The Best Fantasy Stories from the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction

by Edward L. Ferman (Editor), Steve Crisp

Simple and complex, humorous and thrilling, fantastically logical and completely surprising, these 40 works of fiction are the best fantasy stories from The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Drawing on the Magazine's bank of almost 5,000 stories built up over decades as the leading publisher of short fantasy fiction, this unique collection combines established masterpieces with little known gems and rarely anthologized long stories with imaginative sketches. Authors featured in this prestigious collection include Nebula and Hugo Award winners.

Bob Leman The Tehama

Genres: Fantasy, Science Fiction, Anthologies, Short Stories

792 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1985

About the author

Edward Ferman (born 1937) was an American science fiction and fantasy fiction editor and magazine publisher.

Ferman is the son of Joseph W. Ferman, and took over as editor of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1964 when Avram Davidson, due to his residence in various Latin American locales with unreliable postal delivery, could no longer practically continue editing; on the masthead, Joseph Ferman was listed as editor and publisher for Edward Ferman's first two years. Edward Ferman would take on the role of publisher, as well, by 1970, as his father gradually retired. He remained as editor until 1991 when he hired his replacement, Kristine Kathryn Rusch. He remained as publisher of the magazine until he sold it to Gordon Van Gelder in 2000. While Ferman was the editor, many other magazines in the field began to fold or were shortlived, and his magazine, along with Analog, was one of the few which maintained a regular schedule and sustained critical appreciation for its contents.

From 1969-1970, he was the editor of Fantasy & Science Fiction's sister publication Venture Science Fiction Magazine. Together, the Fermans had also edited and published the short-lived nostalgia and humor magazine P.S. and a similarly brief run of a magazine about mysticism and other proto-New Age matters, Inner Space.

Ferman received the Hugo Award for Best Professional Editor three years in a row, from 1981 through 1983. F&SF had previously won several other Hugos under his editorship, which had been famously conducted, at least in the last decade of his tenure, from a table in the Ferman family's Connecticut house. He edited or co-edited several volumes of stories from F&SF and co-edited Final Stage with Barry N. Malzberg. It is probable that he also ghost-edited No Limits for or with Joseph Ferman, an anthology drawn from the pages of the first run of Venture.

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_L..."

Reviews

[Craig · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a big door-stop gift-edition hardback with forty stories from thirty-five years of F & SF. There are a lot of good stories, some very good stories, a few iconic classics, and a few that didn't much do anything for me. I wouldn't agree that they're the best fantasy stories from the magazine, but that's a very subjective opinion. I would have selected different stories by some of the authors who are represented. I liked the stories by Tom Reamy, Ron Goulart, Stephen King, Jack Vance, Fritz Leiber, Richard Matheson, Larry Niven, Robert Bloch, Sterling E. Lanier, and maybe a few others. My favorites were One Ordinary Day, With Peanuts by Shirley Jackson and Jeffty is Five by Harlan Elllison.

[Cheryl]

Inherited. Need to get this big old hardcover off my shelves.
I may not read it all, as I'm not as fond of fantasy as I am of SF.
No intro., no discernible order (not title nor author's name, not original publication date...).

- "Far from Home" by Walter S. Tevis - short, lovely
- "My Dear Emily" by Joanna Russ - imo unreadable, dnf
- "The Man Who Painted the Dragon Griaule" by Lucius Shepard - amazing novelette: original & lyrical and I will absolutely look for more by the author
- "The Vanishing American" by Charles Beaumant - snappy satire
- "The Cloud-Sculptors of Coral D" by J. G. Ballard - nice try but cliched, sexist, ableist, also just badly written
- "The Invasion of the Church of the Holy Ghost" by Russell Kirk - novelette on subjects that do not interest me, dnf
- "The Accountant" by Robert Sheckley - darkly funny (well, yeah, it's Sheckley)
- "The Fire When It Comes" by Parke Godwin - ah... no... G. is not drawn as a real woman; is this what they mean when they say 'male gaze' - ?
- "My Boy Friend's Name is Jello" by Avram Davidson - anecdote meant to be witty, p'raps satirical, but fails due to misogyny
- "San Diego Lightfoot Sue" by Tom Reamy - meant to be both romance and fantasy, but the fantasy seems shoe-horned in to, as it turns, wreck the romance and the story too
- "Sooner or Later or Never Never" by Gary Jennings - satire of missionaries in Australia, pretty funny
- "Jeffty is Five" by Harlan Ellison - sentimental nostalgia in a story you've prolly seen in other anthologies
- "The Third Level" by Jack Finney - sentimental nostalgia you've seen on Twilight Zone and in Finney's novels
- "The Silken-Swift" by Theodore Sturgeon - a wicked witch and a noble unicorn
- "Another Orphan" by John Kessell - a love letter to *Moby Dick* that just might get the original a few more readers
- "The Manor of Roses" by Thomas Burnett Swann - skipped, I don't like the setting or the 'voice'
- "Please Stand By" by Ron Goulart - starts out funny, gets adventurous; I'd like to find more
- "Downtown" by Thomas M. Disch - short surreality
- "Man Overboard" by John Collier - playboy seeks sea serpent
- "One Ordinary Day, With Peanuts" by Shirley Jackson - about a man who does nice things... or so it seems
- "Yes, We Have No Ritchard" by Bruce Jay Friedman - about a man who thinks he's nice enough to go to heaven... but...
- "The Ballad of the Flexible Bullet" by Stephen King - analysis of madness assoc. w/ writers... better than it sounds, and better than expected
- "That Hell-Bound Train" by Robert Bloch - very short 'trick the devil' story
- "Will You Wait?" by Alfred Bester - clever the first time I read it in another anthology, but not again
- "Sule Skerry" by Jane Yolen - I didn't appreciate this dark fairy tale or whatever it is
- "La Ronde" by Damon Knight
- "Narrow Valley" by R. A. Lafferty - funny story with a topology gimmick
- "Not Long Before the End" by Larry Niven.
- "$1.98" by Arthur Porges - clever but offensive vignette
- "The Tehama" by Bob Leman - a bit Lovecraftian. The 'Indian' culture is interesting but totally made up.
- "Ghost of a Crown" by Sterling E. Lanier - I struggled to >1/2 but had to give up, not to my taste
- "Pages from a Young Girl's Journal" by Robert Aickman - just another vampire story, I read to the end only because I saw hints that Mama and Papa were already long-lived or something, but no
- "Narapoia" by Alan Nelson - clever short satire
- "Born of Man and Woman" by Richard Matheson very short horror, response to a mutant scare?
- "Mythago Wood" by Robert Holdstock - dnf, too gothic-ish
- "Harrison Bergeron" by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. - skipped, didn't need the umpteenth reread
- "Four Ghosts in Hamlet" by Fritz Leiber - sort of funny, I guess? Gotta be a drama major to fully appreciate I think
- "Gorilla Suit" by John Shepley - short satire, worth reading
- "Green Magic" by Jack Vance - not my thing, skipped
- "Black Air" by Kim Stanley Robinson - not my thing, skipped

Ok, to sum. I shoulda skipped more. I was surprised by how much I liked the King story, my interests in Tevis and Sheckley are confirmed, and I might try something more by Goulart. Marked dnf so I wouldn't have to give it a low rating... some of you might like it a lot more. Posting to paperbackswap.

[Jakub Brudny · Rating 2 out of 5]

Bardzo brudne opowieści, oldschoolowe ale nie do końca w pozytywnym znaczeniu.

[Isabel (kittiwake) · Rating 2 out of 5]

I nearly gave up on this book, as strangely, nearly all of the interesting stories were in the second half of the book. I'm giving it 2.5 stars because it was a mixture of good and poor stories.

I've read a couple of these stories before, "Jeffty is Five" and "That Hell-bound Train".

[Shelby Wiederin · Rating 3 out of 5]

this book and I have a love hate relationship. there were some stories that were amazing and some I hated my self for even wasting my time on. so yea not the best but not the worst

[Taco Banana]

Jeffty is Five by Harlan Ellison is a fantastically written story with all kinds of punch. By far the best of the lot in this collection.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Listened to "$1.98".