Introduction to THE HOOFER Walter M. Miller, Jr.
Walter M. Miller, Jr., is best known for his only novel, A Canticle for Liebowitz (Lippincott, 1959); he has also published two collections of short fiction, Conditionally Human (1962) and The View from the Stars (1965).
Born in Florida in 1923, Miller served in the Air Corps during World War II as radio operator and gunner, flying 55 missions over Italy and the Balkans. He began writing in 1950 during his convalescence from an automobile accident which interrupted his G.I.-bill studies at the University of Texas. He took his degree in electrical engineering a year later, and shortly afterward returned to Florida, where he still lives with his wife and four children.
Miller's first short story was published in American Mercury and received an Honorable Mention in The Best American Short Stories for 1950. Between 1951-1957, he published approximately 40 stories in the science-fantasy magazines, including the three novellas in Fantasy & Science Fiction in 1955-57 on which Canticle was based; among the stories most widely reprinted since are "Command Performance", "Crucifixus Etiam", "Momento Homo", and "Darfsteller", which won science fiction's annual "Hugo" award for short fiction in 1955.
He has also written for television, most notably for the gone-but-not-forgotten Captain Video show of the early fifties.
"The Hoofer" was first published in Fantastic Universe, September, 1955, and is reprinted from the 1st SF Annual.
Introduction to BULKHEAD Theodore Sturgeon
Theodore Sturgeon is probably science fantasy's most-reprinted author: of the hundred-odd short stories, novelettes, and novellas published in magazines between "Ether Breather" in 1939, and "Tandy's Story" in 1961, almost all have since appeared in book form; some of the best-known ("Microcosmic God", "Killdozer", "Thunder and Roses", "Saucer of Loneliness") have been reprinted five or six times in English-language collections alone. His outstanding novel, More Than Human, won the International Fantasy Award in 1952, and a short story, "Bianca's Hands", was awarded the British Argosy $1000 prize in 1947.
Born on Staten Island in 1918, Sturgeon grew up in Philadelphia with one basic ambition: to become a circus acrobat. When rheumatic fever made that career impossible, he worked as a roustabout for a while, then went to sea in the merchant marine. Sold his first story at eighteen, to McClure's Syndicate for $5.00; shortly afterwards came ashore to stay, and except for short spells (as hotel executive, bulldozer operator, literary agent, etc.), has been a full-time writer since. He now lives in Woodstock, N.Y., with his wife and their four children.
Sturgeon has published seven novels (one under the pen name, Frederick R. Ewing, and one a "novelization" of a movie), and almost a dozen short-story collections, the latest of which was Sturgeon in Orbit (1964). In September, 1963, the magazine Fantasy & Science Fiction published an issue in his honor, centered on one of his rare stories of recent years, "When You Care, When You Love". Since then, most of his time has gone to critical writing (If and National Review, primarily), and to television work; only two pieces of fiction (in Playboy and Sports Illustrated) have appeared until the recent Doubleday anthology, Dangerous Visions, which included his new "If All Men Were Brothers, Would You Let Your Sister Marry One?"
"Bulkhead" was originally published (as "Who?") in Galaxy, and was reprinted in the collection, A Way Home (Funk & Wagnall, 1955) and in the 1st SF Annual. Other stories of Sturgeon's—"The Other Man", "The Comedian's Children", and "The Man Who Lost the Sea"—appeared in the 2nd, 4th, and 5th SF Annuals.
Introduction to THE ANYTHING BOX Zenna Henderson
Zenna Henderson is a schoolteacher ("mostly first grade, but have taught them all—up to Adult Group Teaching in Eloy now") who has lived all her life in or near Tucson, Arizona, except for two years in France (teaching in Army schools) and one in Connecticut. Her first story, "Come On, Wagon" (1951), was included in a 1965 collection of which The Anything Box is the title story; "Something Bright" and "Subcommittee", in the same collection, also appeared in the 6th and 8th SF Annuals. In 1952, she began writing the "People" stories, for which she is best known; these have now been collected in two book-length volumes: Pilgrimage: The Book of the People (1962) includes "Pottage", which also appeared in the 1st SF Annual, and "Wilderness", which was in the 3rd. The People: No Different Flesh was published earlier this year by Doubleday.
"The Anything Box" first appeared in Fantasy & Science Fiction, January, 1956, and was included in the 2nd SF Annual.
Introduction to PRIMA BELLADONNA J. G. Ballard
J. G. Ballard is the most controversial author in science fiction today: doubly controversial, because American fans and critics are still arguing over his latest novel, The Crystal World (1966), while British readers are battling over his more recent surrealistic short fiction ("condensed novels") now appearing in New Worlds, Encounter, and Ambit, but not yet published in the U.S.
Born in Shanghai in 1930, Ballard was repatriated to England at the age of sixteen, after his release from a Japanese internment camp. He read medicine at Cambridge, and won the annual short-story competition there in 1951. "Prima Belladonna" was the first story he sold, in 1956. He now has six short-story collections in print in the U.S. and four in England, as well as four novels. His most recent American book was The Impossible Man (Berkley, 1966). Two new collections are scheduled shortly, by Berkley, and by Doubleday.
"Prima Belladonna" originally appeared in Science Fantasy, Dec., 1956, and was reprinted in the 2nd Annual and in the author's collections, Billenium (U.S., 1962) and The Four-Dimensional Nightmare (U.K., 1963).
Introduction to CASEY AGONISTES Richard McKenna
Richard Milton McKenna (1912-1964) was the author of the best selling Harper prize novel, The Sand Pebbles (1962). Born in Idaho, McKenna had "a desert and cowboy type youth" and joined the Navy promptly at eighteen. He spent most of ten years stationed in China, decided to become a writer while on postwar assignment to the Public Information Office. In 1956, three years after his discharge (as Chief Machinist's Mate), he graduated from the University of North Carolina, got married the next day, and began writing.
He was a slow, painstaking writer. His unfinished second novel, The Sons of Martha, was published posthumously by Harper and Row. His handful of short stories have been widely reprinted, and one, previously unpublished, appeared in Damon Knight's 1966 Orbit, and received a Nebula Award in 1967.
"Casey Agonistes" was McKenna's first published story, in the September, 1958, Fantasy & Science Fiction. It was reprinted in the 4th SF Annual and in the anthology, The Dark Side (Doubleday, 1965). Another story, "Mine Own Ways", was in the 6th Annual.
Introduction to A DEATH IN THE HOUSE Clifford D. Simak
Clifford D. Simak left his job as news editor of the Minneapolis Star in 1959 to initiate an educational program, the Science Reading Series, for the Star's sister paper, the Tribune. The program is now used in 3,500 classrooms, and has won him a Westinghouse—American Association for the Advancement of Science Award (1966) and a Minnesota Academy of Science Award (1967) to put next to his 1953 International Fantasy Award (for City, the novel-length collection of his "Webster Family" stories), and his two "Hugo's" (for the novelette, "The Big Front Yard", in 1958, and the novel, Way Station, 1963).
Born in 1904 on a Wisconsin farm, Simak worked his way through a one-year teacher's training course, then taught rural school to earn enough to enter the University of Wisconsin; but the depression hit early in the midwest farm country, and in 1929 he left college for his first newspaper job, on the Iron River, Michigan, Reporter. In 1931, when his first science-fiction story was published, he was editor of the Reporter. Over the next few years, he changed jobs and markets regularly, producing only a handful of science-fiction stories; but by 1939, when he started on the Star, he had settled down to (what was to remain for twenty years) a fairly steady production of four or five science-fiction stories a year.
He has published twelve novels and short-story collections, and three books of non-fiction. Most recent: Trilobite, Dinosaur and Man (St. Martin's Press, 1966) and Why Call Them Back from Heaven? (Doubleday, 1967). At present, he divides his time between a weekly science column for the Star, work on his Science Reader Series, and turning out approximately one science-fiction novel a year. A new novel, The Werewolf Project, is due from Putnam's shortly.
"A Death in the House" was first published in Galaxy, October, 1959, and reprinted in the 5th SF Annual and in Ideas in Literature (Merrill, 1966).
Introduction to SPICE-TIME FOR SPRINGERS Fritz Leiber
Fritz Leiber is the author of seven novels and five short-story collections; since the appearance of his first story in 1939, he has published close to 200 magazine stories, almost all science fiction and fantasy, and a large number of critical and scholarly articles on the combined fields. His work has appeared in more than fifty anthologies, a number of stories have been dramatized for television, and his memorable novel, Conjure Wife, was made into a movie under the title Burn, Witch, Burn.
Born in Chicago in 1910, Leiber spent his first years touring with his actor-parents in Robert B. Mantell's Shakespeare Company. Later, he lived with two maiden aunts in Chicago during the school year and spent summers at his parents' off-season home on the Jersey shore. He began writing while at the University of Chicago (Philosophy, Phi Beta Kappa), creating with Harry Fischer the background of the first "Grey Mouser" stories.
He spent a year studying for the Episcopal ministry, two years acting in his father's Shakespeare Company, and two years in the movies, during which time he initiated a close correspondence with H. P. Lovecraft, a major influence on his early work. Other jobs included a year of teaching at Occidental College, and editorial work on an encyclopedia and at Science Digest. Since 1957 he has devoted his full time to writing.
His first book was a collection, Night's Black Agents (Arkham House, 1947), followed shortly by the novel, Gather Darkness. He has received two "Hugo" awards: for The Big Time (1958) and The Wanderer (1964). Most recent titles: The Night of the Wolf (Ballantine, 1966), and a "novelization," Tarzan and the Valley of Gold.
He is currently working on a book on the fantasy novel for the University of Southern Illinois Press and completing a novel version of some of the "Mouser" stories. A new short-story collection will be published shortly by Rupert Hart-Davis in England.
Seven Leiber stories have appeared in the SF Annuals: "The Beat Cluster," in the 7th Annual, also appeared in the short-story collection, A Pail of Air. "The Man Who Made Friends with Electricity" was in the 8th Annual; "237 Talking Statues, Etc." in the 9th; "Be of Good Cheer" the 10th; "Moon Duel", the 11th. "Mariana", from the 5th Annual, is also included in this volume. "Space-Time for Springers" was first published in Star Science Fiction #4 (Ballantine, 1958), and reprinted in Star of Stars (1960); and in the 4th SF Annual.
Introduction to PELT Carol Emshwiller
Carol Emshwiller is more typical of the writers who came into science fiction in the sixties than of most of the others in this volume. Graduated from the University of Michigan in 1949, she went to France on a Fulbright to study art; when she switched to writing, she began with science fiction, published some fifteen stories between 1956-1961. Her work was distinctive from the beginning; by 1961, she was considerably "far-out" for the then-standards of the science-fiction magazines, and turned her sights to the literary and avant-garde markets. Her work has appeared recently in Transatlantic Review, Cavalier, and the one-shot City Sampler. She is married to Ed Emshwiller, the science-fiction illustrator and producer of experimental films (Relativity, Life Lines, Thanatopsis, etc.); they live with their three children in Wantagh, Long Island.
"Pelt", originally published in Fantasy & Science Fiction, November, 1958, was reprinted in the 4th SF Annual. "Day at the Beach", from the 5th Annual, also appears in this anthology.
Introduction to STRANGER STATION Damon Knight
Damon Knight has worked at every conceivable job in science fiction: writer, editor, critic, translator, anthologist, illustrator, agent. A founder, and now sole Director, of the Milford Science Fiction Writer's Conference, he also helped to found, and became first President of, the Science Fiction Writers of America, and edited the first volume of its annual Nebula Award Stories. He is currently a consulting editor for Berkley Books, and editor of the Putnam-Berkley Orbit anthologies of original science-fiction.
Born in Oregon in 1922, Knight came to New York in the aftermath of a science-fiction fan convention in 1941—the same year his first story appeared in Stirring Science Stories. In 1950-51, he was editor of the magazine, Worlds Beyond, and his first book, In Search of Wonder, a volume of science-fiction criticism for which he received a "Hugo" award, was published in 1956. Since then he has published five novels and five story collections, and almost 20 anthologies. He now lives in Milford, Pa., and is married to author Kate Wilhelm. Latest books: Worlds to Come, a juvenile anthology (1967); and a new and enlarged edition of In Search of Wonder (Advent, 1967). A translation of a novel by Rene Barjavel, Ashes, Ashes, is due shortly.
Knight's stories have appeared in three SF Annuals: "The Country of the Kind" was in the 1st, and "The Handler" in the 5th. "Stranger Station", from the Dec., 1956, Fantasy & Science Fiction, appeared in the 2nd Annual.
Introduction to SATELLITE PASSAGE Theodore L Thomas
Theodore L. Thomas is a patent attorney who started his writing career doing a weekly science column for the Stamford, Conn., Advocate in 1949, branched out into articles for the science-fiction magazines in 1952 (as "Leonard Lockhard", sometimes collaborating with another lawyer-writer, Charles L. Harness). His first fiction appeared in 1953; he has published about 70 stories in magazines, ranging from Planet Stories to Playboy; still writes for the Advocate, and also does a science column for Fantasy & Science Fiction. He has written one novel, The Clone (1965) in collaboration with Kate Wilhelm.
Born in 1920, Thomas studied chemical engineering at M.I.T., then took a second degree in law, with time out for the artillery, and for court-martial work in Japan, during World War II. He now lives, with his wife and three children, in Lancaster, Pa., except when they are scuba-diving off their cabin cruiser in Atlantic coastal waters.
"Satellite Passage" was reprinted from If (Dec., 1958) in the 4th SF Annual. Thomas' story, "The Far Look", also appeared in the 2nd Annual, and "The Lagging Profession", by "Lockhard", in the 6th.
Introduction to NO NO, NOT ROGOV! Cordwainer Smith
Paul M. A. Linebarger ("Cordwainer Smith") (1913-1966) was Professor of Asiatic Politics at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. At the time of his death, he and his wife, Genevieve Linebarger (a political scientist specializing in Southeast Asia), had recently completed a book, Confrontation and World Peace, based on a tour of Asia and the Pacific in 1964-65.
Dr. Linebarger was born in Milwaukee, but just barely: "Father wanted a boy who could be President, so I had to be born in America." He grew up in China: "father," a former U.S. Judge in the Philippines, was legal adviser to Sun Yat-sen. (Years later, Dr. Linebarger business cards bore his name in Chinese characters, and at least two pen names, "Felix C. Forrest" and "Cordwainer Smith," were derived from the literal translation of the name, Lin Po-lo: Forest of Incaro descent Bliss.)
The first "Smith" story, "Scanners Live in Vain", appeared in a semiprofessional magazine, Fantasy Book, in 1950, and was immediately reprinted in Heinlein's classic anthology, Tomorrow the Stars. His first book, You Will Never Be the Same, was published in 1962. The last was Quest of Three Worlds (Ace, 1966).
"No, No, Not Rogov!" was first published in If, February, 1959, and reprinted in the 5th Annual. "A Planet Named Shayol" also appeared in the 7th Annual, and "Drunkboat" in the 9th.
Introduction to COMPOUNDED INTEREST Mack Reynolds
Mack Reynolds burst, rather than broke, into print in 1950, with almost 20 stories in the SF magazines alone. Shortly afterwards, he began wandering through Europe, Asia, and Africa (with wife, van and typewriter) as travel editor for Rogue, and his SF production fell to only six or seven stories a year, on average, and even less when he began concentrating on longer work. Since 1960, he has written one or two magazine novels a year, and adapted probably (at least) as many again of his shorter pieces for publication by Ace Books. His agent claims he is "the most prolific—by published wordage—contemporary writer of science fiction," and possibly the claim can be upheld, now that he has settled in Mexico, concentrating almost all his time on science fantasy.
His latest book (as I write) is The Rival Rigelians (Ace, 1967), and he is reported to be at work on "a major book" to be published "in connection with the 1968 Mexican Olympics."
Four Reynolds stories have been reprinted in the SF Annuals: "Freedom" in the 7th; "Earthlings, Go Home" in the 8th; "Pacifist" in the 10th; and "Compounded Interest", which was published in Fantasy & Science Fiction, August, 1956, and in the 2nd Annual.
Introduction to JUNIOR Robert Abernathy
Robert Abernathy published some 40 science-fiction stories between 1942 and 1957. (His last story, ''Grandma's Lie Soap", was reprinted in the 2nd Annual SF.) When last heard from (1957), he was living in Tucson, Arizona, and doing something Highly Classified for a nearby U.S. Government Establishment—presumably something involving his triplex of specialties, physics, photography, and Slavonic languages. He has since moved to Seattle, where rumor has it he is employed at something unclassifiedly professorial.
"Junior", which first appeared in Galaxy, January, 1956, and then in the 1st Annual, is reprinted here with the author's permission, but without any precise knowledge of his whereabouts. Any information leading to the possibility of paying him for this inclusion will be deeply appreciated by the editor.
Introduction to SENSE FROM THOUGHT DIVIDE Mark Clifton
"Remembrance and reflection, how allied;
What thin partitions sense from thought divide."
Pope
Mark Clifton (1911-1962) had an impact on science fiction entirely out of proportion to the quantity of his published work. His first two stories, "Star, Bright" and "What Have I Done?", appeared almost simultaneously early in 1952 in Astounding and Galaxy, followed by nine more in rapid succession. Between 1954 and 1962 there were, altogether, another nine, and four novels. Yet at one time he seemed to dominate the pages of Astounding (then the leading magazine in the field) so completely that some disgruntled fans began referring to it as the "Clifton House Organ."
Born in Oklahoma, Clifton was teaching rural school when he was thirteen; got fired for teaching evolution; went to the city and worked his way through college-equivalency by ghosting papers and theses for enrolled students. He spent 20 years in personnel work and industrial engineering, retired at forty-one after a serious illness, and turned to science fiction. His last novel was Eight Keys to Eden (1960), and he wrote one nonfiction book for college students, Opportunity Unlimited (1959).
"Sense from Thought Divide" first appeared in Astounding, March, 1955, in a slightly longer version; it is reprinted here from the 1st SF Annual. His story, "What Now, Little Man?" was in the 5th Annual, and "Hang Head, Vandal!" in the 8th.
Introduction to MARIANA Fritz Leiber
"Mariana" was selected for the 5th SF Annual from Fantastic, Feb., 1960.
Introduction to PLENITUDE Will Worthington
"Will Worthington" is the pseudonym of an author who published ten stories altogether between 1958-1961. "Plenitude" was selected for the 5th SF Annual from Fantasy & Science Fiction, October, 1959.
Introduction to DAY AT THE BEACH Carol Emshwiller
"Day at the Beach", originally published in Fantasy & Science Fiction, August, 1959, was reprinted in the 5th SF Annual, and in the British anthology, The ABC of Science Fiction (1966).
Introduction to LET'S BE FRANK Brian W. Aldiss
Brian W. Aldiss is the author of some 20 or more books in England and America, and editor of half a dozen anthologies, as well as a book reviewer, Literary Editor of the Oxford Mail, and co-editor (with Harry Harrison) of the critical journal, S. F. Horizons.
Born in England in 1925, Aldiss had a tour of Asia with the Army during World War II, and a tour of Yugoslavia, with his wife, in 1965; they now live just outside Oxford in what is certainly the only thatched cottage in England with central heating.
His first story was published in 1954; in 1955, his first book, The Brightfount Diaries, came out, and he was also in his first anthology, as author of the prize-winning story in a London Observer contest.
His first U.S. publication was in 1958; in 1959, there were two novels and a collection, and there have been one or two books a year since. His 1965 novella, "The Saliva Tree" (title story of a 1966 Faber collection), won a Science Fiction Writers of America Nebula Award; and he took a "Hugo" in 1961 for "Hothouse" (part of the novel of that title, in England—The Long Afternoon of the Earth in the U.S.). His last U.S. book was Who Can Replace a Man? (Harcourt, 1966); a new novel, Cryptozoic, will be out soon from Doubleday.
"Let's Be Frank", reprinted in the 3rd Annual from Science Fantasy, June, 1957, was Aldiss' first hardcover publication in the U.S.; it also appears in The ABC of Science Fiction. Three other Annuals contained Aldiss stories: "Ten-Storey Jigsaw" in the 4th, "Old Hundredth" the 6th, and "Scarfe's World" in the 11th.
Introduction to THE WONDER HORSE George Byram
George Byram explains his single excursion into science fantasy as a sort of daydream-on-paper. Born in Mississippi in 1920, Byram grew up in Florida, and, after a desultory two years of college, wandered west and "fell in love with the vast, mean, windy, cold, murderous, wonderful country of north-central Wyoming," where (except for two years in the Army Signal Corps in WW II) he stayed until 1950; then "caught the universal postwar disease of securityitis," and left the range to go to work (eventually) as a television announcer.
In 1950, he also sold his first story to Colliers; the next, in 1954, was to the Saturday Evening Post; then a broad assortment including True West, Atlantic and Sports Afield. Meanwhile, he started a horse-breeding program in Colorado, "paying for what I lose on the ranch out of what I earn in television and writing." He has published two novels, The Piper's Tune and Tomorrow's Hidden Season.
"The Wonder Horse" first appeared in Atlantic (August, 1957), and was reprinted in the 3rd Annual.
Introduction to NOBODY BOTHERS GUS Algis Budrys
Algis Budrys is in a sense the prototype writer for this anthology: first published in 1952, he had an immediate success, wrote prolifically through the fifties, and tapered off, after 1957, to a full stop in the early sixties. Typically, too, his work was primarily sociological and psychological in orientation.
In no other way is Budrys typical of anything. The son of a Free Lithuanian diplomat, he came to the U.S. at the age of five in 1936; wrote his first story (science fiction) six years later, and sold his first (science fiction) ten years after that. He had half a dozen books in print, and was widely published in magazines, in and out of s-f, when he moved to Chicago in 1961 to become editor of Regency Books, and then editorial director of Playboy's book-publishing division.
Except for a few articles (Esquire, Saturday Evening Post), he virtually stopped writing until 1966, when his first suspense story, "The Master of the Hounds", was nominated for an "Edgar" award, and he began selling to the SF magazines again. A new science-fiction novel is now completed, and a suspense novel is in work.
Budrys' work has appeared in three Annuals: "Silent Brother" and "The Edge of the Sea" were in the 2nd and 4th; "Nobody Bothers Gus" was first published in Astounding in November, 1955, under the pseudonym, "Paul Janvier," and reprinted in the 1st Annual.
Introduction to THE PRIZE OF PERIL Robert Sheckley
Robert Sheckley was born in New York City in 1928, but grew up in Maplewood, N. After high school, he spent two years in Korea with the occupation forces, then enrolled in N.Y.U. in 1948; graduated in '51, and sold his first story the same year; published ten stories in '52, and close to fifty in '53. His first book, Untouched by Human Hands, was published in 1954, and he has hardly slowed down since, although his short-story production tapered off sharply after 1957, in favor of novels and scriptwriting. He has now published 17 books, among them The Game of X, a spy novel, and Mindswap (Delacorte, 1966). His television and film credits include The People Trap, and The Tenth Victim, which he wrote twice—as a short story, "The Seventh Victim", in 1953, and as a "novelization" of the film based on the first version. Three other stories are now being filmed, and a new novel, Maze of Mirrors, will be published by Delacorte in 1968.
"The Prize of Peril" was reprinted in the 4th SF Annual, from Fantasy & Science Fiction, May, 1958.
Introduction to THE HANDLER Damon Knight
"The Handler" was selected for the 5th SF Annual from Rogue, August, 1960.
Introduction to THE GOLEM Avram Davidson
Avram Davidson is the author of nine books (plus one, Joyleg, in collaboration with Ward Moore) and editor of three, two of them being the annual collections of The Best from Fantasy & Science Fiction, representing his two years as editor of that magazine. His first crime story took first prize in the 1957 Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine contest, and in 1962 he edited a fact-crime collection, Crimes and Chaos.
The title story of his first collection of short stories, Or All the Seas with Oysters, won a "Hugo" in 1958, and was also included in the 4th SF Annual. (Two others, "Now Let Us Sleep" and "No Fire Burns" appeared in the 3rd and 5th Annuals.) His first hardcover collection, and first hardcover novel, Bumberboom, are both scheduled by Doubleday for this year.
Davidson says he "was born during the halcyon days of the Millard Filmore administration; he has one son, Ethan; and now lives at Mon Tsourice, the family plantation on Mauritius, where he raises dodoes for the export market." The facts are, he left Yonkers some time after his birth in 1923, for California, where he studied sheep raising and wrote scholarly articles until the publication of his first story, "My Boyfriend's Name is Jello", in 1954.
"The Golem" was his second story, in Fantasy & Science Fiction, March, 1955; it is reprinted from the 1st SF Annual, and also appeared in Or All the Seas with Oysters.
Introduction to THE SOUND SWEEP J . G. Ballard
Six Ballard stories have appeared in the SF Annuals.
"Prima Belladonna" (2nd Annual) and "The Insane Ones" (the 8th) were also included in the 1962 collection, Billenium.
"The Terminal Beach" (in the 10th) was also the title story of two (only partly matching) collections: one from Berkley in 1964, and one in England (Gollancz), which also included "The Volcano Dances" and "The Drowned Giant" (both in the 11th). "Giant" (titled "Souvenir" in Playboy) also appeared in the first annual Nebula Award Stories (both 1966).
"The Sound Sweep", originally published in Science Fantasy, February, 1960, was reprinted in The Voices of Time (Berkley, 1962), and The Four-Dimensional Nightmare (Gollancz, 1963), as well as in the 5th SF Annual.
Introduction to HICKORY, HICKORY, KEROUAC Richard Gehman
Richard Gehman owns nine typewriters and an unknown number of pen-names. Since leaving the Army for the freelance life in 1946, he has written some of everything for virtually everybody. (Reputedly, he once wrote six pieces for a single issue of Cosmopolitan, under six different names, in three days.) Born in Lancaster, Pa., he now lives with his wife and four children in Kent Cliffs, N.Y. His recent books include Bogart (Gold Medal, 1965), Haphazard Gourmet (Scribner, 1966), and Playboy's Playboy (Trident, 1966).
So far as I know, "Hickory, Dickory, Kerouac" was his only venture into fantasy—but I wouldn't have known about this one, either, since it appeared originally (in the March, 1958 Playboy) under the pseudonym of "Martin Scott." It is reprinted here from the 4th SF Annual.
Introduction to DREAMING IS A PRIVATE THING Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov is the author (or editor, or collaborative author) of more than 80 books: science fiction, mystery, popular science, scientific textbooks, juveniles, and philosophic essays. His short stories and articles have appeared in publications ranging from Esquire to Astonishing Stories to TV Guide to the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists; although writing and lecturing engagements now prevent his maintaining a teaching schedule, he is an Associate Professor of Biochemistry at the Boston University School of Medicine.
Born in Russia in 1920, Asimov was not yet three years old when his family moved to Brooklyn, N.Y. He sold his first story at the age of eighteen; three years later, when he took his M.A. in Chemistry at Columbia, he had sold almost two dozen more, including the first of the positronic robot stories (postulating the now classic "three laws of robotics") recently reprinted in I, Robot (1962) and The Rest of the Robots (1965). The stories composing The Foundation Trilogy (1964) were largely written while he was working for his Ph.D., after wartime service at the Naval Air Experimental Station in Philadelphia.
Asimov's nonfiction career began with a curious article in 1948 entitled "The Endochronic Properties of Resublimated Thiotimoline", which was responsible for his being the first science candidate for a Ph.D. to be asked a science-fiction question during his oral examination. In 1950, when his first S-F book (Pebble in the Sky) was published, he began writing his first textbook. By 1958, nonfiction writing was occupying him almost exclusively: among (many) other things, he began the monthly science articles still running in Fantasy & Science Fiction, and published (in 1960) the first edition of the recently revised, monumental, New Intelligent Man's Guide to Science (Basic Books, 1965). He is now (among other things) working on a volume called It's Mentioned in the Bible, and a book on Greek history.
He is also, happily, returning at last to writing some fiction (notably, "Eyes Do More Than See" in the 11th Annual).
"Dreaming is a Private Thing" first appeared in the December, 1955, Fantasy & Science Fiction; it is reprinted here, from the 1st SF Annual, with the author's permission. His storks, "Each an Explorer" and "Let's Get Together" also appeared in the 2nd and 3rd Annuals, and an article, "The Thunder-Thieves", in the 4th.
Introduction to THE PUBLIC HATING Steve Allen
Stephen Patrick Valentine William Allen is the author of six books (most recently: Letter to a Conservative, 1965) and about 2,000 songs, among them "Gravy Waltz" (for which he won a Grammy Award), "This Could Be the Start of Something," and "Picnic." Born in New York City in 1921, he became a radio announcer in 1942, worked as comedian, disc jockey, scriptwriter, actor, musician, in radio, films, and television until (and after) starting his own TV show in 1950.
"The Public Hating" was selected for the 1st Annual from Bluebook, January, 1955, and was included in Allen's first short-story collection, Fourteen for Tonight (1955).
Introduction to YOU KNOW WILLIE Theodore R. Cogswell
Theodore R. Cogswell is an Associate Professor of English at Keystone College in Pennsylvania. Primarily a poet and songwriter, he published thirty science-fantasy stories between 1952-1958, with only an occasional title since then; a collection, The Wall Around the World, was published in 1962.
Born in Ohio in 1918, Cogswell graduated from high school just in time to join the International Brigade in Spain; back home, he wandered his way through several colleges, with time out for the Pacific Theatre in World War II, and wound up teaching English at the University of Minnesota, where Gordon Dickson and Poul Anderson got him interested in writing science fantasy.
He also was the founder and editor of the unique and sorely mihed authors' journal, the Proceedings of the Institute of Twenty-first Century Studies.
Two of his songs, "Radiation Blues" and "Blowup Blues", were reprinted in the 6th Annual. "You Know Willie" originally appeared in Fantasy & Science Fiction, May, 1957; it is reprinted here from the 3rd SF Annual.
Introduction to ONE ORDINARY DAY, WITH PEANUTS Shirley Jackson
Shirley Jackson (1919-1965) wrote comparatively little outright fantasy; virtually everything she wrote, whether macabre suspense novel or domestic essay, was illuminated with a rare consciousness of the fantastic quality of reality (and/or the reality of the fantastic and incredible), a perception of truths one level farther in than those available to most of us.
Her most famous story was "The Lottery", first published in The New Yorker in 1948, and then in the 1949 collection of the same title. Among her other books were Life Among the Savages, We Have Always Lived in the Castle, The Bird's Nest and The Magic of Shirley Jackson. Most of her short stories appeared in the larger-circulation quality magazines—Harper's, Story, Mademoiselle, American Mercury, etc.—and in such national women's magazines as Woman's Home Companion and McCalls. Five short stories were published in Fantasy & Science Fiction between 1953 and 1958, including "One Ordinary Day, With Peanuts" (January, 1955), which is reprinted here from the 1st SF Annual.