1941 Retro Hugo Awards: Getting hold of the short fiction
The number of published volumes containing much in the way of sf short fiction from 1940 is rather finite. Having trawled the pages of the ISFDB, I believe that this is a comprehensive list of all of the collections and anthologies which it lists with three or more stories from that year.
The best starting place is an anthology edited by Isaac Asimov and Martin H. Greenberg, and published under three different titles: The Great Science Fiction Stories: Volume 2, 1940 (1979); Isaac Asimov Presents The Golden Years of Science Fiction (second half, 1983); and Great Science Fiction Stories of 1940 (2002). The sixteen stories from 1940 included are:
The Dwindling Sphere, by Willard Hawkins
The Automatic Pistol, by Fritz Leiber
Hindsight, by Jack Williamson
Postpaid to Paradise, by Robert Arthur
Into the Darkness, by Ross Rocklynne
Dark Mission, by Lester del Rey
It, by Theodore Sturgeon
Vault of the Beast, by A. E. van Vogt
The Impossible Highway, by Oscar J. Friend
Quietus, by Ross Rocklynne
Strange Playfellow, by Isaac Asimov
The Warrior Race, by L. Sprague de Camp
Farewell to the Master, by Harry Bates
Butyl and the Breather, novelette by Theodore Sturgeon
The Exalted, novelette by L. Sprague de Camp and
Old Man Mulligan, novelette by P. Schuyler Miller
An interesting choice of stories in Phil Stong's 1941 anthology, The Other Worlds aka The Other Worlds: 25 Modern Stories of Mystery and Imagination, includes half a dozen from 1940:
The Pipes of Pan, by Lester del Rey
The Man Who Knew All the Answers, by Albert Bernstein
Adam Link's Vengeance, by Eando [Otto] Binder
Truth Is a Plague, by D. W. O'Brien
The Comedy of Eras, by "Kelvin Kent" [Henry Kuttner]
The Song of the Slaves, by Manly Wade Wellman
A more standard but still interesting half dozen 1940 stories are included in Unknown Worlds: Tales from Beyond (1988), eds. Stanley Schmidt and Martin H. Greenberg:
When It Was Moonlight, by Manly Wade Wellman
The Pipes of Pan, by Lester del Rey
It, by Theodore Sturgeon
Fruit of Knowledge, by C. L. Moore
The Wheels of If, by L. Sprague de Camp and
The Bleak Shore, by Fritz Leiber
The 1990 anthology Rivals of Weird Tales, eds Robert Weinberg, Stefan R. Dziemianowicz and Martin H. Greenberg, includes five 1940 stories:
Me and My Shadow, by Eric Frank Russell
Doomed, by Seabury Quinn
Warm, Dark Places, by H. L. Gold
But Without Horns, by Norvell W. Page and
Philtered Power, by Malcolm Jameson
The classic 1946 anthology Adventures in Time and Space, eds Raymond J. Healy and J. Francis McComas, includes four 1940 stories:
Requiem, by Robert A. Heinlein
The Roads Must Roll, by Robert A. Heinlein
Quietus, by Ross Rocklynne and
Farewell to the Master, by Harry Bates
So does Yesterday’s Tomorrows (1982), ed. Frederik Pohl:
Into the Darkness, by Ross Rocklynne
Strange Playfellow, by Isaac Asimov
Emergency Refueling, by James Blish and
Let There Be Light, by Robert A. Heinlein
So does The Astounding Science Fiction Anthology (1952), ed. John W. Campbell:
Blowups Happen, by Robert A. Heinlein
Hindsight, by Jack Williamson
Vault of the Beast, by A. E. van Vogt and
The Exalted, by L. Sprague de Camp
Those are all the anthologies I found with more than three 1940 stories.
I also found a number of single-author collections, which I'll whiz through quickly.
H. Russell Wakefield's 1940 collection, The Clock Strikes Twelve has (not surprisingly) twelve stories, all original: The Alley; Jay Walkers; Ingredient X; "I Recognised the Voice"; Farewell Performance; Not Quite Cricket; In Collaboration; A Stitch in Time; Lucky's Grove; Red Feathers; Happy Ending?; and Masrur.
Another dozen short stories from 1940 are among those compiled in Volume 2 of The Collected Jorkens (2004), by Lord Dunsany: A Fishing Story; The Neapolitan Ice; The Fancy Man; The Lion and the Unicorn; Elephant Shooting; African Magic; Jorkens Consults a Prophet; A Matter of Business; Pundleton's Audience; The Fight in the Drawing-Room; The Ivory Poacher; and After Many a Summer.
The Ultimate Egoist, Volume 1: The Complete Stories of Theodore Sturgeon (1995) contains eight 1940 stories by that author: Mahout; The Long Arm; The Man on the Steps; Punctuational Advice; Place of Honor; The Ultimate Egoist; It; and Butyl and the Breather.
Another 1940 single-author collection of original stories is Kai Lung Beneath the Mulberry Tree, by Ernest Bramah, containing: The Story of Prince Ying, Virtuous Mei, and the Pursuit of Worthiness; The Three Recorded Judgments of Prince Ying, from the Inscribed Scroll of Mou Tao, The Beggar; The Ignoble Alliance of Lin T'sing with the Outlaw Fang Wang, and How It Affected the Destinies; The Story of Yin Ho, Hoa-mi, and the Magician; The Story of Ton Hi, Precious Gem and the Inconspicuous Elephant; The Story of Sam-tso, the Family Called Wong, and the Willing Buffalo; The Story of Sho Chi, the No-longer Merchant Ng Hon, and the Docile Linnets; and The Story of the Poet Lao Ping, Chun Shin's Daughter Fa, and the Fighting Crickets.
The Early Asimov, in its various permutations, includes six 1940 stories: The Callistan Menace; Ring Around the Sun; The Magnificent Possession; Half-Breed; Homo Sol; and Half-Breeds on Venus.
So does The Far Side of Nowhere, by Nelson Bond: Parallel in Time; The Castaway; The Unusual Romance of Ferdinand Pratt; The Scientific Pioneer Returns; The Fertility of Dalrymple Todd; and The Man Who Weighed Minus Twelve.
So does Gateway to Paradise (2008), by Jack Williamson: The Sun Maker; The Crystal of Death; The Girl in the Bottle; Racketeers in the Sky; Ashes of Iron; and Darker Than You Think.
Two different Heinlein collections have five stories from 1940 each, with three overlaps. The first is The Man Who Sold The Moon, which includes: "Let There Be Light"; The Roads Must Roll; Blowups Happen; and Requiem. The second is The Past Through Tomorrow, which includes The Roads Must Roll; Blowups Happen; Requiem; "If This Goes On -"; and Coventry. Confusingly, the Baen collection The Man Who Sold the Moon / Orphans of the Sky contains only three 1940 Heinlein stories: Let There Be Light; Requiem; and The Roads Must Roll.
Volume 1 of The Early Del Rey is another collection with five stories from 1940: The Smallest God; The Stars Look Down; Doubled in Brass; Reincarnate; and Done Without Eagles.
Two of those and two different del Rey stories are collected in Robots and Magic: The Smallest God; Reincarnate; The Pipes of Pan; and Doubled in Brass.
The prolific John Collier collected his four favourite 1940 stories from his own work in four different collections, Presenting Moonshine; Green Thoughts and Other Strange Tales; Fancies and Goodnights; and The John Collier Reader. They are: Evening Primrose; The Chaser; Another American Tragedy; and Thus I Refute Beelzy.
Far Lands, Other Days, by E. Hoffmann Price includes the following 1940 stories: Khosru's Garden; Heart of a Thief; Vengeance in Samarra; and Selene Walks By Night.
The Henry Kuttner volume in the Centipede Press Masters of the Weird Tale series includes four 1940 stories: Time to Kill; The Seal of Sin; To Boatl and Back; and Threshold.
We have had precisely one story so far by a woman. The 2002 Haffner Press collection, Martian Quest: The Early Brackett, includes the following four 1940 stories by Leigh Brackett: Martian Quest; The Treasure of Ptakuth; The Tapestry Gate; and The Stellar Legion. NB that the 2008 Baen collection, Martian Quest, includes only the first two of these (and for some reason dates one of them to 1942 rather than 1940).
Finally, Robert Bloch's collection Flowers From the Moon and Other Lunacies includes three stories from 1940: Power of the Druid; Be Yourself; and Wine of the Sabbat.
I already had a couple of these collections lurking around somewhere; I must dig them out and also get hold of the Asimov/Greenberg anthology. Of course, a lot of the stories listed here and yesterday are also available in electronic form in one way or another.
The best starting place is an anthology edited by Isaac Asimov and Martin H. Greenberg, and published under three different titles: The Great Science Fiction Stories: Volume 2, 1940 (1979); Isaac Asimov Presents The Golden Years of Science Fiction (second half, 1983); and Great Science Fiction Stories of 1940 (2002). The sixteen stories from 1940 included are:
The Dwindling Sphere, by Willard Hawkins
The Automatic Pistol, by Fritz Leiber
Hindsight, by Jack Williamson
Postpaid to Paradise, by Robert Arthur
Into the Darkness, by Ross Rocklynne
Dark Mission, by Lester del Rey
It, by Theodore Sturgeon
Vault of the Beast, by A. E. van Vogt
The Impossible Highway, by Oscar J. Friend
Quietus, by Ross Rocklynne
Strange Playfellow, by Isaac Asimov
The Warrior Race, by L. Sprague de Camp
Farewell to the Master, by Harry Bates
Butyl and the Breather, novelette by Theodore Sturgeon
The Exalted, novelette by L. Sprague de Camp and
Old Man Mulligan, novelette by P. Schuyler Miller
An interesting choice of stories in Phil Stong's 1941 anthology, The Other Worlds aka The Other Worlds: 25 Modern Stories of Mystery and Imagination, includes half a dozen from 1940:
The Pipes of Pan, by Lester del Rey
The Man Who Knew All the Answers, by Albert Bernstein
Adam Link's Vengeance, by Eando [Otto] Binder
Truth Is a Plague, by D. W. O'Brien
The Comedy of Eras, by "Kelvin Kent" [Henry Kuttner]
The Song of the Slaves, by Manly Wade Wellman
A more standard but still interesting half dozen 1940 stories are included in Unknown Worlds: Tales from Beyond (1988), eds. Stanley Schmidt and Martin H. Greenberg:
When It Was Moonlight, by Manly Wade Wellman
The Pipes of Pan, by Lester del Rey
It, by Theodore Sturgeon
Fruit of Knowledge, by C. L. Moore
The Wheels of If, by L. Sprague de Camp and
The Bleak Shore, by Fritz Leiber
The 1990 anthology Rivals of Weird Tales, eds Robert Weinberg, Stefan R. Dziemianowicz and Martin H. Greenberg, includes five 1940 stories:
Me and My Shadow, by Eric Frank Russell
Doomed, by Seabury Quinn
Warm, Dark Places, by H. L. Gold
But Without Horns, by Norvell W. Page and
Philtered Power, by Malcolm Jameson
The classic 1946 anthology Adventures in Time and Space, eds Raymond J. Healy and J. Francis McComas, includes four 1940 stories:
Requiem, by Robert A. Heinlein
The Roads Must Roll, by Robert A. Heinlein
Quietus, by Ross Rocklynne and
Farewell to the Master, by Harry Bates
So does Yesterday’s Tomorrows (1982), ed. Frederik Pohl:
Into the Darkness, by Ross Rocklynne
Strange Playfellow, by Isaac Asimov
Emergency Refueling, by James Blish and
Let There Be Light, by Robert A. Heinlein
So does The Astounding Science Fiction Anthology (1952), ed. John W. Campbell:
Blowups Happen, by Robert A. Heinlein
Hindsight, by Jack Williamson
Vault of the Beast, by A. E. van Vogt and
The Exalted, by L. Sprague de Camp
Those are all the anthologies I found with more than three 1940 stories.
I also found a number of single-author collections, which I'll whiz through quickly.
H. Russell Wakefield's 1940 collection, The Clock Strikes Twelve has (not surprisingly) twelve stories, all original: The Alley; Jay Walkers; Ingredient X; "I Recognised the Voice"; Farewell Performance; Not Quite Cricket; In Collaboration; A Stitch in Time; Lucky's Grove; Red Feathers; Happy Ending?; and Masrur.
Another dozen short stories from 1940 are among those compiled in Volume 2 of The Collected Jorkens (2004), by Lord Dunsany: A Fishing Story; The Neapolitan Ice; The Fancy Man; The Lion and the Unicorn; Elephant Shooting; African Magic; Jorkens Consults a Prophet; A Matter of Business; Pundleton's Audience; The Fight in the Drawing-Room; The Ivory Poacher; and After Many a Summer.
The Ultimate Egoist, Volume 1: The Complete Stories of Theodore Sturgeon (1995) contains eight 1940 stories by that author: Mahout; The Long Arm; The Man on the Steps; Punctuational Advice; Place of Honor; The Ultimate Egoist; It; and Butyl and the Breather.
Another 1940 single-author collection of original stories is Kai Lung Beneath the Mulberry Tree, by Ernest Bramah, containing: The Story of Prince Ying, Virtuous Mei, and the Pursuit of Worthiness; The Three Recorded Judgments of Prince Ying, from the Inscribed Scroll of Mou Tao, The Beggar; The Ignoble Alliance of Lin T'sing with the Outlaw Fang Wang, and How It Affected the Destinies; The Story of Yin Ho, Hoa-mi, and the Magician; The Story of Ton Hi, Precious Gem and the Inconspicuous Elephant; The Story of Sam-tso, the Family Called Wong, and the Willing Buffalo; The Story of Sho Chi, the No-longer Merchant Ng Hon, and the Docile Linnets; and The Story of the Poet Lao Ping, Chun Shin's Daughter Fa, and the Fighting Crickets.
The Early Asimov, in its various permutations, includes six 1940 stories: The Callistan Menace; Ring Around the Sun; The Magnificent Possession; Half-Breed; Homo Sol; and Half-Breeds on Venus.
So does The Far Side of Nowhere, by Nelson Bond: Parallel in Time; The Castaway; The Unusual Romance of Ferdinand Pratt; The Scientific Pioneer Returns; The Fertility of Dalrymple Todd; and The Man Who Weighed Minus Twelve.
So does Gateway to Paradise (2008), by Jack Williamson: The Sun Maker; The Crystal of Death; The Girl in the Bottle; Racketeers in the Sky; Ashes of Iron; and Darker Than You Think.
Two different Heinlein collections have five stories from 1940 each, with three overlaps. The first is The Man Who Sold The Moon, which includes: "Let There Be Light"; The Roads Must Roll; Blowups Happen; and Requiem. The second is The Past Through Tomorrow, which includes The Roads Must Roll; Blowups Happen; Requiem; "If This Goes On -"; and Coventry. Confusingly, the Baen collection The Man Who Sold the Moon / Orphans of the Sky contains only three 1940 Heinlein stories: Let There Be Light; Requiem; and The Roads Must Roll.
Volume 1 of The Early Del Rey is another collection with five stories from 1940: The Smallest God; The Stars Look Down; Doubled in Brass; Reincarnate; and Done Without Eagles.
Two of those and two different del Rey stories are collected in Robots and Magic: The Smallest God; Reincarnate; The Pipes of Pan; and Doubled in Brass.
The prolific John Collier collected his four favourite 1940 stories from his own work in four different collections, Presenting Moonshine; Green Thoughts and Other Strange Tales; Fancies and Goodnights; and The John Collier Reader. They are: Evening Primrose; The Chaser; Another American Tragedy; and Thus I Refute Beelzy.
Far Lands, Other Days, by E. Hoffmann Price includes the following 1940 stories: Khosru's Garden; Heart of a Thief; Vengeance in Samarra; and Selene Walks By Night.
The Henry Kuttner volume in the Centipede Press Masters of the Weird Tale series includes four 1940 stories: Time to Kill; The Seal of Sin; To Boatl and Back; and Threshold.
We have had precisely one story so far by a woman. The 2002 Haffner Press collection, Martian Quest: The Early Brackett, includes the following four 1940 stories by Leigh Brackett: Martian Quest; The Treasure of Ptakuth; The Tapestry Gate; and The Stellar Legion. NB that the 2008 Baen collection, Martian Quest, includes only the first two of these (and for some reason dates one of them to 1942 rather than 1940).
Finally, Robert Bloch's collection Flowers From the Moon and Other Lunacies includes three stories from 1940: Power of the Druid; Be Yourself; and Wine of the Sabbat.
I already had a couple of these collections lurking around somewhere; I must dig them out and also get hold of the Asimov/Greenberg anthology. Of course, a lot of the stories listed here and yesterday are also available in electronic form in one way or another.