NESFA

Many science fiction writers of the twentieth century invested much of their efforts into short stories that were submitted and published in pulp magazines, some better than others. Some of these writers, like Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, and Arthur C. Clarke, went on to write novels. The novels that these three writers put out were what gave them their fame and raised more interest about their short stories in turn. There were other authors who wrote great short science fiction literature, but who never achieved the widespread name recognition that the "Big Three" had. The great body of these short works, some of which were masterpieces, had fallen out of print along with the pulp publications that they had appeared in. The more famous authors, with their publishers, realized that they could buy back, compile, and sell collections of their own stories. But the others either didn't have the pull with their publishers or didn't amass a sufficient quantity of recognized works to assemble and publish a collection of short works. Excellence in short science fiction has been recognized over the years by the publication of "year's best" anthologies that at least exposed these less known authors and gave them a small share of the great legacy of the "Golden Age" of science fiction. Asimov himself, in collaboration with Martin H. Greenberg, collected and edited anthologies for a series titles The World's Best SF. Writer and editor Donald Wollheim put out a different series honoring the year's best stories. After Asimov and Wollheim died, this concept continued with editors David Hartwell,and Gardner Dozois putting out separate quality anthologies of the year's best short science fiction. But there was still a demand for the publication of the collected works for some of the lesser known writers.

This is where NESFA, the New England Science Fiction Association, stepped in to perform a great service to fans of this genre. Over the past few years, NESFA has published collections of the short fiction of many writers, notable among them Cyril Kornbluth, William Tenn, Robert Sheckley, E.A. van Vogt, Eric Frank Russell, and Fredric Brown. Some of these had published small paperback collections of short stories over the years, but NESFA collected these and put out definitive volumes of the authors' works. There are many other science fiction writers whose collected works are listed on their website. NESFA isn't the only organization doing this. North Atlantic Books has been collecting all of Theodore Sturgeon's works into several volumes, and SFBC (Science Fiction Book Club) took over the publication of Two-Handed Engine, a collection of the best short stories that the husband-wife writing team of Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore had written, either alone or in collaboration with each other (the classic story Mimsy Were the Borogoves was a collaboration). I think that, ultimately, the appropriate place for these types of collected works is the public or school library, but it's wonderful that you can now buy for yourself a comprehensive collection of your favorite science fiction author's short stories. Hats off to NESFA and the others!