1951 A year in Science fiction

Here is a list of books published/written in 1951 that I have read:

Isaac Asimov - Foundation
Ray Bradbury - The illustrated man 5 stars
L Sprague du camp - Rogue Queen 3 stars
Arthur C Clarke - Prelude to Space
Hal Clement - Iceworld 3.5 stars
Philip Jose Farmer - The lovers) 3stars
Austin Hall - The Blind Spot ( 2.5 stars
Robert A Heinlien - The Green Hills of Earth 3.5 stars
Robert A Heinlien - The Puppet masters 3.5 stars
Clifford Simak - Time and Again 3.5 stars
Philip Wylie - The Disappearance 4 stars
John Wyndham - The Day of the Triffids 5 stars
Leigh Brackett - People of the Talisman Shadow over Mars 3 stars
Fritz Leiber - Gather Darkness 3 stars
H P Lovecraft - The Haunter of the dark 5 stars
Isaac Asimov - Stars like Dust 2 stars
Robert Spencer Carr - Beyond Infinity 3 stars
Arthur Koestler - The age of Longing, Arthur koestler 5 stars
Lewis Padgett and C L Moore - Tomorrow and Tomorrow and the fairy chessman 3.5 stars
William F Temple - four sided triangle 4 stars
Jack Williamson (Will Stewart) - Seetee ship 3 stars
Stanley Mullen - Kinsmen of the Dragon 3.5 stars
L Ron Hubbard - Typewriter in the sky/Fear 3 stars
Raymond F Jones - Renaissance 3.5 stars
The Frederic Brown Megapack 3.5
Sam Merwin jnr - The House of Many Worlds 3 stars
Malcolm Jameson - Bullard of the Space Patrol - 2.5 stars.
Lord Dunsany - The Last revolution 2.5 stars.
Edmond Hamilton - City At Worlds End 3.5 stars
Jack Vance - Son of the tree 3 stars
Raymond F Jones - The Alien 3 stars
Groff Conklin - Possible worlds of Science Fiction 3.5 star
Groff Conklin - In the Grip of Terror 3 star
Jack Williamson - Dragon's Island 4 star

Books still to read:
Raymond F Jones - The Toymaker
Arthur C Clarke - Sands of Mars.
Gideon Clark - To make a world
August Derleth - The Outer reaches
John D McDonald - Planet of the Dreamers
Sterling Noel - I Killed Stalin
George O Smith - Pattern for Conquest
Hal Annas - The longsnozzle Event
Hal Annas - Maid-to-Order
Manley Wade Wellman - Twice in Time
Clifford D Simak - Empire
Robert A Heinlein - Between planets
John Taine - Seeds of Life
Cyril Judd - Outpost Mars/Sin in Space
Mack Reynolds - The case of the little Green Men
James Blish - The Warriors of Today
Frederick Brown - What mad universe
John W Campbell - The moon is hell
John Russell Fearn - The petrified Planet
Paul W Fairman - Whom the gods would slay
Daniel R Gilgannon - Stopwatch on the world
Fletcher Pratt - World of Wonder
E E Doc Smith - Gray Lensmen
Wilson Tucker - The City in the sea
S Fowler Wright - The Amphibians
S Fowler Wright - The world Below
Willy Ley - Dragons in amber
Willy Ley - Rocket missiles and Space travel
Cyril Judd - Mars Child
Gerald Heard - Is another world watching
Eric Frank Russell - Dreadful Sanctuary
Fred Hoyle - The Nature of the Universe
L Sprague de Camp - The Undesired Princess
Fletcher Pratt - World of Wonder
Isaac Asimov presents the Great SF stories No.13 1951
Raymond Z Gallun - Passport to Jupiter.

Can anybody beat this list for 1951 science fiction books - Would anybody want to?

Does anybody know books that I have missed?

Do you count as a 1951 ones novels which were serialized in 1950 (in 1 or more parts) in a magazine but then published in book form in 1951? Or are they 1950 in your counting? Such as City at World's End by Edmond Hamilton for example?

PS: Never mind - looking at the list answered that - Time and Again is on your list and it is in that category as well. Although it was in 3 parts and not as 1 as the Hamilton. Does that make a difference for your counting? Or does the different ending of the Simak serialization compared to the novel itself make a difference?

>1 baswood: I've read just a few of those titles, and don't currently feel drawn to go back for more. I was interested, though, to see that Koestler wrote SF, although neither the work you linked to (by Richard Wright) nor the novel of the same name by Koestler seems to fit into the genre.

Of those you haven't read, I enjoyed The Dying Earth quite a bit.

>2 AnnieMod: Yes I have read City at Worlds End - I will add it to the list.
I am sure there are other errors on the actual year of publication, because of publication in series format in the pulp mags. I have tried to stick to published in book form.

>3 Jim53: I have changed the link to the Koestler novel. It is a sort of alternative history and just about creeps into the science fiction genre. It is an excellent book. I hope to get to the Jack Vance book soon.

>5 baswood: I'll have to keep an eye out for the Koestler. The only thing of his that I've read is Darkness at Noon. Thanks for alerting me to it.

What a fun list! It was indeed quite a year.I would add Simak's Empire,and just as pure fun,a Heinlein juvenile,Between Planets
I love the 50s,pulpy fun for the most part,but the shadow of a devastating nuclear war produced some of the greatest works in SF/Fantasy.Shockingly,I have only read 16 of the 46 books on your list,I would have thought my score would be higher since I read a lot of vintage stuffbut co-incidentally Philip Wylie's The Disappearance is on my April TBR :0).
At the moment for the 50s I am diving into Kuttner/Moore,in all their combinations and pseudonyms. At the moment I am reading C L Moore's Northwest of Earth,lush purple prose,but her voice is unique for the time.A female perspective on even the tritest of pulp themes adds nuances and interesting ideas

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I can rarely afford to buy books - 4 children,6 grandkids,and 6 great grandkids to cater to on basic pension,Eek - so I have really given high praise to Internet Archive with its Open Library service,which has given me access to so many of these old books.True,they are scanned copies of often battered old books,but I have at least been able to read them.
At the moment there is a lot of unease at Open Library.. The big publishers are trying to have them closed down,or they want revenues from people borrowing books from the archive. Boston Library in particular has digitally provided a huge number of books to the Archive. I would never have progressed through all the WWEnd lists without their putting the books out for our free access.I only had to buy 6 books to complete the Hugo and Nebula listsI always smile with satisfaction when I see the Boston library bookplate in a scanned copy of an old book.The case began on Monday 20th,we can but wait and see how things pan out. Open Library'argument is that once a library has bought a book,it is within their remit to lend it out freely in any particular format. The publishers are agin it. I suppose if they could they would close all libraries altogether. Free access? Shocking. Libraries have been fighting for a hundred years against such enemies. We can but pray Open Library wins the day once again.Fingers crossed.

>7 dustydigger: Thank you for those two now added to my list.

You are right the internet archive and open library is a great resource for older books. There are even some at Project Gutenberg. Amazing that you managed the Hugo and Nebula award lists with buying so few books. Apart from reading books published in 1951 I have other projects: reading Elizabethan Literature and Proto science fiction and so I rely on open libraries for most of my reading.

>1 baswood:

I cannot see on your list

The Sands of Mars by Clarke which was 1951 (at least in the UK)
Outpost Mars by Cyril Judd (Cyril M. Kornbluth and Judith Merril) which appeared in magazine form in 1951.
Seeds of Life by John Taine - first published in book form in 1951 but previously in magazines (1931?)
The Weapon Shops of Isher by AE Van Vogt was 1951.
The Case of the Little Green Men by Mack Reynolds was 1951.

BTW Gill Hunt was a house pseudonym. Galactic Storm was written by John Brunner if ISFDB is to be believed. There are other 1951 "Gill Hunt" books one of which Hostile Worlds which was really written by Denis Hughes. Looking at things Denis Hughes churned out around 15 (maybe not all SF) books that year (although he was only getting warmed up he did over 20 the next year) - so the quality of those may be low. John Russell Fearn was also fairly busy in 1951 under a number of pseudonyms (Vargo Statten, Astron del Martia, Hugo Blayn, Earl Titan) as well as his own.

Thank you >9 andyl: I can't believe I had not read The Sands of Mars one of the most obvious picks from that year.

I have read The Weapon Shops of Isher which I think is a short story, but the other three Seeds of Life, Outpost Mars and The Case of the Little Green men I will add to the 'to read list'
I will do more research into "Gill Hunt" "Denis Hughes" and "John Russell Fearn"
Thank you for all the information at this rate the 'to read' list is in danger of overtaking the 'have read' list.

>10 baswood:

The Weapons Shops of Isher is both. It is a fix-up novel of three novellas (or maybe novelettes) one of which was also called "The Weapon Shops of Isher".

>8 baswood: Another great resource for free SF is the Luminist archive
check out - http://www.luminist.org/archives/index.htm

They are adding new titles to it regularly. Lots of good stuff from lots of authors,covering many decades.They are even starting to add some old crime fiction too,which I also like.

On the Elizabethan stuff,I am determined this year to FINALLY get round to Kit Marlowe's Dr Faustus and Webster'sThe Duchess of Malfi,but at the moment I am immersed in ancient Greek drama,,am halfway through Vergil's Aeneid and April is going to be devoted to Beowulf. Wish I could clone myself so as to read more! :0)

>12 dustydigger: Wow! That looks to be a great archive.

Well we can't talk about Elizabethan literature here, but I am reading chronologically and I am up to 1595 and immersed in Shakespeare.

As far as Victorian Proto science fiction goes My next book is
1890 Mary E Bradley Lane - Mizowa a prophecy

Nice list. There's a few that I have not read that I'd at least consider looking for. In my opinion, The Puppet Masters hasn't aged well at all, I re-read it a couple of years ago and it is now fairly terrible.

Since October 2019 I have been steadily reading science fiction books published in 1951. A year selected at random, but it came within the so-called golden age of science fiction writing, when many of the American science fiction magazines were still doing good business. I managed to find 67 books, easily available, most of which were free to read on the internet. Most of the writers had stories or novels serialised in the pulp magazines such as; Amazing stories, Astounding Science Fiction, Galaxy science Fiction, Planet Stories, Startling Stories and others. Some of the novels serialised in the pulps were later tidied up for publication in book form and some of the books published in 1951 were collections of stories from an earlier era. I decided not to be too precious about this and used the internet speculative fiction database as my guide.

Most of the books were quite short; 1951 was well before the advent of the sometimes overly long fantasy novels and most fell in the range of 120 - 250 pages. They covered many of the sub genres of fantasy and science fiction such as: space operas, invasion from and visits to planets in our solar system, earthbound stories, time travel, alternative time lines, fantasy adventures including sword and sorcery and short story collections. There was a noticeable absence of hard science fiction which was not surprising because of publications in the pulp magazines. I was quite surprised by the lack of dystopian novels, but then again many stories were pessimistic in outlook, there were certainly no utopias.

I rated and reviewed all the books that I read and did this with an eye to the genre in which I was reading, so although four of the books got a five star rating they could not be considered as literary masterpieces. The average rating was three stars which I thought was good enough for publishing in the pulps and so anything above that was worth a read in book form. So here is the list:

5 Stars
Ray Bradbury - The illustrated Man
John Wyndham - The Day of the Triffids
H P Lovecraft - The Haunter of the Dark
Arthur Koestler - The Age of Longing

4 Stars
Hal Clement - Ice World
Philip Wylie - The Disappearance
Jack Williamson - Dragon's Island
Frederic Brown - What Mad Universe
Cyril Judd - Sin in Space
Eric Frank Russell - Sentinels from Space
Arthur C Clarke - The Exploration of Space
L. Ron Hubbard -Fear

3.5 stars
Robert A Heinlein - The Green Hills of Earth
Robert A Heinlein - The Puppet Masters
Clifford Simak - Time and Again
Lewis Padgett and C L Moore - Tomorrow and Tomorrow & Fairy Chessman
Stanley Mullen - Kinsmen of the Dragon
Raymond F Jones - Renaissance
Edmond Hamilton - City at Worlds End
Groff Conklin - Possible worlds of Science fiction
Arthur C. Clarke - The Sands of Mars
Manley Wade Wellman - Twice in Time
John Taine - Seeds of Life
Mack Reynolds - The Case of the Little Green Men
Wilson Tucker - The City in the Sea
Isaac Asimov Presents the Great SF Stories No.13 1951
L. Sprague du Camp - The Undesired Princess
Wallace West - The Memory bank (Dark Tower)
Leigh Brackett - Starmen of Llyrdis 29

3 Stars
Isaac Asimov - Foundation
L Sprague du Camp - Rogue Queen
Arthur C. Clarke - Prelude to Space
Robert A Heinlein - Between the Planets
Leigh Brackett - People of the Talisman
Fritz Leiber - Gather Darkness
Robert Spencer Carr - Beyond Infinity
Jack Williamson (Will Stewart) - Seetee Ship
L. Ron Hubbard - Typewriter in the Sky
Sam Merwin Jnr - The House of Many Worlds
Jack Vance - Son of the Tree
Raymond F Jones - The Alien
Groff Conklin - In the Grip of Terror
August Derleth - The Outer Reaches
John D Macdonald - Wine of the Dreamers
George O. Smith - Pattern for Conquest
Clifford D Simak - Empire
James Blish - The Warriors of Day
Vargo Statten (John Russell Fearn - The Devouring Fire
Vargo Statten ( John Russell Fearn - The New Satellite
E. E. Doc Smith - The Grey Lensman
Daniel R Gilgannon - Stopwatch on the World
S. Fowler Wright - The Throne of Saturn
Raymond Z Gallun - Passport to Jupiter
Kendell Foster Crossen - Adventures in Tomorrow
Fletcher Pratt - The Seed from Space

2.5 stars
Austin Hall - The Blind Spot
Malcolm Jameson - Bullard of the Space Patrol
Lord Dunsany - The Last Revolution
John Brunner - Galactic Storm
Poul Anderson - The Virgin of Valkarion

2 Stars
Isaac Asimov - Stars Like Dust
Sterling Noel - I killed Stalin
Hal Annas - The Longsnozzle Event & Maid-to-Order
Gerald Heard - Is another World Watching
Manly Wade Wellman - The Devil's Planet
A. A. Craig - Witch of the Demon Seas
Vargo Statten - Cataclysm

Two of my five star reviews were re-reads which did not disappoint: Ray Bradbury was a master of the short story and the Illustrated man is a very good collection of some of his inventive tales. I read The Day of the Triffids during the world wide covid pandemic when nothing was moving on the road outside and Wyndham creates a perfect scenario with his Triffids. H P Lovecraft's the Haunter of the Dark is a collection of horror stories written in the 1920's and 1930's, but I loved the atmosphere of impending doom that permeates this collection, Arthur Koestler's The age of Longing is the most literary of the books read and is an alternate time line story, which imagines that after the second world war, Western Europe is in danger of being swallowed up by Russia.

The four star reads were well worth the time spent on them. Hal Clements Iceworld was an imaginative look at a totally alien world. Philip Wylie imagines that all the women disappear from the world in the blink of an eye and explores psychological themes and ideas. Jack Williamson's novel is a story about mutants and genetic engineering on earth in the near future and has a strong female character. Frederic Brown's short story collection is full of fast paced inventive stories. Cyril Judd's luridly titled Sin in Space tells a story of the hard work of setting up a new colony on another planet. Eric Russel's Sentinels of Space is another mutant story where mutants on Venus and Mars combine to free themselves from Earth's colonial rule. L. Ron Hubbards Fear is a psychological horror story with a good twist at the end and Arthur C. Clarke's exploration of Space manages to induce a sense of wonder as he explores the solar system and beyond.

So thats most of 1951 in science fiction, there are a handful of books that I found too expensive or unavailable for me to read and I drew the line at reading all 16 of John Russell Fearn's books published that year. It was an interesting experiment in reading, but I am not sure I learned much from limiting myself to one particular year. Some acknowledged masters of science fiction were just getting going that year: Isaac Asimov, Arthur C Clarke, Clifford Simak and Leigh Brackett and so their best books were still ahead of them. I did uncover a few gems, but there were too many disappointments. I don't want to read any more.

The lengthening of genre novels over time is interesting. Rather flies in the face of the idea people's free time and attention spans are eroding.

(Well, novels in some genres at least. I don't now if romance novels or whodunnits have lengthened similarly to fantasy and sf?)

I don't think that longer f/sf novels are an argument against shortening attention spans. They can be read in many short sittings, after all. It strikes me that many contemporary readers of these genres prize the readerly experience of immersion in the imagined milieu, and that having long books (and long series) allows for more detailed immersion over more sessions, with the difficult work of interiorizing and understanding the setting and characters often front-loaded, so that the later parts are less work and more reward. The longer the book, the more of it will be "later parts."

>15 baswood: Interesting! One odd thing for me is that while many favorite authors of mine are on the list, virtually none of the individual titles are favorites of mine (either in terms of that author, or overall). The Bradbury and the Lovecraft are favorites, but then i love both authors. For many of the authors i could name titles I like better.
Such an impressive project deserves any suggested corrections, so I mention that the first Heinlein book is The Puppet Masters (plural).
I was two in 1951, so I didn't read these when they were new, but grew up reading SF of the 50s which was much newer when I read it than it is now!

>16 AndreasJ: " I don't now if romance novels or whodunnits have lengthened similarly to fantasy and sf?" Mysteries, yes. Not as gargantuanly as fantasy, but still a marked difference.

1951 in sf cinema was the year of The Day the Earth Stood Still, The Thing from Another World, and When Worlds Collide. These are treated in the chapter "Absolute Elsewhere" of the terrific study Welcome to Mars by Ken Hollings.

>18 rshart3: The Puppet masters corrected. I was one years old in 1951

>18 rshart3: I started reading SF seriously around the age of 13 in 1970; but more older material stayed in print in those days and for possibly ten years or so afterwards. The public library was my first source for written SF, and paperbacks soon filled in the gaps. In those days, there were still paperback anthologies of Golden Age stories, and indeed some anthologies went through multiple impressions and so got reprinted for some years after their first appearance. (Here in the UK, Faber's Best SF series of anthologies definitely kept reappearing.) So I consider myself reasonably well-read in classic short stories in ways that more recent fans probably aren't. I know a lot of this material is now online and so can be read, but the joy of the anthology was in having a spread of stories presented so that the reader can decide for themselves which merit further exploration and which don't cut the mustard.