Some of the best stories in science fiction history have been written in the short story form. Anyone who has only read novel-length sf is missing out on some of the best that sf has to offer. If you are just getting into sf and particularly the golden age, short-story anthologies are great places to start.
Paperback anthologies of science fiction stories started gaining in popularity during the 1940s, and by the 1950s and 60s were a staple of the science fiction scene. Dating back to the late 1920s, most of the short stories written appeared in monthly magazines devoted to science fiction. In their heyday, there were dozens of these monthly magazines producing thousands of stories each year, and, because of its popularity, science fiction frequently appeared in many non-sf publications as well.
As an example of the volume of stories being published toward the end of the sf magazine boom, see Judith Merril's SF The Year's Greatest Science-Fiction and Fantasy Third Annual Volume which collected stories from 1957 (the year of Sputnik) and 1958. The book itself only had room for 18 stories and articles — Merril's choices for the best of the year — but Merril also included her Honorable Mentions, a list that contains 90 stories from 74 different authors published in two dozen different publications. That must have been some year! In contrast, just over a half-century later, there are only three sf-specific story magazines left that publish, at best, 4-5 stories a month.
Fortunately, there are many great anthologies from the good-old-days floating around used book stores and other outlets that have captured and collected many of the best of the golden age sf short stories. Presented here are the anthologies from our collection: