James Nicoll Reviews

Between 1956 and 1968, Judith Merril edited twelve annual anthologies selecting what were in her option the best speculative fiction stories of the previous year. These were noteworthy for a number of reasons, one being the width of the net Merril cast to gather her material, and also the curious fact that while there have been many, many similar anthology series, Merril’s is the only example from the 20^th century of which I am aware of a Best SF annual edited by a solitary woman. Since I’ve looked at examples from del Rey, Carr, and Dozois’ Best SF series, it seems only fair to balance it out with an exploration of Merril’s.