Author:James E. Gunn
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Astounding Stories: The 60th Anniversary Collection
In 1990 The Easton Press published a set of three leather bound hardcover anthologies.
All three volumes have the same title, Astounding Stories: The 60th Anniversary Collection, and none of them have a volume number nor an ISBN or catalog number. For convenience, they have been numbered 1, 2, and 3 patterned after the order used by Locus Magazine in their listing for the set.
None of the volumes credit James Gunn as the editor. Locus Magazine is the source for the editor credit used on ISFDB. There is a secondary attribution available in that in 1992 Carroll & Graf published The Best of Astounding by James Gunn (ed) where the copyright page states "Abridged from a three-volume series published by The Easton Press in arrangement with Davis Publications, Inc." The implication is that James Gunn was the editor of the three-volume set.
The front cover of each volume has a small (2 9/16th x 3 3/4 inch) image of the cover of an issue of the Astounding Stories magazine. It is possible the set is being reprinted as Easton's web site shows a different set of covers that where the magazine image was enlarged to use the entire cover and is rendered in gold foil. The date in the Cover column below is the date of the magazine that's shown on the cover.
Volume Cover Introduction Notes 1. Red December 1937 Stanley_Schmidt Introduction mentions this is the first of three volumes 2. Blue December 1930 Isaac_Asimov 3. Black October 1937 Poul_Anderson
The price is not stated on any of the volumes and it's not known how much they sold for in 1990. At present, March 2008, the publisher is selling them for $65 per volume.
The stories selected were always the headliner story and thus mentioned on the front cover of the magazine. The original magazine cover is reproduced in color on a page before each story in this anthology set. The original magazine illustrations are also included with the stories though the artists are only credited by their last name (Rogers, Timmons, Freas, etc.).
Many of the stories in this set have been widely reprinted as expected for anthologies that collect "best of" stories from the magazines. However, a few stories appeared for the first time in book form in this set of three anthologies. They are
- The Sargasso of Space by Edmond Hamilton
- The Fifth-Dimension Tube by Murray Leinster (later reprinted in [The Best of Astounding also edited by James Gunn)
- The Eternal Wanderer by Nat Schachner
- Bindlestiff by James Blish (later reprinted in other anthologies)
- Martians, Go Home! by Fredric Brown
- We Have Fed Our Sea by Poul Anderson
References:
- The Easton Press Publisher's page.
- Locus Magazine index for this set.
- A comprehensive review of the set.
Seller listings:
- AbeBooks has 26 listings from $51 on up (list generated in March 2008).
- Amazon B000M7AJ4I- 3-volume set with images for $110
- Amazon B000OITGQM- 3-volume set for $325.00
- Amazon B000N2BPP4- Volume 2 with watermarked cover image for $63
- Amazon B000KRVCWS- Unknown volume for $110
- Amazon B000J0KU6K- Unknown volume for $110