#anthonyboucher

#AnthonyBoucher's late-1949s story #RocketToTheMorgue is a locked-room style mystery w/characters based on his well-known sci-fi author/friends IRL, the #MañanaLiterarySociety. 3/10/22 Open 6-9p Masks req'r'd. No open containers, please. (at Bonnett's Book Store) https://www.instagram.com/p/Ca77dqivAEm/?utm_medium=tumblr

The Best From Fantasy And Science Fiction: Fourth Series by Anthony Boucher Ace Books (1960) These books are great, and with this one you get 16 stories of fantasy and science fiction. You get stories by Alfred Bester, C. M. Kornbluth, Poul Anderson, Ray Bradbury, Avram Davidson, Richard Matheson, and more. The cover artist is Ed Emshwiller. . Overall Good Condition, Good Spine With Lean And Slight Creasing, Binding Tight, Pages Look Good . . . #thebestfromfantasyandsciencefiction #anthonyboucher #paperbacksciencefiction #sciencefiction #fiction #instabooks #bookstagram #instabookstagram #paperback #bookcollector #bookstore #science #scifi #instabook #bookaddict #bookishlove #bookish #library #anthology #edemshwiller #ace #scifiart #syfy #scifibooks #acebooks #acesciencefiction https://www.instagram.com/p/CUA8Nz1rxwL/?utm_medium=tumblr

Anthony Boucher (ed.) - The Best From Fantasy and Science Fiction (8th Series) (1959) Another collection of the best stories published in F&SF magazine, this time for the year 1958 and including some truly great stuff as well as some that I can just take or leave. A great thing about these collections is that not only do you read famous writers in the context of their contemporaries as well as allowing you to re-evaluate them and to find out who you really like. Better yet are the discoveries you make. I have to admit to myself that I really am not a fan of Fritz Leiber's writing style, it just doesn't work for me, and it never did. In the process of finding this out I must have read half a dozen novels and a dozen short stories by him. Oh well. On the other hand less famous people like Zenna Henderson just grow in my sight with each story I read and her story here, the longest in the volume, is great. In fact the same is true for all the stories by women writers here, like Kit Reed and Shirley Jackson. Other highlights go to Alfred Bester's light comedic closing story or Brian W. Aldiss's early story. So yeah, definitely a collection worth looking into with a good ratio of great stories. None of them is really bad, some just leave me cold... looking at you Leiber! But if you can only choose one collection of stories from 1958 I'd go with Judith Merril's amazing volume. (3/5) #anthonyboucher #scifi #sciencefiction #book #books #bookish #bibliophile #bookgram #bookstagram #bookporn #bookworm #booklover #shortstories #fantasy #f&sf #fantasy (at Lisbon, Portugal) https://www.instagram.com/p/B-n5o2YFSIn/?igshid=qqg77u2131ts

Anthony Boucher - The Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction, Sixth Series (1957) Another collection of short stories from 1957, this time selecting the best stories in F&SF magazine. As such it isn't as great as Judith Merrill's collection of the same year, which was freer to select from disparate sources, but it is still a fun collection with some stories of it's own worth reading. The two highlights for me here are Theodore Sturgeon's "And Now the News..." and especially Poul Anderson's "The Barbarian", which being a spoof of Conan the Barbarian is particularly close to my heart being a fan of the character. It's as usual a bit of a hit and miss, but it's overall entertaining fare. However, I would definitely recommend the Judith Merrill anthology of the same year if you are interested in some Science Fiction short stories of the time. (3/5) #anthonyboucher #theodoresturgeon #scifi #sciencefiction #book #books #bookish #bibliophile #bookgram #bookstagram #bookporn #bookworm #booklover #shortstories #poulanderson #fantasy (at Lisbon, Portugal) https://www.instagram.com/p/B6zCeWCly5h/?igshid=127vcm854yivd

Anthony Boucher - The Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction, Fifth Series (1956) Another anthology, this time collecting the best stories from F&SF magazine from 1955, you get some true classics here. Foremost among them is of course the magazine version of A Canticle for Leibowitz, but you also get highlights from Arthur C. Clarke, Damon Knight, Isaac Asimov, Shirley Jackson and Richard Matheson and the really fascinating Pottage from Zenna Henderson. This is truly a golden age of science fiction writer, with many authors which are part of the pantheon of science fiction and fantasy since then. Of course there are some repetitions in this anthology if you've read the Judith Merrill and T.E. Dikty anthologies of the same year. It does however show a dominance and an overall quality to F&SF magazine at this time that far surpasses its companion magazines. By this point Analog was still stuck on their weird pseudo-science groove and Galaxy was excellent but still very focused exclusively on SF, which would change by 1956. All in all an excellent picture of fantasy and science fiction in the mid-50s with household name and iconic stories. It's also pretty surprising, for the time, how many great works of fiction here are by women writers in a field famously dominated by men. But Shirley Jackson's Zenna Henderson's and Mildred Clingerman's stories are great. And Alice Eleanor Jones' Created He Them, with it's strong feminist plot, was a particular revelation. (4/5) #anthonyboucher #isaacasimov #scifi #sciencefiction #book #books #bookish #bibliophile #bookgram #bookstagram #bookporn #bookworm #booklover #shortstories #damonknight #fantasy #shirleyjackson #arthurcclarke (at Lisbon) https://www.instagram.com/p/B5dO4r_lvZq/?igshid=1sp9181zj6wxu

Anthony Boucher and J. Francis McComas (eds.) - The Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction, Third Series (1954) An anthology from 1954 collecting some of the best stories from the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (F&SF) and edited by the editors of the magazine this is an interesting collection that reflects that magazine's editorial inclinations in the mid-50s. The idea behind F&SF was to be more inclusive than other more "nuts and bolts" oriented SF magazines (looking at you Astounding (later Analog)) . As such there's more of an emphasis on science fiction which is more about ideas than brass tacks, and that's something I enjoy. Still this is a bit of a hit and miss anthology. There's quite a lot of emphasis on humorous stories which very often fall flat both as parodies and as stories, however some stories are worth reading here. There's a couple of stories of what might be called "ethnographic" SF which are particularly interesting. These are The Star Gypsies by William L. Gersham in which Roma people become valued members of society in a post-apocalyptic alien world due to their survival skills and the fantastic Vandy, Vandy by Weird Tales alum Manly Wade Wellman about a balladeer looking for new songs and meeting with an immortal evil wizard in deepest Appalachia. Anthony Boucher as a friend of Jack Parsons and L. Ron Hubbard and an occultist himself brings us a tale of humoristic demon summoning in Snulbug. (3/5) #anthonyboucher #jfrancismaccomas #scifi #sciencefiction #book #books #bookish #bibliophile #bookgram #bookstagram #bookporn #bookworm #booklover #shortstories #fsf #fantasy (at Lisbon, Portugal) https://www.instagram.com/p/B0403fUl9al/?igshid=1tipy3i9vk5gt

Via Flickr: Boucher, Anthony The Best From Fantasy And Science Fiction: Sixth Series 1962 AceF-131 Anthology Cover by Valigursky, Ed