ISFDB link

Other reviews:¹
Anthony Boucher & J. Francis McComas, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, February 1951
Groff Conklin, Galaxy Science Fiction, December 1950
P. Schuyler Miller, Astounding Science Fiction, March 1951
Frederik Pohl, Super Science Stories, January 1951
Uncredited, Authentic Science Fiction, #20 (April) 1952
Uncredited, The Journal of Science Fiction, Fall 1951
Uncredited, Startling Stories, January 1951
Various, Goodreads

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Editors, Everett F. Bleiler & T. E. Dikty

Fiction:
Private Eye • novelette by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore [as by Lewis Padgett] ∗∗∗∗∗
Doomsday Deferred • short story by Murray Leinster [as by Will F. Jenkins] ∗∗∗
The Hurkle Is a Happy Beast • short story by Theodore Sturgeon ∗
Eternity Lost • novelette by Clifford D. Simak ∗∗
Easter Eggs • novelette by Robert S. Carr –
Opening Doors • novelette by Wilmar H. Shiras ∗∗∗∗
Five Years in the Marmalade • short story by Robert W. Krepps ∗∗+
Dwellers in Silence short story by Ray Bradbury ∗∗∗+
Mouse • short story by Fredric Brown ∗
Refuge for Tonight • novelette by Robert Moore Williams ∗∗∗+
The Life-Work of Professor Muntz • short story by Murray Leinster ∗
Flaw • short story by John D. MacDonald ∗
The Man • short story by Ray Bradbury ∗∗∗

Non-fiction:
Cover
A Sort of Introduction • essay by Vincent Starrett
Preface • essay by Everett F. Bleiler and T. E. Dikty
About the Authors

_____________________

The Best Science-Fiction Stories: 1950 is the second of the ‘Best of the Year’ series that came from Everett F. Bleiler & T. E. Dikty (they began the previous year with the first such volume in the field) and it contains stories first published in 1949. Four of the stories here also appear in The Best SF Stories #11: 1949 by Isaac Asimov & Martin H. Greenberg, which I have previously reviewed (the contributions from MacDonald, Kuttner & Moore, Simak and Sturgeon). I’ve copied and pasted my comments on those stories at the end of the column (if you have skimmed this part, a feeling of déjà vu awaits). I’ll try to be brief here and, if I’ve reviewed the stories at length elsewhere, I’ll add the links below.²

Doomsday Deferred by Murray Leinster is the first of two stories in the volume from The Saturday Evening Post—both from the September 24^th issue—and it is a tale of an explorer/butterfly collector deep in the Amazon who is approached by an anxious native with five pounds of gold nuggets. José wants the collector to buy cattle for him in exchange for the gold, but the butterfly collector declines. When Jose then offers to find a specific butterfly for the collector, they strike a deal.
As the story develops the collector takes more of an interest in José, a strange, frightened man, and visits him at his jungle hut. There he sees that José has a wife and son—and that the woman is as scared as her husband. Later, on a second visit, the collector sees a soldier ant emerge from José’s clothing—a swarming insect whose voraciousness is deadly—and grabs the boy to make an escape in the canoe that brought him to the hut. José stops him, stating that the ants are pets. The collector does not believe him, but watches as the ant does a headstand on the palm of José’s hand. At the same time the collector senses a vast mind watching him, so he makes an appropriately admiring response. The rest of the story (spoiler) details how the collector addresses the threat that these uplifted ants pose to all life on the planet.
The story is fairly straightforward, but the setting and the group-consciousness parts of the story are well done and, if you liked Edmond Hamilton’s Alien Earth story in the Asimov/Greenberg volume, you’ll get something out of this one.
Easter Eggs by Robert S. Carr begins at the White House on Easter Sunday, where the narrator and his correspondent friend are admiring secretary Betty’s stenography skills. After a couple of hundred words of them cooing over the “good little girl”, and how marvellous she is, an egg-shaped alien spaceship lands outside on the the White House lawn (they later find that one has landed at the Kremlin too—de rigueur for the stories of the time if I recall correctly).
The ship that lands at the White House gets the usual welcome, i.e., it is shot at by fighter jets, anti-aircraft guns, etc. However, the ship is protected by an invisible force field so, after a certain amount of this, the President, who has meantime decided to take control rather than hide in his bunker, orders a halt. As the men try to figure out how to proceed, Betty communicates telepathically with the visitor, and finds the Martian wants air, water, soil and solar energy.
Meanwhile, the other egg is communicating with the Kremlin, and a bidding war breaks out between the two governments for Martian technology (there is a mini-speech from the President about freedom during this section). This plot line is eventually abandoned, and the Martian hands over the technology before leaving to fight the other ship over the Pacific.
This has crude, cardboard characters, is nonsensical, and is just generally awful. The impression given is of an SF story written by a mainstream writer who was either just (a) not very good or (b) just didn’t care about what he was doing. What on Earth were the editors of this anthology thinking when they selected this stinker?
Opening Doors by Wilmar H. Shiras is a direct sequel to her first ‘Children of the Atom’ story In Hiding, which appeared in the previous anthology in this series. That story had a psychiatrist called Welles take on a child patient called Timothy, who he later discovers is (spoiler) a closeted super-intelligent mutant child with an IQ is off-the scale, and who is making extraordinary efforts to conceal his gifts so as to more easily fit into society. After gaining the child’s trust Dr Welles discovers his parents were at the site of an atomic accident and that his abilities are the result of a mutation. The story closes with Welles and Timothy setting out to discover if there are others like him.
This installment begins with the pair going to the post office to see if there are any replies to a cryptic advertisement placed in a national newspaper. After they return to Welles’ home, they start opening the letters, and find a number of tantalising prospects in among the dross (which includes one from someone who “thinks it must be some sex stuff, because it’s cryptic”!) This section is quite exciting as it hints at what may be the tip of a much larger iceberg.
A couple of days later, while Timothy composes replies to the likely candidates, Welles gets a reply from his detective agency about their other line of inquiry. He learns of nineteen other orphans from the atomic accident, including one called Elsie who is in an asylum. Most of the central section of the story then details Welles urgent trip to the institution to see the girl.
When Welles arrives he meets the Dr Foxwell, presents his credentials, and they discuss Elsie. It turns out that, unlike Timothy, she is a volatile and maladjusted child (Timothy is more super-anorak or super-goody two shoes than superman). Her backstory makes for a compelling read. Welles later meets Elsie, and eventually tells her about Timothy. After Welles takes Fox into his confidence, Elsie is transferred into his care, but only after they subject her to a batch of tests and interviews (to ensure she is sane, among other things). He arranges for her to stay with Miss Page, his former teacher and Timothy’s current one. Elsie eventually meets Tim.
Up to this point the story is very good, but at this point it becomes similar to the first one in that it reverts to a series of endless talking heads: Timothy’s grandmother asks to speak to the two doctors, and offers to give them the land and money to build a school for gifted children. When the two doctors talk to the kids about this proposal, Timothy gives a lengthy description of what the school should contain (it is as if he is giving a room by room description of a set of blueprints).
All that said, this is a pretty good piece, borderline three and a half/four stars but, as I liked it a little more than the previous story, I plumped for the latter.
Five Years in the Marmalade by Robert W. Krepps gets off to an unpromising start with two radium salesmen fresh off the ship from Alpha Centauri. They grab a drink on “Old Terra Spaceport IV” and moan about the trip they have just been on (smelly natives, no home comforts, no sales, etc.) They then notice a Martian dock at the station in one of their unusual “single-trav” spaceships, and go down to talk to him. So far, so bad. Just as it seems we are going to be in for more of the same, it changes into a dull lecture about the thought-controlled ship, and how it adjusts the size of the traveller to that required, and how it can—as it’s thought controlled—travel to imaginary places.
The story then changes from a pulp space tale into something far more intriguing as the Martian tells them about the many imaginary worlds he has visited: Sir Thomas More’s Utopia, Heaven, Erewhon, etc.—apparently belief has brought these worlds into existence and his spaceship can travel there.
After all this (spoiler) one of the men suggests that the Martian visits Marmalade. Intrigued by the description of the world, the Martian sets off. The man then reveals to his partner that Marmalade is a made-up world, and he duped the Martian as it was obvious that the latter was telling them a tall tale. The other man doubts this was a good idea . . . .
The story ends with the Martian in a strange world where there is no light and a strange undulating surface. He discovers he is in the brain of the man who told him about Marmalade’s existence and, when the Martian realises this, he takes his revenge . . . .
This is an atypical story for the time—it rather reminded me of couple of Robert Sheckley’s more metaphysical stories from the 60’s and 70’s—and is certainly not (as I understand it) the kind of thing you’d expect to find in a pulp like Fantastic Adventures. I’m not entirely sure that this works, but it is an interesting piece once it gets going.
Dwellers in Silence by Ray Bradbury is one of his ‘Martian Chronicles’ (it is included in the book under the title The Long Years) and opens with a doctor who is alone on the planet with (it seems) his wife, son, and two daughters. They are the last ones there as all the rockets left when there was a nuclear war on Earth.
When the doctor looks through his telescope at Earth one night he sees a light coming towards the planet. Realising it is a spaceship he sets fire to the deserted American town as a signal. The rocket lands, and the doctor takes the occupants to his house, although they have to treat him along the way for his heart problems. As the crew eat with the family, the captain suspects that the mother and children may not be who they seem to be (there are earlier hints about this in the story). The captain sends a crewman to the graveyard, and when he returns with news of who is buried there, the captain realises (spoiler) that the family are androids that the doctor created after his family died of the plague.
Later on the doctor has a heart attack and dies. After speaking to the “wife”, they bury him in the graveyard alongside his family.
When the men prepare to return to Earth there is a conversation about what to do with the “family,” during which the captain states he will do nothing. He adds that if the men feel differently they can, and gives one of them a gun. He and another crewman go to see the family, but decide to leave the family unmolested.
The story ends with the mother and children acting out a facsimile of human life (this idea of dead things imitating those which are alive appears earlier in the story, when the wife relates to the captain that her husband once wired up the city with loudspeakers to give the impression that it was inhabited).
This is an interesting mood piece that, as well as having this aspect, also foreshadows, to a lesser extent, work by Philip K. Dick (the doctor’s delusions, the androids acting as humans, etc.). An interesting story, and one I’d probably choose for an annual anthology myself.
Mouse by Fredric Brown begins, like the Carr story, with an alien spaceship arriving on Earth. The ship is quite small, and a research biologist called Bill Wheeler watches it land in Central Park from his apartment above. Crowds gather, the authorities arrive, the area is cordoned off. Wheeler watches while he pets his Siamese cat. Eventually, a military messenger arrives at his door, and the biologist is summoned to the site. When he arrives he notes that the dead occupant looks externally similar to a mouse, although there are significant differences when the creature later dissected.
Days later there are a series of major disturbances, e.g. the president and numerous other political leaders are assassinated, an atom bomb store blows up, etc.
The last part of the story has the biologist speculate that the mouse may be a decoy, and the real occupant (spoiler) is a discorporate being—and it has caused all the trouble. As the biologist explains this to the cat, the man also speculates that the alien may have used the nearest animal as a host . . . .
An unconvincing piece, primarily because the writer dumps the above notion into the story at the end without having done any preparation.
Refuge for Tonight by Robert Moore Williams opens with Sam Jones listening to a radio broadcast while driving. The organisation transmitting the program is the European Federation, which has occupied the USA under the pretence of providing relief for an influenza outbreak which has killed millions of Americans. When Jones the sees a crossroads service station he stops to get water for his overheating engine.
Jones sees a hungry looking young woman as he approaches, and tries to win her trust—but she is bait, and three men attack him. They fight and, as the woman is about to shoot Jones, one of three recognises him. The man is Cross, a former military pilot. When both sides talk, they realise they have the common aim of finding an atom bomb site where they can “press the button”, and attack the Federation. Moreover, the woman, Jean Crane, has a map with the location of one of these sites.
Before they can all set off in Jones’ car they are attacked by a Federation helicopter. They hide before it lands, and subsequently kill the helicopter pilot and the troops. Crane then flies them to the location on the map, which turns out to be a mine in the side of a cliff.
A lot happens from this point on: the location is manned, and they find out they have been followed by other Federation helicopters; inside the cave, Jones meets a former colleague called Corless—who seems to have partially lost his mind—from a failed space ship drive project that he was previously employed on. Later, they find there are seventy other people there, including children, and it is not an atomic bomb site but a biowar facility.
Matters become even more convoluted when the Federation attack the mine, and Corless gets past his mental block to remember that the drive failure was a ruse. The installation is actually a front for spaceship project hidden away from the prying eyes of the Federation! In the final scene, the survivors escape to the stars.
Synoptically, this appears to be a story that has too much crammed into too short a space: this is a legitimate criticism—there is quite a lot going on—as is any negative comment about the number of surprise meetings and layers of deception that the piece contains. For all that though, it an engrossing piece, not only for its grim picture of a fallen USA, but also for its realistic mainstream style (I’d suggest that this story would be a good fit for the early-mid 1950’s F&SF). Despite its shortcomings, it is a good choice for this volume, and would be in mine.
The Life-Work of Professor Muntz by Murray Leinster is his second appearance in this volume, and you would struggle to identify that it is by the same author who produced Doomsday Deferred. This story has as its protagonist Mr Grebb, a rough type who drives for the local brewing company. He has a boss called Joe Hallix, who is never off his back.
One morning at breakfast, Grebb’s landlady asks him to look at an electrical device left in the cellar by a deceased lodger, Professor Muntz. Grebb goes down and fiddles about with the machine: multiple/parallel world adventures result. In this other world Grebb gets in trouble for missing deliveries and, as this continues through the week, it looks like he will lose his job. However, because he gets a paper at his lodgings from each of the two worlds (there is some gimmickry that means his work is in one world and his rented room in another), he finds out (spoiler) that Joe Hallix is stealing the missing stock and reselling it.
I’m not sure this makes any sense to be honest—I rather lost track of which world was which—and I couldn’t be bothered rereading the wads of multiple worlds guff at the beginning of the story again to find out. It’s also written in a rather dated pulp style.
The Man by Ray Bradbury begins with a spaceship arriving on a planet (another one) where the human natives ignore it. The captain of the ship becomes impatient and sends Martin, his lieutenant, into town, only to have him return with the news that their landing has been eclipsed by the arrival of a strange man who, among other things, cures the sick. The captain goes into town himself and interrogates the occupants, who describe a Jesus-like figure.
Later, as the spaceship makes ready to leave, Martin decides to stay on the planet, but the captain pressures him to change his mind, stating that it is a ruse started by competing ships. Of course the two ships mentioned promptly arrive on the planet with the crew wounded or dead from a cosmic storm. The captain then realises that his ship was the first one to arrive, and that the stories about the man are true. He goes into town to find him but, when it appears that he has left the planet, the captain determines to leave and search for him. Martin stays behind (spoiler), and the mayor of the city takes him to see the man.
This is an effective mood piece, although I’m not entirely sure what the point of the story is.

Here are the reviews of the three stories I’ve already discussed in Isaac Asimov & Martin H. Greenberg’s The Great Science Fiction Stories #11: 1949:
Flaw by John D. MacDonald concerns a woman and her astronaut boyfriend, who is shortly to leave on a space flight to Mars. Before he goes they agree to marry on his return, and exchange rings. Then he leaves in the Destiny.
A month or so before the ship is due back, a massive meteor lands at the base. The woman goes to the excavation, and sees them eventually recover a ruby the size of a house. She notes (spoiler) that it is similar to the one on the ring that she gave her boyfriend, and later deduces that her boyfriend’s spaceship arrived early because the solar system is shrinking (and the Earth is too).
This is a gimmicky and unbelievable ending to a dull story. Further, there is no explanation as to why the Destiny didn’t shrink as well (other than, “For a little time the Destiny II avoided that influence.”) Pah.
Private Eye by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore starts with a forensic psychologist and a “trace” engineer using a time viewer device (it can see up to fifty years in the past by recovering the sound and light impressions from the immediate environment) to watch Sam Clay stab to death a man called Vanderman. The two operatives have been tasked with investigating Clay to see if the killing was premeditated murder (premeditated offences are essentially the only kind which are still punished in this strange, dark future), so most of the first part of the story is in the form of a murder mystery which shows how Clay manages to conceal his premeditation from the investigating pair’s all-seeing temporal eye over an eighteen month period, the beginning of which was when Vanderman stole Clay’s girlfriend, and Clay decided to kill Vanderman.
Mixed through this storyline are details of Clay’s dark psychological makeup, which includes accounts of a childhood where he was locked in a cupboard by his parents. In this cupboard a religious picture of another all-seeing eye looks over him, with “THOU GOD SEEST ME” printed underneath the image.
The murder mystery part is wrapped up around the three-quarter way stage when Clay (spoiler) is found innocent of premeditation. The rest of the story is then a psychological piece which examines who Clay is and why he has acted as he has. The last few lines provide (spoiler) a shockingly violent resolution where Clay transcends the psychological trauma of his childhood (although not in a good way), and the Eye appears as a final image.
This is a remarkable and complex story, and one that recalls, in parts (the future world, the psychologically damaged anti-hero), Alfred Bester’s The Demolished Man or The Stars My Destination.
Eternity Lost by Clifford D. Simak is set in a world hundreds of years in the future where only a few privileged people get life extension treatment, and the story opens with two political operatives telling a Senator Homer Leonard that his next application has been rejected. The rest of the story details his attempts to find fair means or foul to get his next treatment. During his attempts, he notes that various people have gone missing and that their bodies were not recovered, leading him to wonder if the extrasolar research people have finally found the living space required for the treatment to given to all humanity. Meanwhile, he feels the effects of his age.
At the end of the story (spoiler) the senator fails in his efforts to get an extension so he publically denounces the fact that the treatment is only given to politicians and other worthies. He later finds a letter that he hasn’t opened (due to his being old and forgetful and sleepy) which contains news that provides an ironic end to the story.
This has a good start, but the societal setup does not convince (I can’t see the masses letting a politician live 500 year lifespans while they die) and there is some sophomoric philosophising about aging and death: “we may not be able to assess in their true value the things that should be dearest to us; for a thing that has no ending, a thing that goes on forever, must have decreasing value.” Simak was 45 when this was published—I wonder if he felt the same way in his eighties.
Like the Asimov, it is a better quality work than the stories of his from the late1930’s/early-1940s efforts that I’ve recently read.
The Hurkle Is a Happy Beast by Theodore Sturgeon has an unpleasant and lethal alien inadvertently transported to Earth by a matter transmitter. There are no particular plot complications, and the story is told almost like a children’s tale which is (a) irritating and (b) dissonant.
The cutesy tone did not appeal to me, and I am at a loss to fathom this story’s popularity.

The non-fiction in the book comprises a couple of introductory essays. The first is A Sort of Introduction by Vincent Starrett (a mystery writer and bibliophile, etc.—no, me neither³), who contributes a rambling and slightly eccentric piece. This begins with a description of his childhood reading exotic adventure stories, before goes on to have a moan about current detective fiction:

But something has been happening to the detective story of late, in America at least. Perhaps Dashiell Hammett is responsible for the change, or possibly it has been a natural development of our time—the inevitable result of teaching the wrong people to read and write. Hammett, a master, should have remained unique. His successors and imitators in the federal union (with a few honorable exceptions) have been, in my opinion, almost miraculously bad. The classic detective story is still written and sometimes written well, particularly in England; but for the most part the romance of crime and its detection has degenerated as a work of art until it is a misnomer to call it a detective story.
So, at any rate, it seems to me; and in consequence of my waning admiration for the detective story I have been coquetting with an earlier love. I have been reading science-fantasy again, experimentally, and finding it, on its higher levels, as satisfying as any fiction now being written. On its lower levels it is just the same old tripe; but in recent years a new group of little masters has appeared in the field whose work in the short story has been notable to say the least.  p. 10-11

When he gets down off his intellectual high horse (the “wrong type of people” indeed), he discusses SF for a while, muses about hybrids of the two (this comes up in the Bleiler and Dikty piece as well—they seem to think that the two fields are converging) before he moans about detective stories again.
During all this, Starrett comes up with an admirably pragmatic definition of SF:

Science-fiction, I believe, by strict definition, is fiction based on accepted scientific principles—after which gesture to science the accepted principles and the pop-eyed reader are taken for a ride. I suspect that much of science-fiction’s science is as imaginary as the beautiful heroine of the magazine stories; but that is all right with me. A good story is a good story and, as far as I am concerned, it’s all in fun.  p. 12

He finishes on a valedictory note:

These have been the musings of a large North American mammal (male) permanently ambushed behind reading glasses. He has never been in an airplane, let alone a rocket, and he has no desire to visit Mars or the moon or any other unearthly goal postulated by science or science-fiction, except in a book. He is strictly an armchair adventurer. He likes to read stories in which things happen, and then keep on happening. He thinks that reading a good story is more fun than anything—almost. He believes the stories that follow will repay your attention.  p. 15

Whereas the Starrett piece is occasionally entertaining, the Preface by Everett F. Bleiler and T. E. Dikty is rather stuffy, and begins by discussing gothic and detective novels (referencing titles from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries). It then mentions the decline of the detective story (again with the decline of the detective story), and how those readers and writers are migrating to the SF field. There is nothing, or virtually nothing, in this piece about the modern SF field.
In the second section they introduce the stories, usually by reference to other work, virtually none of which I’ve heard:

Most robots in modern science—fiction have been of two sorts, cheap and efficient labor that may be exploited, or substitutes for humans in emotional life. We all remember Karel Capek’s RUR, which introduced the word “robot,” and made such a stir when it was produced. But the concept of robot workers is really much older in science-fiction, appearing full-blown in Cyrus Cole’s Auroraphone, back in the 1880’s, when robot workers on Saturn were revolting for better working conditions and even before this in Bulwer-Lytton’s Coming Race. But earlier than the working robot is the robot who substitutes for a human being—as old as the Katha Sarit Sagara of India—in modern times appearing back in 1815 in E. T. A. Hoffmann’s clockwork Automatons and The Dancing Doll, and Villiers de L’Isle Adam’s Nouvelle Eve who is more skilled in the amatory arts than is fleshly woman.

The above is the introduction for Ray Bradbury’s Dwellers in Silence. I can’t help but think that a comparison of Bradbury’s robots with those of Isaac Asimov’s would be more profitable—and relevant—to the likely audience than all the literary name-dropping going on above. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for extra-genre references when there is a genuine connection, but this kind of introduction too often uses general thematic connections as an excuse to drag in a lot of irrelevant baggage (e.g. is whatever appears in the Indian work above something we would identify as a robot, or is it just a metaphor for enslaved humans?)
There is also an About the Authors section, which I haven’t seen.⁴
Stylish Cover.⁵

In conclusion, I didn’t think this is as strong an entry as the Asimov and Greenberg volume (here there are fewer very good stories, and more mediocre or bad ones). I probably wouldn’t be alone in that conclusion, as nine out of the thirteen stories have not been reprinted in any other retrospective collection (see the table below).⁶  ●

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1. There are a number of reviews of this book: Anthony Boucher & J. Francis McComas, (F&SF, February 1951) say, “These editors continue . . . with a tasteful and representative survey of the field distinguished by a “sort of an introduction” by Vincent Starrett, which is, of course, among the best writing of any year!”

Groff Conklin (Galaxy Science Fiction, December 1950) says that the anthology “is generally a distinguished job”, and all but four of the stories “rate B-plus on my personal scale of merit”—I wonder which four he thought were the lemons.

P. Schuyler Miller (Astounding Science Fiction, March 1951) notes that these anthologies are the best of the Fell’s SF list, and that the current volume contains thirteen stories from eight magazines—wider coverage than the 1949 anthology. He goes on to add:

Few Astounding Science Fiction readers will quarrel with the choices from this magazine: Wilmar Shiras’ “Opening Doors”—“In Hiding” was the pinnacle of the first selection— Henry Kuttner’s “Private Eye,” and Clifford Simak’s “Eternity Lost.” Few will object too bitterly to the awarding of two places to the reliable Murray Leinster and the remarkable Ray Bradbury, and few will want to miss Ted Sturgeon’s impish “The Hurkle Is a Happy Beast.” Of course everyone will have other candidates which he prefers to the editors’ choices: science fiction would he in an unhealthy condition if selection was obvious. But Bleiler and Dikty are well on their way to doing for this field what the O’Brien and O’Henry anthologies have done for short fiction in general.  p. 146

Frederik Pohl (Super Science Stories, January 1951) has a bit of a moan about the title, and the American attitude towards success, before stating:

Nonetheless, and with due recognition to the fact that this book does not contain a single bad story, it is by no means the “best” of anything. Thirteen stories make up the contents, representing eleven authors; Ray Bradbury is represented twice, and so is Will Jenkins-Murray Leinster. Wilmar H. Shiras made last year’s edition with In Hiding, which was an authentic masterpiece; she makes this year’s with Opening Doors, which is not. Theodore Sturgeon, who has contributed to the science-fiction field such powerful and distinguished stories as Killdozer, Thunder and Roses and It, turns up here with The Hurkle Is a Happy Beast—a story which is pleasant and entertaining and handsomely written, but for which the most appropriate adjective of all is “cute”.
It is hard to quarrel with the selection of Henry Kuttner’s tricky and beautifully handled Private Eye, or Clifford Simak’s somber Eternity Lost. But the remainder of the stories—by Robert Spencer Carr, Robert W. Krepps, Robert Moore Williams and John D. MacDonald—are as good as you would expect to find in an average issue of your favorite science-fiction magazine. And—in spite of the fact that they are labeled the “best” of a record-breaking year in the teeming field of science fiction—very little better.  p. 47

An anonymous reviewer in Authentic Science Fiction, #20, April 1952, says that “the stories are all good, most are well above the average, and a few have a delightful vein of humour—even the one that ends: [spoiler] ‘… as he smashed her skull with the decanter’”! The anonymous reviewer has an odd sense of humour if he finds much “delightful” in the Kuttner story.

The anonymous writer(s) in The Journal of Science Fiction, Fall 1951, open(s) their review with this comment:

Trying to find quality in the science-fiction field is a little like digging for gold in a played out mine; it’s there but the time, trouble, and effort in mining it often doesn’t pay. With the exception of an occasional novel, quality is best represented by some of the better-edited anthologies, notably those of August Derleth, Groff Conklin and the yearly selections by Everett Bleiler and T. E. Dikty.
The Best Science-Fiction Stories: 1950 has Just as fine a selection of stories as the 1949 edition, an extraordinarily well received anthology with which Frederick Fell, Inc. launched their—somewhat mediocre—science-fiction library last year. Granting that the editors operate under something of a handicap they must restrict their selections to stories published the preceding year—they still have done a remarkable job.  p. 7

They go on to say that Jenkins’ Doomsday Deferred, “is tops of its type”; and say that Sturgeon’s Hurkle “is the first of the alien-animal stories in Anthony Boucher’s magazine, and we wish it had been the last since subsequent imitations have been nauseatingly cute”. They state that Simak’s Eternity Lost is “our own favorite and one of the best stories that Simak has ever done”; and that Five Years in the Marmalade by Robert Krepps is “an odd story with an odd title that really hit us where we live, a tale that we very likely would have missed in magazine form”. The remaining comments about the stories are mostly synoptic except for the efforts by Robert Spencer Carr, Murray Leinster, Fredric Brown, and John D. MacDonald, which are merely described as “the remaining stories”. I think that probably tells us what they thought of them.
They conclude with general comments:

Some reviewers have carped about the double inclusion of Jenkins and Bradbury. A case might logically be made for Will Jenkins but certainly it would be difficult to lodge a complaint against two stories by Bradbury, who ranks as one of the foremost short story writers in America today. When Bradbury is good—and the two stories by him are very good—he is superb, and it is difficult to think of any story published during 1949 that we would substitute for either one of his. (In all frankness, we might also add that when Bradbury is bad, he is enough to drive this reviewer into dropping a magazine completely. “Rocket Summer”, published in Planet Stories some time ago, was enough to make us give up browsing through that magazine for well over a year).
One danger that the editors run is the unavoidable use of the word “Best” in the title. It’s a challenge to every science-fiction reader and reviewer to land on the editors’ necks when their own favorite story isn’t included. However, the stories in this volume rate very highly in entertainment and literary value and we think the editors have done very well indeed in picking some of the best of the year. The stories mentioned stand head, shoulders, torso, and ankles above the average that saw print in the magazines.  p. 7

Another anonymous reviewer, this time in Startling Stories, January 1951, states that the volume “contains a good deal of interesting and entertaining material”. They add that “the inclusion of Bradbury twice and Jenkins likewise (once as Leinster) actually cuts down the authors picked to eleven, which we feel adds to what must of necessity already be a somewhat arbitrary choice. For fine work was done last year by at least twice that many unpicked authors.” They add that “the volume is a worthwhile stf item, especially since it does in a way present an annual picture of what goes on in the field—at least in part.” Their favourite story was the Jenkins, “the most impressive bit of story telling in the volume although the others were uniformly good.”

2. My longer reviews of stories are here:

Private Eye by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore
Private – Keep Out! by Philip MacDonald
The Hurkle Is a Happy Beast by Theodore Sturgeon

3. Vincent Starrett’s Wikipeida page is here; there is more here.

4. I don’t have a copy or scan of the book so, as I didn’t particularly want to shell out thirty or forty quid to a book dealer to get a poor quality copy, I found most of the stories (all bar the Williams) in online magazine scans. Jim Harris was kind enough to provide a copy of the missing story, and the introductions. Hopefully I’ll be able to return the favour when we get to the later volumes.

5. Check out the mint replica covers for the Bleiler & Dikty volumes at Facsimile Dust Jackets LLC.

6. If you want a better idea of how this book measures up against what I might pick for a 1949 ‘Year’s Best’, or learn what other anthologists chose, look at the table below (this is the same one which is at the end of the review of Isaac Asimov and Martin H. Greenberg’s Great SF Stories #11: 1949).

The first to fourth column give the story titles, authors, lengths and place of publication (see below the table for abbreviation legend).
The ‘G’ column lists Asimov and Greenberg’s choices with an ‘x’.
The ‘B’ column lists Bleiler and Dikty’s choices with an ‘x’.
The ‘H’ column shows the story’s 1949 Retro Hugo award placing (not yet awarded).
The ‘C’ column shows how many of the anthologies and/or polls used in the Classics of Science Fiction list included the story in their collections (note that this list is SF only and skews against fantasy), minus the anthology or award citations which have their own column (Greenberg/Asimov and Beliler/Dikty in this case).
The ‘O’ column shows the number of inclusions in other major anthologies or recommendation lists I’ve seen which are not on the CoSF (Classics of SF) list. These are selected by me (usually to include Fantasy Retrospectives that CoSF don’t include) but I may not yet have done this for some/all of the stories.
The ‘S’ shows my choices for a ‘Best of the Year’ with an ‘x’. A dash means read but passed over (I only select stories better than ∗∗∗+ and above). Blank means unread.
The ‘T’ column shows the total points that each story gets (they get a point for being in each column and for each of the CoSF and other anthology inclusions).

The titles, names, lengths, publications, and overall score columns are sortable.

A good way to sample 1949’s best short fiction may be to start at the top of the table and work down until you get to the last of the 2-point stories. Bear in mind this is all wildly unscientific, but it will give you something to aim at. Enjoy.

na=novella, nv=novelet, ss=short story

ALM, American Legion Magazine; ARK, The Arkham Sampler; ARU, Argosy (UK); AST, Astounding; BLU, Blue Book; FAN, Fantastic Adventures; FSF, Fantasy and Science Fiction; GHE, The Girl With the Hungry Eyes (anth.); PLA, Planet Stories, RET Retort; SEP, Saturday Evening Post; STA, Startling Stories; SUP, Super Science Stories; TAS, the Arkham Sampler; TWS, Thrilling Wonder Stories; UCL, University of Chicago Law Review.

(1) The Naming of Names was reprinted as Dark They Were, and Golden-Eyed. There is a different story titled The Naming of Names in The Martian Chronicles.
(2) The Long Years was reprinted as Dwellers in Silence. This is a 1948 story, not 1949, hence no overall rating.
(3) Action on Azura was reprinted as Contact, Incorporated. ●