BRAND-NEW SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY DISCOVERIES!
WHAT WOULD YOU DO? . . . If you had to flee an elevator 500 miles up, if pirates accused you of ESP powers, or the plastic trees began to crush your jungle shelter?
WOULD YOU KNOW? . . . What software would interface with pure evil, how there are monsters among us, why the U.S. would bodyguard Hitler? . . . and whose ashes to sow in your garden?
COULD YOU GUESS WHY? . . . Outer space might kill you inside, a robot might be sly, a starship might dream a nightmare? . . . and why Edgar Allan might not be Poe?
CAN YOU IMAGINE? . . . an insect as landlord on Earth, a dying woman in Panama and among the stars, a lost man who is everywhere?
Read These Winning stories The Finest and Latest in SF Tales by The Best of The New Breed!
Called "AJ" by friends, Budrys was born Algirdas Jonas Budrys in Königsberg in East Prussia. He was the son of the consul general of the Lithuanian government, (the pre-World War II government still recognized after the war by the United States, even though the Soviet-sponsored government was in power throughout most of Budrys's life). His family was sent to the United States by the Lithuanian government in 1936 when Budrys was 5 years old. During most of his adult life, he held a captain's commission in the Free Lithuanian Army.
Budrys was educated at the University of Miami, and later at Columbia University in New York. His first published science fiction story was The High Purpose, which appeared in Astounding Science Fiction in 1952. Beginning in 1952 Budrys worked as editor and manager for such science fiction publishers as Gnome Press and Galaxy Science Fiction. Some of his science fiction in the 1950s was published under the pen name "John A. Sentry", a reconfigured Anglification of his Lithuanian name. Among his other pseudonyms in the SF magazines of the 1950s and elsewhere, several revived as bylines for vignettes in his magazine Tomorrow Speculative Fiction, is "William Scarff". He also wrote several stories under the names "Ivan Janvier" or "Paul Janvier." He also used the pen name "Alger Rome" in his collaborations with Jerome Bixby.
Budrys's 1960 novella Rogue Moon was nominated for a Hugo Award, and was later anthologized in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume Two (1973). His Cold War science fiction novel Who? was adapted for the screen in 1973. In addition to numerous Hugo Award and Nebula Award nominations, Budrys won the Science Fiction Research Association's 2007 Pilgrim Award for lifetime contributions to speculative fiction scholarship. In 2009, he was the recipient of one of the first three Solstice Awards presented by the SFWA in recognition of his contributions to the field of science fiction.
Budrys was married to Edna Duna; they had four sons. He last resided in Evanston, Illinois. He died at home, from metastatic malignant melanoma on June 9, 2008.
This collection has been created for over thirty years, and I can tell volume 3 was early on, because while the stories were all complete and written well, there were only a few that were very good. Whereas, volume 31 had many excellent stories. I appreciated the essays included throughout this volume, discussing SF writing, and enjoyed the informative and useful tips. The short, short story at the end was fantastic - "Resonance Ritual" by Paula May. Oh, something else I was surprised by and felt grateful for was the great number of women authors included in the volume. Yay. Thank you!
This is a collection of science fiction and fantasy stories from amateur and (previously) unpublished writers, that have done well in a contest judged by professional and well published writers. Although this competition is known for discovering several well known authors, and some of the authors in this volume did go on to successful writing careers, there's a reason that most of them were unpublished at the time of this book, and remained only lightly published thereafter.
I'm usually pretty easy to please when it comes to short-story anthologies: the quality doesn't have to be high throughout, and I'm happy if I discover only one or two stories that stick with me, or make me think, or are artfully crafted. But this collection didn't quite reach that bar. Many of the stories were quite amateurishly written (because they were written by amateurs, after all), and several were closer to creative writing exercises than publication-quality sci fi.
It also doesn't help that the book was poorly produced. I'm no typography snob, but the fonts seemed intentionally chosen to make the book more difficult to read.
I don't think there was anything I actively hated, but some stories stood out more than others. 'The Language of the Sea' was great and I'd love to visit that world again in a longer story or novel. I thought the same of 'Resonance Ritual' - the background of that would make a great story in itself. I liked 'Jacobs Ladder' too. The writing tips were useful too and I enjoyed reading them as much as the stories.