(Compiled by Nick Gevers, Ph.D., Cape Town, South Africa)

Given SF’s origins as a magazine story genre, and Gardner Dozois’ argument that cutting-edge SF and Fantasy is still most commonly found at short story and novella length, it seems worthwhile to offer a list of the more significant collections of short speculative fiction. With the caveat that, rather than canonicity, my own (unique?) taste is the chief determinant of this list, here are my 25 particular recommendations, in chronological order of publication:

• Jack Vance, The Dying Earth (1950)
• Ray Bradbury, The Illustrated Man (1951)
• Brian W. Aldiss, Space, Time, and Nathaniel (1957)
• J. G. Ballard, The Voices of Time (1963)
• Henry Kuttner, The Best of Henry Kuttner (1975)
• Ursula K. Le Guin, The Wind’s Twelve Quarters (1975)
• Alfred Bester, Starlight (1976)
• Gene Wolfe, The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories and Other Stories (1980)
• Isaac Asimov, The Complete Robot (1982)
• Fritz Leiber, The Ghost Light (1984)
• George R. R. Martin, Nightflyers (1985)
• Robert Silverberg, Beyond the Safe Zone (1986)
• Karen Joy Fowler, Artificial Things (1987)
• Bruce Sterling, Crystal Express (1989)
• John Crowley, Novelty (1989)
• Gene Wolfe, Endangered Species (1989)
• Howard Waldrop, Strange Things in Close Up (1989)
• James Tiptree, Jr., Her Smoke Rose Up Forever (1990)
• Lucius Shepard, The Ends of the Earth (1991)
• Greg Bear, The Venging (1992)
• Ian McDonald, Speaking in Tongues (1992)
• Ursula K. Le Guin, A Fisherman of the Inland Sea (1994)
• Greg Egan, Axiomatic (1995)
• Peter S. Beagle, Giant Bones (1997)
• Michael Swanwick, A Geography of Unknown Lands (1997)