# 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

## Contents
### 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, reprinted 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