ORBIT – Otherworldly Reads, Bold Ideas, and Tales. SF & F Short Stories and Novelettes discussion

Here's a description of how the shelves are organized and how they are defined. Right now, there are three levels. Every book should have at least one shelf at each level.

0 - anthology (many authors) or collection (one author)
An entered book should be one or the other.

1 - era
Early SF is better described by eras rather than decades. The dates the stories were written will determine which era(s) it falls into, NOT the release date of the book. For example, a collection released in 1980 but made up of stories from the 60s and 70s would have the latter two eras checked.

2 - series
Some collections & anthologies are released in a series of many books. We've gathered up a number of the most popular and created shelves for them. For example, the 25-book Isaac Asimov Presents the Great SF series has its own shelf.

Every book should have at lease one "#2" shelf, so these shelves have been arranged so that a book that's not part of an official series has a place. If a collection is released by an author during his career; those are shelved under "author release". If a collection is released posthumously, that is shelved as "retrospective". If an anthology of contemporary stories is released, that is shelved as "editor release" (similar to the author release category but for anthologies).

Thoughts on other shelves are welcome. I'm thinking of shelves for certain prolific short story authors and editors.

Thanks a lot, Allan!

Yes, thanks!

If you know of any "eras" after the 70s, let me know. I just did 80s, 90s and contemporary for the last 25 years. I can break it up finer if we have a need for it.

Allan wrote: "If you know of any "eras" after the 70s, let me know. I just did 80s, 90s and contemporary for the last 25 years. I can break it up finer if we have a need for it."

It seems that after the New Wave eras are sub-genre specific like Cyperpunk or Grimdark or Solarpunk

I think there has been a definite change at some point in the last 10-15 years. I don’t know how useful it would be for our purposes to recognize that.

Stephen wrote: "I think there has been a definite change at some point in the last 10-15 years. I don’t know how useful it would be for our purposes to recognize that."

I guess it can be a great topic for a discussion, I'll create a thread on it

Made a few changes to my notes above.

I've got most of the big series in the bookshelves now, except for the Nebula series and Megapack, which I'm going to compile initially offline because there are over 200 of them, not all sci-fi. I'll add them in organized fashion.

I've got a shelf called "Decade-Defining", the title and books for which come from WWE. I thought that was a neat way of pulling in some titles that were not part of larger series, but were author/editor releases that were significant in the history of SF.

Great progress, Allan, thanks a lot!

Very impressive, thanks!

What do you all think about including the Orbit 1 series in our shelves? There are 22 books, the last being a "best of" for the first 10 books. It tended toward the avant garde edge & was a significant influence on later anthologies.

Damon Knight was the editor for all the editions. He put it together in 1967 to capture new SF:
"What I wanted to do in Orbit was to bring about a revolution in science fiction, like Campbell's in the eary forties, Gold's and Boucher/McComas's in the fifties. My thesis was that there was no inherent reason why science fiction could not meet ordinary literary standards, but that the pulp tradition of forty years has encouraged ideas at the expense of writing skill. It seemed to me that the only way to cure this was to set high standards at the beginning, even if it meant publishing a lot of fantasy and marginal material because most hard-core SF could not make the grade. Later, cocky with success, I followed this trail too far."

Allan wrote: "What do you all think about including the Orbit 1 series in our shelves? There are 22 books, ."

I'd say let's add. I didn't know about this anthology and the first issue has surprisingly many women names for 1967 SF, so it is interesting

Oleksandr wrote: "I'd say let's add. I didn't know about this anthology and the first iss..."

Done. Another thing that makes it interesting to me is that the entire series is from 1965-1980 & could be considered New Wave. Between this and the other series, we have excellent coverage of that period.

My only reservation is that there were a number of other prominent original anthology series around the same period, such as New Dimensions edited by Silverberg and Universe by Terry Carr. Back in the 1950s there was a Star series edited by Pohl. However Orbit might have had the highest profile in its day and there is also the coincidence of the name being the same as this group. So I would say it wouldn’t be out of place.