The Road to Science Fiction

The Road to Science Fiction is a series of science fiction anthologies edited by American science fiction author, scholar and editor James Gunn. Composed as a textbook set to teach the evolution of science fiction literature, the series is now available as mass market publications.

The six-volume set collects many of the most influential works of the genre. It was published originally by Signet and then by White Wolf Games Studio. Volumes 1 through 4 are currently being reprinted in paperback format by the company Scarecrow Press.

Volume 1: From Gilgamesh to Wells

(Signet, 1979; Scarecrow Press, December 2002)

Contents:

• excerpt from A True Story, by Lucian of Samosata
• excerpt from The Voyages and Travels of Sir John Mandeville, Anonymous
• excerpt from Utopia, by Thomas More
• excerpt from The City of the Sun, by Tommaso Campanella
• excerpt from New Atlantis by Francis Bacon
• Somnium, or Lunar Astronomy, by Johannes Kepler
• excerpt from A Voyage to the Moon, by Cyrano de Bergerac
• excerpt from A Voyage to Laputa, by Jonathan Swift
• excerpt from The Journey to the World Underground, by Ludvig Holberg
• "Micromégas," by Voltaire (not included in the Signet edition)
• excerpt from Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley
• "Rappaccini's Daughter," by Nathaniel Hawthorne
• "Mellonta Tauta," by Edgar Allan Poe
• "The Diamond Lens," by Fitz-James O'Brien
• excerpt from Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, by Jules Verne
• excerpt from Around the Moon, by Jules Verne
• excerpt from She, by H. Rider Haggard
• excerpt from Looking Backward, by Edward Bellamy
• "The Damned Thing," by Ambrose Bierce
• "With the Night Mail," by Rudyard Kipling
• "The Star," by H. G. Wells
• A selected bibliography of books about Science Fiction
• A basic Science-Fiction library

Volume 2: From Wells to Heinlein

(Signet, 1979; Scarecrow Press, September, 2002)

Contents:

• "The New Accelerator," by H. G. Wells
• "The Machine Stops," by E. M. Forster
• excerpt from The Chessmen of Mars (Signet edition) or Under the Moons of Mars, by Edgar Rice Burroughs
• "The People of the Pit," by A. Merritt; replaced by Merritt's "The Moon Pool" in the Scarecrow Press edition (2002)
• "The Red One," by Jack London
• "Dagon," by H. P. Lovecraft
• "The Tissue-Culture King," by Julian Huxley
• "The Revolt of the Pedestrians," by David H. Keller, M.D.
• excerpt from Last and First Men, by Olaf Stapledon
• excerpt from Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
• "A Martian Odyssey," by Stanley G. Weinbaum
• "Twilight," by John W. Campbell
• "Proxima Centauri," by Murray Leinster
• "What's It Like Out There?," by Edmond Hamilton
• "With Folded Hands," by Jack Williamson
• "Hyperpilosity," by L. Sprague de Camp
• "The Faithful," by Lester del Rey
• "Black Destroyer," by A. E. van Vogt
• "Nightfall," by Isaac Asimov
• "Requiem," by Robert A. Heinlein
• A chronology of Science Fiction

Volume 3: From Heinlein to Here

(Signet, 1979; Scarecrow Press, May 2002)

The best work published from 1940 to 1977.

Contents:

• "All You Zombies," by Robert A. Heinlein
• "Reason," by Isaac Asimov
• "Desertion," by Clifford D. Simak
• "Mimsy Were the Borogoves," by Lewis Padgett (Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore)
• "The Million-Year Picnic," by Ray Bradbury
• "Thunder and Roses," by Theodore Sturgeon
• "That Only a Mother," by Judith Merril
• "Brooklyn Project," by William Tenn (Philip Klass)
• "Coming Attraction," by Fritz Leiber
• "The Sentinel," by Arthur C. Clarke
• "Sail On! Sail On!," by José Farmer
• "Critical Factor," by Hal Clement
• "Fondly Fahrenheit," by Alfred Bester
• "The Cold Equations," by Tom Godwin
• "The Game of Rat and Dragon," by Cordwainer Smith
• "Pilgrimage to Earth," by Robert Sheckley
• "Who Can Replace a Man?," by Brian W. Aldiss
• "Harrison Bergeron," by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
• "The Streets of Ashkelon," by Harry Harrison
• "The Terminal Beach," by J. G. Ballard
• "Dolphin's Way," by Gordon R. Dickson
• "Slow Tuesday Night," by R. A. Lafferty
• "Day Million," by Frederik Pohl
• "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale," by Philip K. Dick
• "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream," by Harlan Ellison
• "Aye, and Gomorrah," by Samuel R. Delany
• "The Jigsaw Man," by Larry Niven
• "Kyrie," by Poul Anderson
• "Masks," by Damon Knight
• excerpt from Stand on Zanzibar, by John Brunner
• "The Big Flash," by Norman Spinrad
• "Sundance," by Robert Silverberg
• excerpt from The Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula K. Le Guin
• "When It Changed," by Joanna Russ
• "The Engine at Heartspring's Center," by Roger Zelazny
• "Tricentennial," by Joe Haldeman

Volume 4: From Here to Forever

(Signet, 1982; White Wolf, January 1997; Scarecrow Press, 2003)

Stories selected for their quality of writing.

Contents:

• "Born of Man and Woman," by Richard Matheson
• "The Luckiest Man in Denv," by C. M. Kornbluth (not included in the Signet edition)
• "Common Time," by James Blish (not included in the Signet edition)
• "My Boy Friend's Name is Jello," by Avram Davidson
• "The First Canticle," by Walter M. Miller, Jr.
• "Nobody Bothers Gus," by Algis Budrys
• "Flowers for Algernon," by Daniel Keyes
• "The Moon Moth," by Jack Vance
• "The Library of Babel," by Jorge Luis Borges
• excerpt from Dune, by Frank Herbert
• "Light of Other Days," by Bob Shaw
• "The First Sally (A), or Trurl's Electronic Bard," by Stanisław Lem
• "The Heat Death of the Universe," by Pamela Zoline
• "The Planners," by Kate Wilhelm
• "The Dance of the Changer and the Three," by Terry Carr
• "The Last Flight of Dr. Ain," by James Tiptree, Jr. (Alice Sheldon)
• "Where No Sun Shines," by Gardner Dozois
• "The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories," by Gene Wolfe
• "Angouleme," by Thomas M. Disch
• "Gather Blue Roses," by Pamela Sargent
• "With a Finger in My I," by David Gerrold
• "The Ghost Writer," by George Alec Effinger (Signet edition)
• "Of Mist, and Grass, and Sand," by Vonda N. McIntyre
• "Air Raid," by John Varley
• "Uncoupling," by Barry Malzberg
• "Rogue Tomato," by Michael Bishop
• "This Tower of Ashes," by George R. R. Martin
• "Particle Theory," by Edward Bryant
• "View from a Height," by Joan D. Vinge
• "The Word Sweep," by George Zebrowski
• "The World Science Fiction Convention of 2080," by Ian Watson
• "Abominable," by Carol Emshwiller
• "Exposures," by Gregory Benford
• "Schrödinger's Kitten," by George Alec Effinger (not included in the Signet edition)

Volume 5: The British Way

(White Wolf, March 1998)

Influential British SF published prior to 1986

Contents:

• excerpt from The Battle of Dorking: Reminiscences of a Volunteer by Lieutenant-Colonel Sir George Tomkyns Chesney
• excerpt from Flatland by Edwin A. Abbott
• excerpt from After London; or, Wild England by Richard Jefferies
• "The Doom of London," by Robert Barr
• "A Corner in Lightning," by George Griffith
• "The Country of the Blind," by H. G. Wells
• "As Easy as A.B.C.," by Rudyard Kipling
• "A Negligible Experiment," by John D. Beresford
• "The Horror of the Heights," by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
• "The Rat," by S. Fowler Wright
• excerpt from Star Maker, by Olaf Stapledon
• "The Great Fog," by H. F. Heard
• "Hobbyist," by Eric Frank Russell
• "Dreams Are Sacred," by Peter Phillips
• "Made in U.S.A.," by J. T. McIntosh
• "The Star," by Arthur C. Clarke
• "The Emptiness of Space," by John Wyndham
• "The Voices of Time," by J. G. Ballard
• "The Drowned Giant," by J. G. Ballard
• "The Totally Rich," by John Brunner
• "Mouth of Hell," by David I. Masson
• "The Discontinuous," by D. G. Compton
• "It's Smart to Have an English Address," by D. G. Compton
• "The Muse," by Anthony Burgess
• "The Nature of the Catastrophe," by Michael Moorcock
• "The Power of Time," by Josephine Saxton
• "Mason's Life," by Kingsley Amis
• "Settling the World," by M. John Harrison
• "Working in the Spaceship Yards," by Brian W. Aldiss
• "Appearance of Life," by Brian W. Aldiss
• "An Infinite Summer," by Christopher Priest
• "Custom Fitting," by James White
• "Written in Water," by Tanith Lee
• "The Great Atlantic Swimming Race," by Ian Watson
• "And He Not Busy Being Born," by Brian M. Stableford

Volume 6: Around the World

(White Wolf, July 1998)

Contents:

France

• excerpt from Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne
• "The War of the Twentieth Century," by Albert Robida
• "Another World," by J.-H. Rosny-Aîné
• "The Dead Fish," by Boris Vian
• "Heavier Than Sleep," by Philippe Curval
• "The Valley of Echoes," by Gérard Klein
• "The Knot," by Élisabeth Vonarburg

Germany

• "The Sandman," by E. T. A. Hoffmann
• "The Universal Library," by Kurd Lasswitz
• "The Hunter Gracchus," by Franz Kafka
• "The Building," by Herbert W. Franke
• "Loitering at Death's Door," by Wolfgang Jeschke
• "Ikaros," by Erik Simon

Scandinavia and Finland

• "Mnemosyne's Children," by Svend Åge Madsen
• "Time Everlasting," by Sam J. Lundwall

Eastern Europe

• Epilogue from R.U.R. by Karel Čapek
• "The Hunt," by Stanisław Lem
• "The Divided Carla," by Josef Nesvadba
• "That Invincible Human Spirit, or, The Golden Ships," by Alexandr Kramer
• "The Neuhof Treaty," by Ovid S. Crohmalniceanu

Russia

• "The Strangers," by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky
• "Share It With Me," by Kirill Bulychev

Italy

• "The Time Machine," by Dino Buzzati
• "Cancerqueen," by Tommaso Landolfi
• "The Spiral," by Italo Calvino

Spain and Latin America

• "The Alabaster Garden," by Teresa Inglés
• "The Babylon Lottery," by Jorge Luis Borges
• "Blacamán the Good, Vendor of Miracles," by Gabriel García Márquez
• "Chac-Mool," by Carlos Fuentes

India

• "Einstein the Second," by Laxman Londhe

China

• "The Mirror Image of the Earth," by Zheng Wenguang
• "Corrosion," by Ye Yonglie

Japan

• "Beyond the Curve," by Kōbō Abe
• "Take Your Choice," by Sakyo Komatsu
• "The Legend of the Paper Spaceship," by Tetsu Yano

References

• SF Site review of Volume 5
• The Scarecrow Press