The two major original anthology series after Damon Knight's Orbit were Terry Carr's Universe and Robert Silverberg's New Dimensions, both debuting in 1971. New Dimensions appeared in hardcover from Doubleday for two volumes (the photo shows Avon paperback reprints), then moved to Signet in paperback for two volumes (with the SF Book Club edition of volume 3, shown here, actually appearing earlier than the paperback and thus the first edition), and then to Harper & Row in hardcover for a run of six volumes.

Silverberg's introduction to the first volume contrasts early SF writers, "tradition-bound in matters of style and content" despite occasionally addressing adult themes, with the then recent influx of young writers as familiar with Joyce and Hemingway as with the pulp magazines. He stresses that the stories here are science fiction, evolving from earlier traditions.

These first ten volumes published many major stories, including Gardner Dozois' "A Special Kind of Morning," Ursula K. Le Guin's "Vaster Than Empires and More Slow," Joanna Russ's "Nobody's Home,", R.A. Lafferty's Hugo-winning "Eurema's Dam," James Tiptree, Jr.'s Hugo-winning "The Girl Who Was Pugged In," Le Guin's Hugo-winning and now canonical short story "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas," Richard Lupoff's "After the Dreamtime," and the novella version of Gardner Dozois's "Strangers" -- just in the first four volumes.

After 10 volumes Silverberg turned the series over to Marta Randall, for two volumes from Pocket in paperback. Her selections included two early stories from Michael Swanwick, and Suzy McKee Charnas' Nebula-winning "Unicorn Tapestry." A 13th volume was announced but was never published; it had an impressive table of contents, with many stories later published elsewhere; Black Gate has this article about that phantom book.

In parallel with New Dimensions Silverberg published about as many of volumes consisting of three novellas each (or in one case, four), invoking yet again the publishing truism that longer stories are more difficult to publish, and so deserve separate venues. These also appeared at a rate of about one a year, from various publishers. No authors are repeated within this group, except for Silverberg himself, in four volumes, and in those four volumes and one other, Silverberg isn't explicitely credited as editor, though among those, four are copyright by Silverberg. Exceptions are the first, Three for Tomorrow, with no overall copyright and an introduction by Arthur C. Clarke; Four Futures, with an introduction by Isaac Asimov describing themes for the stories; and The Day the Sun Stood Still, with a book copyright by the publisher and an introduction by Lester del Rey.

Major stories from these novellas volumes include James Blish's "We All Die Naked," Gardner Dozois's "Chains of the Sea," Jack Vance's "Rumfuddle," Norman Spinrad's "Riding the Torch," and Ursula K. Le Guin's "The New Atlantis," as well as Silverberg's own "Going" and "Thomas the Proclaimer."

A decade after Silverberg concluded those series, he and Karen Haber re-launched Universe, in tribute to Terry Carr, who had died three years before. The new books maintained the focus Terry Carr had maintained -- primarily science fiction with only an occasional fantasy story -- but were over twice the size of the earlier books, and published only half as often. The first two volumes were published in simultaneous hardcover and trade paperback editions; the third only in mass market paperback.

Also in this period Silverberg produced shared-world anthology (or "a novel in six parts") Murasaki whose contributors were all Nebula winners. As an SFWA project, Silverberg invited all writers who had won Nebulas, eventually winnowing the list down to six. The introduction describes past shared-world anthologies, especially Harlan Ellison's Medea as the inspiration for this book.

As the millennium turned Silverberg then produced three large anthologies of fantasy and science fiction stories by authors who had established series of novels. The all-star contributors -- King, Jordan, McCaffrey, Brooks, Gaiman, Card, Le Guin, Haldeman, et al. -- wrote new stories in their respective series, and provided précis of their series to date. Dan Simmons' "Orphans of the Helix" won a Locus Award.

(One additional anthology, Between Worlds, is compiled on the SFBC Originals page.)

Over 12 volumes of New Dimensions, most published authors: Barry N. Malzberg (9), Felix C. Gotschalk (7), George Alec Effinger (5), then Gregory Benford, Peter Dillingham, Gardner Dozois, Gordon Eklund, R.A. Lafferty, and Marta Randall (4 each).

From all volumes compiled on this page, most published authors: Barry N. Malzberg (12), then Benford, Gotschalk, Le Guin, and Silverberg (7 each).