The SFWA Science Fiction Hall of Fame: The Complete Set

In 1965, the Science Fiction Writers of America was founded. In 1966, they presented the first Nebula Awards for the best sf of the previous year. But what about the best sf up prior to that point?

The SFWA held a vote, and the result was an anthology of twenty-six short stories from 1929 to 1964, entitled The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume One, edited by Robert Silverberg. This was published in 1970 by Doubleday and remains in print, though now from Tor. 

This must have been a success for everyone involved because it was followed up in 1973 by The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume Two, edited by Ben Bova, which collected the best pre-1964 novellas. Collecting twenty-two novellas would make the volume quite massive, so it was split into two hardbacks, volumes two-A and and two-B. These also remain in print from Tor.

I acquired volumes one and two back in 2007 when I was invited to pick through the sf books of the late brother of one of my mother's friends. Story-for-story, volume one is excellent, one of the best sf anthologies I've ever read; if I was going to teach some kind of general sf survey, it would definitely be on the syllabus. Weirdly, I didn't find volume two-A very satisfying, but I do think that volume two-B had as good a hit rate as volume one.

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The SFWA must have wanted to keep a good thing going (my understanding is that the organization receives the royalties from the books), because 1981 and 1986 saw the release of volumes three and four, respectively. (Volume three was edited by Arthur C. Clarke and Geo W. Proctor; volume four, Terry Carr.) But with the best pre-SFWA stories collected, these shifted to collecting the best stories from the SFWA era, which is to say, Nebula Award winners. Volume three collects Nebula-winning short fiction (short stories, novelettes, and novellas) from 1965 to 1969, and volume four from 1970 to 1974.

These seem to me to be kind of redundant, given the SFWA already publishes annual volumes of Nebula winners, and the hit rate is presumably lower when you're collecting the sixteen best stories of five years, not the twenty-six best of thirty-five. I imagine readers must have felt the same, because these volumes have no subsequent US editions after their original publications by Avon. 

I own both volumes three and four; I found them in used bookstores in 2009 and 2012, respectively. Of the two, I have only read volume three. It was fine. Some excellent stuff, but indeed, not as strong as volumes one or two-B.

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I have read other histories of the SFWA's Hall of Fame series, and they usually stop here, but that's not really where it ends! In 1991, the name of the organization was changed to "Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America." Volumes three and four of the Hall of Fame do contain fantasy stories because fantasy is eligible for the Nebulas, but volumes one and two did not. So the SFWA held a new vote, for the best fantasy short fiction up to 1990.

The result of this was The Fantasy Hall of Fame, edited by Robert Silverberg, published by Harper in 1998. (Confusingly, in 1983, Silverberg had already co-edited an anthology with this title, released by Arbor House.) This is billed as being as good as the original Science Fiction Hall of Fame, but I would guess for whatever reason it has not had the staying power, because it did not stay in print.

Back in 2019, upon finishing volume three, I tracked down a copy of this online; I'd never encountered it in the wild, and it seemed like I wasn't going to if I hadn't done so after ten years. 

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There is one final "Hall of Fame" volume from SFWA, but it's very different from the others. The SFWA European Hall of Fame is a collection of translations of non-Anglophone sf from Europe, containing sixteen short stories; this was edited by James Morrow and Kathryn Morrow, published by Tor in 2007. I believe it was funded by a grant from the SFWA, hence the title.

I did encounter this in the wild, to my surprise, given fifteen years had passed without me bumping into it. It was in the book room at ICFA a couple weeks ago, and I immediately grabbed it. As you can see in my photo above, it is very different from the others! I had been hoping its dimensions would match.

But I'm always happy to have a complete set of any series; it only took me nineteen years in this case! (I am the only LibraryThing user to own all seven volumes, fact fans.) Hopefully it doesn't take nineteen years for me to get around to reading my remaining three volumes. 

Review: The Craft of Writing Science Fiction That Sells by Ben Bova

Trade paperback, 275 pages
Published 2016 (originally 1994)
Acquired July 2019
Read August 2019

The Craft of Writing Science Fiction That Sells by Ben Bova

Based on my short-lived career as an author of mediocre Star Trek tie-ins, I've been assigned to teach a science fiction creative writing class this fall. So, I cast about for a textbook, and after skimming through a couple, decided upon this one, which was focused and straightforward and had some good insights. Bova has had a long career as an sf writer (beginning in 1959, and he had a new novel out this year!), but more importantly he had a strong stint as an editor at Analog (1972-78) and Omni (1978-82). It mostly focused on short fiction (ch. 3-14), though it also touches on novel writing (ch. 15-16, 18).

The book emphasizes four aspects of writing: character, background, conflict, and plot. For each of these aspects, Bova spends a chapter setting up general principles ("theory"). Then, he includes one of his own short stories. Finally, a third chapter explains how that story embodied the principles he set up ("practice"). It's a nice format, let down slightly that (on the basis of this book, at least; I haven't read much by Bova), he's a fairly middling sf writer. Three of the four stories here were good ideas, but coolly written; Bova has set-ups and ideas that could make you feel, but don't. One, "Crisis of the Month," is decidedly poor. However, they are useful at illuminating his ideas, and my plan is to pair his ideas with stories from The Best Science Fiction of the Year for 2018. I like his ideas, especially his take on how to write interesting characters. I do wish he spent more time focusing on what specifically is science fictional in each of the four categories: the background section does this the most, but a lot of his advice is fairly generic to all short fiction.

All that said, if you want a book about writing science fiction and just science fiction, it appears to be one of the strongest out there. My perusal on Amazon was not very promising; a lot of his competitors are unfocused (taking in many speculative genres) or spend a lot of time on basic elements of writing (which Bova assumes one already knows, and is how I would prefer to tackle my class), or just are chaotic (the table of contents for Jeff VanderMeer's Wonderbook, for example, overwhelmed me, though I might take a second look at it). It's not a perfect book, but I suspect it will teach well-- Bova has a very straightforward writing style, very businesslike-- which is the point for me. I guess we'll see this fall!