All ten anthologies in the British Library Science Fiction Classics edited by Mike Ashley,
plus his non-fiction survey Yesterday’s Tomorrows, and interior art from Moonrise (bottom right).
Covers by Chesley Bonestell, David A. Hardy, Warwick Goble, Frederick Siebel, et al
Mike Ashley is a fascinating guy. He interviewed me years ago about founding the SF Site (sfsite.com), one of the first science fiction websites, back in 1995, for his book The Rise of the Cyberzines, the fifth volume of his monumental History of Science Fiction Magazines. He’s edited dozens of SF anthologies over the years, including 19 volumes in The Mammoth Book series (The Mammoth Book of Comic Fantasy, The Mammoth Book of Extreme Science Fiction, The Mammoth Book of New Sherlock Holmes Adventures, etc.)
But I’m currently obsessed with his latest project, a sequence of terrific anthologies published under the banner of the British Library Science Fiction Classics. There are nineteen volumes in the British Library Science Fiction Classics so far, including long-forgotten novels by William F. Temple, Charles Eric Maine, and Muriel Jaeger, and even a new collection of previously-abridged novellas from John Brunner, The Society of Time, which looks pretty darn swell.
But the bulk of the series — eleven books — consists of ten anthologies and a non-fiction title from Mike Ashley. And what books they are! They gather early fiction across a wide range of themes, heavily focused on pulp-era and early 20th Century SF and fantasy. Mining classic tropes like the Moon and Mars, sinister machines, creeping monsters, and looming apocalypses, Ashley has produced a veritable library of foundational SF and fantasy. Reasonably priced in handsome trade paperback and affordable digital editions, these volumes are an essential addition to any modern SF collection. And they are positively packed with fun reading.
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