The Prentice Hall Anthology of Science Fiction and Fantasy

I have Dr. Roberts as a proffesor and i have to say that this book is great!

i needed this book for an English-Sci Fi class. I'm going to keep it so i can finish all the stories. it is a great collection with background info on the authors as well.

I picked this book up as the required text for a course on Fantasy and Science Fiction. Although I have enjoyed science fiction and fantasy for many years, I had really only experienced some major works, such as the Dune series, the Lord of the Rings, Heinlein's Starship Troopers and The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, and Foundation, and I had never really read any short fiction from these genres apart from Lovecraft's "The Call of Cthulhu." However, once I got into this book, I found a whole new world of storytelling. Within a few days, I had acquired the complete works of Edgar Allen Poe and begun reading through those. Thanks to Project Gutenburg, I've been finding more short stories from the various authors in this book, and I have fallen in love with the short stories "Arena" and "The Colour Out of Space." This volume contains an excellent cross-section of fantastic works spanning many years and many subgenres, with the crowning jewel of the text being Edgar Rice Burrough's first novel, A Princess of Mars, printed in its entirety, and finished in one sitting, something I hadn't done in years. For a young reader interested in expanding his horizons, this is an excellent work that will direct him in a variety of directions. For someone like me, who reads a large number of relatively dry texts, this book contains enough in the way of short stories that one can go several years alternating between the dry texts and the vivid worlds the authors present. The price is high, but the cost is worth it.

i came across this book in my hs sci fi english class and it was definately the best book i ever came across in school. the stories are seperated by type, starting with classic archeotypes and includes high fantasy and other categories i cant remember. it was the only book i leisurely read outside of school and i had trouble parting with it at the end of the semester. it is also one of the only books that i would pay $70 for.

As the editor notes, one could argue endlessly about precisely what stories to include in an SF/F anthology, and in such an argument I would doubtless have chosen several different stories than he has. However, I also would have chosen many of the *same* stories he has, and perhaps that's a primary reason that I like this book. It's reasonably well-rounded, effectively organized, and includes a wide selection of stories while avoiding the trap that so many other literary anthologies fall into, that of trying to please so many different tastes that ultimately no one is satisfied.The critical apparatus in the book is mercifully minimal, given that I found many of the editor's critical conclusions very questionable (for example, that _Star Wars_ is a film version of Edgar Rice Burrough's _A Princess of Mars_.)On the whole, this is an extremely useful volume (if rather pricey) well suited for use in a class on fantastic literature or simply for pleasure reading.