Our Solar System: Easy Readers Science Book

After several years of collaboratively editing their World's Best annual anthologies of their picks for the best short science fiction stories published in the previous year, Carr and Donald A. Wollheim began editing separate annual anthologies in 1972. Wollheim had left Ace to found DAW Books, and Carr's series appeared from Ballantine Books (before their line was renamed Del Rey Books). 1974 was the third year that each edited their own volume, with their picks of the best of 1973. One story appears in both, The Deathbird by Harlan Ellison. I preferred Carr's book again this year, though both are excellent. Carr has good stories from Alfred Bester, R.A. Lafferty, F.M. Busby, and Philip Jose Farmer, and great stories by James Tiptree, Jr. (The Women Men Don't See), Ursula K. LeGuin (The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas), Gene Wolfe (The Death of Doctor Island), Vonda N. McIntyre (Of Mist, and Grass, and Sand), Jack Vance (Rumfuddle), and Robert Silverberg (Breckenridge and the Continuum). 1973 was a great year for the field!