Tom Shippey, ed.

Oxford University Press, 1992

This was the first of several academic overviews of science fiction, edited by a well-known critic and implicitly endorsed by the university publisher. Shippey's introduction explores descriptions of science fiction and its history, and declares the scope of the anthology as following those of other Oxford collections: chronologically presented, no author represented more than once, with the aim "to give an impression of the range, vitality, and literally quality of a genre."

There are no individual story introductions. The book ends with a Selected Bibliography of single-author collections, anthologies, and critical and reference works.