Our Facebook group is scheduled to read The Year’s Best S-F: 5th Annual Edition edited by Judith Merril in February and March. This presents a kind of scavenger hunt to find the stories because most of the members do not have a copy of this 1960 book. Probably out of the 400 members only a handful have a copy. Luckily we have ISFDB.org to tell us where these stories from 1959 and 1960 were originally published and reprinted (click on title).

• The Handler • (1960) • short story by Damon Knight
• The Other Wife • (1960) • short story by Jack Finney
• No Fire Burns • (1959) • short story by Avram Davidson
• No, No, Not Rogov! • (1959) • short story by Cordwainer Smith
• The Shoreline at Sunset • (1959) • short story by Ray Bradbury
• The Dreamsman • (1959) • short story by Gordon R. Dickson
• Multum in Parvo • (1959) • short story by Jack Sharkey
• Flowers for Algernon • (1959) • novelette by Daniel Keyes
• A Death in the House • (1959) • short story by Clifford D. Simak
• Mariana • (1960) • short story by Fritz Leiber
• An Inquiry Concerning the Curvature of the Earth’s Surface and Divers Investigations of a Metaphysical Nature • (1958) • short story by Roger Price (1918-1990)
• Day at the Beach • (1959) • short story by Carol Emshwiller
• What the Left Hand Was Doing • (1960) • novelette by Randall Garrett
• The Sound Sweep • (1959) • novelette by J. G. Ballard 
• Plenitude • (1959) • short story by Will Mohler 
• The Man Who Lost the Sea • (1959) • short story by Theodore Sturgeon
• Make a Prison • (1959) • short story by Lawrence Block
• What Now, Little Man? • (1959) • novelette by Mark Clifton

It annoys me that Merril didn’t stay within the 1959 boundary and included four stories from 1960. That makes it hard to compare this best-of-the-year anthology against others – although in 1959-1960 Merril was the sole contemporary annual anthologist. But in 1990 Isaac Asimov and Martin H. Greenberg revisited 1959 in their anthology The Great SF Stories 21 (1959), which included these stories (I’ve bolded stories that Merril also picked):

• Make a Prison • (1959) • short story by Lawrence Block
• The Wind People • (1959) • short story by Marion Zimmer Bradley
• No, No, Not Rogov! • (1959) • short story by Cordwainer Smith
• What Rough Beast? • (1959) • novelette by Damon Knight
• The Alley Man • (1959) • novella by Philip José Farmer
• Day at the Beach • (1959) • short story by Carol Emshwiller
• The Malted Milk Monster • (1959) • short story by William Tenn
• The World of Heart’s Desire • (1959) • short story by Robert Sheckley
• The Man Who Lost the Sea • (1959) • short story by Theodore Sturgeon
• A Death in the House • (1959) • short story by Clifford D. Simak
• The Pi Man • (1959) • short story by Alfred Bester
• Multum in Parvo • (1959) • short story by Jack Sharkey
• What Now, Little Man? • (1959) • novelette by Mark Clifton
• Adrift on the Policy Level • (1959) • short story by Chan Davis [as by Chandler Davis]

I can’t believe Asimov and Greenberg left out “Flowers for Algernon.” In the 1960 volume Asimov and Green also chose Merril’s picks “Mariana” by Fritz Leiber and “The Handler” by Damon Knight. That means nine Merril stories overlap with Asimov/Greenberg out of nineteen in her 5th annual edition.

Our Classics of Science Fiction database showed these stories for 1959-1960 with three or more citations:

Both anthologies missed “All You Zombies—” but then Heinlein is notoriously absent in a lot of anthologies. I assume it was too expensive to reprint his stories.

The 1960 Hugo Award nominations for short fiction from 1959 were:

• “Flowers for Algernon” by Daniel Keyes [F&SF Apr 1959] – winner
• “The Alley Man” by Philip José Farmer [F&SF Jun 1959]
• “The Pi Man” by Alfred Bester [F&SF Oct 1959]
• “The Man Who Lost the Sea” by Theodore Sturgeon [F&SF Oct 1959]
• “Cat and Mouse” by Ralph Williams [Astounding Jun 1959]

None of Merril’s 1960 stories were nominated for the Hugo, but Poul Anderson’s “The Longest Voyage” from 1960 was the winner in 1961. “Flowers for Algernon,” “All You Zombies—,” “The Man Who Lost the Sea,” and “The Pi Man” were in the The Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction: Ninth Series for 1959 stories, and it should be considered another good source of 1959 SF short stories.

James Wallace Harris, 2/6/21