Long Time Passing

11^th Annual Edition: The Year’s Best S‑F (The Year’s Best S‑F, volume 11)

Edited by Judith Merril

2 Jan, 2024

**Judith Merril’s The Year’s Greatest Science Fiction and Fantasy**

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Support me with a Patreon monthly subscription! — 2 Jan, 2024

**Judith Merril’s The Year’s Greatest Science Fiction and Fantasy**

14 comments

1966’s 11^th Annual Edition: The Year’s Best S‑F is the 11^th volume in Judith Merril’s The Year’s Best S‑F series. Unlike previous volumes, 11 does not seem to have had variant titles (or many editions, for that matter). The anthology offers the best stories of the previous year, which in this case stretched from 1962¹ to 1965. Almost all of the stories are from 1965.

Gender balance: two essays, both by the same woman (Merril). One story by a woman, but otherwise the contents are entirely by men.

The Nebula award was established in 1966. Three of the stories in this collection were Nebula nominees. There were no Hugo nominations that I could see. Merril was not mining the ore Hugo voters preferred.

As far as I can tell, the stories were taken from the following sources:

Amazing Stories – 1

Ambit – 1

Analog – 1

The Colorado Quarterly – 1

Escapade 1–

Fantastic Stories of Imagination – 1

Labyrinths: Selected Stories & Other Writings – 1

If – 1

Galaxy – 1

King – 1

Mademoiselle – 1

The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction – 5

New Worlds – 4

The New Yorker – 1

The Oneota Review – 1

Playboy – 3

Rogue – 1

The Saturday Review of Literature – 1

Science Fantasy – 4

Selected Works of Alfred Jarry – 1

The Terminal Beach (collection) – 2

The Washington Post – 1

Worlds of Tomorrow – 1

Worm Runner’s Digest – 1

Most of the stories in this volume were later reprinted. I couldn’t find any record of reprint for eight works but … but Merril often drew from sources not tracked by the ISFDB. Oddly enough, one story for which I found no evidence of a reprint was Better Than Ever, which was a Nebula nominee. The Nebulas have an associated annual anthology, whose sales fund the award, but as far as I can tell, Better Than Ever was not reprinted in that series.

Sad to say, this collection was mostly not to my taste. Merril had just discovered the New Wave and was abuzz with excitement. The excitement was pleasant, but the stories themselves? While I am not actively hostile to New Wave, I was indifferent to most of the examples here. Still, the collection is not all New Wave. ~~Stodgy old-fashioned~~ Classic big three-style² SF is well represented.

One thing I did enjoy about this collection: Merril’s voluminous commentary on each story. She provides such biographical details as are known to her³ and lengthy commentaries on the state of science fiction (from her perspective circa 1966, naturally). One might want to take some of her confident assertions with a pinch of salt, but there’s still much there that is useful. The volume is a fascinating primary source for the history of SFF.

Time for the details.

Introduction (11^th Annual Edition: The Year’s Best S‑F) • (1966) • essay by Judith Merril

Merril foreshadows the rise of the New Wave.

“Something Else” • (1965) • short story by Robert J. Tilley

A castaway on an alien world finds unexpected companionship … until it is taken from him by well-meaning rescuers.

“The Volcano Dances” • (1964) • short story by J. G. Ballard

An obsessed man pursues his quarry — beyond reason or even basic respect for a nearby active volcano.

“Slow Tuesday Night” • (1965) • short story by R. A. Lafferty

A simple medical procedure allows people to enjoy life at a permanently accelerated pace.

“Better Than Ever” • (1965) • short story by Alex Kirs

A man becomes unsatisfied with the packaged entertainments of tomorrow.

“Coming-of-Age Day” • (1965) • short story by A. K. Jorgensson

A young person struggles with the novel sexualities of tomorrow.

“The Wall” • (1965) • short story by Josephine Saxton

Two lovers try and fail to circumvent the barrier that divides them.

Is this one of them metaphor thingies?

The Survivor • (1965) • novelette by Walter F. Moudy

A war game’s lone survivor fails to reintegrate into civil society. Luckily for him, he does not have to.

And here we reach the obligatory rape story that anthologies of this vintage were compelled to include.

“Moon Duel” • (1965) • short story by Fritz Leiber

Human and alien overcome their differences, they cannot overcome basic orbital mechanics.

A similar twist was seen in Bova’s 1964 “Men of Good Will”, not to mention other stories whose titles I cannot be bothered to look up. Was it steam engine time for stories featuring simple orbital mechanics?

“Project Inhumane” • (1964) • short story by Alexander Malec

Jailors are baffled by an escape.

“Those Who Can, Do” • (1965) • short story by Robert T. Kurosaka

A student challenges his professor, only to be outdone by the professor’s superior psionics skills.

Another sexual assault story, this one limited to the involuntary disrobing of a co-ed. Interestingly, Merril refers to psionic stories as “played-out.” Take that, John W. Campbell!

“Susan” • (1965) • short story by Keith Roberts

A young woman with unsuspected gifts wrestles with questions of identity.

“Yesterdays’ Gardens” • (1965) • short story by Johnny Byrne

A young girl chaffs at the realities of life after nuclear war.

“The Roaches” • (1965) • short story by Thomas M. Disch

A spinster troubled by inconsiderate neighbors finds unexpected allies.

“Game” • (1965) • short story by Donald Barthelme

Two men in a missile silo deal poorly with the consequences of a long-delayed relief.

“J Is for Jeanne” • (1965) • short story by E. C. Tubb

Jeanne struggles to understand nightmare symbolism.

The big reveal is that Jeanne, presented as feminine, is a computer fated to slave away for humans, all of whose representatives are men.

“Terminal” • (1965) • short story by Ron Goulart

A befuddled inhabitant of a retirement facility enjoys the full benefits of the policies he helped put in place.

“The Plot” • (1965) • short story by Tom Herzog

Marital tension turns lethal thanks to malevolent household gadgets.

“Investigating the Bidwell Endeavors” • (1965) • short story by David R. Bunch

Who can resist the enticing services of the foreboding Bidwell sisters?

The Case • (1966) • poem by Peter Redgrove

A patient’s inner musings, forever hidden from his family and doctors.

“There’s a Starman in Ward 7” • (1965) • short story by David Rome

A violent lunatic briefly proves useful to a fellow asylum inmate.

“Eyes Do More Than See” • (1965) • short story by Isaac Asimov

Godlike posthumans prove vulnerable to nostalgia.

“Maelstrom II” • (1965) • short story by Arthur C. Clarke

A lunar traveler is saved from certain doom by applied orbital dynamics.

“Two Telepathic Letters to Lord Kelvin” • (1965) • short story by Alfred Jarry

Musings on the afterlife from a dead man.

Is Jarry where the Beatles got the word ‘pataphysical’ for the first line of Maxwell’s Silver Hammer?

“Warrior” • [Childe Cycle] • (1965) • short story by Gordon R. Dickson

Following a military calamity, a grim Dorsai warrior grimly orchestrates the grim death of a man whom the Dorsai grimly believes responsible for the reverse.

There are Dorsai who sometimes smile but this grim Dorsai is not one of them. Dickson in Very Serious Mode is borderline parodic.

“Mars Is Ours!” • (1965) • short story by Art Buchwald

Terrans plot to divide Mars between Earth’s superpowers while the Martians plot to divide Earth between Martian superpowers.

“Scarfe’s World” • (1965) • short story by Brian W. Aldiss

Primitives struggle for survival in a simulated world.

“A Singular Case of Extreme Electrolyte Balance Associated with Folie a Deux” • (1965) • short story by Robert D. Tschirgi

Lot’s wife reimagined as a mental health case study.

A Magus • (1965) • poem by John Ciardi

Visions of the doomed world. I think.

“The Circular Ruins” • (1962) • short story by Jorge Luis Borges

A magician engages in a great work.

“The Girl Who Drew the Gods” • (1965) • novelette by Harvey Jacobs

An anthropology class is disrupted by excessive diligence.

The course requires the students to adopt Navajo identities. I bet such a thing wouldn’t show up on contemporary curricula.

“The Drowned Giant” • (1964) • short story by J. G. Ballard

Crowds wonder at a giant, decaying corpse.

Circe Undersea or a Cry from the Depths • (1965) • poem by George MacBeth

I am not entirely certain what this poem is about.

“Somewhere Not Far from Here” • (1965) • short story by Gerald Kersh

A dying teen relates a successful commando raid against the Enemy in which he participated.

“In the Ruins” • (1965) • short story by Roald Dahl

A world ruined by war leaves the starving survivors no choice but to eat themselves.

“Traveller’s Rest” • (1965) • short story by David I. Masson

Temporary escape from war would make return bitter, but peculiar temporal phenomena make the situation even worse.

“Ado About Nothing” • (1965) • short story by Robert K. Ottum

Spacemen are confounded by the edge of the universe.

Summation (The 11^th Annual of the Year’s Best S‑F) • (1966) • essay by Judith Merril

SF grows ever vaster, to the point that Merril despairs of being able to comprehend it all. She is particularly taken with the New Wave and fantastic works outside conventional SFF. Despite the inherent futility of providing a comprehensive list of recommended works, she does her best.

Modern readers may find her views on Dune interesting. Dune is

long, and in part excellent, but completely conventional future-historical, admirable essentially for its complexity rather than for any original or speculative contribution. Certainly there is nothing in it to stimulate or influence the work of others.

1: Assuming that only the English versions count. If we are to count originals, the Borges dates to 1940 and the Jarry from 1911.

2: The big three at this time were Analog, Galaxy, and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Sadly, there is no room in the margin for my compelling argument that Cele Goldsmith’s Fantastic should have joined them, along with If.

3: Resolving a question from an earlier volume: did Merril always know when she was dealing with the pen name of an author she knew under another name? No. In her commentary, she notes that she inadvertently ran two stories by the same person in an earlier volume. In this volume, she comments on a Poul Anderson story published under a pen name in a manner that makes it clear she has no idea the story was written by Anderson.

Comments

Chris Buckey

Yes, Paul McCartney did in fact get the word "pataphysical" from reading Jarry.

Jeff HarrisChris Buckey

Since Alfred Jarry coined the word and the term "pataphysical" McCartney would have had to have read Jarry to find it. Pataphysical hasn't had much usage elsewhere beyond the works of Jarry.

Rich HortonJeff Harris

As I read Jarry on "pataphysics" it seemed essentially a joke.

I have to admit I heard the lyric in "Maxwell's Silver Hammer" as "metaphysical" until I read Jarry.

Tim

Is "Slow Tuesday Night" the one where a guy becomes a stock-market tycoon (complete with dashing cape) & goes bust several times ... in one day?

James NicollTim

I believe so.

Wiredog

Huh. I had no idea that Art Buchwald had written sf. It was probably humor first, with the genre a convenient afterthought.

Joseph Major

"Slow Tuesday Night" now seems like a version of the hot days of the Internet. (Pets.com anyone?)

"The Drowned Giant" makes me think of the Florence, Oregon exploding whale.

Jeff Harris

A Poul Anderson story under a pseudonym? Can you kindly explicate the facts of the matter and point it out? There are a few possible candidates, but the pseudonyms I know Anderson used aren't present.

James NicollJeff Harris

Under authors of note, she mentions Analog's Michael Karageorge, an Anderson pen name. I believe there were just one Karageorge she could have seen: 1965's The Life of Your Time. I must have read it but I do not remember it.

Rich HortonJames Nicoll

Anderson only used the name Karageorge three times. (A. A. Craig once, and Winston Sanders about a dozen times.) I recently read "The Life of Your Time", and to be honest the only thing I remember about it is that I thought "There is no way any readers of that era would not IMMEDIATELY realize this story was by Poul Anderson." So I'm surprised Merril didn't.

Curious that while there was another Anderson story in the same issue it was published as by "Winston Sanders", so it's not clear why a pseudonym was needed for "The Life of Your Time". That said, this story has only been reprinted once, and the other two Karageorge stories have never been reprinted, so maybe Anderson stuck the pseudonym on them because he realized they were all below his usual standard.

Rich Horton

The greatest story in this book is "Traveller's Rest", which I recommend very very highly. (Highly enough that I prevailed upon John Joseph Adams to reprint it in Lightspeed, even though usually he wanted more recent stories (as in, from the 21st century mostly, maybe back to the '90s.)

I also greatly like "The Circular Ruins", "The Drowned Giant", and Moudy's "The Survivor" (unexpectedly good for an almost unknown writer. The rape scene is definitely in the service of portraying the rapist as a terrible person, mind you. That's said, there's rape in both of Moudy's novels that I've read, so ... maybe he was a bit obsessed.)

As for "The Wall", which I also like, yes, I do believe the wall is one of them metaphor thingies! :)

Why anthologists felt compelled to reprint any old thing Asimov published during that timeframe when he had mostly quit writing fiction, I don't know. But "Eyes Do More Than See" is pretty weak.

Oh, and the other two stories I can think of with similar ideas to "Men of Good Will" are "The Holes Around Mars", by Jerome Bixby, and a very little-known John Varley story, "Scoreboard", which appeared in the August 1974 Vertex, and thus is more or less tied with "Picnic on Nearside" as his first published story. It has never been reprinted, with very good reason -- it's dreadful.

Jan Vanek JrRich Horton

Thanks for the details! I really should take a look at some of these stories (though “Traveller’s Rest" looks NewWawish in an unpleasant way, including "whence").

As for orbital mechanics stories, The Holes Around Mars reminded me of Vladimir Savchenko's Chernye zvezdy [Black Stars, 1960], about the discovery of "neutride", where the title does not refer to neutron stars as such but rather the warmongering Americans' satellites made of the stuff, thus so heavy that (having been launched with A-bombs to the Moon but miscalculated by a hair) they orbit in high layers of stratosphere without being slowed down appreciably. (For an engineer, the guy had surprising problems with energy budgets and suchlike.)

There was also the terrible story from an earlier Merrill anth where crew of two passing satellites wave at each other, or throw supplies, or whatever it was – good thing I forgot almost all about that!

Rich HortonJan Vanek Jr

"Traveller's Rest" is really not a New Wave story at all -- in its way it is quite old-fashioned, a pretty pure "idea" story. Masson was 50 when it was published. He was an academic -- a librarian (like Philip Larkin) and an expert on poetry. That said, as a New Worlds writer, he was certainly associated with the New Wave. Of those writers, Barrington Bayley might be the best comparison -- among later SF writers, I think Ted Chiang is a good comparison.

JVjrRich Horton

Thanks for the response (not to mention helping make the story available on a single, simple webpage – well, why not link it: https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/travellers-rest/ ), but...

While the center is indeed a one-trick-pony, it, and its treatment, is "soft" rather than hard SF: no super invention, no Gordic knot of a plot, but an extended metaphor on subjective perception and passing time, with the "what if the Real Enemy Is Us?" trope thrown on the top. By "NewWavish" I meant that this is very much the kind of story I'd expect from a 50-year old intellectual debuting with a "literary", atmospheric story in 1965, so with the access only to the British Boring rather than the later American Energetic.

I also hate, hate, hate the writing – it is unbelievably, painfully dated and beginnerish; almost everything is tell-don't-show, especially as it trips over itself in the explanatory parentheses; he heaps modifiers and clauses almost at random (a decent editor could have cut it at least by a quarter); the abuse of adverbs is almost Rowlingian ("saying simultaneously"); etc. – Yes, I did read and appreciated your Spotlight as well, but the thing is, I also happen to abhor Chiang.

So I guess we'll have to agree to disagree and I'd better go and finally read Slow Tuesday Night.