Tag Archives: Frederik Pohl

Of Editorial Greatness

Earlier today I was reading a post on a site I don’t normally read these days (I was lured by the temptation of a free ebook).  The post made the argument that John Campbell was the greatest editor the science fiction and fantasy fields have seen.

That got me to thinking, which usually gets me in trouble.  I began wondering who would be the greatest editor, greater being defined as having the most impact over time.  The original post didn’t include fantasy other than a passing reference to Unknown.  So I thought I’d throw the question open to anyone who wanted to voice an opinion.  Below is a list I compiled off the top of my head.  I didn’t include any living editors.  If I had, Ellen Datlow would be on it.  My rationale is that the impact of living editors on the can’t be accurately assessed because they are still having an influence and their greatest influences may still be to come.

 

So in alphabetical order are ten editors.  I’ll provide a brief explanation as to why they have been included.  Some will be quickly eliminated.  Others, not so much. Continue reading

Moore Than Just a Kuttner Kornucopia

Detour to OthernessDetour to Otherness
Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore
Cover art by Richard Powers
Introduction by Robert Silverberg
Afterward by Frederik Pohl
Haffner Press
Hardcover $40, limited edition hardcover $150

In the history of the science fiction and fantasy fields, there have been few authors as versatile as the husband and wife team of Henry Kuttner and Catherine L. Moore. This is especially true at short lengths. (Since Kuttner was an early mentor of Ray Bradbury, this is hardly surprising.)

In the early 1960s, Ballantine Books published two collections of their work, Bypass to Otherness and Return to Otherness. Stephen Haffner states on the page for Detour to Otherness that a third volume was planned but never published. I’ve never heard this before, but I’m more than willing to take his word for it.

The first two Otherness titles contain selections from several of Kuttner’s most popular and well-remembered series. The Hogbens are represented, as is Galloway Gallegher, a scientific genius but only when he’s drunk. Also included is the first of the Baldy stories that comprised the mosaic novel Mutant. They don’t have some of his best known stories, which may not have been available at the time because they were in another book from a different publisher (Line to Tomorrow, Bantam), but this is one of the best samplings of Kuttner and Moore’s work.

Haffner has assembled enough stories for a third collection and combined them in the present volume. That section of the book is called Detour to Otherness, which is also the title of the omnibus.

Haffner had nothing to do with the selections in Bypass and Return, he was responsible to the stories in Detour. Thus, while critiquing the choices in the original volumes is a waste of time, it is very much on the strength of the stories in Detour that the volume will rise or fall. None of these stories has appeared in a Kuttner collection before, although most of them have been reprinted somewhere. I’d read almost all of them before. Let’s look at them more closely. Continue reading