EPOCH: The State of the Art of Science Fiction Now

by Roger Elwood (Editor), Robert Silverberg (Editor)

Introduction (75) Rbt Silverberg & Roger Elwood essay
ARM/Known Space (75) Larry Niven novella
Angel of Truth (75) Gordon Eklund novelette
Mazes (75) Ursula K. LeGuin story
For All Poor Folks at Picketwire (75) R.A. Lafferty story
Growing Up in Edge City (75) Frederik Pohl story
Durance (75) Ward Moore story
The Ghost of a Model T Clifford D. Simak novelette
Planet Story (75) Kate Wilhelm story
Graduation Day (75) W. Macfarlane story
Timetipping (75) Jack Dann story
Encounter with a Carnivore (75) Joseph Green story
Lady Sunshine & the Magoon of Beatus (75) Alexei Panshin & Cory Panshin novella
"For a Single Yesterday" (75) Geo R.R. Martin novelette
Bloodstream (75) Lou Fisher story
Existence (75) Joanna Russ story
Interface (75) A.A. Attanasio novella
Blooded on Arachne (75) Michael Bishop novelette
Leviticus: In the Ark (75) Barry N. Malzberg story
Cambridge, 1:58 AM (75) Gregory Benford story
Run from the Fire (75) Harry Harrison novelette
Waiting for the Universe to Begin/Aperture Moment 1 (75) Brian W. Aldiss story
But Without Orifices/Aperture Moment 2 (75) Brian W. Aldiss story
Aimez-vous Holman Hunt?/Aperture Moment 3 (75) Brian W. Aldiss story
Nightbeat (75) Neal Barrett Jr story
Uneasy Chrysalids, Our Memories (75) John Shirley story
The Dogtown Tourist Agency (75) Jack Vance novella

Genres: Science Fiction, Anthologies, Fiction, Collections, Fantasy, Speculative Fiction, Short Stories

Paperback

First published October 1, 1975

About the author

Roger Elwood was an American science fiction writer and editor, perhaps best known for having edited a large number of anthologies and collections for a variety of publishers in the early 1970s. Elwood was also the founding editor of Laser Books and, in more recent years, worked in the evangelical Christian market.

Reviews

[Craig · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow, it's been a long time since I read this, but I remember thinking that it was an especially good one. I remember liking the Bishop, the Niven, the Vance, and the Simak stories, and the Martin was my favorite of the volume.

[Marc · Rating 3 out of 5]

This anthology of all-original stories was published with the tag line: "The state of the art of science fiction NOW."

Overall, I was disappointed with the quality of most of the stories, which emphasized literary pretensions over storytelling quality. However, there were a few bright spots: the Larry Niven story was reasonably good; the Harry Harrison and John Shirley stories were solid.

Most importantly, there was the first publication of Jack Vance's "The Dogtown Tourist Agency." Far and away the best story in the book, this made a lifelong Jack Vance fan out of me. I had read a couple of his stories before, and had been impressed by "The Last Castle", but it wasn't until "The Dogtown Tourist Agency" that I became addicted to his inimitable style and mordant wit.

Each author contributes a comment/endnote after his/her story, and Vance's was so striking I still have it memorized. In fact, the book is almost worth picking up just for that (the story has been reprinted several times).

For me, this was a good representation of SF then; it was just starting to veer away from the good old-fashioned storytelling of its early years and head down numerous blind alleys of pretentious self-indulgent experimentation, in a perhaps fruitless quest for literary respectability.

I'd certainly rate this collection higher than "Again, Dangerous Visions." I don't think I managed to read a single story in that collection, perhaps deterred by Harlan Ellison's interminable introductions to the the stories, some of which are almost as long as the stories themselves.

[Jerry · Rating 3 out of 5]

This collection starts off with a bang. Larry Niven’s “ARM”, Gordon Ekliund’s “Angel of Truth”, Ursula K. Le Guin’s “Mazes”, R.A. Lafferty’s “For All Poor Folks at Picketwire”, Frederik Pohl’s “Growing Up in Edge City”, Ward Moore’s “Durance”, and Clifford D. Simak’s “The Ghost of a Model T” were all above average—both for this book and science fiction in general. Those are the first seven stories in the book.

The highlight of those seven for me was Frederik Pohl’s, about a boy growing up in an underground planned city, in which any deviation from the plan for his life is punished. He’s smart enough to evade the controls, but not the punishments.

Kate Wilhelm’s “Planet Story” is an interesting experiment in first-person present, about a planet that taps into primal fears in a way that we never discover. It’s almost Lovecraftian, though not to the extent of, say, C.L. Moore’s Northwest Smith.

Lou Fisher wrote a nice old-school twist ending in “Bloodstream”.

I did not particularly enjoy Joanna Russ’s “Existence”, but she in her author’s note following the story she describes her “quixotic dream for the paperback-book industry”.

…a giant Sears-Roebuck-ish, centralized store which will carry remaindered books at lowered (or raised) prices (depending on their bibliographic value and the rise due to inflation) and have wee beautiful catalogs in every hamlet, village, and town…
Of course, such an operation would require a vast capital outlay. Or would it? Specialized bookstores do this kind of thing already. At any rate, it points in the proper direction, I think. The first step is for some brilliant sociologist or computer programmer out there (hello, hello?) to get a grant to study just who buys books and why, something about which there are a lot of publishers’ theories and no facts. A big grant. And then…?
Say, why don’t one of you readers…?

She’s pretty much describing the anti-Amazon, a grant-funded behemoth that would have operated based on what the grant-approving bureaucrats think people should read rather than what people actually want to read. Bonus points for being a typical “here’s my great idea, now someone else go do the easy part” writer’s fantasy.

A.A. Attanasio presents a seventh-grade story about dolphins and humans; there are some interesting ideas in it, but rather than take them up, he ends the story with a classic “and then everyone was hit by a bus”.

Gregory Benford is “a theoretical physicist” and his “Cambridge, 1:58 A.M.” name-drops several real physicists. I’m pretty sure “Tommy Gold” is my old advisor at Cornell, and Thorne must be Kip Thorne, since Benford writes about “Thorne’s group at Cal Tech”. The strange part of this story to me is that there are semi-undecipherable messages coming through time, but the main character doesn’t do anything with these messages. The messages are fragmented, but there’s enough that someone, somewhere, might understand them. The protagonist doesn’t make them available, even through academic or professional backchannels.

Neal Barrett, Jr.’s “Nightbeat” looks like a story of tyranny, but the author’s note at the end turns it into a moral tyranny, in a world where there are too many dreams, and so people need to be forced not to dream lest their dreams intrude upon others.

Harry Harrison’s “Run From the Fire” is the kind of parallel-world story that Harrison excels at. Not going to spoil it, but travelers from other timelines come upon earth and softly shanghai the main character to help them in an Iroquois-run timeline. In his afteword, Harrison tries to shanghai other writers into taking up the parallel-alternate timeline story:

Writing the parallel-world story requires a lot of thought and some recourse to the history books. Both of these seem within the realm of possibility for practicing writers. Therefore I encourage my brethren in this field to consider not only the future but also the manifold possibilities for a changed present.

The last story makes up for any disappointment in the middle. It’s a Jack Vance detective thriller set on a very discouraging planet. It is very difficult to solve mysteries when the detective is human and the races involved are alien to human thought.

Vance declines to write about how he wrote the story and instead writes about writers writing about their stories:

The less a writer discusses his work—and himself—the better. The master chef slaughters no chickens in the dining room; the doctor writes prescriptions in Latin; the magician hides his hinges, mirrors, and trapdoors with the utmost care. Recently I read of a surgeon who, after performing a complicated abortion, displayed to the ex-mother the fetus in a jar of formaldehyde. The woman went into hysterics and sued him, and I believe collected. No writer has yet been haled into court on similar grounds, but the day may arrive.

[Charl · Rating 1 out of 5]

Wow. What a piece of dreck. I only got half-way through this before I had to quit. The majority of these stories aren't even Sci-Fi except by the longest stretch of the definition, and many of them are undeniably fantasy.

And out of the stories I did read, only two were even worth the time. The rest are opaque, wandering keyboard solos with no actual plot that I can see, or execrably written with characters I don't care about and stories that don't even begin to tickle my interest.

I've got much better ways to waste my time than wading through the rest of this pile.

[Alien · Rating 3 out of 5]

The blurb of my edition reads "Now, in this unsurpassed anthology of all-original science fiction, the culmination of centures of imagination crests the sf horizon in a galaxy of new stories".
What a crock of bull!
There were some famous names, there were some unknown names. There were some good stories, there were some not so good ones. All in all an average anthology. And a very long one.

I liked the stories of LeGuin, George R.R. Martin, Kate Wilhelm and Joseph Green.

[Andy Hickman · Rating 3 out of 5]

"... For a Single Yesterday" by George R. R. Martin

“.. I miss that, you know. The water. I always think better when I’m watching water. Strange, right?” – Keith to Gary ***

"…For a Single Yesterday" is a 1975 science fiction novelette by George R. R. Martin. It is about a musician in a post-apocalyptic commune who uses a powerful drug to re-live the past.

[Earl Truss · Rating 2 out of 5]

There's a lot of hype in the back cover notes for this book. Most of the stories don't support this. The stories range from barely OK to simply horrible. I did manage to "finish" the book but only by skimming through the last half of the last story in the book.

[Charles · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not a lot of standout stories for me, but overall pretty good.

[Erik Graff · Rating 4 out of 5]

This, an exceptionally good representative sampling of science fiction, was read during a break from seminary.

[Prospero · Rating 3 out of 5]

This collection tries hard to position itself as another "Dangerous Visions", but falls short. Still, some worthy stories here.

[Misty · Rating 5 out of 5]

A solid anthology.

[Howard]

6

[Red7paulbrennan · Rating 1 out of 5]

did not finish