Classic Sci Fi books: The Science Fiction Hall of Fame Volume One 1929 to 1964 (The Greatest Science Fiction Stories of All Time Chosen by the Members of the Science Fiction Writers of America)

A Warm Hug of a Book

*Image taken from Amazon.com. No copyright infringement intended.

March 1, 2025

Categorization: Science Fiction

Where read: Physical Hardcover (2003 Edition)

It was a warm, sunny late morning of a Sunday in the early 2000’s. I was about fifteen years old and about to go on my weekly sojourn with my mother to a local bookstore. This wasn’t, however, your average bookstore selling cheap mass market paperbacks alongside shelves of school supplies and scrapbooking materials. No sir, this was a very special little bookstore tucked away in the back-end (Bag End?) of the mall. You know the area of the mall I’m talking about, it’s that tiny hallway at the end of the last left corner of the top floor hiding the small specialty stores that carry things that someone who had already pre-researched would find there (like a mole-removal center, or a shop that re-frames the paintings rich people buy at auction), not the usual clothing or cosmetics stores with bright light and big signs to attract the casual passers-by.

The little bookstore we were headed to could not have been more than ten meters square in floor space, but it offered something absolutely precious that bigger bookstores could not hope to match – it offered curated books. In this case, it offered a variety of fiction, fantasy, sci fi, biographical, and nonfiction books, none of which were popular or trendy enough to show up at the bigger bookstores, but great books that the proprietor loved and thus brought in beautiful editions of.

I know that these specialty bookstores have gone the way of the dinosaur, much as predicted in the classic You’ve Got Mail. I won’t even attempt here to urge people to bring them back, because even I know that this would not be a sustainable enterprise, unless one was rich and tired of it, and would enjoy the tedious task of importing expensive physical books that three people might come on Sundays to buy.

But before people realized this, and before the advent of Amazon and its 1-Click to Buy almost every book under the sun (a miracle that I never tire of), there were these people who just loved books enough to be content with a small shop and to cater to a vanishingly small demographic (at least in my country). I mean, this bookstore even came with a portly, venerable old guy who recognized me and my mother on sight and was always more than happy to suggest my next read (because he had read every single book in the shop!)

And yes, this little bookshop that I no longer remember the name of was probably for open a grand total of two and a half years. But I still have and treasure the unique books my mother bought me from this shop until this day, and the fact that I was able to have these books at all when I was a teenager is priceless to me.  

And one of these books was The Science Fiction Hall of Fame Volume One 1929 – 1964 (The Greatest science Fiction Stories of All Time Chosen by the Members of the Science Fiction Writers of America). I remember browsing the shelves of the bookstore and seeing this book tucked in there for at least a month of Sundays before working up the courage to ask my mother to buy it for me. It cost a grand total of thirty dollars at the time, which was relatively a lot of money for one book -equivalent to about eight or more paperback Sweet Valley, Nancy Drew, Animorphs, or the Jedi Apprentice books at the time.

But she did, and I have to say I got her money’s worth out of it as I read and reread through it constantly for the next two decades. As this was before the Kindle came out and before it became much easier to find one’s next great sci fi read, the stories in this book filled my imagination and were a source of great comfort to me for several years during high school and college. The ideas in it are so diverse, and the writing so beautiful, that I never tired of the stories. They were so good for just a quick, happy sci fi hit, whenever you needed it.

This is not to say that I didn’t have my favorites and… unfavorites? What is the opposite of a favorite? Actually, this book is an interesting reflection of my own psychology, as I find that in general, the stories that immediately grabbed me when I first read them at 14 or 15, are the same ones I still love now. And the ones that I didn’t enjoy in my first read-through, I continue to skip until this day.

So if you are thinking of picking this up, here is this entirely gratuitous list of all the stories in this book, in the order that they appear, with an equally unnecessary commentary on each one:

1.        A Martian Odyssey by Stanley G. Weinbaum – a fun let’s-explore-Mars in a time the Rover had not been invented adventure! I really enjoyed this one.

2.        Twilight by John W. Campbell– I do not remember what this story was about as I did not really enjoy it the first time I read it and had never attempted since.

3.        Helen O’ Loy by Lester del Rey – this one grew on me, it’s a sweet one about a robot ala Isaac Asimov and the movie Her-style. A must-read for people who like news articles about AIs.

4.        The Roads Must Roll by Robert A. Heinlein – an unfavorite for me. Actually, I find that this is consistent with my reactions to other Robert A. Heinlein books (I think the other one I read was Stranger in A Strange Land, which I read once out of fascination but then had no desire to pick up ever again), that they are too strange for me. I mean, I enjoy strange ideas as much as the next person, but I find his books fall squarely into the “unrelatable” sci fi that will never hit the spot for me.

5.        Microcosmic God by Theodore Sturgeon – absolutely a must-read and one of my favorite stories! I don’t want to ruin it with an even mini review, but since it’s a short story I think the time you spend reading a review can be better spent reading the story itself. A great parable about ethics in scientific discovery.

6.        Nightfall by Isaac Asimov – this one is unique in that I was enthralled by it the first two times I read it, but then I grew bored of the concept and don’t really enjoy it now. As much as I love Isaac Asimov, I don’t think there’s much to really explore or ruminate about this concept once you’ve reflected on it and on the concept of ancient civilizations a couple of times.

7.        The Weapon Shop by A.E. van Vogt – an unfavorite.

8.        Mimsy were the Borogoves by Lewis Padgett – one of the most inventive, unique science fiction stories ever written. A definite hard favorite and a classic that has withstood the test of time for me.

9.        Huddling Place by Clifford D. Simak – I do not even remember what this is about.

10.   Arena by Fredric Brown – a Gladiator meets Arrival work of genius. So much told in so few pages, this is a masterclass in short-story telling.

11.   First Contact by Murray Leinster – I thought this was kind of cool in an adventure-space-exploration kind of way.

12.   The next nine stories I will let you discover for yourself – I didn’t realize until just now that there were so many stories that fall into my unfavorites category? I think I’ll just let you discover them for yourself, you may enjoy what were simply not my cup of tea. I will say that The Nine Billion Names of God by Arthur C. Clarke is there, and while it is not my favorite for a re-read, the concept is trans-generationally fascinating.

13.   It’s a Good Life by Jerome Bixby – the funniest story in the book, and to be quite frank, I don’t know any short story that does this dark humor so well, so this is my favorite dark humor short story of all time (sci fi or non-sci fi). Interestingly, there is an old Cartoon Network Johnny Bravo episode - you remember that Elvis-type blond guy with sunglasses whose entire point of being was to hit on and get rejected by women (I can feel myself losing an entire generation of readers as I type this. Well youngins, back in my day this stuff was hilarious and considered child-appropriate, so joke’s on you) – that I think is based on this story, and was cleverly done, too.

…this post is getting too long now and I am getting hungry… It’s almost 11:30 AM and my lunch is getting cold…

In the interest of…ahem…leaving the rest of the book a happy surprise for readers who have been sufficiently taken in by this long, rambly post, I will just quick mention that Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keys and A Rose for Ecclesiastes Roger Zelazny are part of the remaining stories, and are surefire favorites that remain a pleasure for me to re-read countlessly. I will say that putting these near the end of the book and near each other was a stroke of brilliance by the editor, as they are thought-provoking, beautiful tales that will make you happy and heartbroken at the same time. They embody something I always found beautiful about science fiction – good science fiction is never a tear-jerker. The great writers (like the aforementioned two) can write a story seemingly coldly, and the story will talk about technology, or scientific concepts, or sterile predictions of what is to come in the future, and yet they can make the emotional human dilemma bleed through this to become all the more poignant to the reader for having been restrained.  

I guess a final word on this book, is that there is something for everybody, and I hope that you will buy it and find the joy and adventure in discovering your own favorites and unfavorites.  I think it is remarkable that nearly a hundred years later, some of the things these writers dreamed up continue to fascinate and are still deeply relatable.