This is not the very best of Fantasy & Science Fiction. The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction has published so many wonderful stories that for many years they were able to publish ANNUAL best-ofs. They did a few more anthologies for occasional anniversaries, and had to cull this list from all of those. So these may be some of the most culturally significant stories the magazine has put out, or they may be stories that the editors thought stood the test of time particularly well, but I think

This is not a particularly inspired collection of short stories. My favorite was the Peter S. Beagle short story that was a sequel (of sorts) to the Last Unicorn, but I doubt it would stand well on it's own.The editor seemed more interested in picking stories that were personally interesting to him (such as stories that he liked when he was twelve or what have you) than in picking the best short stories that had been published in the magazine. Further, the short story Eastward Ho! was incredibly...

This is a fantastic anthology, with a huge variety of absolute classics and gems, from a sixty-year span of publication. Powerful, powerful pieces -- and ones that give you great tastes of a whole lot of different authors, from Alfred Bester to Ted Chiang.Some of the standout stories are:* The classic "Flowers For Algernon";* Peter Beagle's heartbreaking adventure "Two Hearts,"* Ted Chiang's "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate," which does Arabian Nights style tales of magical time travel;* "...

For some reason I started thinking about reading Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes in (grade? high?) school and all I could remember was that there was a super-smart mouse. So I tracked down the story in a science fiction anthology and was very pleased to get reacquainted with it. It's chilling and poignant and sad and funny to read mentally-handicapped protagonist Charlie Gordon's first-person account of receiving an "operashun" to make him smart. The story was originally published in 1959 a...

This 60th anniversary anthology of the best of F&SF features an extraordinary body of work. Honestly, it reads like a who's who of genre fiction: Stephen King, Neil Gaiman, Karen Joy Fowler, Ursula K. Le Guin, Ray Bradbury, etc. I had read some of the stories before, like Kurt Vonnegut's "Harrison Bergeron" and Bradbury's tragic "All Summer in a Day." I think there were only three stories in the book that just didn't click for me at all, but far more were truly astonishing and fantastic. Some of...

For all the many, many years I've been reading science fiction, I had never read the classic "Flowers For Algernon". Always meant to, just never got around to it. Finally with this volume I did - and it turns out it IS as good as everyone says it is. Powerful stuff, and deeply affecting. I confess, there must have been a bit of dust in my eyes as I finished the story.All the stories in this book are of a very high standard, and I would recommend to anyone who likes their fiction with a taste of

This volume reminded me of the Twilight Zone marathon -- several episodes/stories that didn't grab me at all (notably those with military members, aliens, etc.) and others that were great.I read and enjoyed:All Summer in a Day (Ray Bradbury)One Ordinary Day, with Peanuts (Shirley Jackson)Flowers for Algernon (Daniel Keyes)Harrison Bergeron (Kurt Vonnegut)Flowers for Algernon was a WOW -- "It's a good feeling to know things and be smart." "Soon you'll be able to connect them too. You'll see how t...

Gordon Van Gelder has been the editor of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction since 1996. Mr. Van Gelder prepared brief paragraphs to introduce each of the short fiction selections of when it was first published in the magazine. He also included a little background on the authors which I found to be a nice touch.It was lovely going back to some old favourite stories I had not read in years to reread them in this anthology, such as Flowers for Algernon. Many of the authors I had not read bef...

Some true classics here, along with stories I don't remember hearing of or reading before. As with any anthology, it's Forrest Gump's box of chocolates, and only the editor will love every one of the stories, but by and large these stories demonstrate why F&SF has been so successful for so long. They aren't, for the most part, trotting out the tropes, even to play with them or subvert them; they're taking SFF to strange and wonderful new places.There's also a visible shift over time in the kind

I enjoyed 12 of the 23 stories in this anthology, which would seem to indicate a so-so rating, but the stories I did like tended to be quite good indeed. This anthology is heavy on science fiction and alternative fantasy - there is basically no dungeons and dragons-style fantasy here, which was initially a bit of a disappointment. Overall, I found the author selection and subject matter diverse and pleasantly surprising and the story order well thought out. Also, the great thing about this being...

4.5 stars.A lot of the stories are classics so if you are someone who reads fantasy or sci-fi short stories a lot of them will be ones you’re familiar with. But there were a few that I didn’t know and most of them were excellent. And it’s wonderful to have collected in one book some of the strongest stories from some major figures in the genre. “Solitary” is a story I love and was excited to re-encounter here and the short story that eventually became the novel flowers for Algernon which I knew

The Very Best of Fantasy & Science Fiction: Sixtieth Anniversary Anthology is the most recent anthology to be published by the magazine bearing the same name. It is not a bad short-story collection, although I have to say that the first half is much better than the second. Some stories really have a lasting effect, like "Flowers for Algernon," while others, for a selection celebrating 60 years of publication, are really just so-so. One of the latter that immediately comes to mind is Ursula Le Gu...

Mini-reviews of each story:Of Time and Third Avenue, Alfred Bester: 3/5The short-story format has always been important and held in high regard in science fiction. This classic twist-in-time mystery story is a good example of why. The short format allows a simple idea and plot twist to be explored without the need to build elaborate sets, plot, and side characters. Bester serves us with an enjoyable, if straightforward and somewhat predictable story, effectively setting a scene and executing a p...

Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book through the kind offices of the Publicist of the publisher, Tachyon Publications.The Very Best of Fantasy & Science Fiction, edited by Gordon Van Gelder, is an anthology of stories across the eponymous magazine's 60 year history.Although I am not a heavy reader of SF magazines (when I read SF stories, its usually in anthologies or collections), it is clear to me, immediately, that F&SF has had a wonderful history of publishing some of the best stories i...

The Very Best of Fantasy & Science Fiction: Sixtieth Anniversary Anthology is an excellent collection of 23 stories picked from the treasure trove of short fiction that's been published in the eponymous magazine over the past 60 years. Editor Gordon Van Gelder — also the editor of the magazine since 1997 — has done an admirable job, picking stories that illustrate the diversity of both the genre and the magazine. As such, this is a great anthology for SF&F fans as well as newcomers looking for a...

I hesitate to give a book five stars. I'm not a crotchety literary elitist (I swear!); I just have this bizarre OCD about not wanting to cheapen the value of five stars. "The Very Best of Fantasy & Science Fiction: Sixtieth Anniversary Anthology" is the only short story collection to which I've given five stars (and I loved Fragile Things and Last Defender of Camelot!).Short story collections are usually mixed bags for me. I tend to leave a book behind with a vivid memory of a half-dozen favorit...

The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction has always been the home of more literate science fiction and fantasy than most of its competitors. This anthology demonstrates the quality and breadth of writing that has graced its pages. Here are some of the highlights."All Summer in a Day" by Ray Bradbury (March 1954 - short story) 3 StarsThere's no doubt Bradbury could string words together into evocative sentences and come up with characters and locations unlike anything else. His plots, however,...

I hadn't read the short story version of "Algernon," but found it just as heartbreaking as the novel was when I was half as old as I am now. Of course Bradbury still masters the form with his classic "All Summer in a Day," Le Guin similarly crushes it with "Solitude," and I am incredibly grateful to get proper introductions to legends like Damon Knight, Terry Bisson, Karen Jay Fowler, and Michael Swanwick. The weaker additions are forgivable since this is, after all, a survey of the magazine's t...

Very solid collection. In addition to the well-known classics (Harrison Bergeron, All Summer in a Day, Flowers for Algernon), there were a bunch of great stories I was unfamiliar with. Some standouts: The Electric Ant (PKD), Other People (Neil Gaiman), Journey into the Kingdom (Mary Rickert). I thought the last story, The Merchant at the Alchemists Gate (Ted Chiang) was the best in the collection, and maybe one of the best time-travel stories I've read.

4.5 starsThe Very Best of Fantasy & Science Fiction: Sixtieth Anniversary Anthology is an excellent collection of 23 stories picked from the treasure trove of short fiction that's been published in the eponymous magazine over the past 60 years. Editor Gordon Van Gelder — also the editor of the magazine since 1997 — has done an admirable job, picking stories that illustrate the diversity of both the genre and the magazine. As such, this is a great anthology for SF&F fans as well as newcomers look...