Best of All Possible Worlds

A science fiction anthology edited by Spider Robinson. The concept is that Spider picked some of his favorite stories, with a heavy slant towards those not reprinted elsewhere. He then went to the authors and asked them to pick a story they enjoyed that was not widely available. The end result is this anthology. An utterly fantastic read if you can find it. Publisher: Ace Books, 1980

There are supposed to be several volumes, of which I have only the first. The stories contained within it are:

Inconstant Moon by Larry Niven
Spud and Cochise by Oliver LaFarge
Need by Theodore Sturgeon
Hop-Friend by Terry Carr
The Duel Scene from The Princess Bride by William Goldman
Seventh Victim by Robery Sheckley
Portions of this Program by Dean Ing
They Bite by Anthony Boucher
The Man Who Traveled In Elephants by Robert Heinlein
Our Lady's Juggler by Anatole France

An expression used by Gottfried Leibniz (and Voltaire's parody of Leibniz, Dr. Pangloss) to describe the actual world. Leibniz's reasoning is that if there were a better possible world that was not actualized, then God would not be a perfect being. Since he rejected the consequent, he had to affirm the antecedent. (Leibniz also had much more complicated arguments for his view.)