The result is The Very Best of Fantasy & Science Fiction: Sixtieth Anniversary Anthology, out now from Tachyon Publications. The title pretty much says it all.

This collection starts of with three classics that could be in that perfect season of The Twilight Zone that the ghost of Rod Serling only wishes he produced. There's "Of Time and Third Avenue" by Alfred Bester in which he uses one of his favorite themes, that getting your favorite wish (knowing the future, reading minds, or having your perfect lover) is not the great idea you thought it was. I prefer Bester's "Fondly Fahrenheit" which appeared in F&SF in 1954. A brilliantly mad thrill ride of imagination; perhaps the old-school hipster jazzbeaux language seemed too dated to make Van Gelder's cut but what a trip, "All reet, all reet!"

Ray Bradbury, meanwhile, takes us to a colony on a perpetually rainy Venus in "All Summer in a Day". Here he once again makes a perfect blend out of the nostalgia and utter suckitude of childhood. Shirley Jackson's "One Ordinary Day With Peanuts" is a perfectly charming slice of urban life and a glimpse of the secret method by which the world might actually work. Jackson could be either howlingly funny or deeply disturbing as in her quintessential ghost story The Haunting of Hill House. She is best known for "The Lottery", which produced furious controversy after its first appearance and is now often included in many school's reading lists.

Another story that even non-readers will remember from class is "Flowers for Algernon" by Daniel Keyes. This is F&SF's most popular story of all time. I dare you to keep from choking up at the brief flowering of a genius, and his tragic end. Too damn sad? You can take a refreshing plunge into goofiness with "A Touch of Strange" by Theodore Sturgeon, about the blossoming of a nerd romance.

There are a lot of old favorites here. I'm so envious of those of you who might be reading some of these for the first time. I was also surprised how fresh and stimulating these stories are, after years of repeated reading. Have I gained new perspective over the decades or is it just Damn Good Writing?

Try and remember where you were when you first encountered Kurt Vonnegut's superman "Harrison Bergeron" and his last stand against a tyranny of the mediocre. Cranky hallucinogenic rambling or poignant universal eulogy? You get both and a whole lot more in "The Deathbird" by Harlan Ellison®, dog lover. I read "The Women Men Don't See" by James Tiptree, Jr. with a greater appreciation than I did as a teen. It starts off as a tropical Hemingway trek that turns into two people's desperate escape from alien beings. This insightful story left me appropriately uncomfortable. That James, what a nutty guy.

Most of these tales reveal an entire self-contained world in a dozen or so pages. Neil Gaiman shows us a glimpse of eternity in just under three with "Other People". Some short stories can be a gateway to an author's larger universe. "Solitude" by Ursula K. Le Guin is a story of anthropology and family heartbreak on a planet of the Ekumen. This is the same galactic setting as The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed. When the man in black fled across the desert, Stephen King's "Gunslinger" followed him for the first time across the pages of F&SF. That story is here, as is "Two Hearts", the coda to Peter S. Beagle's beloved The Last Unicorn.

Some Hard SF purists might dismiss many of these stories, and mores the pity. You won't find much detailed technical jargon, or clear-cut heroes and villains who take on the universe as a problem to be solved. There are many stories here that explore the impact of science on society, such as Damon Knight's "I See You". He posits a miraculous technology available to every household that allows anyone to look up anything in history — and which means the loss of privacy forever. Like that could ever happen. In "macs", Terry Bisson presents a gruesome combination of cloning and victims' rights in a documentary fashion. To the unprepared, Bisson's technique of pure unattributed dialogue— without any description of setting or action,— can be a bit jarring, but he does it better than anyone else I've read and produces a very intimate effect. (Look for that internet darling, "They're Made of Meat" or a personal fave of mine, "Press Ann").

Many of these offerings head off to the vaguely-defined zone of Fantasy but not in any predictable elfy-welfy manner. We could toss around terms like Surrealism or Magic Realisim, or just sit back and enjoy the finely-crafted enigmas and wonders. Michael Swanwick presents a society with spaceships and virtual immortality living on "Mother Grasshopper", a planet-sized insect where disease is a precious gift. Plagues also figure in "The Dark" by Karen Joy Fowler, as do the Tunnel Rats of the Vietnam War and reports by campers of mysterious bipeds in the woods.

The final piece in this anthology is by the brilliant Ted Chiang, who will never, ever write enough stories to satisfy me. "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate" uses that classic science fiction convention, the time machine, in the nested stories style of Scheherezade's fabled One Thousand and One Nights. Chiang weaves deeply moving threads of shifting fortune, guilt, and repentance in a very clever and rational approach to time-travel all through the lens of Muslim faith. Just beautiful.

This is an ideal collection for someone who wants to start reading more SF, or for us grizzled old bibliophiles who would like to have some favorite stories in one convenient trade paperback. I was repeatedly blown away by the impact such short pieces, some quite familiar to me, still had on me. Half an hour's reading, and I spent the next day or so catching myself staring off into space muttering, "Oh wow."

We've all been discussing the apparent decline in short fiction lately. Recently, at a reading and panel discussion, author Marta Randall decried the lack oh venues for short stories. She noted that so many new writers go directly for the"huge sagging trilogies" rather than learning how to knock our socks off in a dozen pages. The Publishing industry is all about the 600 pp doorstop, and why? Because that's what readers think they want. "I'm not going to fork over US$7.99 for something slim I can finish in an afternoon," we say,"I want more bang for my buck, more meat for my moola!" But are we really getting the best deal? Ms. Randall insists that more craft and talent go into a really good short story than some epic pot-boiler plumped up with needless exposition and obsessive description. They say this is the twilight for the print periodicals like The Magazine of Fantasy & Science. Everyone is very excited by the possibilities this new-fangled "internet" might provide, but no one really seems to have a clear picture yet for a viable model for how writers will be compensated fairly. Yes, writers should get paid for their work, that's why it's called work.

I hope all of you will continue support short story writing. Pick up magazines and anthologies like this one or quarterly independent 'zines such as Electric Velocipede orLady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet. The rise of super short "flash fiction", such as that in the upcoming anthology Last Drink Bird Head looks interesting. Strange Horizons is a great site to read new short fiction, poetry and articles every week. I'm still deeply mired in dead tree stuff, so all this is unexplored territory. Please feel free to share with us in the comments your favorite current short story authors and professional venues for this important and vital form of speculative fiction.

Here is the complete Table of Contents of The Very Best of Fantasy & Science Fiction: Sixtieth Anniversary Anthology.:

Alfred Bester "Of Time and Third Avenue"
Ray Bradbury "All Summer in a Day"
Shirley Jackson "One Ordinary Day With Peanuts"
Theodore Sturgeon "A Touch of Strange
William Tenn "Eastward Ho!"
Daniel Keyes "Flowers for Algernon"
Kurt Vonnegut "Harrison Bergeron"
Roger Zelazny "This Moment of the Storm"
Philip K. Dick "The Electric Ant"
Harlan Ellison® "The Deathbird"
James Tiptree, Jr. "The Women Men Don't See"
Damon Knight "I See You"
Stephen King "The Gunslinger"
Karen Joy Fowler "The Dark"
John Kessel "Buffalo"
Ursula K. Le Guin "Solitude"
Michael Swanwick "Mother Grasshopper"
Terry Bisson "macs"
Jeffery Ford "Creation"
Neil Gaiman "Other People"
Peter S. Beagle "Two Hearts"
M. Rickert "Journey into the Kingdom"
Ted Chiang "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate"

The Very Best of Fantasy & Science Fiction: Sixtieth Anniversary Anthology.
may be purchased here , direct from the publisher, or from your local independent bookseller.

Commenter Grey_Area is known to many short fiction authors as Chris Hsiang. He always looks up to tall fiction authors because, well, he has to.

Tachyon focuses almost exclusively on short fiction collections (with the occasional novel or novella thrown in) and a list of recent publications includes books by Terry Bisson, Peter S. Beagle, Nancy Kress, Harlan Ellison, Tim Powers, Michael Swanwick, Cory Doctorow, James Patrick Kelly and many others. The publisher also has put out some acclaimed (and hot-selling) anthologies, including The New Weird and Steampunk (edited by io9 contributors Jeff and Ann VanderMeer) and Feeling Very Strange: The Slipstream Anthology (edited by James Patrick Kelly and John Kessel. And Tachyon has posthumously published two books by Thomas M. Disch: a novel called The Word Of God and a story collection called The Wall Of America.

We talked to Weisman about the journey from zinester to short-fiction impressario.

How did Tachyon get involved in posthumously publishing some of Thomas Disch's work? Was this something that was in the works before his death?

Unfortunately, the books weren't supposed to be published posthumously. I didn't even know initially that there was a long lost Disch manuscript out there. The Word of God was turned down by several major publishers and all of the sf magazines. Disch even lost his agent over the book, who called it an insult to publishing. But when I got the manuscript from Tom I was relieved to find a well-written, cogent book that reminded me of his classic works like Camp Concentration and "The Squirrel Cage."

The book I was after was The Wall of America, which turned out to be Disch's final short story collection. Tom didn't trust me enough, at first, to select and pick the order of stories, to shape a book that needed to represent the second half of Tom's career. I'm not sure he would have trusted anybody. But meanwhile the book wasn't getting published, either.

What Tom did have was what he believed was a finished manuscript of The Word of God, waiting to be published, no editing required. In the end, of course, some small amount of editing was required, and gradually I won his trust enough to publish both The Word of God and The Wall of America.

Tom lived long enough to see The Word of God in print and an advance review copy of The Wall of America. I gave him the galley of Wall the last time I saw him at his Union Square apartment. I was worried because Tom hadn't seen the cover yet. Luckily Tom loved the cover, said it was the best cover he'd ever had for any of his books.

So how many books is Tachyon doing per year nowadays?

We publish about ten books a year. Ten years ago, we published two books a year in limited print runs and sold the bulk of the books though science fiction specialty stores, many of which are no longer in business. We’ve had to roll with the times, sell our books through chains stores as well as independents, print more copies, and offer larger discounts. It seems to be working.

I didn't realize until recently that Tachyon started out as a zine publisher. How long did your zine 13th Moon come out? What was its focus?

I was hooked on magazines early, probably why I have such an affinity for short stories. I started my first magazine, a fanzine devoted to comic books, in the first grade. I worked for every newspaper at at every school I ever attended, majored in journalism and creative writing, and wrote for magazines as diverse as Realms of Fantasy and The Nation. When I found myself with free time during the last recession, I started my own magazine and bamboozled all my friends and family into writing for it.

The Thirteenth Moon ran fourteen issues between June 1992 through May 1996. An earlier incarnation was produced irregularly, three issues all dating from the early 1980s. The version from the 1990s typically ran two or three short stories, poetry, an occasional essay, as well as book and record reviews. We featured stories by Ursula K. Le Guin, Lisa Goldstein, Paul Di Filippo, Michael Bishop, David Nemec, Mary Soon Lee, and Wayne Wightman.

What's the reasoning behind mostly doing short story collections? It seems like most publishers are leery of doing single-author collections, but Tachyon does a lot of them. Is that just a niche that nobody else was serving, or was there another reason?

We're all about niche publishing. Short stories, while important to us, are only one of the many things we do. As we gotten bigger and better we've added more original projects, novels and anthologies to our list. The anthologies have been particularly successful for us.

I seem to remember hearing that the Steampunk and New Weird anthologies were among your top sellers recently. Is that true? Why do you think they've been so successful?

Steampunk is the most successful book we've ever published. The book has found a home with the Steampunk community and should be going into a third printing within a few months. The New Weird, also edited by Ann & Jeff VanderMeer has also done really well for us, as have Rewired, and Feeling Very Strange, two anthologies edited by James Patrick Kelly and John Kessel. These have been timely, extremely well thought-out explorations
of our genre.

Recently you've branched out into doing non-fiction books. Is Cory Doctorow's Content your first non-fiction collection? How did that come about? Do people ever question your role as a publisher (who profits from intellecutal property) putting out a book of essays questioning copyright protections?

Content is the second non-fiction book we've done (The first was the The Best of Xero, a reprise of Dick Lupoff's Hugo Award-winning fanzine from the early sixties) But Content is, in fact, a radical departure for Tachyon.

I don’t think there is any contradiction with us publishing a book for sale about intellectual property rights, since the book is available for free on Cory Doctorow’s website. The customer is paying for the old fashioned delivery system, printed paper pages bound between color covers. (some of us Luddites still prefer to read that way.) The availability of the electronic version, meanwhile, is mentioned on the back cover of our edition.

Our next non-fiction book, Booklife: Strategies and Survival Tips for the 21st Century Writer by Jeff VanderMeer, is scheduled for publication in the fall of 2009. This should be the first writing guide of its kind, taking into account viral marketing and blogging, as well as more of the nuts and bolts aspects of writing.