Slim
science fiction anthologies now a piece of history, the idea of picking up a
small book for a few cents featuring only a handful of stories is strange to a
generation accustomed to doorstopper ‘year’s best’ anthologies and sprawling
collections having twenty or more stories from their favorite author. Gone are the days a publisher thought to
re-print a couple of popular selections, hoping to squeeze a few additional
cents from fan favorites. Unless ebooks
revive the format, anthologies like Leo Margulies and Oscar J. Friend’s
collaborative 1958 Race to the Stars
are a thing of the past.
Race to the Stars features four novellas,
all published at least a decade prior to being anthologized by Margulies and
Friend, and one nearly two: “The City of the Lost Ones” (1949) by Leigh
Brackett (better known as “Enchantress of Venus”), “Forgotten World” (1946) by
Edmond Hamilton, “The Time Gate” (1941) by Robert A. Heinlein (better known as
“By His Bootstraps”), and “The Sun Maker” (1940) by Jack Williamson. Each story has been reprinted at least four
times since, with Heinlein’s in a whopping fifteen different anthologies or
collections and re-printed in The Menace
of Earth alone twenty-one times.
