WThe Best Science Fiction Stories: 1950 is a 1950 anthology of science fiction short stories edited by Everett F. Bleiler and T. E. Dikty. An abridged edition was published in the UK by Grayson in 1951 under the title The Best Science Fiction Stories. The stories had originally appeared in 1949 in the magazines Astounding, The Saturday Evening Post, Fantasy and Science Fiction, Fantastic Adventures, Maclean’s, Thrilling Wonder Stories, Blue Book and Startling Stories. The anthology was later combined with the 1949 volume and reissued as Science Fiction Omnibus.
WBeyond Time and Space is an anthology of science fiction stories edited by American writer August Derleth. It was first published by Pellegrini & Cudahy in 1950. Several of the stories had originally appeared in the magazines The Century, The Atlantic Monthly, The Strand, Blue Book, Blackwood's Magazine, Weird Tales, Amazing Stories, Astounding Stories, Maclean's, The American Legion Magazine and Startling Stories. A heavily abridged paperback edition was issued by Berkley Books in 1958.
WBig Book of Science Fiction is an anthology of science fiction short stories edited by Groff Conklin. It was first published in hardcover by Crown Publishers in August 1950. A later edition was issued by Bonanza Books/Crown Publishers in 1978 under the alternate title The Classic Books of Science Fiction. An abridged paperback edition containing ten of its 32 stories was published by Berkley Books in April 1957, and reprinted in June 1957 and September 1964; the reprints bore the variant title The Big Book of Science Fiction.
WCollected Stories of William Faulkner is a short story collection by William Faulkner published by Random House in 1950. It won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1951. The publication of this collection of 42 stories was authorized and supervised by Faulkner himself, who came up with the themed section headings.
WThe Delicate Prey and Other Stories is a collection of 17 stories written by Paul Bowles, first published in 1950.
WThe Dying Earth is a collection of fantasy short fiction by American writer Jack Vance, published by Hillman in 1950. Vance returned to the setting in 1965 and thereafter, making it the first book in the Dying Earth series. It is retitled Mazirian the Magician in its Vance Integral Edition (2005), after the second of six collected stories.
WA Gnome There Was is a collection of science fiction and fantasy stories by American writers Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore, published under their Lewis Padgett pseudonym by Simon & Schuster in 1950. No other editions were issued.
WThe Hidden Universe is a collection of two science fiction novellas by Ralph Milne Farley. It was first published in 1950 by Fantasy Publishing Company, Inc. in an edition of 700 copies of which 500 were hardback. The novellas originally appeared in the magazine Amazing Stories.
WI, Robot is a fixup novel of science fiction short stories or essays by American writer Isaac Asimov. The stories originally appeared in the American magazines Super Science Stories and Astounding Science Fiction between 1940 and 1950 and were then compiled into a book for stand-alone publication by Gnome Press in 1950, in an initial edition of 5,000 copies. The stories are woven together by a framing narrative in which the fictional Dr. Susan Calvin tells each story to a reporter in the 21st century. Although the stories can be read separately, they share a theme of the interaction of humans, robots, and morality, and when combined they tell a larger story of Asimov's fictional history of robotics.
WThe Last Pool and Other Stories is a 1950 collection of short stories by the English author Patrick O'Brian. It was his first published book under that name. The thirteen stories are largely about rural experiences, focusing on hunting, shooting and fishing. Published by Secker and Warburg, the collection included several stories that would later be republished in The Walker and other stories. The collection was both a critical and financial success for O'Brian.
WThe Man Who Sold the Moon is the title of a 1950 collection of science fiction short stories by American writer Robert A. Heinlein.
WThe Martian Chronicles is a science fiction fix-up, published in 1950, by American writer Ray Bradbury that chronicles the settlement of Mars, the home of indigenous Martians, by Americans leaving a troubled Earth that is eventually devastated by nuclear war. The book is a work of science fiction, apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction, dystopian fiction, and horror that projects American society immediately after World War II into a technologically advanced future where the amplification of humanity's potentials to create and destroy have both miraculous and devastating consequences.
WMasters of Time is a collection of two science fiction novellas by Canadian-American writer A. E. van Vogt. It was first published in 1950 by Fantasy Press in an edition of 4,034 copies. The novellas originally appeared in the magazine Astounding SF.
WMen Against the Stars is a 1950 anthology of science fiction short stories edited by Martin Greenberg, originally published in hardcover by Gnome Press. A British hardcover was issued by Grayson & Grayson in 1951. Pyramid Books published several abridged paperback versions in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
WMisteriosa Buenos Aires is a 1950 book of literary fiction by Manuel Mujica Laínez, containing no fewer that 42 short stories illustrating life in Buenos Aires from the time of its mythical First Foundation, in 1536, to 1904.
WThe Moon Is Hell! is a collection of science fiction stories by American writer John W. Campbell Jr. It was published in 1950 by Fantasy Press in an edition of 4,206 copies. The title story deals with a team of scientists stranded on the Moon when their spacecraft crashes, and how they use their combined skills and knowledge to survive until rescue, including building shelter from meteor showers, and creating their own oxygen from Lunar rock. The second story, "The Elder Gods", Campbell rewrote, on a short deadline, from a story by Arthur J. Burks purchased for Unknown but later deemed unsatisfactory. It originally appeared in that magazine under the pseudonym Don A. Stuart. The title of the eponymous story is generally reported without the exclamation point, although the punctuation is used for the title of most editions of the collection itself.
WMurder Twice Told is a collection of two short thrillers by Donald Hamilton.
WNothing Serious is a collection of ten short stories by P. G. Wodehouse. It was first published in the United Kingdom on 21 July 1950 by Herbert Jenkins, London, and in the United States on 24 May 1951 by Doubleday & Co., New York. It was published again in 2008 by The Overlook Press.
WThe Omnibus of Time is a collection of science fiction short stories by Ralph Milne Farley. It was first published in 1950 by Fantasy Publishing Company, Inc. in an edition of 1,500 copies. An additional 500 copies were bound as a Gnome Press edition and sold through an associated book club. Most of the stories originally appeared in the magazines Top-Notch, Amazing Stories, Thrilling Wonder Stories, Weird Tales, Argosy, Fantasy Book and Science Fiction Digest.
WThe Remarkable Adventures of Lancelot Biggs, Spaceman is a collection of humorous science fiction stories by Nelson Bond, published by Doubleday Books in 1950. It comprises eleven of the fourteen stories in Bond's "Lancelot Biggs" series. Sometimes described as a novel, it presents the stories in a sequence of twenty-seven numbered chapters. The collection was reissued in trade paperback by Wildside Press many years later; no mass market paperback edition was issued.
WThe Science Fiction Galaxy is an anthology of science fiction short stories edited by Groff Conklin. It was first published in hardcover by Permabooks in 1950.
WSeven Men is a collection of five short stories written by English caricaturist, essayist and parodist Max Beerbohm. It was published in Britain in 1919 by Heinemann. In the United States there was a 1920 limited edition from Alfred A. Knopf with drawings of the characters by Beerbohm, followed by a popular edition in 1921. An enlarged edition, Seven Men, and Two Others, containing the new story "Felix Argallo and Walter Ledgett" interpolated as the last but one item, was published by Heinemann in 1950.
WSidewise in Time is a 1950 collection of science fiction short stories by Murray Leinster. It was first published by Shasta Publishers in 1950 in an edition of 5,000 copies. The stories all originally appeared in the magazines Astounding and Thrilling Wonder Stories.
WThe Simple Art of Murder is the title of several quasi-connected publications by hard-boiled detective fiction author Raymond Chandler:The first, and arguably best-known, is a critical essay on detective fiction, originally published in The Atlantic Monthly in December 1944. A revised, expanded version was included in Howard Haycraft's 1946 anthology The Art of the Mystery Story. The second is a separate, shorter essay, mostly describing Chandler's personal experiences writing for pulp magazines, originally published in Saturday Review of Literature, April 15, 1950. The third is a short story collection, also originally published in 1950, which contains eight of Chandler's stories pre-dating his first novel The Big Sleep, that he wanted remembered. While first editions of this collection feature the Saturday essay as an introduction and the Atlantic essay as an afterword, later editions tend to feature the Atlantic essay as the introduction and relegate the Saturday essay to other collections.
WSomebody on the Phone is a 1950 short story collection by American crime writer Cornell Woolrich under the pseudonym William Irish. It consists of six short stories.
WThree Blind Mice and Other Stories is a collection of short stories written by Agatha Christie, first published in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company in 1950. The first edition retailed at $2.50.
WThree Doors to Death is a collection of Nero Wolfe mystery novellas by Rex Stout, published by the Viking Press in 1950 — itself collected in the omnibus volume Five of a Kind. The book comprises three stories that first appeared in The American Magazine:"Man Alive" "Omit Flowers" "Door to Death"
WWaldo and Magic, Inc. is a book containing those two novellas, one science fiction, one fantasy, by American writer Robert A. Heinlein. It was published in 1950.
WThe Watchful Gods and Other Stories is a collection of short stories by Walter Van Tilburg Clark published in 1950. It brings together eight stories and one novella. Three of the stories had already appeared in the annual anthology of O. Henry Award-winning stories, most notably "The Wind and the Snow of Winter" which was selected by that anthology, in 1945, as their "first-place winner." Since this book's publication, two other stories have remained notable: "The Portable Phonograph" and "Hook" have both been widely anthologized since they were published.