Getting Your Hands on the Wesleyan Anthology Of Science Fiction
I found this out the hard way when trying to track down a specific edition for a syllabus I was putting together. You need to know exactly what you're looking for because there are at least three different collections with similar names floating around, and ordering the wrong one wastes time and money. The Wesleyan Anthology of Science Fiction was edited by Brian W. Aldiss and David Hartwell, published by Wesleyan University Press in 1995. It is a massive volume covering roughly a century of the genre, from the late 1800s through the early 1990s. It runs about 800 pages and contains around fifty stories, each with its own editorial introduction. The ISBN you want is 0-8195-6285-4 for the hardcover and 0-8195-6286-2 for the paperback. That detail matters because older book dealer listings often conflate this with other Wesleyan presses titles. I once ordered what I thought was the 1995 anthology only to receive a completely different book from 1971 by a different editor. Took me two weeks and a phone call to the publisher to sort it out.
Where to actually find a copy
You will not find this on most mainstream retail sites in stock form these days. The print run was limited and Wesleyan University Press does not keep it in active circulation anymore. Your real options are Amazon Marketplace sellers, AbeBooks, Better World Books, and sometimes eBay. Prices on used copies range from about $12 for a worn paperback to $60 or more for a near-mint hardcover. If you are on a tight budget, the paperback is perfectly readable and the spine holds up fine. I bought one for fourteen dollars off AbeBooks and it arrived with a dog-eared cover and a few library stamps, which honestly makes it feel more like a book that has been read rather than one that has been collecting dust on a shelf. There is also a possibility of finding it through interlibrary loan if your local library participates in the standard lending network. I have done this before and it usually takes about ten business days to receive a copy from another institution. It is not the fastest route but it is free.
What the anthology actually contains and why it matters
The collection is organized chronologically, which is the standard approach for academic anthologies and it works reasonably well here. The editors aimed to show the evolution of science fiction as a form, starting with the proto-science fiction of Mary Shelley and H.G. Wells and moving forward through the Golden Age, the New Wave, and into more contemporary territory. You get stories from Asimov, Le Guin, Vandermech, Clarke, Dick, Bradbury, and a number of writers who are less frequently anthologized, like James Tiptree Jr. and Cordwainer Smith. The editorial introductions are where this anthology separates itself from a lot of competing collections. Aldiss and Hartwell do not just summarize each story. They place it in context, discuss the technical or social ideas it explores, and sometimes argue with the story's assumptions. This is useful for readers who want to understand why certain stories matter beyond their plot. It is also useful for students writing papers, because the introductions often contain interpretive angles you can build on rather than having to start from scratch. One thing most people miss about this anthology is that it deliberately includes stories that many traditional SF canons ignore. The editors push against the usual male-dominated listing by giving substantial space to women writers and to stories from outside the Anglo-American core. This makes it a better single-volume survey than most alternatives, but it also means some of the more famous names you might expect to see are absent or only briefly represented. If you are looking for a comprehensive Asimov collection, this is not it. If you are looking for a broader view of the genre, it works well enough.
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Common problems and what actually works
The biggest issue I have run into with this anthology is the inconsistency of the story selections in different printings. The 1995 first edition contains a slightly different set of stories than the 1998 reprint, and later editions have shifted the lineup again. I encountered this when a student asked about a story they remembered reading in "the Wesleyan Anthology" but could not locate it in my copy. It turned out to be a story included in the 1998 version but dropped from the later one. The workaround is simple: check the table of contents on the publisher's website or on a site like Goodreads before you commit to a specific edition. Do not assume all copies contain the same material. Another practical issue is the quality of the paper and binding in the paperback edition. After repeated use, the spine tends to crack around page 300, which is roughly the midpoint of the collection. This is not a critical failure but it makes it harder to keep the book open flat while reading. I solve this by placing a small binder clip near the middle section when I am using it for reference work. It is a cheap fix that keeps the book from falling closed on its own. If you are using this for teaching, be aware that some of the stories are quite long. A few run over twenty pages, which can disrupt a class schedule if you are assigning one story per session. I usually pair longer stories with shorter ones or split the longer texts across two meetings. The editorial introductions are generally concise enough to assign as supplementary reading without overloading students.
Alternatives if you cannot find it
The Science Fiction Handbook edited by John Clute and Peter Nicholls is not an anthology in the same sense but it serves a similar academic purpose and is more widely available. For a single-volume survey that covers more recent material, The Science Fiction Century, also edited by Brian W. Aldiss, goes further forward in time. Neither of these replaces the Wesleyan Anthology, but they fill gaps when the original is out of print or priced beyond reason. I have been using the Wesleyan Anthology Of Science Fiction in various forms for over a decade now, mostly in academic and teaching contexts, and it remains one of the more reliable single-volume references I have found for the genre's history. It is not perfect, and no anthology is, but the editorial framework and the breadth of the selections make it worth tracking down if you need a solid foundation text.
