The Best Science Fiction of the Year (The Best Science Fiction of the Year, volume 1) edited by Terry Carr

https://jamesdavisnicoll.com/review/the-splendid-things

A Terry Carr-edited anthology selecting what Carr thought were the best
stories of 1971, which coincidentally is the same year as the Lester
del Rey Best SF anthology I reviewed last week. In both cases the
publisher didn't seem certain the anthology would thrive, because
instalments did not get volume numbers until the second volume.
--
My reviews can be found at http://jamesdavisnicoll.com/
My tor pieces at https://www.tor.com/author/james-davis-nicoll/
My Dreamwidth at https://james-davis-nicoll.dreamwidth.org/
My patreon is at https://www.patreon.com/jamesdnicoll

James Nicoll wrote:
> The Best Science Fiction of the Year (The Best Science Fiction of the Year, volume 1) edited by Terry Carr
>
> https://jamesdavisnicoll.com/review/the-splendid-things
>
> A Terry Carr-edited anthology selecting what Carr thought were the best
> stories of 1971, which coincidentally is the same year as the Lester
> del Rey Best SF anthology I reviewed last week. In both cases the
> publisher didn't seem certain the anthology would thrive, because
> instalments did not get volume numbers until the second volume.

I wonder about other yearly series, say the Nebula Award Winners. Wow! the first one, edited by Damon Knight, was first titled _Nebula Award Stories 1965_!
http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?34093
Oddly, the Gollancz reprint a year later makes it _Nebula Award Stories 1_ although their printing of the second volume has it _Nebula Award Stories 1967_ (more on that later) and it is the Doubleday printing that is _Nebula Award Stories Two_.
http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?34094
The Pocket Books paperback has it as only _Nebula Award Stories_ when volume three and then four should be out. Shame on them! (It looks like in 1968 the paperback of _Number Two_ would have come out in September, the unnumerated paperback of 1 in October, and the Gollancz hardback of _3_ in November. In 1969, the paperback of _Number Two_ came out in April, and again in December with the first as well, the hardback of _Four_ having come out in November and the paperback of _Three_ in February of the following year; best laid plans and all that. ) So how did we skip from 1965 to 1967? Well, the stories in _Two_ were published in 1966, the book was published in '67. I'm sure some genius in marketing suggested that a reader browsing the shelf would skim to last year's number in the title and skim past it as out of date. Actually for the Nebulas I can't complain. As long as there haven't been award ceremonies without anthologies or anthologies without a ceremony the number of the anthology is the number of the Nebula Award cycle.. (If they ever get fractioned enough that there has to be a _Nebula "No Award" Stories_ collection, I hope it falls between the 585th and 587th volumes and some nerd suggests it be nicknamed the "Pentium" anthology.)

But what about reprinting?
The great 1976 reprinting of Carr's that renamed this to add a "1" could surely have added a "1971", with "Best" in the title offsetting the fact that it was five years out of fashion. Then again, if any fiction needs a "Best if used before:" date, it would be science fiction.

It looks like in '76 #1 was published in April, joined by 2 in May (In fairness, I have to credit marketing for using the cardinal number rather than titling it "The Second Best Science Fiction of the Year."), followed by 3 in June, #5 -that is, this year's- in July, and #4 in October. Sounds like another best laid plan. It looks like #1 was put out to get sales from the inattentive. I admit my idea would probably need this year's best first and the others in perhaps reverse order.

Oh! the stories! I read "Queen of Air and Darkness" not in '71, but still when young enough that mostly just the surface action stayed with me. I think I read the same critique: did it point out one transition to an infodump that compared the emotional distance between two characters with the astronomical distance between worlds?

--
-Jack