Let us name some great Science Fiction Anthologies!

Back when I was little, I read a lot of SF short story anthologies. I still think the short story suits the form best, as with SF it is often the idea that's the thing, so it does not need to be porked out over a book.

I do not remember all the anthologies I read, but these are some great ones:

1. An Asimov edited collection of great SF short short stories. In this one there were loads of really short SF stories, oftern stripped down to being just the idea. A lot of them seemed to revolve around rejection letters from magazine publishers.

2. A collection of stories that people had written as part of a series of linked stories. I remember next to none of these except some crazy Clifford D. Simak thing about giant anthills and intelligent dogs, but it was all great.

3. A Kinglsey Amis edited collecton of thrill powered SF stories, of which The Streets of Ashkelon is the one I remember the most.

4. Another Asimov edited collection of really early SF stories, from an era of extremely high thrill power. Tumithawk of Shawm is the one I remember here - an odd tale written almost in the style of the Old Testament.

And you?

Dangerous Visions edited by Harlan Ellison. the forward and introductions are good.
Bordertown is a good fantasy anthology of stories about a place by different people.

I never heard the term Thrill Power before. I had to google it.

Some discussion of this matter on this thread: Best Story in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume One, 1929–1964 (Unabridged Version)

One of the earliest anthologies of this type I read was something like Peter Davison Presents Great SF Short Stories (he was Doctor Who #5). Had great stuff like Clarke's Star of Bethlehem story, the Bradbury one where the girl is locked in the cupboard and misses the once-in-a-century rain, gear like that.

Tumithawk in Shawm available here (along with everything else he wrote):
http://www.charlesrtanner.com/TumithakInShawm.htm
doesn't say where it's been collected.

i recently enjoyed ACClarke's The Sentinel, a collection of a dozen or so of his short stories. there's a 900+ page collection of pretty much all of them available too.

i have a bunch of great ones at home. i'll check titles when i'm back there.

This one, because with a cover this epic the stories have to be good

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51MMCZMT30L._SS500_.jpg

http://www.penguinsciencefiction.org/images/1638_BRIAN_ALDISS_%28Ed%29_Penguin_Science_Fiction_1965.jpg

http://www.penguinsciencefiction.org//images/1963_BRIAN_ALDISS_%28Ed%29_More_Penguin_Science_Fiction_1963.jpg

http://www.penguinsciencefiction.org/images/2189_BRIAN_ALDISS_%28Ed%29_Yet_More_Penguin_Science_Fiction_1964.jpg

believe you can get 'em all in one bumper anthology these days.

http://www.ballardian.com/images/mirrorshades.jpg

http://img1.fantasticfiction.co.uk/images/t0/t2069.jpg

(In Dreams, a celebration of the 7-inch single in original SF and horror fiction)

http://www.multiverse.org/imagehive/d/61000-7/BestSFNW8.jpg

The only one of the series really worth bothering with, even though (or because) it has four stories from the same guy, Barrington Bailey.

^ basically my top 6 of all time, although sci-fi hall of fame vol 1 is worthwhile, and i do need to get hold of dangerous visions.

hmm i have this one, think it's pretty good

http://www.multiverse.org/imagehive/d/60997-9/BestSFNW7.jpg

but like this is one of only two things like this i own, both bought second hand the same day.

(the other is Best SF: 75)

great covers, though I think the dinosaur one wins.

i'm sure i've mentioned this one before somewhere else, but i love love love this anthology. it's got both classics and unknowns (and both! i.e. "shambleau" and "black destroyer")

http://www.amazon.co.uk/World-Turned-Upside-Down/dp/1416520686

original covers for the aldiss anthologies are some epic shit

the dinosaur book was one of the things required for the course I took in uni about 'speculative and science fiction'. it was due to be the best course ever — the prof was a dude in his 60s with a ponytail who looked like he'd read/seen every sciency fictiony thing ever. then, as old men tend to, he got sick and had to take the semester off, and we got stuck with the head-of-dept's wife as a teacher. she didn't have a phd in lit and she knew fuckall about the course material. it turned out to be one of the worst classes I ever took because of her.

I'm still fond of the dinosaur book though.

I started The World Turned Upside down but the second story was a 50 page 1950s futuristic patrol car on megahighway snoresville which sapped my will to live, so I stopped. Will get back to it.

yeah ledge that one's a dud - i have no idea why they included it!!

that story is such a transparent rehash of the guy's army medic experience as well..

Did get back to it, almost done. Some good stuff in there but it doesn't reach the peaks of the Aldiss anthologies imo. This could just be personal taste. The two you mentioned, "The Black Destroyer" and "Shambleau" don't do it for me. I don't get on with Van Vogt, his characters behave oddly and his psychologising and sociologising and historicising all seem highly amateurish. "Shambleau" is bog-standard outer space as wild west with bonus fantasy-style monster.

"Who Goes There" is certainly a classic but it's impossible to read it without recalling John Carpenter's "The Thing".

Wondered if it's a date thing, Aldiss concentrates on the 50s and 60s and TWTUD has lots of 30s and 40s stuff. But there isn't really any strong date/quality correlation and that dreadful patrol car story ("Code 3") is from 1963!

more weird fiction than science fiction but my all time favourite is the freak show ed. Peter Haining

http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/h/peter-haining/freak-show.htm

awesome themed collection ... poe, bradbury, leiber, whyndham, derleth, bloch, ellison etc with some lovely little introductions linking it all together