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.

Reception
Everett Franklin Bleiler described the first two volumes as follow: "A historical anthology... A good selection, with good headnotes".

Volume 1 and 2 was also reviewed by:


 * David Mogen (1979) in Science Fiction & Fantasy Book Review, July 1979
 * Joseph Nicholas (1980) in Vector 99

Volume 3 was reviewed by:


 * Thomas A. Easton [as Tom Easton] (1980) in Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact, July 1980
 * Joseph Nicholas (1980) in Vector 99

Volume 4 was reviewed by:


 * Neil Barron (1983) in Science Fiction & Fantasy Book Review, #11, January-February 1983
 * Frank Borsch (1994) in Blizz, #29 (in German)
 * Clinton Lawrence (1997) in Science Fiction Weekly, 5 May 1997
 * Thomas A. Easton [as Tom Easton] (1997) in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, September 1997

Volume 5 was reviewed by:


 * Clinton Lawrence (1998) in Science Fiction Weekly, 18 May 1998
 * Steven H Silver (1998) in SF Site, Mid-May 1998, (1998)
 * Damien Broderick (1999) in The New York Review of Science Fiction, April 1999

Volume 1: From Gilgamesh to Wells

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

The anthology was published Signet in 1979 and reprinted by Scarecrow Press in December 2002.

Volume 2: From Wells to Heinlein

 * "The New Accelerator," by H. G. Wells
 * "The Machine Stops, by E. M. Forster
 * The Chessmen of Mars (excerpt) (Signet edition) or Under the Moons of Mars (excerpt) 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.
 * Last and First Men (excerpt) by Olaf Stapledon
 * Brave New World (excerpt) 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

Published by Signet, 1979, reptinted by Scarecrow Press, September, 2002.

Volume 3: From Heinlein to Here
Contained work published between 1940 and 1977.


 * "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 Philip José Farmerr
 * "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
 * Stand on Zanzibar (excerpt) by John Brunner
 * "The Big Flash" by Norman Spinrad
 * "Sundance," by Robert Silverberg
 * The Left Hand of Darkness (excrpt) by Ursula K. Le Guin
 * "When It Changed," by Joanna Russ
 * "The Engine at Heartspring's Center," by Roger Zelazny
 * "Tricentennial" by Joe Haldeman

First published by Signet in 1979, reprinted by Scarecrow Press, May 2002.

Volume 4: From Here to Forever

 * "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
 * Dune (excerpt) 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 N. 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)

First published by Signet, 1982, reprinted by White Wolf, January 1997 and Scarecrow Press, 2003)

Volume 5: The British Way
(White Wolf, March 1998)

Influential British SF published prior to 1986'


 * The Battle of Dorking: Reminiscences of a Volunteer (excerpt) by Lieutenant-Colonel Sir George Tomkyns Chesney
 * Flatland (excerpt) by Edwin A. Abbott
 * After London; or, Wild England (excerpt) 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
 * Star Maker (excerpt) 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)

France

 * Journey to the Center of the Earth (excerot) 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 (from Tales of Pirx the Pilot)
 * "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