THE ASCENT OF WONDER: THE EVOLUTION OF HARD SF

New York: Tor, [1994]. First edition. A fine copy in a fine dust jacket. (28747). Octavo, boards. Collects sixty-six short stories. Introductions by Gregory Benford, David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer. "... not only a collection of many of science fiction's landmark works, it also provides a brilliant critical analysis of the origins and meaning of hard science fiction -- when unbridled imagination meets hard scientific reality. The authors represented range from the genre's earliest pioneers, such as Edgar Allan Poe, Jules Verne and H. G. Wells, and its modern masters, including Poul Anderson, Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke and Robert Heinlein, to its most visionary innovators, including J. G. Ballard, Philip K. Dick, Ursula K. Le Guin and Gene Wolfe, and its most outstanding younger talents, including Greg Bear, William Gibson and Bruce Sterling." -- dj flap copy. "Hartwell is arguably the most influential SF book editor of the 1970s and 1980s ..." - Anatomy of Wonder (1995) 8-66. Anatomy of Wonder (2004) II-1319.