Series talk:Macmillan's Best of Soviet Science Fiction Series

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This series is also called "Theodore Sturgeon Introduces New Science Fiction From Russia". Is it possible to give the series a Variant name? CoachPaul 12:14, 22 May 2007 (CDT)
Not at this time, I am afraid :( Ahasuerus 12:29, 22 May 2007 (CDT)
I thought the thread was to be about Asimov's Soviet Science Fiction and More Soviet Science Fiction but suspect this is something else. Could someone who who knows what this is about please fix up the Series:Macmillan's_Best_of_Soviet_Science_Fiction_Series page to link back to the ISFDB series record? I just tried to find it without luck as I have no idea what the titles/authors are. ISFDB has the following, all of which are not part of a series meaning I have no idea if they are related to this thread.
  • Soviet Science Fiction (1962 and 1966) by Anonymous 36214 (pub by Collier) - I have the 1966 ed. and can verify now if needed.
  • More Soviet Science Fiction (1962) by Anonymous 36148 (pub by Collier) - I have this and can verify now if needed. The spine says "Asimov" but the cover/title page only indicate he wrote the introduction.
  • New Soviet Science Fiction (1979) by Anonymous 35618 (pub by Macmillan)
  • New Soviet Science Fiction (1980) by Theodore Sturgeon 592053 (pub by Collier)
The last two seem to be the same book and probably should be merged and/or made a variant. With the two earlier books I have them in my own list as edited by Asimov though I suspect he only did the introduction and someone at Collier-Macmillan selected the stories and put the anthologies together. Marc Kupper (talk) 15:19, 22 May 2007 (CDT)
It was what we call a "Publication series", not a Title series, and we don't have real support for Publication series at this time. Basically, Sturgeon and Macmillan thought that it would be a good idea to do a restrospective series of the "Best of Soviet Science Fiction" from the 1920s through the 1970s. They published a dozen+ volumes, mostly novels, between 1977 and 1981 with Sturgeon doing most of the intros explaining why it was important to read these books. Unlike Don Wollheim's similar paperback project in the 1970s, they sold reasonably well to libraries which tend to like Important Books (tm). Ahasuerus 16:05, 22 May 2007 (CDT)
OK, I will delete the series, if I can, if not, I at least won't add any more books to it. CoachPaul 22:00, 22 May 2007 (CDT)
Where exactly is this "series" in ISFDB? Marc Kupper (talk) 01:01, 23 May 2007 (CDT)
ps: I just added a tag [1] as one way to deal with a "publisher series" though I'm still interested in knowing about exactly which books/series this thread is about. I've also verified my copy of Soviet Science Fiction which turned out to be more painful than planned and am working on More Soviet Science Fiction now. Marc Kupper (talk) 02:55, 23 May 2007 (CDT)

(unindent) A Worldcat search on "Best of Soviet Science Fiction" returns 32 records, about half of them belonging to this series:

etc. Which reminds me that I need to post about the whole "Kir Bulychev"/"Kirill Bulychev" mess... Ahasuerus 04:38, 23 May 2007 (CDT)


According to a page inside "New Soviet Science Fiction" the series consists of the following books.

By Arkady and Boris Strugatsky
Prisoners of Power
Noon: 23rd Century
Definitely Maybe
Far Rainbow / The Second Invasion From Mars
Roadside Picnic / Tale of the Troika
By Mikhail Emtsev and Eremei Parnov
World Soul
By Vladimir Savchenko
Self-Discovery
By Kirill Bulychev
Half a Life
By Dimitri Bilenkin
The Uncertainty Principle
By Vadim Shefner
The Unman / Kovrigin's Chronicles
By Alexander Beliaev
Professor Dowell's Head
And Lastly
New Soviet Science Fiction.

CoachPaul 08:12, 23 May 2007 (CDT)

Thanks! I have copied this list to the main article page and will link individual Publications later today. Not sure what we can do with it at that point, but it seems like a handy thing to have, perhaps as a template for further Publication series discussions. Ahasuerus 11:31, 23 May 2007 (CDT)
Thank you - what I had been asking for was the link(s) to ISFDB which turns out to be Macmillan's Best of Soviet Science Fiction Series. I also set up the links on the main page. There may be one typo - the list above has Noon: 23rd Century. Is this Noon: 22nd Century? Marc Kupper (talk) 19:29, 23 May 2007 (CDT)
I have the book in my collection and it should be Noon: 22nd Century. It was the first volume in what eventually became their main series/universe. At some point we will need to create a Noon: 22nd Century superseries with a few subseries for the major plotlines. Ahasuerus 19:38, 23 May 2007 (CDT)
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