I mentioned a story of Graham Greene’s which would have been included here, had it been possible. There are always a few such disappointments in compiling an anthology. It may be due to the growing respectability of the field, or to the increasing number of mainstream entries, or both—but there seem to be more such problems each year. Some of these are due to previous exclusive reprint commitments. Others are budget problems: many anthologies proportion their funds to allow for larger payments to “name” authors) I prefer not to.
These dropouts are, of course, listed in the Honorable Mentions, together with stories that were too long, or for other reasons not quite right for the book. But there are two stories I should like to mention here, if only because both are the work of comparatively new writers of unusual ability. These were Roger Zelazny’s extraordinarily thoughtful and lender “A Rose for Ecclesiastes,” and Rick Raphael’s very funny, very human “Sonny.”
There were two other dropouts not listed at all because I do not feel that my coverage of poetry is wide enough for me to name individual items as “The Best.” I use—or try to use—what I happen to see that I like. This time I was unable to secure rights to some poems from John Updike’s new collection. Telephone Poles, and to excerpts from Harry Martinson’s Aniara (both published by Knopf, 1963).
Fifteen or twenty of the poems in the Updike volume qualify readily as s-f; I liked, in particular, “Cosmic Gall,” “In Praise of (Cl0HfOs)V “While Dwarf,” “Comp. Religion,” “Fever,” and the title poem, “Telephone Poles.”
Aniara is the book of poems on which the Swedish space opera (no joke; opera, about space) of the same name is based. The opera was published here in 1962; the poems in 1963.
In addition to these, several individual poems came to my (delighted) attention during the year: John Ciardi’s “A New Fable of the Grasshopper and the Ant,” in McCall’s; May Swenson’s “Models of the Universe,” written on commission for the Steuben Glass Company; Doris Pitkin Buck’s “No Trading Voyage,” in Fantasy and Science Fiction/ Robert Cullen’s “Dolphin,” in Commonweal) “Helpmeet,” by “Sec,” in the Reporter) J. S. Bigelow’s “The Bat and the Scientist,” in the Atlantic Monthly.
I come now to the paragraph where I must thank those people who assisted in the preparation of the anthology. This (like the securing of stories) is increasingly difficult: the number of people who offer suggestions, read stories, or lend clerical help, seems to grow with each book. With apologies, then, to the many who are not mentioned here— my especial gratitude to Carol Emshwiller and Anthony Boucher for their recommendations; to Virginia Blish, Gerard Dorion, and James Walker for reader reactions; to Mary Lou Collard, Marcia Pley, George Roeder, and Ann Pohl, for clerical and other assistance; and above all to Barbara Norville, at Simon and Schuster, for every conceivable kind of help and cooperation.
The following authors participated in the Playboy symposium, the Double Bill survey, and/or the New Worlds guest-editorial series:
The following editors, anthologists, publishers, producers, etc., also participated! John W. Campbell, Jr., E. J. Cornell, Groff Conklin, Basil Davenport, Martin Greenberg, J. F. McComas, P. Schuyler Miller, all In Double Bill; Dr. I. F. Clarke and Roberta Rambelli, in New Worlds.
BOOKS
Anthony Boucher
Remember 1953? More Than Human, Bring the Jubilee, The Space Merchants, The Lights in the Sky Are Stars ... hell, even the titles of science-fiction novels were more memorably exciting in that so recent and so remote aureate age. Today a reviewer receives an unending series of machine-made and all but indistinguishable paperback novels of the spaceways among which even the “lesser” novels of 1953 (remember The Syndic? or The Green Millennium?) would shine like novae.
But 1963 still had its own distinctions, few but marked. It was the year in which Robert A. Heinlein favored us with not one but two book-length stories, and it was the year in which Anthony Burgess entered the s-f field.
The first 1963 Heinlein, and one of his best in many years, was Podkayne of Mars (Putnam’s; Avon), a shrewd and successful effort to widen the s-f audience by a teen-age heroine. Poddy’s first-person narrative reveals her as a genuinely charming girl (perhaps the most delightful young female in s-f since Isaac Asimov’s Arkady Darell), and her creator as the master absolute of detailed indirect exposition of a future civilization. Just to prove that Heinlein can do anything, his later Glory Road (Putnam’s) is an all-out swashbuckling swords-and-sorcery, yellow-brick-road adventure tale, and a splendid one—at least until, as has happened before with Heinlein, the philosophy outlasts the plot and the book bogs down in overt lecturing.
Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange (Norton) is one of the most remarkable of s-f debuts: a penetrating novel of the next century’s juvenile delinquency, brilliant enough in its insights into the nature of crime and free will, but made doubly dazzling by the fact that it is related entirely in the nadsat (teen-age) jargon of the future—a curious slang so vividly compelling that you find yourself thinking in it for weeks afterward. Burgess’s later The Wanting Seed (Norton), on the theme of the population explosion, is more conventional, but still offers plentiful evidence that this is a mainstream writer who can create genuine s-f while writing with astonishing wit, grace, and distinction.
Of the year’s other novels the most noteworthy was Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.’s, Cat’s Cradle (Holt, Rinehart & Winston), a mad caprice which combines mad-scientist-destruction-of-earth with the swinging antireligion of Bokononism to create a freewheeling vehicle that may not take you anywhere but gives you an unforgettable ride.
Anthologies, which have been largely regrettable in recent years, brightened considerably in 1963, with several unusual specialized collections. The often unreliable “my favorite story” gimmick comes off well in Robert P. Mills’s The Worlds of Science Fiction (Dial), largely because of the inclusion of interesting writers not strictly “in the field” (Mark Van Doren, George P. Elliott, R. V. Cassill, and others). L. Sprague de Camp’s Swords and Sorcery (Pyramid) is so well edited (and so well illustrated by Virgil Finlay) as to delight the most die-hard resisters to heroic fantasy. D. R. Benson’s The Unknown and (in early 1964) The Unknown Fire (both Pyramid) are well-selected samplers from that greatest of fantasy magazines, Unknown Worlds. Damon Knight’s First Flight (Lancer) offers the first published stories (1937—1956) of ten of today’s leading s-f writers) and as with Mystery Writers of America’s similar collection. Maiden Murders (Harper, 1952), it’s amazing how good these novice efforts are.