The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume Two B

I love good sci-fi and this anthology has collected a good number of novellas from some of the masters. The problem I had was the very term "Novella". It is a hybrid between short story and novel. If I am reading a novel, I expect it will take me a couple of days to go through it. With short stories, they should be able to be consumed at a sitting. But Novellas take more time than a short story, which means I rarely finish it in once sitting. So when I return to it, I have to flip back to the beginning of the novella to remember what the story is. It is like 3/4 of something that you realize should have been either 1/2 or 4/4. They felt overly long and somewhat padded and should have been trimmed down.

Every single story (novella?) in this book is excellent. While I am not a huge fan of each of the authors, I think these tales represent the best concepts of science fiction and are extremely well-written. There is enough variation of style and subject to strike a chord with most readers. This book was a great read and well-worth the investment of time and money.

Just to clarify for anyone who may not know, this book and the others in the series are REPRINTS. Not just story reprints but the book in it's entirity is a reprint. This is not meant as a knock against this fine collection of science fiction, but just to give you more buying choices and possibly save buying a book you already have. Nice new cover!

The follow up to Volume Two A, which also like this anthology, contains eleven novellas published from 1929 to 1964, is a strong selection; however in fact Volume Two B is a boomer era collection containing one tale from 1928 (close enough for government and sci fi collections), three from the forties, five from the fifties, and two from the sixties. The authors for the most part remain famous, a virtual who's who to include Asimov, Blish, Budrys, Cogswell, Forster, Pohl, Schmitz, Sherrod, Shiras, Simak, and Vance. Some of the entries like "The Martian Way", "The Midas Plague" and "The Witches of Karres" remain popular. The choices are solid as none are bad though some handle the test of time better. This reviewer especially enjoyed "Earthman Come Home by James Blish having remembered reading it in high school. The key to this anthology and its predecessor are that it is just about all story; in this case 526 pages of stories with no padding except for a brief two and half page introduction to explain the voting process. Great look back at some of the pre Nebula Awards age, The Science Fiction Hall of Fame Volume Two B is a strong enjoyable compilation that validates how entertaining science fiction was especially from 1947-1961. Harriet Klausner

An anthology of stories chosing by the SFWA, from the sixties and earlier. A pretty good bunch, but given the age of some may not appeal as much now, with the stories set in closer to the present time, like the del Rey example, or Williamson. Even includes Wells' Time Machine, which most people will think of as a novel. The standouts are Campbell's Who Goes there and the ageless Cordwainer Smith's The Ballad of Lost C'Mell. Still, another book worth having for the SF story fan's collection. Science Fiction Hall of Fame 2A : CALL ME JOE - Poul Anderson Science Fiction Hall of Fame 2A : WHO GOES THERE? - John W. CampbellJr. Science Fiction Hall of Fame 2A : NERVES - Lester delRey Science Fiction Hall of Fame 2A : UNIVERSE - Robert A. Heinlein Science Fiction Hall of Fame 2A : THE MARCHING MORONS - C. M. Kornbluth Science Fiction Hall of Fame 2A : VINTAGE SEASON - Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore Science Fiction Hall of Fame 2A : AND THEN THERE WERE NONE - Eric Frank Russell Science Fiction Hall of Fame 2A : THE BALLAD OF LOST C'MELL - Cordwainer Smith Science Fiction Hall of Fame 2A : BABY IS THREE - Theodore Sturgeon Science Fiction Hall of Fame 2A : THE TIME MACHINE - H. G. Wells Science Fiction Hall of Fame 2A : WITH FOLDED HANDS - Jack Williamson "Psibeams are persnickety" 3 out of 5 A discovery of a lifeform buried in the Antarctic ice causes serious problems for an isolated research team. 5 out of 5 Atomic accident surgery improvisation. 3.5 out of 5 Outside discovery ship mutiny conflict. 3.5 out of 5 Unfrozen average bloke's lemming solution lack of life lesson. 4 out of 5 Past holiday. 4 out of 5 Antigand-a be any authority around here, you crazy people. 4 out of 5 Underpeople Lord assisted deadly punishment escapage. 4.5 out of 5 Gestalt growth. 3.5 out of 5 It will come as no surprise that the protagonist in this story, the traveller, invents a time machine and uses it to venture into the future. The society that he ends up in seems amazing for a brief time, then he realises that all is not as it seems. There is a large underclass that is terribly exploited to produce all this for the eloi, as they are called. The underclass are named Morlocks, and it is here that the Time Traveler's sympathies reside. 3.5 out of 5 Robot home help useless. 2.5 out of 5 4.5 out of 5

This is the "Science Fiction Hall of Fame" (Volume IIB), edited by Ben Bova; the second half of the second volume. This volume was published in 1973, and as with the Volume I, there were a set of criteria for which stories were selected. In this case the stories that were voted on had to be published prior to 1966, and there could be no more than one entry per author, although this limitation did not exclude authors who were published in Volume I, but was a limitation within Volume II itself. Both volumes IIA and IIB are for works which are longer novelettes and novellas, i.e. stories of more than 15,000 words. Volume I was arranged in chronological order of when the stories were published, but each of the Volume II books are arranged alphabetically by author within each sub-volume. Not surprisingly, with the longer stories, there is a shorter table of contents than for Volume I, with just 11 stories each in Volume IIA and IIB. But what maybe lacking in quantity is made up for in quality, with such stories as: * The Martian Way by Isaac Asimov - novella * Earthman, Come Home by James Blish - novelette * Rogue Moon by Algis Budrys - novella * The Specter General by Theodore R. Cogswell - novella * The Machine Stops by E. M. Forster - novelette * The Midas Plague by Frederik Pohl - novella * The Witches of Karres by James H. Schmitz - novelette * E for Effort by T. L. Sherred - novelette * In Hiding by Wilmar H. Shiras - novelette * The Big Front Yard by Clifford D. Simak - novella * The Moon Moth by Jack Vance - novella Actually, there is nothing lacking in quantity here either, as this sub-volume is over 550 pages, as was the first sub-volume. This volume, taken as a whole, does a little better job of balancing out the different eras of Science Fiction than Volume I did. At the same time, the quality of the collection remains at the highest level, with classic stories from start to finish. In addition to the stories themselves, there is an introduction by Ben Bova, but it is the same introduction that was included in Volume IIA. One could argue over whether or not there were other stories which should have been considered, but clearly every story here is very good and worthy of consideration.