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Kuttner, Henry
THE BEST OF HENRY KUTTNER
book-date: 1975
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GRADING:
SFBC
1975
1st
Hardcover
Larry Kresek

Book= near-Fine
Dustjacket= VG+ or better

The Best of Henry Kuttner (1975) - the first American retrospective of Kuttner's short fiction. There were a pair of British "Best of" paperbacks in 1965/66, and then a massive retrospective in 2005 (Two-Handed Engine.) Expect a lot of overlap between contents for these, with several stories unique to each. The SFBC hardcover (February) is the true first edtion - 2 months earlier than the Ballantine/Del Rey paperback (April 1975.) This collection was reprinted as The Last Mimsy when the movie of that title came out - based the first story: "Mimsy Were the Borogroves."

In my opinion, Kuttner's stories have lasting power and are still readable even after 50 years - unlike much early SF. Since his marriage in 1940 to SF author C. L. Moore, almost anything they wrote after that had some element of collaboration, particularly when using pseudonyms - the most common of which was "Lewis Padgett."

(Introduction by Ray Bradbury)
Mimsy Were the Borogroves
Two-Handed Engine
The Proud Robot
The Misguided Halo
The Voice of the Lobster
Exit the Professor
The Twonky
A Gnome There Was
The Big Night
Nothing But Gingerbread Left
The Iron Standard
Cold War
Or Else
Endowment Policy
Housing Problem
What You Need
Absalom

These first appeared from 1939 to 1950: 7 in Astounding, 4 in Thrilling Wonder Stories, 2 in Unknown, and the rest in Magazine of F&SF, Amazing, Charm, Startling Stories.






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