Wither the SFBC 50th Anniversary Collection?
As you may or may not know, the SFBC has been doing a 50th Anniversary Collection for the past five years -- we started in 2003 (the 50th anniversary of the club's founding in 1953) with a series of eight great books of the 1950s, and have had series each year since then to cover the decades following.
Well, we're running out of history now, since in 2007 we're doing books from the 1990s, and it's a little early to do the best books of the 2000s in 2008. So the series either needs to end or do something different.
And that's what I wanted to ask you folks about -- what different thing could we do? (Note that suggestions that a reasonable number of people might buy with their own money will be preferred -- yes, it would be nice to have the eight-volume definitive collection of Great SF Poetry, but the SFBC is a commercial enterprise and needs to be able to sell books to continue operations.)
We've thought about going backwards, and doing a series of the great SF books of the '40s -- or maybe just eight books from the period before 1950 (probably only going back to Verne and/or Wells). But I'm sure there are other possibilities.
All suggestions will be considered, though ones along the lines of my Great SF Poetry example may be mocked...
Comments
How about a collection of undeservedly obscure novels?
Call it the There Ain't No Justice Collection.
Posted by: Johan Larson | March 1, 2007 04:27 PM
Certainly there are more than 8 worthy books in each decade. Just the Hugo and Nebula Award winners alone could get you twenty. Maybe extend that idea further to include some nominees. Some great books came close to winning.
Posted by: John | March 1, 2007 08:50 PM
How about a book of short stories for each decade?
Sort of SFBC Presents the best short stories of the 1950s, and so on. It might be a big editorial task, but could prove interesting.
Posted by: Rob B | March 1, 2007 10:07 PM
John: Well, what I'm looking for is a theme that will give us one year's worth -- eight books. We do other kinds of classics all the time -- one slot every cycle (eighteen times a year) is devoted to classics -- so I'm not sure your suggestion actually narrows anything down for this particular series.
Posted by: Andrew Wheeler | March 1, 2007 10:33 PM
Eight books? Well, there are eight planets: maybe one deservedly famous book per planet.
For Jupiter, I'd be tempted to suggest reprinting the Pohl's JUPITER anthology, which is the best possible anthology that they could have come up with at that time.
Posted by: James Nicoll | March 1, 2007 11:58 PM
May I suggest that some of the writers who were missed in previous sets be in the next eight.
For example, you could include Andre Norton, Ray Bradbury. Robert Silverberg, A.E. Van Vogt, Theodore Sturgeon. And, if you stretch, you could include Kurt Vonnegut. Then, you might dig further into the history of Science Fiction writing to Jules Verne, H.G. Wells and maybe even Doc Smith and Mary Shelley.
Posted by: Ronald Hawkins | March 19, 2007 10:44 AM
Each decade has a long list of hugo award nominees that didn't win.Perhaps two of the best of these per decade would sell well. Another idea might be to publish some of the best fastasy novels of those decades or perhaps bringing back some books that were popular way back and were contemporaris of say Edgar Rice burroughs- e.g. Talbot Mundy or the fellow who wrote the Topper books, which are still fun to read.
Posted by: Ed Milewski | April 12, 2007 11:23 AM