My 1956 “Year’s Best SF” anthology

The Short: I recently took part in a group read for “The Best SF Short Stories” of 1956. Here is a link to my thoughts on that subject, at “The Best SF Short Stories of 1956“. A comment there drove me to consider what a “Year’s Best SF of 1956” would look like in anthology form for me. I picked 10 stories for my 1956 anthology with a page count about what Judith Merril used for her first two “Year’s Best SF” anthologies from 1956 and 1957. Being somewhat more expansive, I also picked 11 added stories for a page count more like we would have expected from Gardner Dozois or a current contemporary. See below.

The Long: I recently took part in a Best Science Fiction Fantasy Short Fiction (BSFFSF) group read on Facebook for “The Best SF Short Stories” of 1956. Here is a link to the post by Jim Harris on this.

Because I love reading short SFF, I chose to read 80 bonus stories from 1956 as well. Here is a link to my thoughts on that subject, at “The Best SF Short Stories of 1956“. In that post, I identified 46 stories from 1956 that I thought were “Great” or better.

To wrap this up, Jim Harris did a FB post noting this, “Vote for all the 1956 SF short stories we read that you’d include in an anthology you’d edit of the best short science fiction of 1956.” After this, Jim included a poll of the 22 stories that were the basis for our 1956 group read.

I selected 12 of those 22 as stories that I’d include in an anthology of the best short SF of 1956. I also commented that there were at least another nine stories from my bonus read I would include.

Jim’s response to this was, “You want to create an anthology as big as those Dozois created. I want to make Wollheim sized anthologies.”

That is a fair comment. I was not worrying about how big of an anthology would be needed for my suggestions.

I took a look at the size of the first two Judith Merril “Year’s Best” anthologies, the  “S-F: The Year’s Greatest Science-Fiction and Fantasy” (1956) and the “SF: The Year’s Greatest Science-Fiction and Fantasy Second Annual Volume” (1957). The page count was about 320 for both. Looking at the T. E. Dikty “Best SF Stories” in this period, the page count was in the 240 to 255 page range.

Donald A. Wollheim, first with Terry Carr and then with Arthur W. Saha, edited the “World’s Best SF” series of anthologies from 1965 to 1990. The first two of those, from 1965 and 1966, had about 280 pages of fiction.

The last “Year’s Best” anthology by Gardner Dozois was the 2108 “The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Fifth Annual Collection“. It had a page count of about 670 pages of fiction. The prior year was at about 650 pages. Other recent Year’s Best anthologies came in at:

1. Neil Clarke, “The Best Science Fiction of the Year: Volume 7“, 2023 Night Shade Books, 595 pages hb (625 tpb).
2. Rich Horton, “The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2020“,  2020 Prime Books, 505 pages tbp. The next version, 2021, was in ebook only, so I don’t have a page count.
3. Jonathan Strahan, “The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Volume 2“, 2021 Saga Press, 590 pages tpb.

I came up with two versions of my “Year’s Best Short SF 1956” anthology.

First, at about 320 pages, the length of the two Merril “Year’s Best” anthologies, I had 10 stories. I took these page counts from ISFDB by doing the math on adjacent stories for both hardback (hb) and paperback (pb) versions. I tried for versions of these that were as close to 1956 as possible, but did not worry about it overmuch. I realize that in the real world someone would have to lay these stories out in a book to see what the page count would be. I am not qualified to do that. I also realize that some of these page counts don’t make sense to me, but that’s all I have.

Here are those 10 stories for my 1950s length “Year’s Best SF 1956” anthology.

1. “The Anything Box“, a short story by Zenna Henderson, F&SF October 1956, rated 4.5/5, or “A classic”, 16 p at hb and pb.
2. “Consider Her Ways“, a novella by John Wyndham, from “Sometime, Never“, no editor listed, 1956 Eyre & Spottiswoode rated 4.5/5, or “A classic, 77 p hb and 66 p pb.
3. “The Country of the Kind“, a short story by Damon Knight, F&SF February 1956, rated 4.5/5, or “A classic”, at 17 p at hb and pb.
4. “The Dead Past“, a novelette by Isaac Asimov, Astounding April 1956, rated 4.3/5, or “Superlative”, at 46 p hb and 45 p pb.
5. “The Minority Report“, a short story by Philip K. Dick, Fantastic Universe January 1956, rated 4/5, or “Great”, at 33 p hb and 45 p pb.
6. “The Man Who Came Early”, a novelette by Poul Anderson, F&SF June 1956, rated 4.1/5, or Superlative”, at 29 p hb and pb.
7. “The Failed Men” a short story by Brian W. Aldiss, Science Fantasy V6 #18 May 1956, bonus read, rated 4/5, or “Great, at 21 p hb and 17 pb.
8. “The Claustrophile“, novelette by Theodore Sturgeon, Galaxy August 1956, bonus read, rated 4.1/5, or “Superlative”, at 33 p hb and 31 p pb.
9. “The Windows of Heaven” (AKA “Two By Two”), a short story by John Brunner, bonus read, rated 4/5, or “Great”, at 17 p hb and 14 p pb.
10. “And the Light is Risen“, a novella by Walter M. Miller, Jr, in the Canticle for Leibowitz universe, F&SF August 1956, bonus read, rated 4/5, or “Great”, at 79 pages in F&SF (no reprints on this version ever, to my knowledge).

I have not put too much thought into the order of these 10 stories, as I don’t have the expertise or experience. I did move “Consider Her Ways”, as I did not want to start Dave’s version with a 77 or 66 page novella. I re-ordered to alternate short stories with novelettes or novellas. Four of these stories 10 were from my 80 bonus read stories of 1956.

Next, at about 580 pages of fiction (more of a Dozois, Strahan or Clarke length), I added another 11 stories, for a total of 21 stories for my modern length 1956 “Best of” anthology. These added stories combined with the first 10 to form my 2020s length “Year’s Best SF 1956” anthology.

1. “A Work of Art“, a short story by James Blish, Science Fiction Stories July 1956, rated 3.9/5, or “Great”, at 23 p hb and 15p pb.
2. “And Now the News …“, a novelette by Theodore Sturgeon, F&SF December 1956, rated 3.9/5, or “Great”, at 25 p hb and 23 p pb.
3. “Silent Brother“, a short story by Algis Budrys, Astounding February 1956, rated 3.9/5, or “Great”, at 19 p hb and 22 p pb.
4. “The Executioner“, a novelette by Algis Budrys, Astounding January 1956, bonus read, rated 3.9/5, or “Great”, 38 p hb and pb.
5. “The Piece Thing“, a short story by Carol Emshwiller, Science Fiction Quarterly May 1956, bonus read, rated 3.9/5, or “Great”, at 7 p hb and 8 p pb.
6. “T“,, a short story by Brian W. Aldiss, Nebula Science Fiction Number 18 November 1956, bonus read, rated 3.9/5, or “Great”, at 8 p hb and pb.
7. “Death Between the Stars“, a short story by Marion Zimmer Bradley, Fantastic Universe March, bonus read, rated 3.9/5, or “Great”, at 19 p hb and 21 p pb.
8. “Prima Belladonna“, a short story by J. G. Ballard, Science Fantasy December 1956, bonus read, rated 3.9/5, or “Great”, at 17 p hb and 16 p pb.
9. “What to Do Until the Analyst Comes”, a short story by Frederik Pohl (variant of “Everybody’s Happy But Me!”), from the Pohl collection “Alternating Currents“, 1956 Ballantine Books, bonus read, rated 3.9/5, or “Great”, at 12 p hb and pb.
10. “Horrer Howce“, a short story by Margaret St. Clair, rated 3.8/5, or “Great”, at 15 p hb and 14 p pb.
11. “Legwork“, a novelette by Eric Frank Russell, Astounding April 1956, rated 3.8/5, or “Great”, at 28 p hb and 44 p pb (I think this difference a bit hard to believe, but that’s what I see).

In terms of organization for the modern length “Year’s Best SF 1956” anthology version, I’d leave “The Anything Box” and “And the Light is Risen” as the first and last stories and add these 11 stories in, alternating short stories and novelettes as much as possible.

I believe these stories are all science fiction, although I know that I and others have wondered if “And Now the News …“ is. I decided it did not matter to me. Some have also argued about whether “The Anything Box” is SF or fantasy, and I’m sticking with SF.

You will see some notable absences. To the best of my knowledge, and I looked, Alfred Bester, Cordwainer Smith and Robert A. Heinlein did not publish any short fiction in 1956.

This was fun, but I realize there are all kinds of things that a real editor of an anthology needs to consider that I did not. I did not worry about whether putting story A next to story B is a good idea. I did not worry about whether I could get the rights at a reasonable cost, or at all. I did not worry about figuring out who owns the rights to these stories; this might not be trivial, as I believe all of the authors are dead. I did not worry about whether having two stories by an author was a good idea. I did not worry about including “important” stories from 1956 that are loved by others but not by me, such as “Stranger Station” by Damon Knight. I did not worry about finding the definitive versions of the stories and getting workable copies of them. I did not worry about copy editing, cover art, design of the book, advertising and other aspects of publishing and selling. I’ll let a real editor do all of those things and more. With that, I am paying tribute to those that I know that do that today or have done it in the past, such as Rich Horton, Allan Kaster, Bryan Thomas Schmidt, Neil Clarke, Sheila Williams, Gideon Marcus, Jonathan Strahan, and others. Your hard work is deeply appreciated.

My thanks to Jim Harris for the idea.