The Year's Greatest Science-Fiction and Fantasy 3rd Annual Vo... by Judith Merril

I do think there is something lost when these things fall out of print, because the notes make this more, in my view, than just the sum of the stories. Paul: I am reminded that rights make it difficult to get many of these older anthologies except in falling-apart paperbacks. Today we’re talking about Judith Merril’s first Year’s Best anthology: SF: The Year’s Greatest Science Fiction and Fantasy, originally published in 1956.Īdri: Yes! Second hand retailers have been scoured, books have crossed oceans (well, the North Sea), and I have had the kind of fragile paperback reading experience which has renewed my love of ebooks, and of publishers like Gollancz, who make a lot of classic longer SF accessible on e-reader. Merril also helped to found the highly influential and important Milford Writer’s Conference with Damon Knight and James Blish. Merril was the editor of twelve editions of Year’s Best anthologies (which included inconsistent title naming conventions, ranging from “ The Year’s Greatest Science Fiction and Fantasy” to simply “ SF12”), the first edition of the Tesseracts series anthologizing Canadian short fiction, and an additional seven anthologies (including England Swings SF notable for helping to launch the New Wave in the United States). Merril’s influence on the genre, though, is less about her fiction than it his for her editorial work (and more). Her debut story “That Only a Mother” was reprinted in Pamela Sargent’s Women of Wonder anthology as well various Science Fiction Hall of Fame anthologies and more.

Judith Merril may be best known today is a short fiction writer.

We are hopeful that this will be the first in a new series of focused conversations and with that in mind, we wanted to pick something that felt like a spiritual successor to our Feminist Futures conversation.

Joe: We do enjoy our conversation pieces here at Nerds of a Feather and though we do love talking about awards, we wanted to step back from that and instead to focus a conversation around one book much as we did with our roundtable Vigilance review.

The Year's Greatest Science-Fiction and Fantasy 3rd Annual Vo... by Judith Merril