<span class="SFPTagline"> From SCIFIPEDIA </span>

The Annual World’s Best SF is a series of short story anthologies edited by Donald A. Wollheim, and published by Wollheim’s DAW Books between 1972 and 1990. Wollheim is the only editor named on the covers, but on the title page the volumes are “edited by Donald A. Wollheim with Arthur W. Saha”. The title of each volume includes a year of publication, but the stories and novellas included were all originally published in the previous year; thus The 1972 Annual World’s Best SF includes stories that had originally been published in 1971. The title given on the front cover of the book is always preceded by the phrase “Donald A. Wollheim Presents”, however this phrase is always omitted from both the spine of the book and from the title page, and so is not actually part of the title. Some early volumes have also been reprinted under a slightly different title, namely Wollheim’s World’s Best SF, followed by a series number; for example The 1977 Annual World’s Best SF (the sixth in the series) was republished under the title Wollheim’s World’s Best SF Series Six. Most volumes were also re-published in hardback, book club editions. Each volume includes a brief introduction from Wollheim and some cover art.

Wollheim had been editing anthologies for years even before the first volume of this series appeared, and in many ways this series is simply a continuation of another series he edited with Terry Carr, under the title World’s Best Science Fiction, from 1965 to 1970. In fact the final volume of the later series, The 1990 Annual World’s Best SF includes a note on the cover calling it “The twenty-fifth anniversary edition of the series that brings you the finest science fiction stories of the year.” However, the titles of the two series are slightly different (the earlier series, edited with Terry Carr, omits the word “Annual” and spells out the phrase “Science Fiction”), and the earlier series was published by Ace Books, while the later series was published by Wollheim’s DAW Books.

The nineteen volumes in the series include:

The 1972 Annual World’s Best SF
The 1973 Annual World’s Best SF
The 1974 Annual World’s Best SF
The 1975 Annual World’s Best SF
The 1976 Annual World’s Best SF
The 1977 Annual World’s Best SF
The 1978 Annual World’s Best SF
The 1979 Annual World’s Best SF
The 1980 Annual World’s Best SF
The 1981 Annual World’s Best SF
The 1982 Annual World’s Best SF
The 1983 Annual World’s Best SF
The 1984 Annual World’s Best SF
The 1985 Annual World’s Best SF
The 1986 Annual World’s Best SF
The 1987 Annual World’s Best SF
The 1988 Annual World’s Best SF
The 1989 Annual World’s Best SF
The 1990 Annual World’s Best SF