(Unfortunately, the What If? series was cancelled after the first two books, and Volume 3 only appeared decades later from a small press.)Īlpha 5 (Ballantine 1974, cover by Bruce Pennington) and Driftglass (Signet 1977, cover by Bob Pepper)ĭelany collected “The Star Pit” in his great first collection Driftglass, and in a later collection, Aye, and Gomorrah. And Richard Lupoff chose it for What If? Volume 3, the third entry in his series of books highlighting the stories that he felt should have won the Hugo each year.

Gardner Dozois put it in his anthology with a similar title (and ambition) to Silverberg’s: Modern Classic Short Novels of Science Fiction. Robert Silverberg anthologized it twice – not just in Alpha 5 but in the Arbor House Treasury of Great Science Fiction Short Novels. It was in Judith Merril’s SF 12, the very last outing for her seminal series.

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“The Star Pit” was a finalist for the 1968 Hugo for Best Novella, which went in a tie to “Riders of the Purple Wage” by Philip Jose Farmer and “Weyr Search” by Anne McCaffrey. (Interestingly, the magazine ceased publication after the next issue (May 1967) before a brief (three issue) revival in 19.) It first appeared in Worlds of Tomorrow for February of 1967 – and as Worlds of Tomorrow was widely considered the “third-string” magazine in Fred Pohl’s editorship, behind sister magazines Galaxy and If, that could be regarded as “underappreciation,” though more likely it reflected the difficulty of fitting novellas into magazines. In fact this is a story with a decent history of anthologization and recognition over the years, so my term “underappreciated” is off base. But it’s been quite a few years since my last read. I remember it as one of the great underappreciated novellas in SF. It was a story I liked then, and loved on a reread a few years later. I remember reading “The Star Pit” as a teen, probably in Robert Silverberg’s exceptional reprint anthology Alpha 5. Of necessity, each of these essays will go into some detail as to the plot of the stories – in most case, in my opinion, this will not “spoil” the stories, but I know that I am less spoiler-phobic than many, so tread carefully. This is the first of what I hope will be an extended series of essays taking a closer look at some stories I either consider to be particularly good, or interesting for other reasons.

Worlds of Tomorrow, February 1967, containing “The Star Pit” by Samuel R.

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