about intelligence and stupidity expressed here are obviously much more problematic nowadays, but as a piece of storytelling this is still pretty fine)
The Longest Voyage - Poul Anderson 5/10
The Dragon Masters - Jack Vance 7/10
No Truce With Kings - Poul Anderson 2/10 (an unbelievably tedious sci-fi retelling of the American Civil War. Kinda hate Poul Anderson now.)
Soldier, Ask Not - Gordon R Dickson 6/10
'Repent Harlequin', said the Ticktockman - Harlan Ellison 7/10 (yes the author is a terrible arse, and the hepcat writing style has dated badly, but after the stodge of Anderson this definitely felt like a leap into modernity and you can still see why it had such an impact at the time)
The Last Castle - Jack Vance 9/10 (Vance at his best - a baroque melding of fantasy, historical and classic SF ficion tropes)
Neutron Star - Larry Niven 6/10 (reminded me a little of Delany's Nova, which is less hard science than the Niven, and therefore much more to my taste)

The Big Front Yard - Clifford D Simak

this is the one where the hoverbike riding aliens are impressed by paint, yeah?

oh look there they are:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/3/3c/The_Big_Front_Yard.jpg/220px-The_Big_Front_Yard.jpg

LOL yep, that's a fantastically literal cover painting that gives away the ending. There's a lot of folksy yarn-spinning before that.

Winner of the Hugo Award for Best Novelette, 1959

Thanks, Ward. I remember reading those two Poul Anderson stories in that book, liking the first one well enough and hating the other one, so much I did not finish it

Simak? Folksy yarn-spinning? No way.

Never happened

This anthology series I have never seen or heard of until today, edited by guess-who, looks pretty interesting: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_(anthology_series)?wprov=sfti1

Amazing looking stuff.

For real! A bunch of great stuff i know plus a bunch of stuff I’ve been looking for, like Wilhelm’s “Baby, You Were Great”

'Baby, You Were Great' also included in Pamela Sargent's first Women of Wonder anthology.

At the same time as the Alpha series, Silverbob was also editing the all-original New Dimensions series too. Dude was just insanely productive in the late 60s/early 70s.

Yeah, edited a lot of one-off anthologies as well, I think

Of course, those Alphas are not originals, like the New Dimensions were, I think, but still. “Baby, You Were Great” is from Orbit, for instance.

And can also be found in The Best From Orbit.

I have this nice UK paperback edition of Orbit 2, where the Wilhelm made its first appearance:

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/413FfkCenfL.SX316.SY316.jpg

I only have a battered copy of the UK Orbit 1 paperback, but I love the cover:

https://pictures.abebooks.com/ELLEPOTTER/md/md20882515571.jpg