Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 2 (1940)

First edition, cover art by Jack Gaughan

Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 2 (1940) is the second volume of Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories, which is a series of short story collections, edited by Isaac Asimov and Martin H. Greenberg, which attempts to list the great science fiction stories from the Golden Age of Science Fiction. They date the Golden Age as beginning in 1939 and lasting until 1963. The book was later reprinted as the second half of Isaac Asimov Presents The Golden Years of Science Fiction: 36 Stories and Novellas with the first half being Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 1 (1939).

This volume was originally published by DAW books in August 1979.

Stories

  1. * Requiem by Robert A. Heinlein
  2. The Dwindling Sphere by Williard Hawkins
  3. The Automatic Pistol by Fritz Leiber
  4. Hindsight by Jack Williamson
  5. Postpaid to Paradise by Robert Arthur
  6. * Coventry by Robert A. Heinlein
  7. Into the Darkness by Ross Rocklynne
  8. Dark Mission by Lester del Rey
  9. It by Theodore Sturgeon
  10. Vault of the Beast by A. E. van Vogt
  11. The Impossible Highway by Oscar J. Friend
  12. Quietus by Ross Rocklynne
  13. * Blowups Happen by Robert A. Heinlein
  14. Strange Playfellow by Isaac Asimov
  15. The Warrior Race by L. Sprague de Camp
  16. Farewell to the Master by Harry Bates
  17. Butyl and the Breather by Theodore Sturgeon
  18. The Exalted by L. Sprague de Camp
  19. Old Man Mulligan by P. Schuyler Miller

* The three stories by Robert A. Heinlein were not printed in this volume because arrangements for their use could not be made. Martin Greenberg and Isaac Asimov's notes for each are included where the stories would have appeared.