Search Results for: Terry Carr

From the Library of Terry Carr: Here’s Your Chance to Own a Piece of Science Fiction History

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A few of the (mostly new) Terry Carr anthologies you can buy on eBay for $3 each Terry Carr is widely respected today, nearly four decades after his death, for his legendary work as a science fiction editor. He assembled some 70 anthologies in a career spanning over twenty years, including the highly respected Universe series (17 volumes), Fantasy Annual (five volumes), and the career-defining Best Science Fiction of the Year (16 volumes), which may well be the finest Year’s…

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Vintage Treasures: The Best Science Fiction of the Year 11 edited by Terry Carr

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The Best Science Fiction of the Year 11 (Timescape, July 1982) I’ve realized I enjoy these old Terry Carr anthologies much more now than when they first appeared 40 years ago. I wasn’t a sophisticated reader in those days (not that I’m particularly sophisticated today, but at least I’m more patient). I was still discovering science fiction, and purely on the hunt for tales of wonder and adventure. I’d read Carr’s Best Science Fiction volumes with a skeptical eye, not…

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Vintage Treasures: The Best Science Fiction of the Year 12, edited by Terry Carr

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The Best Science Fiction of the Year 12 (Timescape/Pocket Books, July 1983) I recently found a copy of Terry Carr’s 1983 anthology The Best Science Fiction of the Year 12 in a paperback collection I bought on eBay, and I was astonished at just how many great tales it contained. There’s Connie Willis’s Hugo & Nebula Award winner “Firewatch,” the story of a time-traveling history student doing research during the London Blitz who discovers much more than he bargained for;…

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Vintage Treasures: The Best Science Fiction of the Year #8 edited by Terry Carr

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The Best Science Fiction of the Year #8 (Del Rey, July 1979) Terry Carr died 34 years ago, in 1987. A whole generation of fans has arrived since his death, discovered science fiction, argued over the Star War sequels, and settled comfortably into middle age to raise contentious young SF fans of their own. So fans today could be forgiven for not understanding how thoroughly Carr dominated the field during his lifetime. Before he died in 2018, Gardner Dozois was…

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Vintage Treasures: Year’s Finest Fantasy edited by Terry Carr

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Year’s Finest Fantasy (Berkley Books, 1978). Cover by Carl Lundgren The first Year Best volume I ever read was Terry Carr’s The Best Science Fiction of the Year #6, published in paperback by Del Rey in 1977 and filled with stories that blew my 13-year old mind, including the fascinating gadget tale “I See You” by Damon Knight,  John Varley’s futuristic murder mystery “The Phantom of Kansas,” the raunchy and bizarre “Meathouse Man” by George R. R. Martin, and Isaac…

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The Golden Age of Science Fiction: Universe 9, edited by Terry Carr

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The Locus Awards were established in 1972 and presented by Locus Magazine based on a poll of its readers. In more recent years, the poll has been opened up to on-line readers, although subscribers’ votes have been given extra weight. At various times the award has been presented at Westercon and, more recently, at a weekend sponsored by Locus at the Science Fiction Museum (now MoPop) in Seattle. The Best Anthology Award dates back to 1976, although it was not…

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The Golden Age of Science Fiction: The 1973 Hugo Award for Best Fan Writer: Terry Carr

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Steven Silver has been doing a series covering the award winners from his age 12 year, and Steven has credited me for (indirectly) suggesting this, when I quoted Peter Graham’s statement “The Golden Age of Science Fiction” is 12, in the “comment section” to the entry on 1973 in Jo Walton’s wonderful book An Informal History of the Hugos. You see, I was 12 in 1972, so the awards for 1973 were the awards for my personal Golden Age. And…

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Vintage Treasures: Classic Science Fiction: The First Golden Age, edited by Terry Carr

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Terry Carr may be my all-time favorite editor. His Creatures From Beyond (1975) was one of the very first SF anthologies I read in Junior High, and the sixteen volumes of The Best Science Fiction of the Year he produced remain a high water mark for the genre. Carr died in 1987, at the too-young age of 50, but I still read his books with enormous pleasure today. It may be a sign of age (mine, not Carr’s), but I usually associate…

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Vintage Treasures: The Best Science Fiction 1974, edited by Lester del Rey, Terry Carr, and Donald Wollheim

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In his Foreword to his Fourth Annual Collection of Best Science Fiction Stories of the Year, which gathered stories published in 1974, Lester del Rey makes the case for Sense of Wonder as the core literary virtue of science fiction. There is another element that must be present in every good science fiction story. It should excite a feeling of wonder, of something beyond the ordinary. It is the expectation of finding such wonders that makes the reader turn to…

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A Return to Terry Carr’s Best Science Fiction of the Year

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My taste in science fiction — like my taste in music and film — was shaped early. What I learned to love as a teen I largely still enjoy… with some exceptions. One of those exceptions is Terry Carr’s Best Science Fiction of the Year. I picked up my first one in 1977, at the age of 13, and I discovered pretty quickly that they weren’t for me. I went back to reading pulp SF in books like Before the Golden Age, and was…

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