Browsing Around in Pre-1975 Anthologies Other Than Conklin's

[Extollager]

...I should have said that the offshoot guys are about two feet tall, but they weigh so much that they leaves footprints in solid rock.

 

[J Riff]

Much more sophisticated. Here at the coffeeshop, a lady regular is reading a classic short story collection, and I spotted Sheridan La Fanu, and went on about vampires for a while, but I guess they are passe at last. A retitled C.L. Moore novella was on TV when I woke up, an 80s adaptation of something... Vintage Season.

 

[Extollager]

Two more stories from Monster Museum before the book goes back into storage.

"The Desrick on Yandro" by Manly Wade Wellman was intended, I suppose, to charm with its Appalachian milieu and the simplicity of its tale of a greedy man's fate at the "hands" of the Flat, the Toller, the Bammat, the Behinder, and the Culverin.

"The Homecoming" by Ray Bradbury reminded me of the once well-known cartoons of Charles Addams, with vampires, witches, etc. being the personnel of what were intended to be amusing weird variations of familiar family tensions. If you like the one you should like the other.

Leaving the book, I'm struck by how only a few of the offerings would have suited the taste of a youngster who wanted monster stories for the sake of a creepy atmosphere such as you might try to conjure up if you were outside with your cousins on a late summer evening, or if you relished The Outer Limits, etc. Monster Museum was a book from way, way, way back in my reading life, but I'm wondering if, as a kid, I managed to read more than "Slime" all the way through. I might have read "The Day of the Dragon," but I associate it, rather, with a later anthology edited by Robert Arthur, Monster Mix. "Doomsday Deferred" and "The Microscopic Giants" might have held my interest. But it was a long time ago!

Anyone else care to comment on this one?

Over at the Robert Arthur subforum, I expect to be commenting before too long on stories from two other juvenile anthologies credited to Hitchcock, Ghostly Gallery and Haunted Houseful.

 

[pambaddeley]

There was a whole series of SF anthologies from the sixties, published for children and available in the local Library - had a name similar to the TV series Out of This World.

 

[Extollager]

These?

 

[Randy M.]

Two more stories from Monster Museum before the book goes back into storage.

"The Desrick on Yandro" by Manly Wade Wellman was intended, I suppose, to charm with its Appalachian milieu and the simplicity of its tale of a greedy man's fate at the "hands" of the Flat, the Toller, the Bammat, the Behinder, and the Culverin.

"The Homecoming" by Ray Bradbury reminded me of the once well-known cartoons of Charles Addams, with vampires, witches, etc. being the personnel of what were intended to be amusing weird variations of familiar family tensions. If you like the one you should like the other.

Can't comment on the book as a whole, but on these ...

The Wellman is one of his John the Balladeer series (a.k.a. Silver John), the first collection of which, Who Fears the Devil? (originally a 1963 volume from Arkham House), is something of a landmark for both horror and fantasy, often mentioned in "best of" lists and by writers like David Drake and Karl Edward Wagner as an inspiration. I came across a few stories previous to reading Who Fears the Devil? and wasn't tipped over into reading the collection until "Walk Like a Mountain" in Gardner Dozois' Modern Classics of Fantasy, though I'd be hard-pressed to say why that one struck a note the others didn't. Anyway, the point I'm meandering toward is, I think the collection is greater than the sum of its individual stories of which "...Yandro" is easily the oddest, most fantastical of the stories in my mind. In spite of a certain sameness in the structure of the stories -- I think it would be harsh to say formula, but I'm sure others would disagree -- there is a cumulative effect in the stories that I found appealing.

As for the Bradbury, you're right about mentioning Charles Adams. I've heard that for years Bradbury and Adams talked of a collection of the Family stories with illustrations by Adams. The collection finally came to be -- From the Dust Remembered -- but by then Adams was no longer. I'd have to check my copy, but I think the publisher used some of Adams' old work as a book cover. As for this story, it would be my nomination for best 20th century American fantasy short story I've read. There are other strong contenders, but there's something about "Homecoming" that touches me every time I read it.


Randy M.

 

[pambaddeley]

Thanks Extollager, yes those are the ones!

 

[Extollager]

Alfred Hitchcock's Ghostly Gallery was an anthology aimed at the school market. It included a couple of chestnuts, Crawford's "The Upper Berth" and Burrage's "The Waxwork." The former features a rather physical "ghost" that can be wrestled with, in the manner of the Icelandic draug. I like Burrage's "One Who Saw" and "Smee" as ghostly fiction, but "Waxwork" struck me as corny when I first read it and still does. Dunsany's "In a Dim Room" is a you-see-it-coming trick story. Bah!

 

[Extollager]

[QUOTE="Extollager, post: 1992880, member: 27126]
Over at the Robert Arthur subforum, I expect to be commenting before too long on stories from two other juvenile anthologies credited to Hitchcock, Ghostly Gallery and Haunted Houseful.[/QUOTE]

Arthur didn't edit Ghostly Gallery -- my mistake.

 

[2DaveWixon]

Here's another anthologist whose editions you used to see... but I suppose he is forgotten now: Leo Margulies.
View attachment 21984View attachment 21985


View attachment 21986

As it happens, Margulies was a magazine editor, and I know that Cliff Simak sold him a number of stories over the years...
Dave

 

[2DaveWixon]

As long as you experts on anthologies are gathered here, may I ask if you can help me with the name of the author of a story that I remember reading in an anthology from, probably, the sixties?
It was called "Let's Be Frank." (I think there was a later story with that name, but I'm looking for the story in which all of the human race becomes the same person in multiple bodies...

Dave Wixon

 

[J-Sun]

Brian Aldiss, probably from Merril's SF: Best of the Best (1967). It's not quite all the human race, though - there was that unfortunate visit to Hispaniola by Frank II.

 

[2DaveWixon]

Brian Aldiss, probably from Merril's SF: Best of the Best (1967). It's not quite all the human race, though - there was that unfortunate visit to Hispaniola by Frank II.

Thank you, sir.
(I would not have associated Aldiss with that type of story; I am chastened...)

Considering that it's been umpty-ump years since I read that story, it's understandable that I had forgotten the Hispaniola incident...

Now I'm left to puzzle why that story suddenly popped back into my head, a few days ago...likely something I read somewhere in Chrons stimulated some unusual portion of the memory banks, but I can't think what that stimulus might have been...

Appreciative of your aid.

Dave

 

[J-Sun]

Thank you, sir.

You're very welcome.

Considering that it's been umpty-ump years since I read that story, it's understandable that I had forgotten the Hispaniola incident...

Completely understandable - I only mentioned it because I was scanning through it to make sure it was the right story - I'd forgotten it, too.

 

[John Thiel III]

Herewith I invite interested folk to browse around in anthologies that they may have on hand, that were published 40 or more years ago (as of 2015), and edited by someone other than Groff Conklin -- who for many years seems to have been the sf anthology king.

Anthologists who would be appropriate for this new thread include Don Wollheim --

...Damon Knight --


...Judith Merril--

...Robert Silverberg--
View attachment 21982
...Arthur C. Clarke--
View attachment 21983
... and more.

For our purposes, I suggest we define "anthology" as an assembly of stories by multiple authors (in contrast to single-author "collections"), and that we confine ourselves to books that reprint previously-published stories, i.e. that we not include books that published their contents for the first time.

Purely up to you, but I propose to rate the selected stories 1-5, thus:

5/5: Outstanding stories in one's whole personal experience of reading sf and a cherished classic

4/5: Exceptionally good

3/5: Worth reading


2/5: Perhaps passable entertainment, but eminently skippable

1/5: Not worth reading

 

[John Thiel III]

BEYOND HUMAN KEN is the first science fiction anthology I ever read, purchased off a rack at "The Milk Store". I was highly impressed with the stories in it, which she defined as "uncanny" by the title of her anthology, and as "alien" in the same way. But "Beyond" put it above ordinary reading anyway. She was highly in favor of "out there" and the "beyond". I think her anthology gave a boost to science fiction, which has sometimes needed it. I think it was never in hard covers and had a kind of soft-cover attitude. Nevertheless it was influential, and she was later elevated to doing the earliest Best of the Year anthologies.

Other early anthologists I read besides Groff Conklin, who was indeed the anthology king, were Bleiler and Dikty and Leo Margules. Some strange, far out reading, which I like, in both.

 

[2DaveWixon]

Other early anthologists I read besides Groff Conklin, who was indeed the anthology king, were Bleiler and Dikty and Leo Margules. Some strange, far out reading, which I like, in both.

I'd say that while the Bleiler and Dikty team did not produce as many anthologies as did Conklin (no one came close), they were close in quality... And it may be a sign that the golden age of sf was about that same period in which all the great stories to be found in both Conklin's and B&D's volumes were created (and maybe it's easier to produce great anthologies when you've got such a golden era to winnow through...

Dave