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$2.99 Kindle sale, Sept. 10, 2019. An amazing collection of classic SF tales! Of all the very many science fiction books I swiped from my dad when I was a teen, this anthology was one of the best: 26 classic SF short stories, first published between 1929 and 1964, and written by many of the great SF authors of that age: Asimov, Heinlein, Clarke, Sturgeon, Zelazny, and so on. In about 1969, the Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA) group nominated 132 stories from the pre-Nebula award era and then voted on their favorites. So this collection could be considered the "best of the best" for older SF short stories.

Robert Silverberg, the editor, wrote a highly interesting foreword regarding the selection process. The most intriguing part of this foreword, to Teenage Me, was his disclosure of the top fifteen stories, in terms of votes received. The official top ten:

1. Nightfall (Isaac Asimov)
2. A Martian Odyssey (Stanley Weinbaum)
3. Flowers for Algernon (Daniel Keyes)
4. Microcosmic God (Theodore Sturgeon)
(tie) First Contact (Murray Leinster)
6. A Rose for Ecclesiastes (Roger Zelazny)
7. The Roads Must Roll (Robert Heinlein)
(tie) Mimsy Were the Borogoves (Lewis Padgett)
(tie) Coming Attraction (Fritz Leiber)
(tie) The Cold Equations (Tom Godwin)

Well. As a 16* year old, this kind of ordering was irresistible to me. So I read all of the stories and made my own list, writing my own top 15 in the book, in pencil, next to Silverberg's list. My top 10 at age 16:

1. A Martian Odyssey
2. Microcosmic God
3. The Little Black Bag (C.M. Kornbluth)
4. Flowers for Algernon
5. The Cold Equations
6. The Roads Must Roll
7. Surface Tension (James Blish)
8. Mimsy Were the Borogoves
9. First Contact
10. Arena (Fredric Brown)

*Actually, I have hazy recollections of first reading this book when I was about 13, and creating my first personal top 15 list at that tender age. Unfortunately 16 year old me saw fit to erase that first list from the book and replace it with my updated list. I now remember nothing about that very first list except that "A Martian Odyssey" was #1 then too and, heaven forgive me, "Helen O'Loy" made an appearance in the top 10. Well, I was only 13!

At age 24, I concluded that my tastes as a 16 year old were on the shallow side, and that I had underappreciated some great stories. So written next to the first two lists is a third top 15 list, with these as the top 10:

1. Microcosmic God
2. Surface Tension
3. A Rose for Ecclesiastes
4. First Contact
5. A Martian Odyssey
6. Flowers for Algernon
7. The Weapon Shop (A.E. van Vogt)
8. Nightfall
9. The Roads Must Roll
10. The Little Black Bag

It's a (to me, at least) fascinating history of my evolving view of what I considered a great SF story when I was younger. And now, looking at my carefully handwritten lists again, I've got a definite urge to reread these classic stories once more, and see what I would list as my favorites now, some three decades later.

But in whatever order, you really can't go wrong with this collection of stories. Several of them are pretty dated, but there's also some amazing writing, especially given the context of the times when they were written. It's still one of my favorite SF short story collections of all time, and one of the main reasons I've been a lifelong fan of science fiction.

Thanks, Dad!