Over at the Facebook group Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Short Fiction I’m about to lead Group Read 63 starting September 7th. It will be devoted to the best short SF stories from 1955. We have four moderators, of which I’m one. We take turns leading our Facebook group in reading an anthology, or other collections of SF short stories. I’ve decided my group reads will become an ongoing project of reading the best short SF of the year starting in 1955 (which was when the Hugo Awards began). We won’t use a specific anthology but use the Classics of Science Fiction database. Most of the stories will come from the anthologies pictured above, but we hope they are widely found in many anthologies and online. Participation often depends on the availability of stories.

To keep Group Read 63 reading list short, to around 15-20 stories for each year, the minimum number of citations in the database was set to 2. You can use the List Builder to see the stories for each year. Set the Start Year and End Year to the same year (in this case “1955”), the Minimum Citations to “2,” and Citation Type to “Story.” If you set the citation to one, you’ll see all the stories in the database from 1955. If you click on “Show Citation” you will see the citation sources.

Here’s our reading list for 1955 ordered by number of citations. That gives us twenty-two stories, of which we’ve previously read and discussed seven. For Group Read 63, we’ll read the fifteen we haven’t discussed before. Here they are with their start discussion dates:

• 09/07/23 – “Allamagoosa” by Eric Frank Russell
• 09/09/23 – “Nobody Bothers Gus” by Algis Budrys
• 09/12/23 – “The Tunnel Under the World” by Frederik Pohl
• 09/14/23 – “A Canticle for Leibowitz” by Walter M. Miller, Jr.
• 09/16/23 – “One Ordinary Day, with Peanuts” by Shirley Jackson
• 09/19/23 – “The Cave of Night” by James E. Gunn
• 09/21/23 – “The Darfsteller” by Walter M. Miller, Jr.
• 09/23/23 – “The Dead Fish” by Boris Vian
• 02/26/23 – “Delenda Est” by Poul Anderson
• 09/28/23 – “Dreaming Is a Private Thing” by Isaac Asimov
• 09/30/23 – “Home There’s No Returning” by Henry Kuttner, C. L. Moore
• 10/03/23 – “Judgment Day” by L. Sprague de Camp
• 10/05/23 – “The Short Life” by Francis Donovan
• 10/07/23 – “The Short-Short Story of Mankind” by John Steinbeck
• 10/10/23 – “Who?” by Theodore Sturgeon

The seven previously discussed stories will be reviewed on 10/12/23. They are (with previous discussion link):

• “The Game of Rat and Dragon” by Cordwainer Smith
• “The Star” by Arthur C. Clarke
• “Grandpa” by James H. Schmitz
• “The Golem” by Avram Davidson
• “The Gift of Gab” by Jack Vance
• “I Do Not Love Thee, Doctor Fell” by Robert Bloch
• “The Public Hating” Steve Allen

My turn to lead a group read comes up about four times a year, which means the years 1956-1959 will be covered next year in 2024. That’s assuming the group likes this idea.

I plan during the weeks we’re discussing the stories from 1955 to have an ongoing thread where people can write about any story they’ve read and admired from 1955. And I will have another thread discussing what was happening with science fiction in general in 1955, with a focus on SF magazines.

What I’m hoping to achieve is an ongoing study of the evolution of science fiction starting with the year 1955. The Facebook group is open to anyone, but if you join, please answer the two questions. We use those two questions to weed out spammers and let people know our group is focused on science fiction short stories. (For people who hate Facebook, we try hard to police the group and keep out spammers, trolls, self-promoters, and off-topic comments that ruin the atmosphere of the group.)

Here are the posts we’ve made planning the project. As we discuss stories they will be automatically added to that link.

To get you interested in 1955, here’s Rich Horton’s review of the 1956 Hugo Award. He goes over the winners, finalists, and stories he thought should have been considered.

I also hope to review the stories individually here for this blog.

James Wallace Harris, 8/24/23