A Treasury of Great Science Fiction, Vol. 1, ed. Anthony Boucher, Doubleday 1959

Anthony Boucher, ed.

Doubleday, 1959

This two-volume set from 1959 is included here as a "tome" anthology somewhat by default. Not because it doesn't include some excellent stories -- and four full-length novels -- and despite its editor's explicit claim in his introduction that the book "is not a definitive anthology ... not a scholarly survey ... not, indeed, any kind of shaped or patterned anthology, but simply a very large collection of stories which are (I think) of high quality and (I hope) unfamiliar to many readers." Thus, along with a number of still-famous stories, there are a few that have never again been reprinted since and have languished into obscurity.

The reason these volumes are a "tome" is that for many years it was an introductory selection for members of the US Science Fiction Book Club -- an attractive choice, if for no other reason, than containing those four full-length novels, all of them classic works -- and so book club editions of these achieved, among a certain generation of SF readers, far wider currency than any other contemporaneous anthologies.

Boucher was a founding editor of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and produced annual The Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction anthologies from 1952 to 1959. This two-volume set were his last anthologies.

This section of "Tomes" is called "Singletons" because they include major anthologies by editors who only produced one such anthology.

A Treasury of Great Science Fiction, Vol. 2, ed. Anthony Boucher, Doubleday 1959

Anthony Boucher, ed.

Doubleday, 1959