FFB: Murder in Japan and Danger in D.C.

Martin H. "Harry" Greenberg (1941-2011) started out as a political science professor and later founded book packager Tekno Books, which published over 2,300 books translated into 33 languages. But he may be best known to many as the "king of anthologists," editing singly or with others over 1,298 anthologies and commissioning over 8,200 original short stories—but I'm not sure anyone really knows how many he hand a hand in. Greenberg received four genre Lifetime Achievement Awards: the Milford Award in science fiction, the Solstice Award in science fiction, the Bram Stoker Award in horror, and the Ellery Queen Award in mystery.

His collaborators included the bright lights in their respective genres, such as science fiction author Isaac Asimov, with whom Greenberg edited more than 120 anthologies, and crime fiction authors Ed Gorman and Bill Pronzini, among many others. As an example of his wide-ranging thematic material, I offer up two very different anthologies, Murder in Japan: Japanese Stories of Crime and Detection, and Danger in D.C.: Cat Crimes in the Nation's Capital.

Danger in D.C. is one of at least seven in a series of "cat crimes" story anthologies Greenberg edited with Ed Gorman from 1991 to 1998. As you might guess from the title, the volume features 18 stories with felines connected to the nation's capitol in some way, with offerings by Jon L. Breen, Max Allan Collins, Bill Crider, Barbara D'Amato, Carole Nelson Douglas, John Lutz, Barbara Paul, Carolyn Wheat, and more. Since the book dates from the Clinton presidential years, many of the stories feature the "first cat" Sox or a stand-in, including "Code Red: Terror on the Mall" by Bill Crider, involving a terrorist plot to blow up the President's cat and the Washington Monument. 

Murder in Japan is co-edited with John L. Apostolou and includes 14 stories arranged chronologically from pre-1920s up to the 1980s. Although crime fiction has been quite popular in Japan for some time, few short stories have been translated into English, and I can almost guarantee that neither you (nor I) have heard of most of the authors included here, beginning with two stories by Edogawa Rampo, credited as being  the father of the Japanese mystery story and influenced heavily by Edgar Allan Poe. There are also two stories by Shizuko Natsuki, sometimes referred to as the "Agatha Christie of Japan," (whose 1983 novel Murder at Mt. Fuji sold over a million copies) with her tales frequently based on actual cases.

If you want to delve into the many treasures Greenberg left behind as part of his legacy, check out the partial bibliography listed on the Fantastic Fiction web site. To put his impact into perspective, if you read one story from one of his anthologies per day (using a 1,000 anthology total with an average 14 stories each), it would take you 38 years to read them all—without taking a day off. Happy reading!

Comments

[Todd Mason]

Greenberg had perhaps Too much influence as an anthology editor, but the books themselves were usually at least readable, and he did provide markets for some fiction when decent-paying markets for short fiction are always needed, as they have been since at least since the phasing out of fiction in slick magazines and the more bust than boom fiction magazines have faced since the 1950s...and some of his projects, including not a few with Ed and with Asimov and others, were very good indeed.

[BV Lawson]

I also have to wonder how many authors got their first break through a Greenberg anthology? It would be something of a Herculean task to dig into the anthologies and find out, but I know there have to be at least a few.

[Todd Mason]

Some, though he did like to return to Reliables. He was probably the first to computerize anthologizing in a sensible way.