Alternate Skiffy

by Mike Resnick (Editor), Leah A. Zeldes (Contributor), Gregory Feeley (Contributor)

Book by

Genres: Science Fiction

124 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1997

About the author

Michael "Mike" Diamond Resnick, better known by his published name Mike Resnick, was a popular and prolific American science fiction author. He is, according to Locus, the all-time leading award winner, living or dead, for short science fiction. He was the winner of five Hugos, a Nebula, and other major awards in the United States, France, Spain, Japan, Croatia and Poland. and has been short-listed for major awards in England, Italy and Australia. He was the author of 68 novels, over 250 stories, and 2 screenplays, and was the editor of 41 anthologies. His work has been translated into 25 languages. He was the Guest of Honor at the 2012 Worldcon and can be found online as @ResnickMike on Twitter or at www.mikeresnick.com.

Reviews

[Craig]

As can be told from the title, this is a silly little book of fun. Resnick had been editing the wildly popular "Alternate..." series of anthologies for Tor, and jokes were rife in the field at the time about what the next one would be called, or maybe when "Alternate Resnicks" would appear. Anyway, this volume is filled with in-jokes and probably wouldn't appeal much to those not familiar with sf fandom, but I had a lot of fun with it. I especially liked the selections from Malzberg, DiChario, and Haldeman.

[Ronn]

As a big fan of the other "Alternate" books co-edited by Michael Resnick, I was curious when I saw this title pop up. After finally getting my hands on a copy, I discovered that this is Alternate SCI-FI, a book of short stories concerning science fiction authors, publishers, and a few characters. As these stories seem to be targeted TO science fiction authors, publishers, and a few characters in addition to being about them, this has limited appeal to a general science fiction reading public. Not that it wasnt amusing, but it also wasnt essential.

[Will]

Another "Alternate" collection, focusing on the history OF SF. As usual, quality varies greatly,with some contributors using an excuse to strut their own prejudices, others speculating in interesting fashion. I particularly like the one where Chesterton was editor of F & SF (and doubtless sent scathing rejection letters to Aleister Crowley.)

[Christian Lindke]

Science Fiction,Patrick Nielsen Hayden