The Golden Age of Science Fiction (anthology)

The Golden Age of Science Fiction is an anthology of science fiction short stories all originally published between 1949 and 1962. The stories were selected and introduced by Kingsley Amis, who also wrote an Editor's Note and a 21-page Introduction. The collection was first published by Hutchinson in 1981 and was released in paperback by Penguin in 1983.

The book includes the following stories:

  1. "The Quest for Saint Aquin", by Anthony Boucher
  2. "The Xi Effect", by Philip Latham
  3. "The Tunnel under the World", by Frederik Pohl
  4. "Old Hundredth (short story)", by Brian Aldiss
  5. "A Work of Art", by James Blish
  6. "Harrison Bergeron", by Kurt Vonnegut
  7. "The Voices of Time", by J. G. Ballard
  8. "Specialist", by Robert Sheckley
  9. "He Walked Around the Horses", by H. Beam Piper
  10. "The Game of Rat and Dragon", by Cordwainer Smith
  11. "The Nine Billion Names of God", by Arthur C. Clarke
  12. "The Streets of Ashkelon", by Harry Harrison
  13. "The Country of the Kind", by Damon Knight
  14. "The Machine that Won the War", by Isaac Asimov
  15. "Student Body (short story)", by F. L. Wallace
  16. "It's a Good Life", by Jerome Bixby
  17. "Sister Planet" (short story), by Poul Anderson


Famous quotes containing the words golden, age, science and/or fiction:

    “He hangs in shades the orange bright,
    Like golden lamps in a green night,
    And does in the pomegranates close
    Jewels more rich than Ormus shows;
    He makes the figs our mouths to meet,
    And throws the melons at our feet;
    But apples plants of such a price
    No tree could ever bear them twice.”
    —Andrew Marvell (1621–1678)

    “Nothing in medieval dress distinguished the child from the adult. In the seventeenth century, however, the child, or at least the child of quality, whether noble or middle-class, ceased to be dressed like the grown-up. This is the essential point: henceforth he had an outfit reserved for his age group, which set him apart from the adults. These can be seen from the first glance at any of the numerous child portraits painted at the beginning of the seventeenth century.”
    —Philippe Ariés (20th century)

    “The well-educated young woman of 1950 will blend art and sciences in a way we do not dream of; the science will steady the art and the art will give charm to the science. This young woman will marry—yes, indeed, but she will take her pick of men, who will by that time have begun to realize what sort of men it behooves them to be.”
    —Ellen Henrietta Swallow Richards (1842–1911)

    “The acceptance that all that is solid has melted into the air, that reality and morality are not givens but imperfect human constructs, is the point from which fiction begins.”
    —Salman Rushdie (b. 1947)