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The Big Book of Science Fiction
Quite possibly the greatest science fiction collection of all time - past, present and future. What if life was neverending? What if you could change your body to adapt to an alien ecology? What if the pope were a robot? Spanning galaxies and millennia, this must-have anthology showcases classic contributions from H. G. Wells, Arthur C. Clarke, Octavia E. Butler, and Kurt Vonnegut, alongside a century of the eccentrics, rebels, and visionaries who have inspired generations of readers. Within its pages, you'll find beloved worlds of space opera, hard SF, cyberpunk, the New Wave, and more. Learn about the secret history of science fiction, from titans of literature who also wrote SF to less well-known authors from more than twenty-five countries, some never before translated into English. In The Big Book of Science Fiction, literary power couple Ann and Jeff VanderMeer transport readers from Mars to Mechanopolis, planet Earth to parts unknown. Immerse yourself in the genre that predicted electric cars, space tourism, and smartphones. Sit back, buckle up, and dial in the coordinates, as this stellar anthology has got worlds within worlds.
Including:
. Legendary tales from Isaac Asimov and Ursula K. Le Guin
. An unearthed sci-fi story from W. E. B. Du Bois
. The first publication in twenty years of the work of cybernetic visionary David R. Bunch
. A rare and brilliant novella by Chinese international sensation Cixin Liu
Plus:
. Aliens!
. Space battles!
. Robots!
. Technology gone wrong!
. Technology gone right!"
Including:
. Legendary tales from Isaac Asimov and Ursula K. Le Guin
. An unearthed sci-fi story from W. E. B. Du Bois
. The first publication in twenty years of the work of cybernetic visionary David R. Bunch
. A rare and brilliant novella by Chinese international sensation Cixin Liu
Plus:
. Aliens!
. Space battles!
. Robots!
. Technology gone wrong!
. Technology gone right!"
1216 pages, Paperback
First published July 12, 2016
1267 people are currently reading
3919 people want to read
About the author
Ann VanderMeer
66 books261 followersAnn VanderMeer is an American publisher and editor, and the second female editor of the horror magazine Weird Tales. She is the founder of Buzzcity Press.
Her work as Fiction Editor of Weird Tales won a Hugo Award. Work from her press and related periodicals has won the British Fantasy Award, the International Rhysling Award, and appeared in several year's best anthologies. Ann was also the founder of The Silver Web magazine, a periodical devoted to experimental and avant-garde fantasy literature.
In 2009 "Weird Tales edited by Ann VanderMeer and Stephen H. Segal" won a Hugo Award for Best Semiprozine. Though some of its individual contributors have been honored with Hugos, Nebula Awards, and even one Pulitzer Prize, the magazine itself had never before even been nominated for a Hugo. It was also nominated for a World Fantasy Award in 2009.
Her work as Fiction Editor of Weird Tales won a Hugo Award. Work from her press and related periodicals has won the British Fantasy Award, the International Rhysling Award, and appeared in several year's best anthologies. Ann was also the founder of The Silver Web magazine, a periodical devoted to experimental and avant-garde fantasy literature.
In 2009 "Weird Tales edited by Ann VanderMeer and Stephen H. Segal" won a Hugo Award for Best Semiprozine. Though some of its individual contributors have been honored with Hugos, Nebula Awards, and even one Pulitzer Prize, the magazine itself had never before even been nominated for a Hugo. It was also nominated for a World Fantasy Award in 2009.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 166 reviews
April 4, 2025
Finished! Overall this was really more educational than enjoyable, but I'm glad I read it.
The Star by H.G. Wells -"...how small the vastest of human catastrophes may seem, at a distance of a few million miles."
Sultana's Dream by Rokheya Shekhawat Hossain -"You have neglected the duty you owe to yourselves and you have lost your natural rights by shutting your eyes to your own interests."
The Triumph of Mechanics by Karl Hans Strobl - apparently Strobl spent a good portion of his career producing pro-Nazi propaganda.
The New Overworld by Paul Scheerbart - fur covered turtles learn to live happily together on Venus. Not sure about much more than that.
Elements of Pataphysics by Alfred Jarry - Hmmm...no idea.
Mechanopolis by Miguel de Unamuno - My favourite story so far! "My loneliness began to be filled with ghosts. That is the worst thing about loneliness, how easily it becomes filled."
The Doom of Principal City by Yefim Zozulya -"Bitter confusion and spiritual devastation were universal now. Even serious-minded and governmental newspapers started dedicating a lot of space to personal polemics that were not free of spiteful accusations, vindictive attacks, and intent to offend and humiliate rather than establish the truth."
The Comet by W.E.B. DuBois - Distinctions of race and class mean little without a world full of people to perpetuate them.
The Fate of the Poseidonia by Clare Winger Harris -"How little we then realized that the relative importance of gold and water was destined to be reversed, and that man was to have forced upon him a new conception of values which would bring to him a complete realization of his former erroneous ideas."
The Star Stealers by Edmond Hamilton - I was happily surprised to see that the pilot was a woman who fought alongside the men...up until the end when she seeks a beauty parlour as her only reward for helping to save the world from sure destruction.
The Conquest of Gola by Leslie F. Stone - The matriarchy of Venus crushes the invasion of their planet by the weakling men of Earth using the superior power of their minds!
A Martian Odyssey by Stanley G. Weinbaum - Finally the SF short story evolves to include more intricate worldbuilding in the development of a variety of well described alien species.
The Last Poet and the Robots by A. Merritt - "Now and then, out of the sea of lunatic mediocrity, a wave uplifted that beheld for a moment a light from the sun of truth-but soon it sank back and the light was gone. Quenched in the sea of stupidity."
The Microscopic Giants by Paul Ernst - Written in 1936, this is the first story where the writing style, to me, has the feel of a more modern SF thriller. "Cold anger shone from the soulless eyes. Chill outrage, such as might shine from the eyes of a man whose home has been invaded. The little men palpably considered us trespassers in these depths, and were glacially infuriated by our presence."
Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius by Jorge Luis Borges - The collective consciousness of the world is changed by means of a book."[A]lready a fictitious past has supplanted in men's memories that other past, of which we now know nothing certain--not even that it is false."
Desertion by Clifford D. Simak - Altering humans to survive the off-world environment! This story was much more to my taste than anything we have read up to now. "Maybe the brains of Earth things naturally are slow and foggy. Maybe we are the morons of the universe. Maybe we are fixed so we have to do things the hard way."
September 2005: The Martian by Ray Bradbury - This story has an enduring quality representative of Bradbury's writing generally. "Who is this, he thought, in need of love as much as we? Who is he and what is he that, out of loneliness, he comes into the alien camp and assumes the voice and face of memory and stands among us, accepted and happy at last?"
Baby HP by Juan Jose Arreola - "To the Lady of the House: Convert your children’s vitality into an energy force. We now have on sale the marvelous Baby HP, a device that is set to revolutionize the domestic economy."
Surface Tension by James Blish - An excellent story about humans altered to microscopic size and adapted for an aquatic environment, yet still retain the desire to explore "space" and travel to "other worlds." "Come, my friend; join me at my table. We will plan our journey to the stars."
Beyond Lies the Wub by Philip K. Dick - I always like Dick's short stories, and this is no exception. A short, clear, and wonderfully self-contained story.
The Snowball Effect by Katherine McLean - This is an interesting story about what happens when people conducting an experiment forget about the inherent unpredictability of social systems. MacLean is a writer I hadn't heard of before, and I found her style very readable.
Prott by Margaret St. Clair - In the introductory notes to this story the editors describe it as "one of the most original collected in this anthology." Reading this story I can see the genesis of Jeff VanderMeer's own brilliantly creative and original book, Annihilation.
The Liberation of Earth by William Tenn - Deeply political and therefore controversial in its time, this 1953 tale makes it clear that the "liberated" are the last thing so-called liberators actually care about.
Let Me Live in a House by Chad Oliver - A tightly written and tense psychological story; probably my favourite in the collection so far. "Starburn leaves scars on the soul. Some men could not give up. Some men knew that man could not turn back. Starburned men knew that dreams never really die."
The Star by Arthur C. Clarke - An example of how humans can't help but try to integrate the new and unknown into existing narrative.
Grandpa by James H. Schmitz - Relying on policy and regulations rather than observation and common sense can get you killed.
The Game of Rat and Dragon by Cordwainer Smith - "Only partners could fight this deadliest of wars--and the one way to dissolve the partnership was to be personally dissolved!"
The Last Question by Isaac Asimov - Everything truly does come full circle.
Stranger Station by Damon Knight - to be honest I'm not exactly sure what happened at the end there, but I know it wasn't good.
Sector General by James White - a very interesting and readable space hospital story. I was sorry when the end came!
The Visitors by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky - "Imagine yourself in the bowels of an alien spaceship, surrounded by unliving mechanisms, imagine yourself flying over an icy desert--without any hope, unsure where you are going--flying for days, months, maybe even years, imagine all of this and you can see what I'm thinking." A great premise that never played out in the execution.
Pelt by Carol Emshwiller - A kind of creepy environmental story where it becomes clear that the distinction between "furs" and hunter is somewhat murky.
The Monster by Gérard Klein - Quietly chilling and exquisitely written. "A memory came suddenly into her mind. A sentence read or heard, an idea harvested and stored away, to be milled and tasted now. It was something like this: men are nothing but empty shells, sometimes cold and deserted like abandoned houses, and sometimes inhabited, haunted by the beings we call life, jealousy, joy, fear, hope, and so many others. Then there was no more loneliness."
The Man Who Lost the Sea by Theodore Sturgeon - "For no farmer who fingers the soil with love and knowledge, no poet who sings of it, artist, contractor, engineer, even child bursting into tears at the inexpressible beauty of a field of daffodils--none of these is as intimate with Earth as those who live on, live with, breathe, and drift in its seas."
The Waves by Silvina Ocampo - "Science" can always be used to justify "progress." "But there is always someone who tells the truth, and if the truth sets some people free, then it condemns others."
Plenitude by Will Worthington - A father and son confront their family's choices in a tale that could easily be the inspiration for some elements of The Matrix. "You look for ugliness and senselessness. It is that simple. Look for places that have been overlaid with mortar so that nothing can grow or change at its will. Look for things which have been fashioned at great expense of time and energy and then discarded."
The Voices of Time by J.G. Ballard - Not for me. Pondering and philosophical without much structured plot and not really even enjoyable in terms of writing style.
The Astronaut by Valentina Zhuravlyova - a moving and wistful account of the actions of a crew on a mission of exploration. "I enjoy...no, I have a love, a great love for Earth, for life on Earth, for the people who live there."
The Squid Chooses Its Own Ink by Adolfo Bioy Casaeres - political critique observing the failed and dangerous state of those in power and and lamenting the lack of will most people ultimately possess to effect real change.
2BR02B by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. - a typically grim tale about population control. "The painter pondered the mournful puzzle of life demanding to be born and, once born, demanding to be fruitful...to multiply and to live as long as possible--to do all that on a very small planet that would have to last forever."
A Modest Genius by Vadim Shefner -a wonderful story about an underappreciated inventor and the love that finds its way to him.
Day of Wrath by Sever Gansovsky - intelligent story with a focus on biotech experimentation and the aftermath that is left to the ordinary person to live with. A critique of the danger of intelligence untempered by compassion. Well, they take them all, the talented people, and lock them away in a closed space. And they coddle them. And they don't know anything about life. And that's why they have no compassion for people. . .You need to be a person first of all. And only then a scientist."
The Hands by John Baxter - Creepy SF dealing with bodily takeover: "No thought had any real permanence. They were all vague and shadowy. He felt nothing sharply, with real emotion. He seemed always to be watching pictures of thoughts rather than the thoughts themselves."
...
"Repent, Harlequin!" Said the Tictockman by Harlan Ellison - a great story about one man's nonviolent attempts at disrupting authority: "...you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs, and in every revolution a few die who shouldn't, but they have to, because that's the way it happens, and if you make only a little change, then it seems to be worthwhile."
Nine Hundred Grandmothers by R.A. Lafferty - "If they die, they not be here to say they do not die. Oh, I joke, I joke. No, we do not die. It is a foolish alien custom which we see no reason to imitate."
...
When it Changed by Joanna Russ - Men come to Themyscira and they aren't Chris Pine. "Where are all the people?" said that monomaniac.
I realized then that he did not mean people, he meant men, and he was giving the word the meaning it had not had on Whileaway for six centuries."
And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill's Side by James Tiptree Jr. - The biological imperative to seek out the new and the exotic becomes untenable and destructive when it comes to relations between humans and aliens.
Where Two Paths Cross by Dmitri Bilenkin - A really interesting contact story where the humans and aliens are each completely beyond the initial understanding and experience of the other. I read Semiosis by Sue Burke shortly after this story and it made for a great pairing.
Standing Woman by Yasutaka Tsutsui - a very creepy dystopian where government dissenters and troublemakers aren't killed, but planted and slowly turn into trees. Tsutsui also wrote the novel upon which the very interesting anime film, The Girl Who Leaped Through Time, was based.
The IWM 1000 by Alicia Yanez Cossio - Imagine having a device at your fingertips that could supply any knowledge required: "Its operation was so simple that children spent time playing with it. It was an extension of the human brain. Many people would not be separated from it even during the most personal, intimate acts."
The House of Compassionate Sharers by Michael Bishop - interesting and clever idea, but so sad and depressing to read too.
Sporting with the Chid by Barrington J. Bayley - Tightly written and no less dark and creepy for the inevitable ending: "And life, he remembered dimly, was worth hanging on to at any cost."
Sandkings by George R.R. Martin - Excellent SF horror by a master writer. It's easy to see why this won both the Hugo and the Nebula in 1979.
Wives by Lisa Tuttle - feminist and anti-colonialist, this was utterly depressing and more impactful than Joanna Russ' story, When it Changed.
The Snake Who Had Read Chomsky by Josephine Saxton - lab scientists seeking glory and social status turn on each other with predictably disastrous results. A nicely written and well-developed story.
Reiko's Universe Box by Kajio Shinji - A really tidy little story that I liked quite a bit except for the very end, which felt a bit...incomplete somehow.
Swarm by Bruce Sterling - a great, complete-feeling story, with a fantastic organic setting that reminded me of Kameron Hurley's books.
...
Bloodchild by Octavia Butler - in a masterful combination of the sensual and the horrifying, Butler demonstrates she can write excellent short stories as well as novels. One of the best selections in the book.
Variation on a Man by Pat Cadigan - I didn't completely understand what happened, but I liked the writing. If we prize our illusions, we are even that much more jealous of our delusions because they're so patently untrue.
Passing as a Flower in the City of the Dead by S.N. Dyer - I suppose this story is about the decay of relationship in a new environment and dramatic life changes. Not much more to say about the story although I did like the writing itself.
New Rose Hotel by William Gibson - Hmmm. I didn't like this much. I wasn't a fan of the use of second person here. It made the story feel even more vague.
Pots by C.J. Cherryh - Sort of the opposite problem that I had with the story by S.N. Dyer. I liked the idea here but not the way it was written. It didn't feel tight enough to me, although that really is a matter of taste.
Snow by John Crowley - A story about the nature of memory. In this case, rediscovering something you didn't know you lost and then seeing it disappear again.
The Lake Was Full of Artificial Things by Karen Joy Fowler - Another story about memory, this time constructs of events that never happened. I liked this one a lot. It read a bit like an episode of Black Mirror.
**Review continued in comments**
The Star by H.G. Wells -"...how small the vastest of human catastrophes may seem, at a distance of a few million miles."
Sultana's Dream by Rokheya Shekhawat Hossain -"You have neglected the duty you owe to yourselves and you have lost your natural rights by shutting your eyes to your own interests."
The Triumph of Mechanics by Karl Hans Strobl - apparently Strobl spent a good portion of his career producing pro-Nazi propaganda.
The New Overworld by Paul Scheerbart - fur covered turtles learn to live happily together on Venus. Not sure about much more than that.
Elements of Pataphysics by Alfred Jarry - Hmmm...no idea.
Mechanopolis by Miguel de Unamuno - My favourite story so far! "My loneliness began to be filled with ghosts. That is the worst thing about loneliness, how easily it becomes filled."
The Doom of Principal City by Yefim Zozulya -"Bitter confusion and spiritual devastation were universal now. Even serious-minded and governmental newspapers started dedicating a lot of space to personal polemics that were not free of spiteful accusations, vindictive attacks, and intent to offend and humiliate rather than establish the truth."
The Comet by W.E.B. DuBois - Distinctions of race and class mean little without a world full of people to perpetuate them.
The Fate of the Poseidonia by Clare Winger Harris -"How little we then realized that the relative importance of gold and water was destined to be reversed, and that man was to have forced upon him a new conception of values which would bring to him a complete realization of his former erroneous ideas."
The Star Stealers by Edmond Hamilton - I was happily surprised to see that the pilot was a woman who fought alongside the men...up until the end when she seeks a beauty parlour as her only reward for helping to save the world from sure destruction.
The Conquest of Gola by Leslie F. Stone - The matriarchy of Venus crushes the invasion of their planet by the weakling men of Earth using the superior power of their minds!
A Martian Odyssey by Stanley G. Weinbaum - Finally the SF short story evolves to include more intricate worldbuilding in the development of a variety of well described alien species.
The Last Poet and the Robots by A. Merritt - "Now and then, out of the sea of lunatic mediocrity, a wave uplifted that beheld for a moment a light from the sun of truth-but soon it sank back and the light was gone. Quenched in the sea of stupidity."
The Microscopic Giants by Paul Ernst - Written in 1936, this is the first story where the writing style, to me, has the feel of a more modern SF thriller. "Cold anger shone from the soulless eyes. Chill outrage, such as might shine from the eyes of a man whose home has been invaded. The little men palpably considered us trespassers in these depths, and were glacially infuriated by our presence."
Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius by Jorge Luis Borges - The collective consciousness of the world is changed by means of a book."[A]lready a fictitious past has supplanted in men's memories that other past, of which we now know nothing certain--not even that it is false."
Desertion by Clifford D. Simak - Altering humans to survive the off-world environment! This story was much more to my taste than anything we have read up to now. "Maybe the brains of Earth things naturally are slow and foggy. Maybe we are the morons of the universe. Maybe we are fixed so we have to do things the hard way."
September 2005: The Martian by Ray Bradbury - This story has an enduring quality representative of Bradbury's writing generally. "Who is this, he thought, in need of love as much as we? Who is he and what is he that, out of loneliness, he comes into the alien camp and assumes the voice and face of memory and stands among us, accepted and happy at last?"
Baby HP by Juan Jose Arreola - "To the Lady of the House: Convert your children’s vitality into an energy force. We now have on sale the marvelous Baby HP, a device that is set to revolutionize the domestic economy."
Surface Tension by James Blish - An excellent story about humans altered to microscopic size and adapted for an aquatic environment, yet still retain the desire to explore "space" and travel to "other worlds." "Come, my friend; join me at my table. We will plan our journey to the stars."
Beyond Lies the Wub by Philip K. Dick - I always like Dick's short stories, and this is no exception. A short, clear, and wonderfully self-contained story.
The Snowball Effect by Katherine McLean - This is an interesting story about what happens when people conducting an experiment forget about the inherent unpredictability of social systems. MacLean is a writer I hadn't heard of before, and I found her style very readable.
Prott by Margaret St. Clair - In the introductory notes to this story the editors describe it as "one of the most original collected in this anthology." Reading this story I can see the genesis of Jeff VanderMeer's own brilliantly creative and original book, Annihilation.
The Liberation of Earth by William Tenn - Deeply political and therefore controversial in its time, this 1953 tale makes it clear that the "liberated" are the last thing so-called liberators actually care about.
Let Me Live in a House by Chad Oliver - A tightly written and tense psychological story; probably my favourite in the collection so far. "Starburn leaves scars on the soul. Some men could not give up. Some men knew that man could not turn back. Starburned men knew that dreams never really die."
The Star by Arthur C. Clarke - An example of how humans can't help but try to integrate the new and unknown into existing narrative.
Grandpa by James H. Schmitz - Relying on policy and regulations rather than observation and common sense can get you killed.
The Game of Rat and Dragon by Cordwainer Smith - "Only partners could fight this deadliest of wars--and the one way to dissolve the partnership was to be personally dissolved!"
The Last Question by Isaac Asimov - Everything truly does come full circle.
Stranger Station by Damon Knight - to be honest I'm not exactly sure what happened at the end there, but I know it wasn't good.
Sector General by James White - a very interesting and readable space hospital story. I was sorry when the end came!
The Visitors by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky - "Imagine yourself in the bowels of an alien spaceship, surrounded by unliving mechanisms, imagine yourself flying over an icy desert--without any hope, unsure where you are going--flying for days, months, maybe even years, imagine all of this and you can see what I'm thinking." A great premise that never played out in the execution.
Pelt by Carol Emshwiller - A kind of creepy environmental story where it becomes clear that the distinction between "furs" and hunter is somewhat murky.
The Monster by Gérard Klein - Quietly chilling and exquisitely written. "A memory came suddenly into her mind. A sentence read or heard, an idea harvested and stored away, to be milled and tasted now. It was something like this: men are nothing but empty shells, sometimes cold and deserted like abandoned houses, and sometimes inhabited, haunted by the beings we call life, jealousy, joy, fear, hope, and so many others. Then there was no more loneliness."
The Man Who Lost the Sea by Theodore Sturgeon - "For no farmer who fingers the soil with love and knowledge, no poet who sings of it, artist, contractor, engineer, even child bursting into tears at the inexpressible beauty of a field of daffodils--none of these is as intimate with Earth as those who live on, live with, breathe, and drift in its seas."
The Waves by Silvina Ocampo - "Science" can always be used to justify "progress." "But there is always someone who tells the truth, and if the truth sets some people free, then it condemns others."
Plenitude by Will Worthington - A father and son confront their family's choices in a tale that could easily be the inspiration for some elements of The Matrix. "You look for ugliness and senselessness. It is that simple. Look for places that have been overlaid with mortar so that nothing can grow or change at its will. Look for things which have been fashioned at great expense of time and energy and then discarded."
The Voices of Time by J.G. Ballard - Not for me. Pondering and philosophical without much structured plot and not really even enjoyable in terms of writing style.
The Astronaut by Valentina Zhuravlyova - a moving and wistful account of the actions of a crew on a mission of exploration. "I enjoy...no, I have a love, a great love for Earth, for life on Earth, for the people who live there."
The Squid Chooses Its Own Ink by Adolfo Bioy Casaeres - political critique observing the failed and dangerous state of those in power and and lamenting the lack of will most people ultimately possess to effect real change.
2BR02B by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. - a typically grim tale about population control. "The painter pondered the mournful puzzle of life demanding to be born and, once born, demanding to be fruitful...to multiply and to live as long as possible--to do all that on a very small planet that would have to last forever."
A Modest Genius by Vadim Shefner -a wonderful story about an underappreciated inventor and the love that finds its way to him.
Day of Wrath by Sever Gansovsky - intelligent story with a focus on biotech experimentation and the aftermath that is left to the ordinary person to live with. A critique of the danger of intelligence untempered by compassion. Well, they take them all, the talented people, and lock them away in a closed space. And they coddle them. And they don't know anything about life. And that's why they have no compassion for people. . .You need to be a person first of all. And only then a scientist."
The Hands by John Baxter - Creepy SF dealing with bodily takeover: "No thought had any real permanence. They were all vague and shadowy. He felt nothing sharply, with real emotion. He seemed always to be watching pictures of thoughts rather than the thoughts themselves."
...
"Repent, Harlequin!" Said the Tictockman by Harlan Ellison - a great story about one man's nonviolent attempts at disrupting authority: "...you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs, and in every revolution a few die who shouldn't, but they have to, because that's the way it happens, and if you make only a little change, then it seems to be worthwhile."
Nine Hundred Grandmothers by R.A. Lafferty - "If they die, they not be here to say they do not die. Oh, I joke, I joke. No, we do not die. It is a foolish alien custom which we see no reason to imitate."
...
When it Changed by Joanna Russ - Men come to Themyscira and they aren't Chris Pine. "Where are all the people?" said that monomaniac.
I realized then that he did not mean people, he meant men, and he was giving the word the meaning it had not had on Whileaway for six centuries."
And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill's Side by James Tiptree Jr. - The biological imperative to seek out the new and the exotic becomes untenable and destructive when it comes to relations between humans and aliens.
Where Two Paths Cross by Dmitri Bilenkin - A really interesting contact story where the humans and aliens are each completely beyond the initial understanding and experience of the other. I read Semiosis by Sue Burke shortly after this story and it made for a great pairing.
Standing Woman by Yasutaka Tsutsui - a very creepy dystopian where government dissenters and troublemakers aren't killed, but planted and slowly turn into trees. Tsutsui also wrote the novel upon which the very interesting anime film, The Girl Who Leaped Through Time, was based.
The IWM 1000 by Alicia Yanez Cossio - Imagine having a device at your fingertips that could supply any knowledge required: "Its operation was so simple that children spent time playing with it. It was an extension of the human brain. Many people would not be separated from it even during the most personal, intimate acts."
The House of Compassionate Sharers by Michael Bishop - interesting and clever idea, but so sad and depressing to read too.
Sporting with the Chid by Barrington J. Bayley - Tightly written and no less dark and creepy for the inevitable ending: "And life, he remembered dimly, was worth hanging on to at any cost."
Sandkings by George R.R. Martin - Excellent SF horror by a master writer. It's easy to see why this won both the Hugo and the Nebula in 1979.
Wives by Lisa Tuttle - feminist and anti-colonialist, this was utterly depressing and more impactful than Joanna Russ' story, When it Changed.
The Snake Who Had Read Chomsky by Josephine Saxton - lab scientists seeking glory and social status turn on each other with predictably disastrous results. A nicely written and well-developed story.
Reiko's Universe Box by Kajio Shinji - A really tidy little story that I liked quite a bit except for the very end, which felt a bit...incomplete somehow.
Swarm by Bruce Sterling - a great, complete-feeling story, with a fantastic organic setting that reminded me of Kameron Hurley's books.
...
Bloodchild by Octavia Butler - in a masterful combination of the sensual and the horrifying, Butler demonstrates she can write excellent short stories as well as novels. One of the best selections in the book.
Variation on a Man by Pat Cadigan - I didn't completely understand what happened, but I liked the writing. If we prize our illusions, we are even that much more jealous of our delusions because they're so patently untrue.
Passing as a Flower in the City of the Dead by S.N. Dyer - I suppose this story is about the decay of relationship in a new environment and dramatic life changes. Not much more to say about the story although I did like the writing itself.
New Rose Hotel by William Gibson - Hmmm. I didn't like this much. I wasn't a fan of the use of second person here. It made the story feel even more vague.
Pots by C.J. Cherryh - Sort of the opposite problem that I had with the story by S.N. Dyer. I liked the idea here but not the way it was written. It didn't feel tight enough to me, although that really is a matter of taste.
Snow by John Crowley - A story about the nature of memory. In this case, rediscovering something you didn't know you lost and then seeing it disappear again.
The Lake Was Full of Artificial Things by Karen Joy Fowler - Another story about memory, this time constructs of events that never happened. I liked this one a lot. It read a bit like an episode of Black Mirror.
**Review continued in comments**
June 22, 2024
A kind of offhand review of the actual book
No one is going to prosecute Ann and Jeff Vandermeer under the Trade Descriptions Act – their book is big all right, and there’s an awful lot of science fiction in it. They make a point of including translated stories – I counted 22 of those, way more than most giant sf anthologies. The time span goes all the way from HG Wells in 1897 to Johanna Sinisalo in 2002. There are of course a number of total bangers in here, which fans will already know, that’s inevitable, people who do huge (this book is huge) anthologies must have endless fights about whether an important story has been reprinted too many times already or whether their anthology will have a gaping wound in its side if it isn’t included. As usual with these chronological collections I enjoyed the first three quarters way more than the last quarter, and once again I groaned at how much science fiction is stuffed with smirky sardonic comedy writing. If I was the anthologist rule number one would be No Funny Stories. They are so not funny.
followed by some list of favourite sf stories I added here years ago, I'm sure there must have been a good reason at the time
The Next 58
Following on from
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
****
1968 (continued)
The Dance of the Changer and the Three : Terry Carr
Going Down Smooth : Robert Silverberg
The Comsat Angels : J G Ballard
1969
"Franz Kafka" by Jorge Luis Borges : Alvin Greenberg
The Holland of the Mind : Pamela Zoline
Sundance : Robert Silverberg
1970
Heresies of the Huge God : Brian W Aldiss
The Worm that Flies : Brian W Aldiss
Where No Sun Shines : Gardner Dozois
1971
The Sliced-Crosswise Only-on-Thursday World : Philip Jose Farmer
1972
Ozymandias : Terry Carr
The Milk of Paradise : James M Tiptree, Jr
The Head and the Hand : Christopher Priest
When we Went to See the End of the World : Robert Silverberg
The Meeting : Frederick Pohl and C M Kornbluth
1974
The Last Flight of Dr Ain : James M Tiptree, Jr
1975
The Air Disaster : J G Ballard
1976
I See You : Damon Knight
Tricentennial : Joe Haldeman
1977
If this is Winnetka, you must be Judy : F M Busby
Air Raid : John Varley
The Screwfly Solution : James M Tiptree, Jr
Particle Theory : Edward Bryant
1981
The Start of the End of it All : Carol Emshwiller
1982
Fire Watch : Connie Willis
Swarm : Bruce Sterling
1983
Hardfought : Greg Bear
1985
Snow : John Crowley
All my Darling Daughters : Connie Willis
Roadside Rescue : Pat Cadigan
1986
Hatrack River : Orson Scott Card
R&R : Lucius Shepherd
Note : these two long stories (awright, novelettes) are wonderful examples of how the new sf writers of the 1980s found that magical thing all the critics said sf never had : style. The writing is gorgeous, never mind the ideas, which are also.
1987
At the Cross-Time Jaunters' Ball : Alexander Jablokov
1990
Bears Discover Fire : Terry Bisson
Mr Boy : Patrick Kelly
1991
Beggars in Spain : Nancy Kress
1993
Papa : Ian McLeod
1994
Flowering Mandrake : George Turner
Cocoon : Greg Egan
Seven Views of Olduvai Gorge : Mike Resnick
None so Blind : Joe Haldeman
1995
Hot Times in Magma City : Silverberg
Judgement Engine : Greg Bear
We were out of our Minds with Joy : David Marusek
Mortimer Gray's "History of Death" : Brian Stableford
1996
The Dead : Michael Swanwick
The Flowers of Aulit Prison : Nancy Kress
Bicycle Repairman : Bruce Sterling
1997
Moon Six : Stephen Baxter
1998
Taklamakan : Bruce Sterling
1999
The Wedding Album : David Marusek
Macs : Terry Bisson
People Came from Earth : Stephen Baxter
2000
Tendeleo's Story : Ian Macdonald
The Thing about Benny : M Shayne Bell
2002
In Paradise : Bruce Sterling
2004
The People of Sand and Slag : Paolo Bacigalupi
Note : it may be observed that the selections trickle to a halt after the year 2000 – this is because I have a giant heap of Dozois and other anthologies that I have not got round to yet.
2010
Ant Colony : Alissa Nutting
******
As with the first 100 list - which ones are missing ??
No one is going to prosecute Ann and Jeff Vandermeer under the Trade Descriptions Act – their book is big all right, and there’s an awful lot of science fiction in it. They make a point of including translated stories – I counted 22 of those, way more than most giant sf anthologies. The time span goes all the way from HG Wells in 1897 to Johanna Sinisalo in 2002. There are of course a number of total bangers in here, which fans will already know, that’s inevitable, people who do huge (this book is huge) anthologies must have endless fights about whether an important story has been reprinted too many times already or whether their anthology will have a gaping wound in its side if it isn’t included. As usual with these chronological collections I enjoyed the first three quarters way more than the last quarter, and once again I groaned at how much science fiction is stuffed with smirky sardonic comedy writing. If I was the anthologist rule number one would be No Funny Stories. They are so not funny.
followed by some list of favourite sf stories I added here years ago, I'm sure there must have been a good reason at the time
The Next 58
Following on from
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
****
1968 (continued)
The Dance of the Changer and the Three : Terry Carr
Going Down Smooth : Robert Silverberg
The Comsat Angels : J G Ballard
1969
"Franz Kafka" by Jorge Luis Borges : Alvin Greenberg
The Holland of the Mind : Pamela Zoline
Sundance : Robert Silverberg
1970
Heresies of the Huge God : Brian W Aldiss
The Worm that Flies : Brian W Aldiss
Where No Sun Shines : Gardner Dozois
1971
The Sliced-Crosswise Only-on-Thursday World : Philip Jose Farmer
1972
Ozymandias : Terry Carr
The Milk of Paradise : James M Tiptree, Jr
The Head and the Hand : Christopher Priest
When we Went to See the End of the World : Robert Silverberg
The Meeting : Frederick Pohl and C M Kornbluth
1974
The Last Flight of Dr Ain : James M Tiptree, Jr
1975
The Air Disaster : J G Ballard
1976
I See You : Damon Knight
Tricentennial : Joe Haldeman
1977
If this is Winnetka, you must be Judy : F M Busby
Air Raid : John Varley
The Screwfly Solution : James M Tiptree, Jr
Particle Theory : Edward Bryant
1981
The Start of the End of it All : Carol Emshwiller
1982
Fire Watch : Connie Willis
Swarm : Bruce Sterling
1983
Hardfought : Greg Bear
1985
Snow : John Crowley
All my Darling Daughters : Connie Willis
Roadside Rescue : Pat Cadigan
1986
Hatrack River : Orson Scott Card
R&R : Lucius Shepherd
Note : these two long stories (awright, novelettes) are wonderful examples of how the new sf writers of the 1980s found that magical thing all the critics said sf never had : style. The writing is gorgeous, never mind the ideas, which are also.
1987
At the Cross-Time Jaunters' Ball : Alexander Jablokov
1990
Bears Discover Fire : Terry Bisson
Mr Boy : Patrick Kelly
1991
Beggars in Spain : Nancy Kress
1993
Papa : Ian McLeod
1994
Flowering Mandrake : George Turner
Cocoon : Greg Egan
Seven Views of Olduvai Gorge : Mike Resnick
None so Blind : Joe Haldeman
1995
Hot Times in Magma City : Silverberg
Judgement Engine : Greg Bear
We were out of our Minds with Joy : David Marusek
Mortimer Gray's "History of Death" : Brian Stableford
1996
The Dead : Michael Swanwick
The Flowers of Aulit Prison : Nancy Kress
Bicycle Repairman : Bruce Sterling
1997
Moon Six : Stephen Baxter
1998
Taklamakan : Bruce Sterling
1999
The Wedding Album : David Marusek
Macs : Terry Bisson
People Came from Earth : Stephen Baxter
2000
Tendeleo's Story : Ian Macdonald
The Thing about Benny : M Shayne Bell
2002
In Paradise : Bruce Sterling
2004
The People of Sand and Slag : Paolo Bacigalupi
Note : it may be observed that the selections trickle to a halt after the year 2000 – this is because I have a giant heap of Dozois and other anthologies that I have not got round to yet.
2010
Ant Colony : Alissa Nutting
******
As with the first 100 list - which ones are missing ??
January 3, 2019
I HAVE FINISHED THIS BIG GREEN BEAST!!
It's been a journey of almost two years at one story per week. Sometimes I let a few stories pile up before reading them all at once, but the overall average rate was one per week. This book is huge, like a telephone book, with telephone book-like pages, so it was a daunting project. And for someone who tends to start things with the best of intentions, but then doesn't finish for whatever reason, I am very happy that I stuck with this short story project to the end. The stories were not always great, or even good. And some of them I had no clue what they were even about. But there were several very good stories that were either pretty creepy, or else thought-provoking. Overall I had a pretty enjoyable experience with reading this book. I think what I liked best was that the stories are all in chronological order, and each one is prefaced with an author bio. And sometimes the bio was more interesting than the story. It was a great way to get a nice sampling and overview of a variety of authors in the field.
I would say for the stories themselves, the book gets a rating of 3 stars as there was quite the range of stories on the spectrum - from one to five stars. But I'm tacking on another star just because I always looked forward to see what I would be reading next. And if the story wasn't very good, at least it wasn't very long, then it was on to the next one.
******************************
Previous update:
Embarking on a beast of a buddy read. Tentative schedule - 1 story per week. 105 stories total by 105 authors are included in this book. Bonus for the way my brain works - the stories are organized in chronological order and encompass the 20th century. I appreciate the page before each story which describes the author's background and mentions longer works to consider.
One story down, "The Star" by H.G. Wells, 104 to go.
It's been a journey of almost two years at one story per week. Sometimes I let a few stories pile up before reading them all at once, but the overall average rate was one per week. This book is huge, like a telephone book, with telephone book-like pages, so it was a daunting project. And for someone who tends to start things with the best of intentions, but then doesn't finish for whatever reason, I am very happy that I stuck with this short story project to the end. The stories were not always great, or even good. And some of them I had no clue what they were even about. But there were several very good stories that were either pretty creepy, or else thought-provoking. Overall I had a pretty enjoyable experience with reading this book. I think what I liked best was that the stories are all in chronological order, and each one is prefaced with an author bio. And sometimes the bio was more interesting than the story. It was a great way to get a nice sampling and overview of a variety of authors in the field.
I would say for the stories themselves, the book gets a rating of 3 stars as there was quite the range of stories on the spectrum - from one to five stars. But I'm tacking on another star just because I always looked forward to see what I would be reading next. And if the story wasn't very good, at least it wasn't very long, then it was on to the next one.
******************************
Previous update:
Embarking on a beast of a buddy read. Tentative schedule - 1 story per week. 105 stories total by 105 authors are included in this book. Bonus for the way my brain works - the stories are organized in chronological order and encompass the 20th century. I appreciate the page before each story which describes the author's background and mentions longer works to consider.
One story down, "The Star" by H.G. Wells, 104 to go.
on-hold
July 17, 2016How do you read an anthology? I always buy them and they sit on my shelf. Well I started a few stories from the end and read forward, and at some point will pick another starting point. I'll write tiny reviews of the stories when I finish them. I didn't want to retype the table of contents, but this one is alphabetical by author last name rather than in the order the book has them. Behind a spoiler tag for space.
August 27, 2020
After reading the introduction by the editors, Holy Crap am I excited for this anthology. The VanderMeers have got to be the most well-read SF goons on the face of the planet. They appreciate the entirety of the genre, with a breadth that even a lifelong fan like myself hardly knew existed. This is gonna be good.
One year, four months later…
OMG I finished it. That was a fantastic anthology, and it was a monster. 105 stories by 104 authors (William Tenn sneaks in twice). 100 years of stories from all over the globe, representing almost every sub-genre and style imaginable. There are a few inevitable omissions: Heinlein and Herbert are missing, probably due to rights issues, but there’s plenty of skiffy goodness to fill in the gaps. Odder still is the lack of time travel; I’d have thought that was a science fiction staple but unless I’m forgetting something it isn’t touched on in this volume.
Mere quibbles! Here’s the good stuff:
An International Sampler
Science Fiction isn’t just an English language phenomenon (uh… Jules Verne, anyone?) and the editors make it a point to showcase the richness and diversity of ideas from around the world. The second story in the volume, “Sultana’s Dream”, is from a turn-of-the-19th Century Bengali feminist writer. I particularly enjoyed the French author Gérard Klein’s story “The Monster” and modern Chinese star Cixin Liu’s “The Poetry Cloud.” Statistically among the international contingent there seems to be a plethora of Argentinian and Russian SF authors. The Argentinians didn’t grab me – too philosophical and didactic – but I love the Russians for their dry, bleak wit.
Hitchhiking the Galaxy
Space travel and exploring other planets? Check. In this humble fan’s opinion, flying around in spaceships and visiting alien worlds is what SF is for. Everything else is just extra. This book’s got plenty of what I like, whether from authors who ignore the cosmic speed limit or those who embrace it, such as Ursula Le Guin, who examines what kind of dysfunctional personalities it would take to leave Earth for hundreds of years in the sublime “Vaster Than Empires and More Slow.” On the other end of the spectrum is the rip-roaring early space opera of Edmond Hamilton’s “The Star Stealers.” Which leads us to what is by far the overriding theme in this collection:
Shaking Hands (and Brains) with Little Green Men
You could easily lump three quarters of this volume into the category “Encountering the Alien” and still not feel that the stories repeat themselves. Whether the aliens come to Earth or we encroach their territory, it’s fascinating to watch the shift in how authors tackle the meeting of human and non-human minds. In the early days it’s either combative Wellsian invasions or unintentionally destructive encounters, such as Ray Bradbury’s tragic “September 2005: The Martian.” A few authors go Full Lovecraft and propose that encountering a truly alien mind would lead to madness, such as in Chad Oliver’s “Let Me Live In a House” or Damon Knight’s “Stranger Station.” I really, really wish I could go back in time and get these authors to read Ted Chiang’s bittersweet mind-bending “Story of Your Life”, which is included toward the end of the collection.
A turning point seems to be James White’s “Sector General,” set in a multi-species intergalactic hospital where all patients are welcomed and treated regardless of how many appendages they have or what they breathe. From there on there is a trend in stories in which contact with aliens is, while still fraught with missteps and danger, a potentially enlightening encounter and broadening on both sides. This comes to full expression with Cory Doctorow’s wonderful “Craphound” in which man and alien come together over a shared love of kitschy memorabilia.
Pick a Future, Any Future
Utopias and Dystopias abound, although Utopian fiction seems to have had its heyday in the early part of the 20th century, before those pesky World Wars and the accompanying atom bombs. After that, there are plenty of examinations of humanity’s possible “failure modes” (as David Brin would put it). Nuclear annihilation was the planetary death of choice for most of the twentieth century, but there is a definite shift toward environmental and sociological collapse toward the later parts of the collection. The only modern author (outside of Gene Roddenberry) with the gall to imagine a working utopia is Iain M. Banks, represented here in “A Gift From the Culture,” though he focuses a lot on the non-Utopian fringe of his perfect society more than the society itself.
Machines Will Save Us / Eat Us All
At its core, SF has always been a literature about the advance of technology and the effect that technology might have on society for good or ill. In “Good News From the Vatican,” Robert Silverberg snarkily presents the A.I. takeover of the theocratic realm, while in “Death Is Static Death Is Movement” Misha Nogha dives headfirst into the cyberpunk realm of human/machine interfaces that blur the very concepts of reality and identity. In “The Hall of Machines” Langdon Jones turns a catalog of mysterious creations into a creepshow more nightmare-inducing than any haunted house. SF’s patron saint Isaac Asimov, however, gets the last word on the long term benefit of artificial intelligence in his classic “The Last Question.”
All Good Things
Science Fiction is also about taking the Deep View, as Asimov does in his above mentioned story. It’s a field that will take an idea to its logical and inevitable end, right up to the end of all things. J.G. Ballard’s “The Voices of Time” brings the slow, grinding death of the universe into the immediate present, while the death of civilizations is examined from afar in C. J. Cherryh’s “Pots” and Arthur Clarke’s “The Star” (which, btw, may be my favorite SF short story ever).
I could go on for days. Originally I tried to review each individual story as I finished it, but the Goodreads word count limit would never let me get away with that. Still, before I go, shout-outs to Harlan Ellison, Michael Moorcock, Connie Willis, Theodore Sturgeon, Kurt Vonnegut, Stanley G. Weinbaum, James Blish, Cordwainer Smith, and the incomparable Gene Wolfe. And many, many thanks to the Vandermeers for putting this Bible of SF together.
I don’t care how thick it is, dammit. READ IT!
One year, four months later…
OMG I finished it. That was a fantastic anthology, and it was a monster. 105 stories by 104 authors (William Tenn sneaks in twice). 100 years of stories from all over the globe, representing almost every sub-genre and style imaginable. There are a few inevitable omissions: Heinlein and Herbert are missing, probably due to rights issues, but there’s plenty of skiffy goodness to fill in the gaps. Odder still is the lack of time travel; I’d have thought that was a science fiction staple but unless I’m forgetting something it isn’t touched on in this volume.
Mere quibbles! Here’s the good stuff:
An International Sampler
Science Fiction isn’t just an English language phenomenon (uh… Jules Verne, anyone?) and the editors make it a point to showcase the richness and diversity of ideas from around the world. The second story in the volume, “Sultana’s Dream”, is from a turn-of-the-19th Century Bengali feminist writer. I particularly enjoyed the French author Gérard Klein’s story “The Monster” and modern Chinese star Cixin Liu’s “The Poetry Cloud.” Statistically among the international contingent there seems to be a plethora of Argentinian and Russian SF authors. The Argentinians didn’t grab me – too philosophical and didactic – but I love the Russians for their dry, bleak wit.
Hitchhiking the Galaxy
Space travel and exploring other planets? Check. In this humble fan’s opinion, flying around in spaceships and visiting alien worlds is what SF is for. Everything else is just extra. This book’s got plenty of what I like, whether from authors who ignore the cosmic speed limit or those who embrace it, such as Ursula Le Guin, who examines what kind of dysfunctional personalities it would take to leave Earth for hundreds of years in the sublime “Vaster Than Empires and More Slow.” On the other end of the spectrum is the rip-roaring early space opera of Edmond Hamilton’s “The Star Stealers.” Which leads us to what is by far the overriding theme in this collection:
Shaking Hands (and Brains) with Little Green Men
You could easily lump three quarters of this volume into the category “Encountering the Alien” and still not feel that the stories repeat themselves. Whether the aliens come to Earth or we encroach their territory, it’s fascinating to watch the shift in how authors tackle the meeting of human and non-human minds. In the early days it’s either combative Wellsian invasions or unintentionally destructive encounters, such as Ray Bradbury’s tragic “September 2005: The Martian.” A few authors go Full Lovecraft and propose that encountering a truly alien mind would lead to madness, such as in Chad Oliver’s “Let Me Live In a House” or Damon Knight’s “Stranger Station.” I really, really wish I could go back in time and get these authors to read Ted Chiang’s bittersweet mind-bending “Story of Your Life”, which is included toward the end of the collection.
A turning point seems to be James White’s “Sector General,” set in a multi-species intergalactic hospital where all patients are welcomed and treated regardless of how many appendages they have or what they breathe. From there on there is a trend in stories in which contact with aliens is, while still fraught with missteps and danger, a potentially enlightening encounter and broadening on both sides. This comes to full expression with Cory Doctorow’s wonderful “Craphound” in which man and alien come together over a shared love of kitschy memorabilia.
Pick a Future, Any Future
Utopias and Dystopias abound, although Utopian fiction seems to have had its heyday in the early part of the 20th century, before those pesky World Wars and the accompanying atom bombs. After that, there are plenty of examinations of humanity’s possible “failure modes” (as David Brin would put it). Nuclear annihilation was the planetary death of choice for most of the twentieth century, but there is a definite shift toward environmental and sociological collapse toward the later parts of the collection. The only modern author (outside of Gene Roddenberry) with the gall to imagine a working utopia is Iain M. Banks, represented here in “A Gift From the Culture,” though he focuses a lot on the non-Utopian fringe of his perfect society more than the society itself.
Machines Will Save Us / Eat Us All
At its core, SF has always been a literature about the advance of technology and the effect that technology might have on society for good or ill. In “Good News From the Vatican,” Robert Silverberg snarkily presents the A.I. takeover of the theocratic realm, while in “Death Is Static Death Is Movement” Misha Nogha dives headfirst into the cyberpunk realm of human/machine interfaces that blur the very concepts of reality and identity. In “The Hall of Machines” Langdon Jones turns a catalog of mysterious creations into a creepshow more nightmare-inducing than any haunted house. SF’s patron saint Isaac Asimov, however, gets the last word on the long term benefit of artificial intelligence in his classic “The Last Question.”
All Good Things
Science Fiction is also about taking the Deep View, as Asimov does in his above mentioned story. It’s a field that will take an idea to its logical and inevitable end, right up to the end of all things. J.G. Ballard’s “The Voices of Time” brings the slow, grinding death of the universe into the immediate present, while the death of civilizations is examined from afar in C. J. Cherryh’s “Pots” and Arthur Clarke’s “The Star” (which, btw, may be my favorite SF short story ever).
I could go on for days. Originally I tried to review each individual story as I finished it, but the Goodreads word count limit would never let me get away with that. Still, before I go, shout-outs to Harlan Ellison, Michael Moorcock, Connie Willis, Theodore Sturgeon, Kurt Vonnegut, Stanley G. Weinbaum, James Blish, Cordwainer Smith, and the incomparable Gene Wolfe. And many, many thanks to the Vandermeers for putting this Bible of SF together.
I don’t care how thick it is, dammit. READ IT!
February 1, 2019
The SpecFic Buddy Reads group read this mammoth anthology starting in January 2017 at a rate of one story per week and just finished it about a week ago in January 2019. It was a long, often frustrating, but voluminous, education on what one pair of really notable editors consider to be important waypoints from the origins of the genre to its most modern antecedents.
Along the way there are some amazing gems, Bloodchild and Story of Your Life among them, but there are also plenty of stories that would best be described as "of academic interest only", including a lot of literary experimentation. I've read the Vandermeer's stuff before, and it's very clear that their tastes in story selection match their own fiction, with quite a number of these stories stretching science fictional concepts to horror and even bizarro fiction in places.
I nearly always appreciated what I was reading through this anthology, for a look at when different science fictional concepts were showing up in fiction, and also to see some of the genre traditions of other countries. But because the editors have such a strong and obvious preference for certain bents in fiction (highbrow literature, experimental fiction, horror), I never got an impression of a chronicle of science fiction as such, but much more of a "this is what we think was important" list.
And ultimately, other than academic interest, I simply don't share much of the tastes of the Vandermeers in this realm, and I probably only enjoyed (rather than appreciated) one story in three in this anthology. I'm still glad I read it though.
Along the way there are some amazing gems, Bloodchild and Story of Your Life among them, but there are also plenty of stories that would best be described as "of academic interest only", including a lot of literary experimentation. I've read the Vandermeer's stuff before, and it's very clear that their tastes in story selection match their own fiction, with quite a number of these stories stretching science fictional concepts to horror and even bizarro fiction in places.
I nearly always appreciated what I was reading through this anthology, for a look at when different science fictional concepts were showing up in fiction, and also to see some of the genre traditions of other countries. But because the editors have such a strong and obvious preference for certain bents in fiction (highbrow literature, experimental fiction, horror), I never got an impression of a chronicle of science fiction as such, but much more of a "this is what we think was important" list.
And ultimately, other than academic interest, I simply don't share much of the tastes of the Vandermeers in this realm, and I probably only enjoyed (rather than appreciated) one story in three in this anthology. I'm still glad I read it though.
Read
February 26, 2025This collection has 105 SF stories, spanning twelve hundred pages. I'll update the review as I complete the stories.
1897
The Star - H.G. Wells - 5
The Earth narrowly avoids a collision with an itinerant star, but an apocalypse happens anyway. Language is a bit convoluted in places; not entirely astronomically sound. But riveting and beautiful nonetheless. Reminiscent of TWotW and climate change.
1905
Sultana's Dream - Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain - 3
Utopian vision of reversing the gender segregation of the purdah. In Ladyland, men live in domestic isolation, while women take on the roles that at this story's time were exclusively men's. Exploration of how technology makes this flip possible. There's no story here per se, just a description of the feminist utopia.
1907
The Triumph of Mechanics - 4
Toy Story 5: Rise of the Adorable Nightmare. Critique of giving power to a technocrat who creates seemingly benevolent tech. Easy read with a twist you'll see coming.
1911
The New Overworld - Paul Scheerbart - 2
Venus has a ballooning population problem that they solve (kind of) with hot air balloons. Elements of weird fiction; awkwardly written with myriad plot holes. Possibly satire, but I lack the context. Enjoyed the furry turtles.
Elements of Pataphysics - Alfred Jarry
A conte philosophique that doesn't even pretend to not be a philosophy textbook. Someone who is as contre philosophie as me can only get through it via hate-reading. Best for those who enjoy formal philosophy.
1913
Mechanopolis - Miguel de Unamuno - 3
A luddite's fever dream about an AI city with no humans. More an idea than a story. We've heard the idea many times in better form by now.
1918
The Doom of Principal City - Yefim Zozulya - 4
A city descends into self-destructing chaos in response to being conquered by people who want to build their own new city right above the existing one in order to avoid destruction. Some amazing images here, like citizens shooting canons at soap and cocoa ads that are projected into their sky, and enemy planes dropping bouquets of flowers on the conquered city.
1920
The Comet - W. E. B. Du Bois - 5
An apocalypse befalls New York and leaves racial barriers and prejudice in the dust. Or does it? My favorite story so far. Some clunky writing - I've never seen so many exclamation points - but some of the most vivid and beautiful, too.
1927
The Fate of the Poseidonia - Clare Winger Harris - 1
Martian invasion story. The intro mentions that it discusses the fear of technology and loss of privacy. Unfortunately, the openly racial descriptions (far from unusual for the time) of the Martians were so distracting for me that I couldn't for the life of me concentrate on the rest of the story after one particular comment about intellect.
1929
The Star Stealers - Edmond Hamilton - 2
A black hole flying through the Milky Way is on course to fling the solar system out of the galaxy. A spaceship fleet is tasked with rescuing the Sun and its planets from this (apparently catastrophic, though I couldn't tell you why) fate. This is a case where an astrophysics background makes it quite hard to enjoy the story because of how ridiculous the science is. Includes aliens that possibly inspired Cthulhu's anatomy.
---------------------
In-progress review stats
---------------------
Mean rating ----- 3.22
Median rating --- 3
Stories read ----- 10/105 (9.5%)
Pages read ------ 128/1191 (10.7%)
Audio equivalent - 9.5/94 hours
1897
The Star - H.G. Wells - 5
The Earth narrowly avoids a collision with an itinerant star, but an apocalypse happens anyway. Language is a bit convoluted in places; not entirely astronomically sound. But riveting and beautiful nonetheless. Reminiscent of TWotW and climate change.
1905
Sultana's Dream - Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain - 3
Utopian vision of reversing the gender segregation of the purdah. In Ladyland, men live in domestic isolation, while women take on the roles that at this story's time were exclusively men's. Exploration of how technology makes this flip possible. There's no story here per se, just a description of the feminist utopia.
1907
The Triumph of Mechanics - 4
Toy Story 5: Rise of the Adorable Nightmare. Critique of giving power to a technocrat who creates seemingly benevolent tech. Easy read with a twist you'll see coming.
1911
The New Overworld - Paul Scheerbart - 2
Venus has a ballooning population problem that they solve (kind of) with hot air balloons. Elements of weird fiction; awkwardly written with myriad plot holes. Possibly satire, but I lack the context. Enjoyed the furry turtles.
Elements of Pataphysics - Alfred Jarry
A conte philosophique that doesn't even pretend to not be a philosophy textbook. Someone who is as contre philosophie as me can only get through it via hate-reading. Best for those who enjoy formal philosophy.
1913
Mechanopolis - Miguel de Unamuno - 3
A luddite's fever dream about an AI city with no humans. More an idea than a story. We've heard the idea many times in better form by now.
1918
The Doom of Principal City - Yefim Zozulya - 4
A city descends into self-destructing chaos in response to being conquered by people who want to build their own new city right above the existing one in order to avoid destruction. Some amazing images here, like citizens shooting canons at soap and cocoa ads that are projected into their sky, and enemy planes dropping bouquets of flowers on the conquered city.
1920
The Comet - W. E. B. Du Bois - 5
An apocalypse befalls New York and leaves racial barriers and prejudice in the dust. Or does it? My favorite story so far. Some clunky writing - I've never seen so many exclamation points - but some of the most vivid and beautiful, too.
1927
The Fate of the Poseidonia - Clare Winger Harris - 1
Martian invasion story. The intro mentions that it discusses the fear of technology and loss of privacy. Unfortunately, the openly racial descriptions (far from unusual for the time) of the Martians were so distracting for me that I couldn't for the life of me concentrate on the rest of the story after one particular comment about intellect.
1929
The Star Stealers - Edmond Hamilton - 2
A black hole flying through the Milky Way is on course to fling the solar system out of the galaxy. A spaceship fleet is tasked with rescuing the Sun and its planets from this (apparently catastrophic, though I couldn't tell you why) fate. This is a case where an astrophysics background makes it quite hard to enjoy the story because of how ridiculous the science is. Includes aliens that possibly inspired Cthulhu's anatomy.
---------------------
In-progress review stats
---------------------
Mean rating ----- 3.22
Median rating --- 3
Stories read ----- 10/105 (9.5%)
Pages read ------ 128/1191 (10.7%)
Audio equivalent - 9.5/94 hours
September 14, 2017
Full disclosure: I received an ARC of this book on Goodreads giveaways in exchange for my honest opinion. Secondly, I haven't fully read the book yet. That may take me a long time to do, given the enormous size (1178 pages) of this book. Therefore, an update will be forthcoming once I finish the book.
This is an incredible anthology of science fiction. I think all of these works have been previously published, although a number of them are either newly translated into English or have been retranslated into English, so those stories will probably be new even to the most avid of science fiction readers.
It looks like the VanderMeers decided to create an anthology that is representative of all the major eras and traditions in science fiction, by including stories published over a span of more than 100 years. I'm sure some readers will flip through the book and say, "but why isn't [insert famous/important/incredible author name here] included?" but I would guess that list is fairly short. In this book, you'll find just about every major name in science fiction and some of the most famous stories in science fiction. Flipping through this book, I see a whole bunch of stories that I've wanted to read for a long time now.
The book has a nice introduction to the history of science fiction, and each story has a short biography of the author, demonstrating why that author and that story in particular are so influential. I like that, since it helps me understand how these works fit together and how they've influenced the genre.
Since I haven't seen anyone publish the table of contents anywhere and viewing that is always important to me when I consider buying an anthology, I'm listing it here for anyone who's interested. I'm always wary of buying anthologies because I might have the stories in other volumes, especially when the anthology is full of classics like this one. However, given the size of this and the relative obscurity of most of the translated works, I suggest that this is worth it if you like to collect short science fiction.
Contents:
H. G. Wells: The Star
Rokheya Shekhawat Hossain: Sultana's Dream
Karl Hans Strobl: The Triumph of Mechanics
Paul Scheerbart: The New Overworld
Alfred Jarry: Elements of Pataphysics
Miguel de Unamuno: Mechanopolis
Yefim Zozulya: The Doom of Principal City
W. E. B. Du Bois: The Comet
Clare Winger Harris: The Fate of the Poseidonia
Edmond Hamilton: The Star Stealers
Leslie F. Stone: The Conquest of Gola
Stanley G. Weinbaum: A Martian Odyssey
A. Merritt: The Last Poet and the Robots
Paul Ernst: The Microscopic Giants
Jorge Luis Borges: Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius
Clifford D. Simak: Desertion
Ray Bradbury: September 2005: The Martian
Juan Jose Arreola: Baby HP
James Blish: Surface Tension
Philip K. Dick: Beyond Lies the Wub
Katherine MacLean: The Snowball Effect
Margaret St. Clair: Prott
William Tenn: The Liberation of Earth
Chad Oliver: Let Me Live in a House
Arthur C. Clarke: The Star
James H. Schmitz: Grandpa
Cordwainer Smith: The Game of Rat and Dragon
Isaac Asimov: The Last Question
Damon Knight: Stranger Station
James White: Sector General
Arkady and Boris Strugatsky: The Visitors
Carol Emschwiller: Pelt
Gerard Klein: The Monster
Theodore Sturgeon: The Man Who Lost the Sea
Silvina Ocampo: The Waves
Will Worthington: Plenitude
J. G. Ballard: The Voices of Time
Valentina Zhuravlyova: The Astronaut
Adolfo Bioy Casares: The Squid Chooses Its Own Ink
Kurt Vonnegut Jr.: 2 B R O 2 B
Vadim Shefner: A Modest Genius
Sever Gansovsky: Day of Wrath
John Baxter: The Hands
Andre Carneiro: Darkness
Harlan Ellison: "Repent, Harlequin!" Said the Ticktockman
R. A. Lafferty: Nine Hundred Grandmothers
Frederik Pohl: Day Million
F. L. Wallace: Student Body
Samuel R. Delany: Aye, and Gomorrah
Langdon Jones: The Hall of Machines
Yoshio Aramaki: Soft Clocks
David R. Bunch: Three from Moderan
Stanislaw Lem: Let Us Save the Universe
Ursula K. Le Guin: Vaster Than Empires and More Slow
Robert Silverberg: Good News from the Vatican
Joanna Russ: When It Changed
James Tiptree Jr.: And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill's Side
Dmitri Bilenkin: Where Two Paths Cross
Yasutaka Tsutsui: Standing Woman
Alicia Yanez Cossio: The IWM 1000
Michael Bishop: The House of Compassionate Sharers
Barrington J. Bayley: Sporting with the Chid
George R. R. Martin: Sandkings
Lisa Tuttle: Wives
Josephine Saxton: The Snake Who Had Read Chomsky
Kajio Shinji: Reiko's Universe Box
Bruce Sterling: Swarm
Jacques Barberi: Mondocane
Greg Bear: Blood Music
Octavia E. Butler: Bloodchild
Pat Cadigan: Variation on a Man
S. N. Dyer: Passing as a Flower in the City of the Dead
William Gibson: New Rose Hotel
C. J. Cherryh: Pots
John Crowley: Snow
Karen Joy Fowler: The Lake Was Full of Artificial Things
Angelica Gorodischer: The Unmistakable Smell of Wood Violets
Jon Bing: The Owl of Bear Island
Elisabeth Vonarburg: Readers of the Lost Art
Iain M. Banks: A Gift from the Culture
Jean-Claude Dunyach: Paranamanco
Tanith Lee: Crying in the Rain
Michael Moorcock: The Frozen Cardinal
Pat Murphy: Rachel in Love
Manjula Padmanabhan: Sharing Air
Connie Willis: Schwarzschild Radius
Gene Wolfe: All the Hues of Hell
Geoffrey A. Landis: Vacuum States
Han Song: Two Small Birds
Rachel Pollack: Burning Sky
Kim Stanley Robinson: Before I Wake
Misha Nogha: Death Is Static Death Is Movement
Michael Blumlein: The Brains of Rats
Leena Krohn: Gorgonoids
Kojo Laing: Vacancy for the Post of Jesus Christ
Gwyneth Jones: The Universe of Things
Robert Reed: The Remoras
William Tenn: The Ghost Standard
Geoffrey Maloney: Remnants of the Virago Crypto-System
Stepan Chapman: How Alex Became a Machine
Cixin Liu: The Poetry Cloud
Ted Chiang: Story of Your Life
Cory Doctorow: Craphound
Tatyana Tolstaya: The Slynx
Johanna Sinisalo: Baby Doll
This is an incredible anthology of science fiction. I think all of these works have been previously published, although a number of them are either newly translated into English or have been retranslated into English, so those stories will probably be new even to the most avid of science fiction readers.
It looks like the VanderMeers decided to create an anthology that is representative of all the major eras and traditions in science fiction, by including stories published over a span of more than 100 years. I'm sure some readers will flip through the book and say, "but why isn't [insert famous/important/incredible author name here] included?" but I would guess that list is fairly short. In this book, you'll find just about every major name in science fiction and some of the most famous stories in science fiction. Flipping through this book, I see a whole bunch of stories that I've wanted to read for a long time now.
The book has a nice introduction to the history of science fiction, and each story has a short biography of the author, demonstrating why that author and that story in particular are so influential. I like that, since it helps me understand how these works fit together and how they've influenced the genre.
Since I haven't seen anyone publish the table of contents anywhere and viewing that is always important to me when I consider buying an anthology, I'm listing it here for anyone who's interested. I'm always wary of buying anthologies because I might have the stories in other volumes, especially when the anthology is full of classics like this one. However, given the size of this and the relative obscurity of most of the translated works, I suggest that this is worth it if you like to collect short science fiction.
Contents:
H. G. Wells: The Star
Rokheya Shekhawat Hossain: Sultana's Dream
Karl Hans Strobl: The Triumph of Mechanics
Paul Scheerbart: The New Overworld
Alfred Jarry: Elements of Pataphysics
Miguel de Unamuno: Mechanopolis
Yefim Zozulya: The Doom of Principal City
W. E. B. Du Bois: The Comet
Clare Winger Harris: The Fate of the Poseidonia
Edmond Hamilton: The Star Stealers
Leslie F. Stone: The Conquest of Gola
Stanley G. Weinbaum: A Martian Odyssey
A. Merritt: The Last Poet and the Robots
Paul Ernst: The Microscopic Giants
Jorge Luis Borges: Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius
Clifford D. Simak: Desertion
Ray Bradbury: September 2005: The Martian
Juan Jose Arreola: Baby HP
James Blish: Surface Tension
Philip K. Dick: Beyond Lies the Wub
Katherine MacLean: The Snowball Effect
Margaret St. Clair: Prott
William Tenn: The Liberation of Earth
Chad Oliver: Let Me Live in a House
Arthur C. Clarke: The Star
James H. Schmitz: Grandpa
Cordwainer Smith: The Game of Rat and Dragon
Isaac Asimov: The Last Question
Damon Knight: Stranger Station
James White: Sector General
Arkady and Boris Strugatsky: The Visitors
Carol Emschwiller: Pelt
Gerard Klein: The Monster
Theodore Sturgeon: The Man Who Lost the Sea
Silvina Ocampo: The Waves
Will Worthington: Plenitude
J. G. Ballard: The Voices of Time
Valentina Zhuravlyova: The Astronaut
Adolfo Bioy Casares: The Squid Chooses Its Own Ink
Kurt Vonnegut Jr.: 2 B R O 2 B
Vadim Shefner: A Modest Genius
Sever Gansovsky: Day of Wrath
John Baxter: The Hands
Andre Carneiro: Darkness
Harlan Ellison: "Repent, Harlequin!" Said the Ticktockman
R. A. Lafferty: Nine Hundred Grandmothers
Frederik Pohl: Day Million
F. L. Wallace: Student Body
Samuel R. Delany: Aye, and Gomorrah
Langdon Jones: The Hall of Machines
Yoshio Aramaki: Soft Clocks
David R. Bunch: Three from Moderan
Stanislaw Lem: Let Us Save the Universe
Ursula K. Le Guin: Vaster Than Empires and More Slow
Robert Silverberg: Good News from the Vatican
Joanna Russ: When It Changed
James Tiptree Jr.: And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill's Side
Dmitri Bilenkin: Where Two Paths Cross
Yasutaka Tsutsui: Standing Woman
Alicia Yanez Cossio: The IWM 1000
Michael Bishop: The House of Compassionate Sharers
Barrington J. Bayley: Sporting with the Chid
George R. R. Martin: Sandkings
Lisa Tuttle: Wives
Josephine Saxton: The Snake Who Had Read Chomsky
Kajio Shinji: Reiko's Universe Box
Bruce Sterling: Swarm
Jacques Barberi: Mondocane
Greg Bear: Blood Music
Octavia E. Butler: Bloodchild
Pat Cadigan: Variation on a Man
S. N. Dyer: Passing as a Flower in the City of the Dead
William Gibson: New Rose Hotel
C. J. Cherryh: Pots
John Crowley: Snow
Karen Joy Fowler: The Lake Was Full of Artificial Things
Angelica Gorodischer: The Unmistakable Smell of Wood Violets
Jon Bing: The Owl of Bear Island
Elisabeth Vonarburg: Readers of the Lost Art
Iain M. Banks: A Gift from the Culture
Jean-Claude Dunyach: Paranamanco
Tanith Lee: Crying in the Rain
Michael Moorcock: The Frozen Cardinal
Pat Murphy: Rachel in Love
Manjula Padmanabhan: Sharing Air
Connie Willis: Schwarzschild Radius
Gene Wolfe: All the Hues of Hell
Geoffrey A. Landis: Vacuum States
Han Song: Two Small Birds
Rachel Pollack: Burning Sky
Kim Stanley Robinson: Before I Wake
Misha Nogha: Death Is Static Death Is Movement
Michael Blumlein: The Brains of Rats
Leena Krohn: Gorgonoids
Kojo Laing: Vacancy for the Post of Jesus Christ
Gwyneth Jones: The Universe of Things
Robert Reed: The Remoras
William Tenn: The Ghost Standard
Geoffrey Maloney: Remnants of the Virago Crypto-System
Stepan Chapman: How Alex Became a Machine
Cixin Liu: The Poetry Cloud
Ted Chiang: Story of Your Life
Cory Doctorow: Craphound
Tatyana Tolstaya: The Slynx
Johanna Sinisalo: Baby Doll
Want to read
August 31, 2024Contains the stories:
The Star – H. G. Wells
Sultana’s Dream – Rokheya Shekhawat Hossein
The New Overworld – Paul Scheerbart
The Triumph of Mechanics – Karl Hans Strobl
Elements of Pataphysics – Alfred Jarry
Mechanopolis – Miguel de Unamuno
The Doom of Principal City – Yefim Zozulya
The Comet – W. E. B. Du Bois
The Fate of the Poseidonia – Clare Winger Harris
The Star Stealers – Edmond Hamilton
The Conquest of Gola – Leslie F. Stone
A Martian Odyssey – Stanley G. Weinbaum - 3/5 - an interesting early look at how humans and aliens might interact
The Last Poet and the Robots – A. Merritt
The Microscopic Giants – Paul Ernst
Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius – Jorge Luis Borges - 3/5 - a fictional, created world of subjective idealism that eventually becomes real
Desertion – Clifford D. Simak - 3/5 - one of the stories in City - this one about genetically transformed humans living on Jupiter
September 2005: The Martian – Ray Bradbury
Baby HP – Juan José Arreola
Surface Tension – James Blish - 5/5 - the results of humans seeding life on an alien world
Beyond Lies the Wub – Philip K. Dick
The Snowball Effect – Katherine MacLean
Prott – Margaret St. Clair
The Liberation of Earth – William Tenn
Let Me Live in a House – Chad Oliver
The Star – Arthur C. Clarke - 4/5 - the significance of one star
Grandpa – James H. Schmitz
The Game of Rat and Dragon – Cordwainer Smith
The Last Question – Isaac Asimov
Stranger Station – Damon Knight
Sector General by James White -
The Visitors – Arkady and Boris Strugatsky
Pelt – Carol Emshwiller
The Monster – Gérard Klein
The Man Who Lost the Sea – Theodore Sturgeon
The Waves – Silvina Ocampo
Plenitude – Will Worthington
The Voices of Time – J. G. Ballard
The Astronaut – Valentina Zhuravlyova
The Squid Chooses Its Own Ink – Adolfo Bioy Casares
2 B R 0 2 B – Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
A Modest Genius – Vadim Shefner
Day of Wrath – Sever Gansovsky
The Hands – John Baxter
Darkness – André Carneiro
“Repent, Harlequin!” Said the Ticktockman – Harlan Ellison - 4/5 - a wicked satire of modern culture emerges eventually
Nine Hundred Grandmothers – R. A. Lafferty
Day Million – Frederik Pohl
Student Body – F. L. Wallace
Aye, and Gomorrah – Samuel R. Delany
The Hall of Machines – Langdon Jones
Soft Clocks – Yoshio Aramaki
Three from Moderan – David R. Bunch
Let Us Save the Universe – Stanisław Lem
Vaster Than Empires and More Slow – Ursula K. Le Guin
Good News from the Vatican – Robert Silverberg
When It Changed – Joanna Russ
And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill’s Side – James Tiptree Jr. - 3/5 - the consequences of alien sex
Where Two Paths Cross – Dmitri Bilenkin
Standing Woman – Yasutaka Tsutsui
The IWM 1000 – Alicia Yánez Cossío
The House of Compassionate Sharers – Michael Bishop
Sporting with the Chid – Barrington J. Bayley
Sandkings – George R. R. Martin
Wives – Lisa Tuttle
The Snake That Read Chomsky – Josephine Saxton
Reiko’s Universe Box – Kajio Shinji
Swarm – Bruce Sterling
Mondocane – Jacques Barbéri
Blood Music – Greg Bear
Bloodchild – Octavia E. Butler
Variation on a Man – Pat Cadigan
Passing as a Flower in the City of the Dead – S. N. Dyer
New Rose Hotel – William Gibson
Pots – C. J. Cherryh
Snow – John Crowley
The Lake Was Full of Artificial Things – Karen Joy Fowler
The Unmistakable Smell of Wood Violets – Angélica Gorodischer
The Owl of Bear Island – Jon Bing
Readers of the Lost Art – Élisabeth Vonarburg
A Gift from the Culture – Iain M. Banks
Paranamanco – Jean-Claude Dunyach
Crying in the Rain – Tanith Lee
The Frozen Cardinal – Michael Moorcock
Rachel in Love – Pat Murphy
Sharing Air – Manjula Padmanabhan
Schwarzschild Radius – Connie Willis
All the Hues of Hell – Gene Wolfe
Vacuum States – Geoffrey A. Landis
Two Small Birds – Han Song
Burning Sky – Rachel Pollack
Before I Wake – Kim Stanley Robinson
Death Is Static Death Is Movement – Misha Nogha
The Brains of Rats – Michael Blumlein
Gorgonoids – Leena Krohn
Vacancy for the Post of Jesus Christ – Kojo Laing
The Universe of Things – Gwyneth Jones
The Remoras – Robert Reed
The Ghost Standard – William Tenn
Remnants of the Virago Crypto-System – Geoffrey Maloney
How Alex Became a Machine – Stepan Chapman
The Poetry Cloud - Cixin Liu
Story of Your Life – Ted Chiang - 4/5 - Stephen Hawking wonders why we can't remember the future...but what if we could? The basis for the film "Arrival"
Craphound – Cory Doctorow
The Slynx – Tatyana Tolstaya
Baby Doll – Johanna Sinisalo
The Star – H. G. Wells
Sultana’s Dream – Rokheya Shekhawat Hossein
The New Overworld – Paul Scheerbart
The Triumph of Mechanics – Karl Hans Strobl
Elements of Pataphysics – Alfred Jarry
Mechanopolis – Miguel de Unamuno
The Doom of Principal City – Yefim Zozulya
The Comet – W. E. B. Du Bois
The Fate of the Poseidonia – Clare Winger Harris
The Star Stealers – Edmond Hamilton
The Conquest of Gola – Leslie F. Stone
A Martian Odyssey – Stanley G. Weinbaum - 3/5 - an interesting early look at how humans and aliens might interact
The Last Poet and the Robots – A. Merritt
The Microscopic Giants – Paul Ernst
Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius – Jorge Luis Borges - 3/5 - a fictional, created world of subjective idealism that eventually becomes real
Desertion – Clifford D. Simak - 3/5 - one of the stories in City - this one about genetically transformed humans living on Jupiter
September 2005: The Martian – Ray Bradbury
Baby HP – Juan José Arreola
Surface Tension – James Blish - 5/5 - the results of humans seeding life on an alien world
Beyond Lies the Wub – Philip K. Dick
The Snowball Effect – Katherine MacLean
Prott – Margaret St. Clair
The Liberation of Earth – William Tenn
Let Me Live in a House – Chad Oliver
The Star – Arthur C. Clarke - 4/5 - the significance of one star
Grandpa – James H. Schmitz
The Game of Rat and Dragon – Cordwainer Smith
The Last Question – Isaac Asimov
Stranger Station – Damon Knight
Sector General by James White -
The Visitors – Arkady and Boris Strugatsky
Pelt – Carol Emshwiller
The Monster – Gérard Klein
The Man Who Lost the Sea – Theodore Sturgeon
The Waves – Silvina Ocampo
Plenitude – Will Worthington
The Voices of Time – J. G. Ballard
The Astronaut – Valentina Zhuravlyova
The Squid Chooses Its Own Ink – Adolfo Bioy Casares
2 B R 0 2 B – Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
A Modest Genius – Vadim Shefner
Day of Wrath – Sever Gansovsky
The Hands – John Baxter
Darkness – André Carneiro
“Repent, Harlequin!” Said the Ticktockman – Harlan Ellison - 4/5 - a wicked satire of modern culture emerges eventually
Nine Hundred Grandmothers – R. A. Lafferty
Day Million – Frederik Pohl
Student Body – F. L. Wallace
Aye, and Gomorrah – Samuel R. Delany
The Hall of Machines – Langdon Jones
Soft Clocks – Yoshio Aramaki
Three from Moderan – David R. Bunch
Let Us Save the Universe – Stanisław Lem
Vaster Than Empires and More Slow – Ursula K. Le Guin
Good News from the Vatican – Robert Silverberg
When It Changed – Joanna Russ
And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill’s Side – James Tiptree Jr. - 3/5 - the consequences of alien sex
Where Two Paths Cross – Dmitri Bilenkin
Standing Woman – Yasutaka Tsutsui
The IWM 1000 – Alicia Yánez Cossío
The House of Compassionate Sharers – Michael Bishop
Sporting with the Chid – Barrington J. Bayley
Sandkings – George R. R. Martin
Wives – Lisa Tuttle
The Snake That Read Chomsky – Josephine Saxton
Reiko’s Universe Box – Kajio Shinji
Swarm – Bruce Sterling
Mondocane – Jacques Barbéri
Blood Music – Greg Bear
Bloodchild – Octavia E. Butler
Variation on a Man – Pat Cadigan
Passing as a Flower in the City of the Dead – S. N. Dyer
New Rose Hotel – William Gibson
Pots – C. J. Cherryh
Snow – John Crowley
The Lake Was Full of Artificial Things – Karen Joy Fowler
The Unmistakable Smell of Wood Violets – Angélica Gorodischer
The Owl of Bear Island – Jon Bing
Readers of the Lost Art – Élisabeth Vonarburg
A Gift from the Culture – Iain M. Banks
Paranamanco – Jean-Claude Dunyach
Crying in the Rain – Tanith Lee
The Frozen Cardinal – Michael Moorcock
Rachel in Love – Pat Murphy
Sharing Air – Manjula Padmanabhan
Schwarzschild Radius – Connie Willis
All the Hues of Hell – Gene Wolfe
Vacuum States – Geoffrey A. Landis
Two Small Birds – Han Song
Burning Sky – Rachel Pollack
Before I Wake – Kim Stanley Robinson
Death Is Static Death Is Movement – Misha Nogha
The Brains of Rats – Michael Blumlein
Gorgonoids – Leena Krohn
Vacancy for the Post of Jesus Christ – Kojo Laing
The Universe of Things – Gwyneth Jones
The Remoras – Robert Reed
The Ghost Standard – William Tenn
Remnants of the Virago Crypto-System – Geoffrey Maloney
How Alex Became a Machine – Stepan Chapman
The Poetry Cloud - Cixin Liu
Story of Your Life – Ted Chiang - 4/5 - Stephen Hawking wonders why we can't remember the future...but what if we could? The basis for the film "Arrival"
Craphound – Cory Doctorow
The Slynx – Tatyana Tolstaya
Baby Doll – Johanna Sinisalo
considering
January 11, 2025The Star: H. G. Wells
Sultana’s Dream: Rokheya Shekhawat Hossain
The Triumph of Mechanics: Karl Hans Strobl
The New Overworld: Paul Scheerbart
Elements of Pataphysics: Alfred Jarry
Mechanopolis: Miguel de Unamuno
The Doom of Principal City: Yefim Zozulya
The Comet: W. E. B. Du Bois
The Fate of the Poseidonia: Clare Winger Harris
The Star Stealers: Edmond Hamilton
The Conquest of Gola: Leslie F. Stone
A Martian Odyssey: Stanley G. Weinbaum
The Last Poet and the Robots: A. Merritt
The Microscopic Giants: Paul Ernst
Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius: Jorge Luis Borges
Desertion: Clifford D. Simak
September 2005: The Martian: Ray Bradbury
Baby HP: Juan José Arreola
Surface Tension: James Blish
Beyond Lies the Wub: Philip K. Dick
The Snowball Effect: Katherine MacLean
Prott: Margaret St. Clair
The Liberation of Earth: William Tenn
Let Me Live in a House: Chad Oliver
The Star: Arthur C. Clarke
Grandpa: James H. Schmitz
The Game of Rat and Dragon: Cordwainer Smith
The Last Question: Isaac Asimov
Stranger Station: Damon Knight
Sector General: James White
The Visitors: Arkady and Boris Strugatsky
Pelt: Carol Emshwiller
The Monster: Gérard Klein
The Man Who Lost the Sea: Theodore Sturgeon
The Waves: Silvina Ocampo
Plenitude: Will Worthington
The Voices of Time: J. G. Ballard
The Astronaut: Valentina Zhuravlyova
The Squid Chooses Its Own Ink: Adolfo Bioy Casares
2 B R 0 2 B: Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
A Modest Genius: Vadim Shefner
Day of Wrath: Sever Gansovsky
The Hands: John Baxter
Darkness: André Carneiro
“Repent, Harlequin!” Said the Ticktockman: Harlan Ellison
Nine Hundred Grandmothers: R. A. Lafferty
Day Million: Frederik Pohl
Student Body: F. L. Wallace
Aye, and Gomorrah: Samuel R. Delany
The Hall of Machines: Langdon Jones
Soft Clocks: Yoshio Aramaki
Three from Moderan: David R. Bunch
Let Us Save the Universe: Stanisław Lem
Vaster Than Empires and More Slow: Ursula K. Le Guin
Good News from the Vatican: Robert Silverberg
When It Changed: Joanna Russ
And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill’s Side: James Tiptree Jr.
Where Two Paths Cross: Dmitri Bilenkin
Standing Woman: Yasutaka Tsutsui
The IWM 1000: Alicia Yánez Cossío
The House of Compassionate Sharers: Michael Bishop
Sporting with the Chid: Barrington J. Bayley
Sandkings: George R. R. Martin
Wives: Lisa Tuttle
The Snake Who Had Read Chomsky: Josephine Saxton
Reiko’s Universe Box: Kajio Shinji
Swarm: Bruce Sterling
Mondocane: Jacques Barbéri
Blood Music: Greg Bear
Bloodchild: Octavia E. Butler
Variation on a Man: Pat Cadigan
Passing as a Flower in the City of the Dead: S. N. Dyer
New Rose Hotel: William Gibson
Pots: C. J. Cherryh
Snow: John Crowley
The Lake Was Full of Artificial Things: Karen Joy Fowler
The Unmistakable Smell of Wood Violets: Angélica Gorodischer
The Owl of Bear Island: Jon Bing
Readers of the Lost Art: Élisabeth Vonarburg
A Gift from the Culture: Iain M. Banks
Paranamanco: Jean-Claude Dunyach
Crying in the Rain: Tanith Lee
The Frozen Cardinal: Michael Moorcock
Rachel in Love: Pat Murphy
Sharing Air: Manjula Padmanabhan
Schwarzschild Radius: Connie Willis
All the Hues of Hell: Gene Wolfe
Vacuum States: Geoffrey A. Landis
Two Small Birds: Han Song
Burning Sky: Rachel Pollack
Before I Wake: Kim Stanley Robinson
Death Is Static Death Is Movement: Misha Nogha
The Brains of Rats: Michael Blumlein
Gorgonoids: Leena Krohn
Vacancy for the Post of Jesus Christ: Kojo Laing
The Universe of Things: Gwyneth Jones
The Remoras: Robert Reed
The Ghost Standard: William Tenn
Remnants of the Virago Crypto-System: Geoffrey Maloney
How Alex Became a Machine: Stepan Chapman
The Poetry Cloud: Cixin Liu
Story of Your Life: Ted Chiang
Craphound: Cory Doctorow
The Slynx: Tatyana Tolstaya
Baby Doll: Johanna Sinisalo
Sultana’s Dream: Rokheya Shekhawat Hossain
The Triumph of Mechanics: Karl Hans Strobl
The New Overworld: Paul Scheerbart
Elements of Pataphysics: Alfred Jarry
Mechanopolis: Miguel de Unamuno
The Doom of Principal City: Yefim Zozulya
The Comet: W. E. B. Du Bois
The Fate of the Poseidonia: Clare Winger Harris
The Star Stealers: Edmond Hamilton
The Conquest of Gola: Leslie F. Stone
A Martian Odyssey: Stanley G. Weinbaum
The Last Poet and the Robots: A. Merritt
The Microscopic Giants: Paul Ernst
Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius: Jorge Luis Borges
Desertion: Clifford D. Simak
September 2005: The Martian: Ray Bradbury
Baby HP: Juan José Arreola
Surface Tension: James Blish
Beyond Lies the Wub: Philip K. Dick
The Snowball Effect: Katherine MacLean
Prott: Margaret St. Clair
The Liberation of Earth: William Tenn
Let Me Live in a House: Chad Oliver
The Star: Arthur C. Clarke
Grandpa: James H. Schmitz
The Game of Rat and Dragon: Cordwainer Smith
The Last Question: Isaac Asimov
Stranger Station: Damon Knight
Sector General: James White
The Visitors: Arkady and Boris Strugatsky
Pelt: Carol Emshwiller
The Monster: Gérard Klein
The Man Who Lost the Sea: Theodore Sturgeon
The Waves: Silvina Ocampo
Plenitude: Will Worthington
The Voices of Time: J. G. Ballard
The Astronaut: Valentina Zhuravlyova
The Squid Chooses Its Own Ink: Adolfo Bioy Casares
2 B R 0 2 B: Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
A Modest Genius: Vadim Shefner
Day of Wrath: Sever Gansovsky
The Hands: John Baxter
Darkness: André Carneiro
“Repent, Harlequin!” Said the Ticktockman: Harlan Ellison
Nine Hundred Grandmothers: R. A. Lafferty
Day Million: Frederik Pohl
Student Body: F. L. Wallace
Aye, and Gomorrah: Samuel R. Delany
The Hall of Machines: Langdon Jones
Soft Clocks: Yoshio Aramaki
Three from Moderan: David R. Bunch
Let Us Save the Universe: Stanisław Lem
Vaster Than Empires and More Slow: Ursula K. Le Guin
Good News from the Vatican: Robert Silverberg
When It Changed: Joanna Russ
And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill’s Side: James Tiptree Jr.
Where Two Paths Cross: Dmitri Bilenkin
Standing Woman: Yasutaka Tsutsui
The IWM 1000: Alicia Yánez Cossío
The House of Compassionate Sharers: Michael Bishop
Sporting with the Chid: Barrington J. Bayley
Sandkings: George R. R. Martin
Wives: Lisa Tuttle
The Snake Who Had Read Chomsky: Josephine Saxton
Reiko’s Universe Box: Kajio Shinji
Swarm: Bruce Sterling
Mondocane: Jacques Barbéri
Blood Music: Greg Bear
Bloodchild: Octavia E. Butler
Variation on a Man: Pat Cadigan
Passing as a Flower in the City of the Dead: S. N. Dyer
New Rose Hotel: William Gibson
Pots: C. J. Cherryh
Snow: John Crowley
The Lake Was Full of Artificial Things: Karen Joy Fowler
The Unmistakable Smell of Wood Violets: Angélica Gorodischer
The Owl of Bear Island: Jon Bing
Readers of the Lost Art: Élisabeth Vonarburg
A Gift from the Culture: Iain M. Banks
Paranamanco: Jean-Claude Dunyach
Crying in the Rain: Tanith Lee
The Frozen Cardinal: Michael Moorcock
Rachel in Love: Pat Murphy
Sharing Air: Manjula Padmanabhan
Schwarzschild Radius: Connie Willis
All the Hues of Hell: Gene Wolfe
Vacuum States: Geoffrey A. Landis
Two Small Birds: Han Song
Burning Sky: Rachel Pollack
Before I Wake: Kim Stanley Robinson
Death Is Static Death Is Movement: Misha Nogha
The Brains of Rats: Michael Blumlein
Gorgonoids: Leena Krohn
Vacancy for the Post of Jesus Christ: Kojo Laing
The Universe of Things: Gwyneth Jones
The Remoras: Robert Reed
The Ghost Standard: William Tenn
Remnants of the Virago Crypto-System: Geoffrey Maloney
How Alex Became a Machine: Stepan Chapman
The Poetry Cloud: Cixin Liu
Story of Your Life: Ted Chiang
Craphound: Cory Doctorow
The Slynx: Tatyana Tolstaya
Baby Doll: Johanna Sinisalo
December 6, 2016
They're not kidding when they call this The Big Book of Science Fiction -- the book is the size of a dictionary, with two columns of text on every page. It is mind-blowingly, wrist-snappingly huge.
But there is a method to this madness. Over the past few years, there's been a great deal of tension in the science fiction community over what constitutes the field's canon. There are those who claim you need a grounding in the (primarily white and male) Golden Age pulp authors to understand the field. Others have tried to reclaim the regularly erased contributions of women, LGBT people and people of color in anthologies that focus on the reclaimed groups, which inadvertently keeps them divorced from the whole. And that's not even counting people who only read subgenres like Cyberpunk. The field has gotten so broad that not only are there multiple conversations going on, but it's entirely possible to read broadly and immerse yourself in the genre without realizing just how much still remains unexplored outside your little bubble.
The BBSF seems to be an attempt to bring everyone back to the table by creating a new, broader canon. It represents a century's worth of science fiction, including entries by great writers from around the world, with good representation by women writers, LGBT writers, and writers of color, and biographical notes on each author that show who is in conversation with whom. There were some old favorites here like James Tiptree Jr, Joanna Russ, and Octavia Butler, but I also got introduced to a number of authors I didn't know, like James White and Chad Oliver, whose work I now want to hunt down. And one of my favorite stories here was written by an author not known for his SF, WEB du Bois.
While I loved about a dozen of the stories, there were a bunch that were not my thing. Honestly, in an anthology this wide-ranging, no one is going to love every story. I also highly recommend getting this in ebook format to save your wrists. But I think it's a hugely important work in terms of getting everyone to take a step back and see how we all make up part of a larger whole.
But there is a method to this madness. Over the past few years, there's been a great deal of tension in the science fiction community over what constitutes the field's canon. There are those who claim you need a grounding in the (primarily white and male) Golden Age pulp authors to understand the field. Others have tried to reclaim the regularly erased contributions of women, LGBT people and people of color in anthologies that focus on the reclaimed groups, which inadvertently keeps them divorced from the whole. And that's not even counting people who only read subgenres like Cyberpunk. The field has gotten so broad that not only are there multiple conversations going on, but it's entirely possible to read broadly and immerse yourself in the genre without realizing just how much still remains unexplored outside your little bubble.
The BBSF seems to be an attempt to bring everyone back to the table by creating a new, broader canon. It represents a century's worth of science fiction, including entries by great writers from around the world, with good representation by women writers, LGBT writers, and writers of color, and biographical notes on each author that show who is in conversation with whom. There were some old favorites here like James Tiptree Jr, Joanna Russ, and Octavia Butler, but I also got introduced to a number of authors I didn't know, like James White and Chad Oliver, whose work I now want to hunt down. And one of my favorite stories here was written by an author not known for his SF, WEB du Bois.
While I loved about a dozen of the stories, there were a bunch that were not my thing. Honestly, in an anthology this wide-ranging, no one is going to love every story. I also highly recommend getting this in ebook format to save your wrists. But I think it's a hugely important work in terms of getting everyone to take a step back and see how we all make up part of a larger whole.
July 13, 2020
I read a LOT, and a lot of that is sci fi, and a lot of THAT is short stories. All that to say, when I say “this is the best comp I’ve ever read,” it means something. Of course it had a lot of gold standards, but also delved into the historical origins of the form. One thing I really appreciated was their concern with and attention to non-English stories, both presenting rare and new stuff, and by paying to retranslate some older stories that benefited from the treatment.
It’s long but great.
It’s long but great.
May 22, 2016
This is one of the best science fiction anthologies I've ever read. Not a dud in the bunch. And not the usual stories either.
February 18, 2017
Time was when an ideal collection of sci-fi could be judged solely by its Thud Factor. Monstrous collections would try to include a couple old-masters works by Asimov and Bradbury, some scary new efforts from Sturgeon or Knight, and a few unknown space-opera chestnuts. But then along came the 1980s fragmentation into New Wave, feminist, humanist, absurdist, cyberpunk, ad infinitum, and it became harder and harder to find the monster collection that pleased everyone.
Jeff and Ann VanderMeer have returned us to Thud Factor with a vengeance, producing a monster work weighing in at 1160 pages, beginning with Alfred Jarry and H.G. Wells, and dancing through all the major sub-genres of science fiction without missing a beat. OK, maybe the collection aims for politically correct by excluding conservatives like Robert Heinlein and Eugene Wolfe, and certainly the modern provocateurs like Vox Day (Theodore Beale), but you know what? I don't miss that segment a bit.
While there are plenty of feminist and environmental works here, there is no intention of focusing on sci-fi stories that opt for dystopia and corrective measures. Instead, the VanderMeers concentrate on the well-told-tale, and give us J.G. Ballard, Kim Stanley Robinson, Ursula K. LeGuin, William Gibson, Kurt Vonnegut, and on and on. Occasionally, the stories are chosen to terrify, as with the back-to-back offerings of Greg Bear and Olivia Butler, but many other works, such as those from Ted Chiang and Cixin Liu, are intended to educate and amaze. The editors have gone to great lengths to make this a global collection, with lesser-known works, sometimes translated for the first time, by authors from South America, China, Russia, and Southeast Asia.
Thud Factor? This book is too massive to carry on a plane or to the beach, but it's one of those definitive collections you'll be proud to place on your coffee table. If a few of the Hugo Awards disrupters think the selection is too politically correct, let them build their own alternative-sci-fi facts for the Trump era. It would be very surprising if such a collection had even a fraction of the Thud Factor of this one.
Jeff and Ann VanderMeer have returned us to Thud Factor with a vengeance, producing a monster work weighing in at 1160 pages, beginning with Alfred Jarry and H.G. Wells, and dancing through all the major sub-genres of science fiction without missing a beat. OK, maybe the collection aims for politically correct by excluding conservatives like Robert Heinlein and Eugene Wolfe, and certainly the modern provocateurs like Vox Day (Theodore Beale), but you know what? I don't miss that segment a bit.
While there are plenty of feminist and environmental works here, there is no intention of focusing on sci-fi stories that opt for dystopia and corrective measures. Instead, the VanderMeers concentrate on the well-told-tale, and give us J.G. Ballard, Kim Stanley Robinson, Ursula K. LeGuin, William Gibson, Kurt Vonnegut, and on and on. Occasionally, the stories are chosen to terrify, as with the back-to-back offerings of Greg Bear and Olivia Butler, but many other works, such as those from Ted Chiang and Cixin Liu, are intended to educate and amaze. The editors have gone to great lengths to make this a global collection, with lesser-known works, sometimes translated for the first time, by authors from South America, China, Russia, and Southeast Asia.
Thud Factor? This book is too massive to carry on a plane or to the beach, but it's one of those definitive collections you'll be proud to place on your coffee table. If a few of the Hugo Awards disrupters think the selection is too politically correct, let them build their own alternative-sci-fi facts for the Trump era. It would be very surprising if such a collection had even a fraction of the Thud Factor of this one.
August 13, 2016
I'll keep it simple. If you either read much speculative fiction or write, this is kinda a MANDATORY book for you to own. It is a Bible of science fiction short stories and probably weighs as much as a Guttenberg.
I have not had such a sense of accomplishment in finishing a book from cover to cover since I finished reading James Joyce in high school.
So very worth it.
I have not had such a sense of accomplishment in finishing a book from cover to cover since I finished reading James Joyce in high school.
So very worth it.
Want to read
December 4, 2019A birthday gift! I'm hoping to make it through all of this beast next year, reading a couple of stories a week. Some of my favorite stories are in here, but most of them will be new to me, and I trust the VanderMeers' tastes.
Currently reading
February 5, 2018The selection is suspect as there is an obvious feminist, even intersectional, agenda at work here. Nevertheless, the masters are at least nominally represented. But some are notably absent, again, likely for political reasons, like Orson Scott Card.
Introduction
***
Learned about the (unfortunate) existence of subgenres like "Humanist" and "Feminist" sci-fi, and others--basically, sci-fi as a commentary on the sociological and otherwise impact of technology, aliens, or other "science-y" stuff. I thereafter expected I'd be skipping some stories, but realized that I had enjoyed such sci-fi by John Brunner (The Sheep Look Up)--who is neglected in this tome--in the past, and as I read the first story by H. G. Wells ("The Star"), which is to a degree about mankind's reaction to an extinction event, I realize it might not be such a deal-breaker after all, and I thus plan to be somewhat more open-minded about the coming stories--at least up to the point of encountering any feminist dreck.
The Star
***
Apparently the origin of "impact fiction", and thus reminiscent of guilty cinematic pleasures along the lines of Armageddon and Deep Impact (God that title sounds corny now … !), it entertains exactly along those lines, without any further consequence. As the first story in the anthology, it's likely there for chronological reasons, but also to soothe any worries a casual reader might have about the agenda the editors have in selecting stories for this tome.
Sultana's Dream
*
What, like the raisin … ? … and the feminist sci-fi genre is … "born" (?) Echhhh. This is NOT sci-fi, but the excuses abound in the preamble about the author of this story, as the editors twist themselves into pretzels to argue that it is, as a "conte philosophique" … and, presuming success, open the door for any "story" to be included herein, peppered among genuine classics and true envelope pushers, in the hopes of infiltrating impressionable young minds still susceptible to the siren song of the progressive left. Hell, according to biographical material, all this was, was a way for her to practice her English composition while her husband was away on some sorta tour ...
The Triumph of Mechanics
**
"Rise of The Machines" trope and its Nazi party origins. Who knew ... ?
The New Overworld
*
Yeah, I dunno what that was all about ...
Elements of Pataphysics
***
You see, I likely won't know what's going on w/ this one, either, but because it's Alfred Jarry, it won't matter--everything he writes is sublime, the master absurdist! Yay! It's fun to see his absurdity come quite close to wandering into the realm of the plausibly rational--but not quite. There is a way to read this stuff such that you just allow yourself to be transported on its waves of nonsense--delightful!
Mechanopolis
****
Even the editors admit to the paucity of sci-fi output from Unamuno, and yet somehow it's still an "excellent example of Spanish" sci-fi at less than three pages in length--more evidence of suspect quality of the selections in this anthology, if you're driving an agenda which includes feminism, internationalism, and intersectionalism. You can't have it both ways ... That being said, this second tale featuring the theme of AI Dominance--this time in it's stable, post-human state--though unremarkable in its content or action, features the most thoughtful and philosophical conclusion reached thus far in this collection: "That is the worst thing about loneliness, how easily it becomes filled." It speaks volumes to me on a personal level, despite my not being entirely sure what it means, or how such a thing even can be. It's one of those things that seems reasonable and clever when you hear it, induces emotional resonance almost immediately, and yet proves ever more elusive the more you think about it. Gold. An alternative translation by Emily A. Davis doesn't have quite the same impact or, really, message: "That’s the worst thing about being alone, when your loneliness gets all filled up with imagined companions."
The Doom of Principal City
Introduction
***
Learned about the (unfortunate) existence of subgenres like "Humanist" and "Feminist" sci-fi, and others--basically, sci-fi as a commentary on the sociological and otherwise impact of technology, aliens, or other "science-y" stuff. I thereafter expected I'd be skipping some stories, but realized that I had enjoyed such sci-fi by John Brunner (The Sheep Look Up)--who is neglected in this tome--in the past, and as I read the first story by H. G. Wells ("The Star"), which is to a degree about mankind's reaction to an extinction event, I realize it might not be such a deal-breaker after all, and I thus plan to be somewhat more open-minded about the coming stories--at least up to the point of encountering any feminist dreck.
The Star
***
Apparently the origin of "impact fiction", and thus reminiscent of guilty cinematic pleasures along the lines of Armageddon and Deep Impact (God that title sounds corny now … !), it entertains exactly along those lines, without any further consequence. As the first story in the anthology, it's likely there for chronological reasons, but also to soothe any worries a casual reader might have about the agenda the editors have in selecting stories for this tome.
Sultana's Dream
*
What, like the raisin … ? … and the feminist sci-fi genre is … "born" (?) Echhhh. This is NOT sci-fi, but the excuses abound in the preamble about the author of this story, as the editors twist themselves into pretzels to argue that it is, as a "conte philosophique" … and, presuming success, open the door for any "story" to be included herein, peppered among genuine classics and true envelope pushers, in the hopes of infiltrating impressionable young minds still susceptible to the siren song of the progressive left. Hell, according to biographical material, all this was, was a way for her to practice her English composition while her husband was away on some sorta tour ...
The Triumph of Mechanics
**
"Rise of The Machines" trope and its Nazi party origins. Who knew ... ?
The New Overworld
*
Yeah, I dunno what that was all about ...
Elements of Pataphysics
***
You see, I likely won't know what's going on w/ this one, either, but because it's Alfred Jarry, it won't matter--everything he writes is sublime, the master absurdist! Yay! It's fun to see his absurdity come quite close to wandering into the realm of the plausibly rational--but not quite. There is a way to read this stuff such that you just allow yourself to be transported on its waves of nonsense--delightful!
Mechanopolis
****
Even the editors admit to the paucity of sci-fi output from Unamuno, and yet somehow it's still an "excellent example of Spanish" sci-fi at less than three pages in length--more evidence of suspect quality of the selections in this anthology, if you're driving an agenda which includes feminism, internationalism, and intersectionalism. You can't have it both ways ... That being said, this second tale featuring the theme of AI Dominance--this time in it's stable, post-human state--though unremarkable in its content or action, features the most thoughtful and philosophical conclusion reached thus far in this collection: "That is the worst thing about loneliness, how easily it becomes filled." It speaks volumes to me on a personal level, despite my not being entirely sure what it means, or how such a thing even can be. It's one of those things that seems reasonable and clever when you hear it, induces emotional resonance almost immediately, and yet proves ever more elusive the more you think about it. Gold. An alternative translation by Emily A. Davis doesn't have quite the same impact or, really, message: "That’s the worst thing about being alone, when your loneliness gets all filled up with imagined companions."
The Doom of Principal City
December 31, 2016
I read this book from cover to cover, first story to last. It was a rewarding quest, and it gives you a sense of the evolution of science fiction, as the stories are arranged roughly chronologically.
One of the really cool things about this anthology is that it includes a selection of stories from many non-english speaking countries. This was probably my first real exposure the Japanese literary science fiction, and I absolutely loved the stories from Japan. But there are many wonderful science fiction stories from places like India, South America, Russia, and the Nordic countries.
The Big Book of Sci Fi also includes many stories by women, including stories from many countries and from many periods. For example, it was cool to read the story 'Sultana's Dream', a philosphical 'utopian' fiction by an Indian woman, and to see cool science fiction being written by women in the 1950s ('The Snowball Effect', by Katherine Maclean, 'Prott' by Margaret St. Clair).
Reading this anthology also gave me a chance to re-read several stories that I had read previously, but often decades ago, and had loved. 'Rachel in Love', 'The New Rose Hotel', 'Repent Harlequin! said the Tick Tock Man', 'The Star', 'Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius', 'The Martian', 'The Story of Your Life' (I actually read this a couple years ago, but the re-read was still great), etc.. all made for awesome re-reads, and I envy the person encountering these marvelous tales for the first time.
But what reading an anthology like this is really good for is discovering new writers, and reading awesome tales that you have not previously encountered. Here is a list of some of the wondrous, new discoveries found within this tome:
“Soft Clocks”, by Yoshio Aramaki: Japanese science fiction that reminded by of Rudy Rucker at his best. It concerns bio-engineering martian reality to be more like a Salvador Dali painting, because Salvador Dali is just that cool.
“Vacancy for the Post of Jesus Christ”, by Kojo Laing. An African writer from Ghana, writing in english, the story has a poetic, beat sensibility. It has something of the kind of take on science fiction that Burroughs did in, say, 'The Soft Machine', or 'The Wild Boyz', in that it re-purposes science fictions metaphors into radical prose, but his sensibility is different from Burroughs. The story also makes use of the street culture and folklore of Ghana to quite cool effect.
“The Poetry Cloud”, by Cixin Liu. I had read 'The Three Body Problem' by Liu (translated by Ken Liu, an America writer who I am also a fan of), but that was about the extent of my encounter with this amazing writer. "The Poetry Cloud" is far reaching, super imaginative space opera that conveys that creepy feeling that I love of being lost in a vast, cold, strange space ('Three Body Problem' does likewise). Also I just love the moniker 'The Devouring Empire'.
“Sandkings”, by George R.R. Martin. I loved this tale of science fiction horror that has a nice, twisty ending. The story is apparently quite famous, but I had never read it before.
“The Liberation of Earth”, by William Tenn. Another awesome, apparently famous story that I had never encountered before. This one was famous in the 60s as an anti-war fable, but highly relevant today.
“Standing Woman”, by Yasutaka Tsutsui. More super groovy Japanese science fiction. This one is a creepy, somewhat Kafkaesque political story. The matter of fact acceptance of the surreal change to the world of having people punished by being metamorphosed into trees reminded me of Murakami's Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World.
"Pots", by C.J. Cherryh. In my quest to read every Hugo winning novel, I have attempted twice to read Cherryh's 'Down Below Station'. I can never get past the first few chapters, though perhaps that's because the cheap paperback copy I have has such small print. This story totally makes me want to give that novel another go! It combines space opera, intense suspense, a gloomy tragic understanding of the precariousness of civilization, and a half cynical, half hopeful take on the power of stories.
One of the really cool things about this anthology is that it includes a selection of stories from many non-english speaking countries. This was probably my first real exposure the Japanese literary science fiction, and I absolutely loved the stories from Japan. But there are many wonderful science fiction stories from places like India, South America, Russia, and the Nordic countries.
The Big Book of Sci Fi also includes many stories by women, including stories from many countries and from many periods. For example, it was cool to read the story 'Sultana's Dream', a philosphical 'utopian' fiction by an Indian woman, and to see cool science fiction being written by women in the 1950s ('The Snowball Effect', by Katherine Maclean, 'Prott' by Margaret St. Clair).
Reading this anthology also gave me a chance to re-read several stories that I had read previously, but often decades ago, and had loved. 'Rachel in Love', 'The New Rose Hotel', 'Repent Harlequin! said the Tick Tock Man', 'The Star', 'Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius', 'The Martian', 'The Story of Your Life' (I actually read this a couple years ago, but the re-read was still great), etc.. all made for awesome re-reads, and I envy the person encountering these marvelous tales for the first time.
But what reading an anthology like this is really good for is discovering new writers, and reading awesome tales that you have not previously encountered. Here is a list of some of the wondrous, new discoveries found within this tome:
“Soft Clocks”, by Yoshio Aramaki: Japanese science fiction that reminded by of Rudy Rucker at his best. It concerns bio-engineering martian reality to be more like a Salvador Dali painting, because Salvador Dali is just that cool.
“Vacancy for the Post of Jesus Christ”, by Kojo Laing. An African writer from Ghana, writing in english, the story has a poetic, beat sensibility. It has something of the kind of take on science fiction that Burroughs did in, say, 'The Soft Machine', or 'The Wild Boyz', in that it re-purposes science fictions metaphors into radical prose, but his sensibility is different from Burroughs. The story also makes use of the street culture and folklore of Ghana to quite cool effect.
“The Poetry Cloud”, by Cixin Liu. I had read 'The Three Body Problem' by Liu (translated by Ken Liu, an America writer who I am also a fan of), but that was about the extent of my encounter with this amazing writer. "The Poetry Cloud" is far reaching, super imaginative space opera that conveys that creepy feeling that I love of being lost in a vast, cold, strange space ('Three Body Problem' does likewise). Also I just love the moniker 'The Devouring Empire'.
“Sandkings”, by George R.R. Martin. I loved this tale of science fiction horror that has a nice, twisty ending. The story is apparently quite famous, but I had never read it before.
“The Liberation of Earth”, by William Tenn. Another awesome, apparently famous story that I had never encountered before. This one was famous in the 60s as an anti-war fable, but highly relevant today.
“Standing Woman”, by Yasutaka Tsutsui. More super groovy Japanese science fiction. This one is a creepy, somewhat Kafkaesque political story. The matter of fact acceptance of the surreal change to the world of having people punished by being metamorphosed into trees reminded me of Murakami's Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World.
"Pots", by C.J. Cherryh. In my quest to read every Hugo winning novel, I have attempted twice to read Cherryh's 'Down Below Station'. I can never get past the first few chapters, though perhaps that's because the cheap paperback copy I have has such small print. This story totally makes me want to give that novel another go! It combines space opera, intense suspense, a gloomy tragic understanding of the precariousness of civilization, and a half cynical, half hopeful take on the power of stories.
March 2, 2022
The Big Book of Science Fiction. edited by Ann and Jeff Vandermeer
Rated 81% Positive. Story Score: 3.83 out of 5
107 Stories : 26 Great / 52 Good / 18 Average / 8 Poor / 2 DNF
Full Review: https://www.shortsf.com/reviews/bigbo...
By any definition, The Big Book of Science Fiction was a massive undertaking for Ann and Jeff Vandermeer. Attempting to cover the entire history of science fiction: from 1897 to 2007 is to find yourself awash in a supernova of stories. No one’s choices were going to please everyone and this book certainly can be polarizing. In a Facebook group that I belong to, we read this book over many months and responses ranged from consistent “That’s my favorite story from that author” to “That isn’t Science Fiction” to “Too much horror” to “This is quite the slog.”
In lieu of highlighting the Stories that made my All Time Great List - and there were 26 of them (!) - I’ll got brief thoughts that emerged during my reading of this book.
This reads like a textbook. Most of the stories seem to be selected to inspire discussion in a classroom or to illustrate some point about either the genre or its history.
The introductions from the Vandermeers are worth the price of the book. Even when I didn’t like a story, that introduction was insightful and detailed.
“Curation is Creation.” The Vandermeers are writing the history of Science Fiction from the perspective of the present. The stories selected embody the values and emphasis of the 21st century reader.
Many of the genre’s legendary authors and stories have been replaced with stories by women, minorities, and foreign language authors. A reader who thinks they are getting an anthology full of the classics of the genre will be disappointed.
This is book of SF as “Literature” not as storytelling. Stories with messages and stories with innovation prose techniques are prioritized over fun adventures. There is definitely a chip on this book’s shoulder. It wants Science Fiction to be ‘taken seriously.”
I recommend that you buy it and read it, but know what it is.
And PLEASE don’t make this your first foray into short Science Fiction.
The Big Book of Science Fiction. edited by Ann and Jeff Vandermeer is rated 81%
107 Stories : 26 Great / 52 Good / 18 Average / 8 Poor / 2 DNF
How do I arrive at a rating?
The Star • (1897) • short story by H. G. Wells
Great. An almost dreamlike tale of apocalyptic disaster started with a collision in the sky.
Sultana's Dream • (1905) • short story by Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain
Good. A woman dreams a tour of a feminist utopia where women rule everything and men are kept secluded.
The Triumph of Mechanics • short story by Karl Hans Strobl (trans. of Der Triumph der Mechanik 1907)
Good. A mechanic toy maker is fired from his firm and gets revenge with rapidly multiplying robotic rabbits.
The New Overworld • short story by Paul Scheerbart (trans. of Die neue Oberwelt. Eine Venus-Novellette 1911)
Average. Turtle people and many-handed people coexist on the face of Venus.
Elements of Pataphysics • short story by Alfred Jarry (trans. of Éléments de pataphysique 1911)
DNF. A bunch of pseudoscience and thought experiments that never comes together into any story.
Mechanopolis • short story by Miguel de Unamuno (trans. of Mecanópolis 1913)
Good. At an oasis, a man stumbles into a world run only by machines.
The Doom of Principal City • short story by Ефим Зозуля? (trans. of Гибель Главного города? 1918) [as by Yefim Zozulya]
Average. Kindly (?) conquerors build a city overtop of the city that they just conquered.
The Comet • (1920) • short story by W. E. B. Du Bois
Good. A comet apocalypse finds a poor black man and a rich white woman the only people left in the world.
The Fate of the Poseidonia • (1927) • short story by Clare Winger Harris
Average. Are the Martians stealing Earth’s water? And also the protagonist’s girlfriend?
The Star Stealers • (1965) • novelette by Edmond Hamilton (variant of The Star-Stealers 1929)
Great. Frolicking Space Opera! A captain in the space navy is sent on a mission to prevent a planet in Dark Space from stealing the Sun.
The Conquest of Gola • (1931) • short story by Leslie F. Stone
Good. Feminist Venus is invaded by Men from Earth. Suffering ensues.
A Martian Odyssey • (1934) • novelette by Stanley G. Weinbaum
Great. A masterpiece featuring a spaceman who crashed on Mars, met an interesting alien named Tweel, and trekked across the surface of the planet.
The Last Poet and the Robots • (1934) • short story by A. Merritt
Poor. An underground brilliant poet helps deal with a robot menace on the surface of earth.
The Microscopic Giants • (1936) • short story by Paul Ernst
Good. An exploration for copper is disrupted when very small, but powerful beings are discovered. They can move through concrete.
Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius • (1998) • short story by Jorge Luis Borges (trans. of Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius? 1940)
Good. The discovery of a fictional city and its legend of a fiction planet works as commentary about ‘modern day’ Argentina.
Desertion • (1944) • short story by Clifford D. Simak
Great. Men are being transformed and sent into Jupiter’s inhospitable maul. Non have returned. One of the most memorable end scenes in all of science fiction.
September 2005: The Martian • (1951) • short story by Ray Bradbury (variant of The Martian 1949)
Good. A elderly couple meet a Martian who wants to live with them as their son.
Baby HP • short story by Juan José Arreola (trans. of Baby H. P. 1952)
Good. “You too can harness your baby’s energy to run your household!”
Surface Tension • [Pantropy] • (1952) • novelette by James Blish
Great. An epic adventure of small aquatic humans - seeded by a galactic civilization - and their exploration above the surface of their watery world.
Beyond Lies the Wub • (1952) • short story by Philip K. Dick
Good. Should you eat the pig-like Wub after it has shown sentience?
The Snowball Effect • (1952) • short story by Katherine MacLean
Good. A science experience gone wrong as a sewing society is given the tools for rapid expansion.
Prott • (1953) • short story by Margaret St. Clair
Average. Telepathic attempt at communication with a very strange alien species in deep space.
The Liberation of Earth • (1953) • short story by William Tenn
Great. Absolute brutal satire of Cold War justifications for foreign intervention, retold as an alien invasion story.
Let Me Live in a House • (1954) • novelette by Chad Oliver
Good. Creepy tale of two couples living in a controlled environment where nothing every changed. One day there is a knock on the door.
The Star • (1955) • short story by Arthur C. Clarke
Good. A science-minding priest loses his faith with the discovery of a supernova that killed a beautiful civilization.
Grandpa • (1955) • novelette by James H. Schmitz
Good. A young man - a troublemaker on a new world - must rise to the occasion when a semi-sentient large raft starts behaving in new and dangerous ways.
The Game of Rat and Dragon • [The Instrumentality of Mankind] • (1955) • short story by Cordwainer Smith
Great. A shockingly original look at the manner and costs of war amongst the stars through the lives of damaged people and their strange partnerships.
The Last Question • (1956) • short story by Isaac Asimov
Great. Classic story of a giant computer which tries to discover how entropy might be reversed.
Stranger Station • (1956) • novelette by Damon Knight
Great. On a space station, a man and an alien suffer because of the other’s presence. Slowly, the man starts to understand why.
Sector General • (1957) • novelette by James White
Good. A sprawling adventure story about doctors on a space station who treat all sorts of aliens.
The Visitors • novelette by Аркадий Стругацкий? and Борис Стругацкий? (trans. of Извне? 1958) [as by Arkady Strugatsky and Boris Strugatsky]
Average. Matter-of-fact story of first contact with aliens.
Pelt • (1958) • short story by Carol Emshwiller
Good. Hunting on an alien planet, told from the perspective of a sentient hunting animal.
The Monster • (1965) • short story by Gérard Klein? (trans. of Le monstre 1958)
Good. A compelling story of a woman who hears about the police dealing with an arrived alien, and instinctively knows it has absorbed/eaten her husband.
The Man Who Lost the Sea • (1959) • short story by Theodore Sturgeon
Great. A literary masterpiece of a dying astronaut and his entire life.
The Waves • short story by Silvina Ocampo (trans. of Las ondas 1959)
Poor. Science will classify people in the future based on their ‘waves.”
Plenitude • (1959) • short story by Will Mohler
Good. A family that lives in the wild is intensely affected by a trip to ‘the city’ where people have are changed in horrific ways. Intense and sharp vignette.
The Voices of Time • (1960) • novelette by J. G. Ballard
Great. A serious literary story that balances death, symbols, sleeping, radiation, and life legacy in a way that is very adult and complex.
The Astronaut • short story by Валентина Журавлёва? (trans. of Астронавт? 1960) [as by Valentina Zhuravlyova]
Good. A story of heroic sacrifice with astronauts that have to take hobbies and the importance that hobbies can embed in your life.
The Squid Chooses Its Own Ink • short story by Adolfo Bioy Casares (trans. of El calamar opta por su tinta 1962)
Average. A comic Argentine sci-fi story about a small town dealing with an alien that has come to protect us from crazy people with The Bomb.
2 B R 0 2 B • (1962) • short story by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
Good. A comic dystopia of a future where each new life must cause the end of another … and one man’s wife is going to have triplets.
A Modest Genius • (1973) • short story by Вадим Шефнер? (trans. of Скромный гений? 1963) [as by Vadim Shefner]
Good. Light romantic science fiction about a fantastic inventor and the women in his life. Very cute.
Day of Wrath • novelette by Север Гансовский? (trans. of День гнева? 1965) [as by Sever Gansovsky]
Great. A journalist and a forester travel out into the wilderness to study the Otarks. The Otarks are super-intelligent creature that escaped from a lab years ago. Brutal and powerful.
The Hands • (1965) • short story by John Baxter
Great. Creepy bit of alien body horror. Earthmen, captured and tortured by an alien, arrive back home with very deformed bodies; multiple arms, heads, torso, etc….
Darkness • (1972) • short story by André Carneiro (trans. of A Escuridão 1963)
Good. In a world strangely plunged into darkness, one man survives with help from the blind.
"Repent, Harlequin!" Said the Ticktockman • (1965) • short story by Harlan Ellison
Good. The Harlequin disrupts the perfectly scheduled work as a protest and is hunted by the Ticktockman.
Nine Hundred Grandmothers • (1966) • short story by R. A. Lafferty
Average. Asteroid miners with unusual names meet a race of people who may never die.
Day Million • (1966) • short story by Frederik Pohl
Good. A snarky, tongue-in-cheek tale of dating and society a million days in our future.
Student Body • (1953) • novelette by F. L. Wallace
Average. A bit of fluff about space settlers who must deal with an evolving rodent issue.
Aye, and Gomorrah • (1970) • short story by Samuel R. Delany (variant of Aye, and Gomorrah ... 1967)
Great. Masterful new age sexual allegory about neutered spacers and the perverse(?) human who pay to have sex with them.
The Hall of Machines • (1968) • short story by Langdon Jones
Great. A haunting description of complex machines in the Hall of Machines.
Soft Clocks • (1989) • short story by 荒巻義雄? (trans. of 柔らかい時計? 1968) [as by Yoshio Aramaki]
Average. Psychiatrist summoned to Mars to evaluate potential husbands for Dali’s granddaughter. Surreal and strange, but not engaging.
No Cracks or Sagging • [Moderan] • (1970) • short story by David R. Bunch (variant of No Cracks or Saggings)
Average. Amateurish story of a traveler from far away that meets a foreman whose robots are stretching and flattening everything.
New Kings Are Not for Laughing • [Moderan] • (1971) • short story by David R. Bunch
Good. A traveler - converted to a cyborg - meets a severely injured man with whom he fought in the war.
The Flesh Man from Far Wide • [Moderan] • short story by David R. Bunch (variant of The Flesh-Man from Far Wide 1959)
Good. The man in a Stronghold meets a traveler who has traveled far to discover a happiness machine.
Let Us Save the Universe (An Open Letter from Ijon Tichy) • [Ze wspomnień Ijona Tichego / From the Memoirs of Ijon Tichy] • (1981) • short story by Stanisław Lem? (trans. of Ratujmy kosmos 1964)
Great. Hilarious and masterful. Ijon Tichy reports on the effects of exploitation and tourism on the solar system. Some highlights are the strange animals that prey on unwary tourists.
Vaster Than Empires and More Slow • [Hainish] • (1971) • novelette by Ursula K. Le Guin
Good. A crew that is seething at each other starts to explore a planet with a strange expansive type of consciousness.
Good News from the Vatican • (1971) • short story by Robert Silverberg
Good. The Catholic Church is about to elect a robot Pope.
When It Changed • [Whileaway] • (1972) • short story by Joanna Russ
Good. On a world made up of only women, men have finally arrived and they pose a creeping threat.
And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill's Side • (1972) • short story by James Tiptree, Jr.
Great. A reporter meets a ragged worker at a spaceport who tells about how fascination with aliens has lead to his ruin …. and will lead to the ruin of humanity. Brilliantly written with incredible things to say about humanity, culture, sexual addiction, and much more.
Where Two Paths Cross • short story by Дмитрий Биленкин? (trans. of Пересечение пути? 1973) [as by Dmitri Bilenkin]
Good. Fun SF adventure with humans arriving on a planet and running afoul of the dimly-sentient plant-based aliens. A nice alien creature and a pleasant story.
Standing Woman • (1981) • short story by 筒井康隆? (trans. of 佇むひと? 1974) [as by Yasutaka Tsutsui]
Good. A sad strange story of a world where people are planted like trees as punishment for disobedience to the state.
The IWM 1000 • short story by Alicia Yánez Cossío (trans. of La IWM mil 1975)
Poor. Short short where humans become reliant on small machines and lose their ability to read and write.
The House of Compassionate Sharers • [Glaktik Komm] • (1977) • novelette by Michael Bishop
Good. A rebuilt man who has a phobia of the human body get treatment at an interesting facility that doubles as an offbeat brothel.
Sporting with the Chid • (1979) • short story by Barrington J. Bayley
Good. To save an injured friend, two hunters break the rules and interact with the Chid who have disgusting, but effective, medical skills.
Sandkings • [Thousand Worlds] • (1979) • novelette by George R. R. Martin
Great. A psychopath buys small creatures that war in his terrarium and worship him as a god. Of course, they escape and this ends badly. A classic of SF action horror.
Wives • (1979) • short story by Lisa Tuttle
Great. To survive occupation by men, an alien race has turned themselves into ‘wives.’ One of the ‘wives’ starts to think there may be another way. One of the best feminist and colonialist analogies I've ever seen in science fiction.
The Snake Who Had Read Chomsky • (1981) • novelette by Josephine Saxton
Poor. Very unpleasant people try to get one up on each other through parties with rich people.
Reiko's Universe Box • (2007) • short story by 梶尾真治? (trans. of 玲子の箱宇宙?) [as by Kajio Shinji]
Good. Poetic story of a Japanese woman who becomes fascinated at the universe she sees in a box.
Swarm • [Shaper/Mechanist] • (1982) • novelette by Bruce Sterling
Good. A special agent from a branch of humanity that is bred for intelligence arrives on a symbiotic space station with a mission that will secure victory in an ongoing war. The Swarm is very well described and there is more than enough here for a novel.
Mondocane • short story by Jacques Barbéri? (trans. of Mondocane 1983)
Poor. Surrealists SF where war has resulted in extreme changes for all people.
Blood Music • (1983) • novelette by Greg Bear
Great. A brilliant scientist goes to a friend for help after injecting himself with the intelligent results of illegal experiments.
Bloodchild • (1984) • novelette by Octavia E. Butler
Great. A visceral and amazing story of the bond between humans and an insect-like race. A young boy who is to be host for the aliens offspring is forced to help with an emergency c-section on a pregnant man who is being eaten from within by the aliens larva. Powerful, complex, horrifying, and strangely realistic. With overtones of slavery and colonial oppression.
Variation on a Man • [Deadpan Allie] • (1984) • short story by Pat Cadigan
Good. A woman enters the mind of a man who has had his memories stolen. He once was a famous composer, but now appears to be an entirely different person.
Passing as a Flower in the City of the Dead • short story by Sharon N. Farber [as by S. N. Dyer]
Good. In a sterile environment of an orbital station, people with rare blood diseases are treated. They hate “Fidos:” people who aren’t sick but tag along to be with their loved ones.
New Rose Hotel • (1984) • short story by William Gibson
Good. A beatnik influenced, cyberpunk crime story about a beautiful woman and the attempt to kidnap a corporate genetic engineer.
Pots • (1985) • novelette by C. J. Cherryh
Average. A representative of the Lord Magistrate comes down to a planet to check on an archeological site, but finds that it contradicts the desires of the Lord Magistrate. Good start, but falls apart.
and more https://www.shortsf.com/reviews/bigbo...
Rated 81% Positive. Story Score: 3.83 out of 5
107 Stories : 26 Great / 52 Good / 18 Average / 8 Poor / 2 DNF
Full Review: https://www.shortsf.com/reviews/bigbo...
By any definition, The Big Book of Science Fiction was a massive undertaking for Ann and Jeff Vandermeer. Attempting to cover the entire history of science fiction: from 1897 to 2007 is to find yourself awash in a supernova of stories. No one’s choices were going to please everyone and this book certainly can be polarizing. In a Facebook group that I belong to, we read this book over many months and responses ranged from consistent “That’s my favorite story from that author” to “That isn’t Science Fiction” to “Too much horror” to “This is quite the slog.”
In lieu of highlighting the Stories that made my All Time Great List - and there were 26 of them (!) - I’ll got brief thoughts that emerged during my reading of this book.
This reads like a textbook. Most of the stories seem to be selected to inspire discussion in a classroom or to illustrate some point about either the genre or its history.
The introductions from the Vandermeers are worth the price of the book. Even when I didn’t like a story, that introduction was insightful and detailed.
“Curation is Creation.” The Vandermeers are writing the history of Science Fiction from the perspective of the present. The stories selected embody the values and emphasis of the 21st century reader.
Many of the genre’s legendary authors and stories have been replaced with stories by women, minorities, and foreign language authors. A reader who thinks they are getting an anthology full of the classics of the genre will be disappointed.
This is book of SF as “Literature” not as storytelling. Stories with messages and stories with innovation prose techniques are prioritized over fun adventures. There is definitely a chip on this book’s shoulder. It wants Science Fiction to be ‘taken seriously.”
I recommend that you buy it and read it, but know what it is.
And PLEASE don’t make this your first foray into short Science Fiction.
The Big Book of Science Fiction. edited by Ann and Jeff Vandermeer is rated 81%
107 Stories : 26 Great / 52 Good / 18 Average / 8 Poor / 2 DNF
How do I arrive at a rating?
The Star • (1897) • short story by H. G. Wells
Great. An almost dreamlike tale of apocalyptic disaster started with a collision in the sky.
Sultana's Dream • (1905) • short story by Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain
Good. A woman dreams a tour of a feminist utopia where women rule everything and men are kept secluded.
The Triumph of Mechanics • short story by Karl Hans Strobl (trans. of Der Triumph der Mechanik 1907)
Good. A mechanic toy maker is fired from his firm and gets revenge with rapidly multiplying robotic rabbits.
The New Overworld • short story by Paul Scheerbart (trans. of Die neue Oberwelt. Eine Venus-Novellette 1911)
Average. Turtle people and many-handed people coexist on the face of Venus.
Elements of Pataphysics • short story by Alfred Jarry (trans. of Éléments de pataphysique 1911)
DNF. A bunch of pseudoscience and thought experiments that never comes together into any story.
Mechanopolis • short story by Miguel de Unamuno (trans. of Mecanópolis 1913)
Good. At an oasis, a man stumbles into a world run only by machines.
The Doom of Principal City • short story by Ефим Зозуля? (trans. of Гибель Главного города? 1918) [as by Yefim Zozulya]
Average. Kindly (?) conquerors build a city overtop of the city that they just conquered.
The Comet • (1920) • short story by W. E. B. Du Bois
Good. A comet apocalypse finds a poor black man and a rich white woman the only people left in the world.
The Fate of the Poseidonia • (1927) • short story by Clare Winger Harris
Average. Are the Martians stealing Earth’s water? And also the protagonist’s girlfriend?
The Star Stealers • (1965) • novelette by Edmond Hamilton (variant of The Star-Stealers 1929)
Great. Frolicking Space Opera! A captain in the space navy is sent on a mission to prevent a planet in Dark Space from stealing the Sun.
The Conquest of Gola • (1931) • short story by Leslie F. Stone
Good. Feminist Venus is invaded by Men from Earth. Suffering ensues.
A Martian Odyssey • (1934) • novelette by Stanley G. Weinbaum
Great. A masterpiece featuring a spaceman who crashed on Mars, met an interesting alien named Tweel, and trekked across the surface of the planet.
The Last Poet and the Robots • (1934) • short story by A. Merritt
Poor. An underground brilliant poet helps deal with a robot menace on the surface of earth.
The Microscopic Giants • (1936) • short story by Paul Ernst
Good. An exploration for copper is disrupted when very small, but powerful beings are discovered. They can move through concrete.
Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius • (1998) • short story by Jorge Luis Borges (trans. of Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius? 1940)
Good. The discovery of a fictional city and its legend of a fiction planet works as commentary about ‘modern day’ Argentina.
Desertion • (1944) • short story by Clifford D. Simak
Great. Men are being transformed and sent into Jupiter’s inhospitable maul. Non have returned. One of the most memorable end scenes in all of science fiction.
September 2005: The Martian • (1951) • short story by Ray Bradbury (variant of The Martian 1949)
Good. A elderly couple meet a Martian who wants to live with them as their son.
Baby HP • short story by Juan José Arreola (trans. of Baby H. P. 1952)
Good. “You too can harness your baby’s energy to run your household!”
Surface Tension • [Pantropy] • (1952) • novelette by James Blish
Great. An epic adventure of small aquatic humans - seeded by a galactic civilization - and their exploration above the surface of their watery world.
Beyond Lies the Wub • (1952) • short story by Philip K. Dick
Good. Should you eat the pig-like Wub after it has shown sentience?
The Snowball Effect • (1952) • short story by Katherine MacLean
Good. A science experience gone wrong as a sewing society is given the tools for rapid expansion.
Prott • (1953) • short story by Margaret St. Clair
Average. Telepathic attempt at communication with a very strange alien species in deep space.
The Liberation of Earth • (1953) • short story by William Tenn
Great. Absolute brutal satire of Cold War justifications for foreign intervention, retold as an alien invasion story.
Let Me Live in a House • (1954) • novelette by Chad Oliver
Good. Creepy tale of two couples living in a controlled environment where nothing every changed. One day there is a knock on the door.
The Star • (1955) • short story by Arthur C. Clarke
Good. A science-minding priest loses his faith with the discovery of a supernova that killed a beautiful civilization.
Grandpa • (1955) • novelette by James H. Schmitz
Good. A young man - a troublemaker on a new world - must rise to the occasion when a semi-sentient large raft starts behaving in new and dangerous ways.
The Game of Rat and Dragon • [The Instrumentality of Mankind] • (1955) • short story by Cordwainer Smith
Great. A shockingly original look at the manner and costs of war amongst the stars through the lives of damaged people and their strange partnerships.
The Last Question • (1956) • short story by Isaac Asimov
Great. Classic story of a giant computer which tries to discover how entropy might be reversed.
Stranger Station • (1956) • novelette by Damon Knight
Great. On a space station, a man and an alien suffer because of the other’s presence. Slowly, the man starts to understand why.
Sector General • (1957) • novelette by James White
Good. A sprawling adventure story about doctors on a space station who treat all sorts of aliens.
The Visitors • novelette by Аркадий Стругацкий? and Борис Стругацкий? (trans. of Извне? 1958) [as by Arkady Strugatsky and Boris Strugatsky]
Average. Matter-of-fact story of first contact with aliens.
Pelt • (1958) • short story by Carol Emshwiller
Good. Hunting on an alien planet, told from the perspective of a sentient hunting animal.
The Monster • (1965) • short story by Gérard Klein? (trans. of Le monstre 1958)
Good. A compelling story of a woman who hears about the police dealing with an arrived alien, and instinctively knows it has absorbed/eaten her husband.
The Man Who Lost the Sea • (1959) • short story by Theodore Sturgeon
Great. A literary masterpiece of a dying astronaut and his entire life.
The Waves • short story by Silvina Ocampo (trans. of Las ondas 1959)
Poor. Science will classify people in the future based on their ‘waves.”
Plenitude • (1959) • short story by Will Mohler
Good. A family that lives in the wild is intensely affected by a trip to ‘the city’ where people have are changed in horrific ways. Intense and sharp vignette.
The Voices of Time • (1960) • novelette by J. G. Ballard
Great. A serious literary story that balances death, symbols, sleeping, radiation, and life legacy in a way that is very adult and complex.
The Astronaut • short story by Валентина Журавлёва? (trans. of Астронавт? 1960) [as by Valentina Zhuravlyova]
Good. A story of heroic sacrifice with astronauts that have to take hobbies and the importance that hobbies can embed in your life.
The Squid Chooses Its Own Ink • short story by Adolfo Bioy Casares (trans. of El calamar opta por su tinta 1962)
Average. A comic Argentine sci-fi story about a small town dealing with an alien that has come to protect us from crazy people with The Bomb.
2 B R 0 2 B • (1962) • short story by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
Good. A comic dystopia of a future where each new life must cause the end of another … and one man’s wife is going to have triplets.
A Modest Genius • (1973) • short story by Вадим Шефнер? (trans. of Скромный гений? 1963) [as by Vadim Shefner]
Good. Light romantic science fiction about a fantastic inventor and the women in his life. Very cute.
Day of Wrath • novelette by Север Гансовский? (trans. of День гнева? 1965) [as by Sever Gansovsky]
Great. A journalist and a forester travel out into the wilderness to study the Otarks. The Otarks are super-intelligent creature that escaped from a lab years ago. Brutal and powerful.
The Hands • (1965) • short story by John Baxter
Great. Creepy bit of alien body horror. Earthmen, captured and tortured by an alien, arrive back home with very deformed bodies; multiple arms, heads, torso, etc….
Darkness • (1972) • short story by André Carneiro (trans. of A Escuridão 1963)
Good. In a world strangely plunged into darkness, one man survives with help from the blind.
"Repent, Harlequin!" Said the Ticktockman • (1965) • short story by Harlan Ellison
Good. The Harlequin disrupts the perfectly scheduled work as a protest and is hunted by the Ticktockman.
Nine Hundred Grandmothers • (1966) • short story by R. A. Lafferty
Average. Asteroid miners with unusual names meet a race of people who may never die.
Day Million • (1966) • short story by Frederik Pohl
Good. A snarky, tongue-in-cheek tale of dating and society a million days in our future.
Student Body • (1953) • novelette by F. L. Wallace
Average. A bit of fluff about space settlers who must deal with an evolving rodent issue.
Aye, and Gomorrah • (1970) • short story by Samuel R. Delany (variant of Aye, and Gomorrah ... 1967)
Great. Masterful new age sexual allegory about neutered spacers and the perverse(?) human who pay to have sex with them.
The Hall of Machines • (1968) • short story by Langdon Jones
Great. A haunting description of complex machines in the Hall of Machines.
Soft Clocks • (1989) • short story by 荒巻義雄? (trans. of 柔らかい時計? 1968) [as by Yoshio Aramaki]
Average. Psychiatrist summoned to Mars to evaluate potential husbands for Dali’s granddaughter. Surreal and strange, but not engaging.
No Cracks or Sagging • [Moderan] • (1970) • short story by David R. Bunch (variant of No Cracks or Saggings)
Average. Amateurish story of a traveler from far away that meets a foreman whose robots are stretching and flattening everything.
New Kings Are Not for Laughing • [Moderan] • (1971) • short story by David R. Bunch
Good. A traveler - converted to a cyborg - meets a severely injured man with whom he fought in the war.
The Flesh Man from Far Wide • [Moderan] • short story by David R. Bunch (variant of The Flesh-Man from Far Wide 1959)
Good. The man in a Stronghold meets a traveler who has traveled far to discover a happiness machine.
Let Us Save the Universe (An Open Letter from Ijon Tichy) • [Ze wspomnień Ijona Tichego / From the Memoirs of Ijon Tichy] • (1981) • short story by Stanisław Lem? (trans. of Ratujmy kosmos 1964)
Great. Hilarious and masterful. Ijon Tichy reports on the effects of exploitation and tourism on the solar system. Some highlights are the strange animals that prey on unwary tourists.
Vaster Than Empires and More Slow • [Hainish] • (1971) • novelette by Ursula K. Le Guin
Good. A crew that is seething at each other starts to explore a planet with a strange expansive type of consciousness.
Good News from the Vatican • (1971) • short story by Robert Silverberg
Good. The Catholic Church is about to elect a robot Pope.
When It Changed • [Whileaway] • (1972) • short story by Joanna Russ
Good. On a world made up of only women, men have finally arrived and they pose a creeping threat.
And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill's Side • (1972) • short story by James Tiptree, Jr.
Great. A reporter meets a ragged worker at a spaceport who tells about how fascination with aliens has lead to his ruin …. and will lead to the ruin of humanity. Brilliantly written with incredible things to say about humanity, culture, sexual addiction, and much more.
Where Two Paths Cross • short story by Дмитрий Биленкин? (trans. of Пересечение пути? 1973) [as by Dmitri Bilenkin]
Good. Fun SF adventure with humans arriving on a planet and running afoul of the dimly-sentient plant-based aliens. A nice alien creature and a pleasant story.
Standing Woman • (1981) • short story by 筒井康隆? (trans. of 佇むひと? 1974) [as by Yasutaka Tsutsui]
Good. A sad strange story of a world where people are planted like trees as punishment for disobedience to the state.
The IWM 1000 • short story by Alicia Yánez Cossío (trans. of La IWM mil 1975)
Poor. Short short where humans become reliant on small machines and lose their ability to read and write.
The House of Compassionate Sharers • [Glaktik Komm] • (1977) • novelette by Michael Bishop
Good. A rebuilt man who has a phobia of the human body get treatment at an interesting facility that doubles as an offbeat brothel.
Sporting with the Chid • (1979) • short story by Barrington J. Bayley
Good. To save an injured friend, two hunters break the rules and interact with the Chid who have disgusting, but effective, medical skills.
Sandkings • [Thousand Worlds] • (1979) • novelette by George R. R. Martin
Great. A psychopath buys small creatures that war in his terrarium and worship him as a god. Of course, they escape and this ends badly. A classic of SF action horror.
Wives • (1979) • short story by Lisa Tuttle
Great. To survive occupation by men, an alien race has turned themselves into ‘wives.’ One of the ‘wives’ starts to think there may be another way. One of the best feminist and colonialist analogies I've ever seen in science fiction.
The Snake Who Had Read Chomsky • (1981) • novelette by Josephine Saxton
Poor. Very unpleasant people try to get one up on each other through parties with rich people.
Reiko's Universe Box • (2007) • short story by 梶尾真治? (trans. of 玲子の箱宇宙?) [as by Kajio Shinji]
Good. Poetic story of a Japanese woman who becomes fascinated at the universe she sees in a box.
Swarm • [Shaper/Mechanist] • (1982) • novelette by Bruce Sterling
Good. A special agent from a branch of humanity that is bred for intelligence arrives on a symbiotic space station with a mission that will secure victory in an ongoing war. The Swarm is very well described and there is more than enough here for a novel.
Mondocane • short story by Jacques Barbéri? (trans. of Mondocane 1983)
Poor. Surrealists SF where war has resulted in extreme changes for all people.
Blood Music • (1983) • novelette by Greg Bear
Great. A brilliant scientist goes to a friend for help after injecting himself with the intelligent results of illegal experiments.
Bloodchild • (1984) • novelette by Octavia E. Butler
Great. A visceral and amazing story of the bond between humans and an insect-like race. A young boy who is to be host for the aliens offspring is forced to help with an emergency c-section on a pregnant man who is being eaten from within by the aliens larva. Powerful, complex, horrifying, and strangely realistic. With overtones of slavery and colonial oppression.
Variation on a Man • [Deadpan Allie] • (1984) • short story by Pat Cadigan
Good. A woman enters the mind of a man who has had his memories stolen. He once was a famous composer, but now appears to be an entirely different person.
Passing as a Flower in the City of the Dead • short story by Sharon N. Farber [as by S. N. Dyer]
Good. In a sterile environment of an orbital station, people with rare blood diseases are treated. They hate “Fidos:” people who aren’t sick but tag along to be with their loved ones.
New Rose Hotel • (1984) • short story by William Gibson
Good. A beatnik influenced, cyberpunk crime story about a beautiful woman and the attempt to kidnap a corporate genetic engineer.
Pots • (1985) • novelette by C. J. Cherryh
Average. A representative of the Lord Magistrate comes down to a planet to check on an archeological site, but finds that it contradicts the desires of the Lord Magistrate. Good start, but falls apart.
and more https://www.shortsf.com/reviews/bigbo...
April 3, 2025
Man, reading this 1200-page monster was hard work. I think it has cured me from ever reading a science fiction anthology ever again. (EDIT: It didn't.)
And it wasn't worth the bother. About 100 pages of introductions and detailed descriptions of each writer (and translator) presented could have been cut out to make room for a short story (ANY short story) by Robert A. Heinlein.
That's right, folks -- a science fiction anthology claiming to be the best thing since slicing bread with laser beams -- and there is NO inclusion by one of the widely acknowledged Grand Masters. (Apparently there were problems with the estate of the late Heinlein. These should have been ironed out to make a better anthology.)
I mean, SERIOUSLY! I pick up an anthology of science fiction stories and all I want to read are science fiction stories. I don't care about the history of scifi or the detailed writing-critic-with-a-hard-on jargon-filled careers of each freaking contributor. And I don't want to read snippets from novels I probably will never read. These snippets were described as "self-contained" but they weren't.
Many selections were translated from other languages and appears here for the first time -- however, 99% of these selections sucked and so were not worth the bother of translating into English.
Many of the English selections can be found in numerous other anthologies, such as George R. R. Martin's "Sandkings", "The Nine Billion Names of God" by Arthur C. Clarke, "Snow" by John Crowley, "Rachel in Love" by Pat Murphy, "The Remoras" by Robert Reed and the short story with the best title I've ever read (too bad the story did not live up to the title), Harlan Ellison's ""Repent, Harlequin!" Said the Ticktockman".
How bad was this? I put this aside and read AN ENTIRE OTHER ANTHOLOGY (edited by Orson Scott Card) before I could work up the energy to go back to this.
And it wasn't worth the bother. About 100 pages of introductions and detailed descriptions of each writer (and translator) presented could have been cut out to make room for a short story (ANY short story) by Robert A. Heinlein.
That's right, folks -- a science fiction anthology claiming to be the best thing since slicing bread with laser beams -- and there is NO inclusion by one of the widely acknowledged Grand Masters. (Apparently there were problems with the estate of the late Heinlein. These should have been ironed out to make a better anthology.)
I mean, SERIOUSLY! I pick up an anthology of science fiction stories and all I want to read are science fiction stories. I don't care about the history of scifi or the detailed writing-critic-with-a-hard-on jargon-filled careers of each freaking contributor. And I don't want to read snippets from novels I probably will never read. These snippets were described as "self-contained" but they weren't.
Many selections were translated from other languages and appears here for the first time -- however, 99% of these selections sucked and so were not worth the bother of translating into English.
Many of the English selections can be found in numerous other anthologies, such as George R. R. Martin's "Sandkings", "The Nine Billion Names of God" by Arthur C. Clarke, "Snow" by John Crowley, "Rachel in Love" by Pat Murphy, "The Remoras" by Robert Reed and the short story with the best title I've ever read (too bad the story did not live up to the title), Harlan Ellison's ""Repent, Harlequin!" Said the Ticktockman".
How bad was this? I put this aside and read AN ENTIRE OTHER ANTHOLOGY (edited by Orson Scott Card) before I could work up the energy to go back to this.
August 21, 2016
A little light reading for the holidays. The first 75% of the book I liked a lot; several stories I read in other anthologies, so a bit like coming home. After that I hit a bit of a snag with stories I just couldn't relate to. Fortunately there were a few gems in there still. A memorable collection.
May 27, 2023
"Sultana's Dream," by Rokheya Shawkat Hossain (1905): 8.25
- wonderfully essentialist feminist tale. I like the complete reversal of oppression rather than gleichberechtigkeit. and you can guess a lot about the authors class and education therefrom. enjoyable nonetheless, esp. the abrupt ending!
“Burning Sky,” by Rachel Pollack (1989): 7.75
- A clear fantasia, but too fitting to pass up. Fitting in the sense of matching the anthology’s outré sensibilities — in terms of both provenance and subject matter. Condoned. Here we have a strictly bifurcated fable (one can argue about the nature and degree of linkage between story halves), in which mimetic and speculative strands trade off, building — when considered in retrospective whole — a picture of sexual frustration, arousal, and discovery and it’s complex relationship to the vicissitudes of real world danger and the intertwined stances of empowerment and submission. A common understanding (if more so now than 1989, admittedly), even if Pollack’s originality comes in the degree to which she pulls thoroughly on the thread, finding not the root of sexuality in fantasy, but the inverse. As she noted, the vanilla think “fantasies exist to intensify arousal,” while the adepts know “sex exists to lay traps for fantasies.”
“Baby HP,” by Juan Jose Arreola (1952): 5
- Inclusion as homage, as reference to and stand-in for a whole swath of extant sf literature we’d like to acknowledge (or, we’d like to be seen as acknowledging) in lieu of more thorough engagement with the thing itself. (And that’s not to say it need be engaged with — genres have borders, and books have covers.) As is, however, inclusion on this micro-level, and at this level of quality, surely does more to demean the literary world of which Arreola was a part than its simple exclusion would have. For the thing is a toss-off—an allegorical sf thinkpiece that missed even the mark of its satire: if we’re considering the economization of domestic space or intrusion upon the family by conjoined techno-capitalist forces, then the whole host of human history offers itself up as a field at least as fruitful as the backend of the century in which childhood itself is (re)invented as a distinct, free-floating zone of development. STORY: faux ad for device that generates electricity from your kid’s movements (does have the tersely sinister line at the end: “all of its joints are extendable,” implying a potential indeterminate extension of the exploitation.
"September 2005: The Martian," by Ray Bradbury (1949): 8.25
- The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing everybody that Ray Bradbury wrote science fiction. Sure, it’s clear that much early sf — or pulp space opera genauer gesagt — is largely interchangeable with Horatio-Hornblower-like naval fiction, albeit with ports of call switched out for planets, sea ships for star ships, and colonial for alien encounters. But, something about the Bradbury bait and switch—the simplicity of it, the almost brazen Midwestern nostalgia underlying the geography and realm of the possible in his Martian stories — has always seemed so transparent as to be infinitely more grating than the Edmond Hamiltons of the world. This isn’t to say, naturally, that the resultant stories are worthless. They can be great; they’re just so rarely worthy of inclusion within sense-making discussions of mid century sf (save as a sort of example of the genre’s rather long tradition of boundaryless-ness. And this is one of the good ones, which, not coincidentally for him, coincides more readily (if one were pressed to name a genre) with horror rather than sf.
"The Doom of Principal City," by Yefim Zozulya (1918): 7
- it's kind of blank vagueness is both asset and detriment, as the former allows it to remain timeless, as we can fill the gap and flush out the illusion to our own satisfaction, while the latter demonstrates The difficulty of finding anything to hold onto, even in the allegory, let alone the characters
"Death is Static Death is Movement," by Misha Nogha (1990): n/a
- Life's too short to read novel excerpts.
"The Triumph of Mechanics," by Karl Hans Strobel (1907): 6.5
- more noteworthy as an historical curio than piece of leisure entertainment reading now but interesting nonetheless in its clear german- and period-markers (taylorism, American innovation and mechanical prowess) which I can't see many others getting excited by.
"Baby Doll," by Johanna Sinisalo (2002): 4.5
- a one-trick pony and even that trick is quite unimpressive. the same story could exist, with the actual same (conservative) message, even if you aged-up each character to "appropriate" ages: a sin that the gimmick was both pointless and not essential to the point trying to be made. still, some good: I did like the muted undertones of disintegrating morality, esp. in the nice delayed reveal that she stopped the boy not because he was raping her, but because she was jealous (and that she took a positive message away from dollhouse). still, a big ehh
"Craphound," by Cory Doctorow (1998): 6
- eh, the charm's lost on me here. allegory-wise. at first was thinking capitalism, then colonialism, then I actually think it's just relative consumerism, and a kind of uninteresting whack at it at that. a bit like the final baby doll story-stale symbolism wrapped in lackluster storytelling. but eh. maybe it's the fault of the book title and the unrealistic expectations it heaps upon each story (both in terms of story AND thematic relevance).
"The Star," by H.G. Wells (1897): 9
- great. the wide lens. the martian astronomers.
"Slynx," by Tatiana Tolstoya (2000): 8
- hard to know exactly what to give, as its an excerpt from a novel, but if measured by wanting to read the novel then pretty good. the tone was that affected simplicity that worked well considering the context here and I liked the suggestions and implications about the world (the half human Degenerants and the sense that they don't know why they call enemies Chechens).
"The Gorgonoids," by Leena Krohn (1993): 6.5
- the truest yet to the form of "philosophical disquisition " with speculative elements as means of investigating larger questions. This, unfortunately, went too much in favor of the later at the expense of fleshing out the former at all.
"The Fate of the Poseidonia," by Clare Winger Harris (1927): 8.5
- I hope I'm not tinging too many of my scores with a patronizing 'appreciation' of things in older stories that I would find irredeemable in newer ones, but I enjoyed this kind of paranoid big-scale and small-window adventure, and more in spite of its obvious flaws than many others: those being, namely, clunky prose and characterization, a fairly muddled timeline, and loose ends galore [does anything come of the Profs visit at the end?]. Still, a fun macro vision here and little threads nicely untied [the "German" spy and others], as well as a pleasingly actual malevolence in the character of Martell.
"The Poetry Cloud," by Cixin Liu (1997): 9
- strange enough to outweigh the obvious Borges replication and otherwise staid scifi trope of artistic glorification in confrontation with cold science.
"The Star Stealers," by Edmond Hamilton (1929): 9
- okay, so this seems to be what is meant by 'classic sci fi,' what all the conservative readers want a return to. indeed, this seems to set the template for all the, again, 'classic' images I have in my head, even without knowing their provenance: the bridge with the mighty vistas; the dually new/retrograde gender politics [the beauty parlor seemed even too much]; the strangely omnipotent, strangely understandable, strangely defeatable, fully malign alien force; and, basically the complete re-tread of a long history of pulpy naval adventures translated to space [dashing escapes; huge ports; sudden rescues].
"The Conquest of Gola," by Leslie F. Stone (1931): 8.5
- nice little playing with gender here, although in a decidedly antebellum way (ie without contemporary gender tropes, such that the 'gender power reversal' here is entirely malign and simply a women dominating men instead of the other, while, similarly, the invading men here are entirely malicious in their intent, AND the clear anti-capitalism, a marker of prewar fiction). Still, a successful early perspective shift in both the gender way and protagonist, as this is clearly taking place on Venus and these are earth men (and an effective 'othering' of the human anatomy as well).
"The Last Poet and the Robot," by A. Merritt (1934): 7.5
- got some of that big thinking and sweep of classic sf I enjoy, although some of the negatives of that style came out in their negative manifestations here [Big Great Man; confusing exposition; clunky dialogue]. Yet, interesting sinister nuggets spread throughout that benefit from his minimal engagement with them [the "truth" of the robot malevolence; the ship attacking].
"Vacancy for the Post of Jesus Christ," by Kojo Laing (1992): 6.5
- Didn't read closely enough to suss out larger metaphor, so total take depends on the effectiveness of the allusions for the reader. But a bit narratively scattershot and not purposefully always, if with some good panoramic views of the society. Does giantman represent secular rulers or man, presupposing power to upset old socio-religious orders, only to be laid low by same?
"The Universe of Things," by Gwyneth Jones (1993): 6.5
- So, I might not totally have all of the actual mechanics down and intricacies of plot, I couldn't read the thing that closely, but as just simple story of alienation and difference and the inescapability of self, no matter how different the other, it kind of worked. Kind of. More so as a reflection on this strange melancholy alien, and not on the mechanic, who I could've spent even less time with it in an already short story. But the writing was too hackneyed to be profound and the plotting a bit clunky
"The Remoras," by Robert Reed (1994): 9.25
- such a strange story that's doing such a common thing; transplanting the narrative of the rich lady, bored as housewife, allured by the poor cool underworld and strange subculture into a place in which she's out of her depths until that dislocation is made abundantly clear. So, the question then is whether this is good BEYOND that smart Scifi allusion to mainstream tropes or if it can even stand on its own apart from that. here i think it does; there's enough strange compelling stuff going on in this Cruise Ship in Space and allusions to a broader world that work
"The Ghost Standard," by William Tenn (1994): 8.75
- strange little story with the philosophy foregrounded, rather than latent, which I imagine'll be more common in the "great" SF stories. narratively, I enjoyed it, although I don't know how formally inventive it was--language game as different means of demonstrating engineering problems. might have dug a bit more into its central Phil. quandary, ie give us more of comp. but good.
"Remnants of the Virago-Crypto System," by Geoffrey Maloney (1995): 7.5
- (quite) affecting, although is it anything more than the sum of its (one) parts?? the hit comes from the machine's question and his answer back, yet that doesn't require really any of the preceding action, his desultory aimlessness, or, especially, her maudlin end.
"How Alex Became A Machine," by Stephan Chapman (1997): 7.25
- picked up towards the end, or at least the strangeness overwhelmed me, or I just gave into it. But still, there's little to hold onto on either a character or narrative level, unless you want to put a whole lot into it
"The Microscopic Giants," by Paul Ernst (1936): 7.5
- Altogether a little trifle, and one, at that, not doing much more than these things from this time tend to do: big theme, exposition, clunky prose, concluding action, and out. The story: the operators at a deep mineshaft have discovered, down at the bottom, a very small race of humanoids who possess great power and the ability to walk through solid-ish pieces of matter that we cannot. Two people confront them, one dies, and the other narrowly escapes, [*50s genre film voice*] hoping, nay, praying(!) that he won’t be alive when they inevitably come once again to the surface to wreak havoc upon the earth! A solid B-movie narrativization, then. Yet, what it does do well--and what precisely these eras stories can do quite wonderfully that ones now would be less likely to--is imbue this ‘other’ with a straight, uncomplicated, and unvarnished malevolence that, at its best, makes the narrative at times read like a strange horror story just as much if not more than a science fiction story.
"Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius," by Jorge Luis Borges (1940): 8.5
- My thoughts on Borges are even less necessary than these lesser-known stories. I've read this story of unknown worlds and the slow blending of reality and fantasy before, and this time laughed at the ending, a wetdream ending for the authoritarian-disposed antiquarians, in that they achieve near complete victory in the ascension of their own creation and worldview -- as closely as our Argentian might've preferred.
"Before I Wake," by Kim Stanley Robinson (1989): 8
- Happenstance--happy or not, I'm unsure--to have read at an in-and-out moment of exhaustion myself, this story of scientists trying (in vain?) to combat the effects of some celestial event causing three human states--awake, sleep, and dream--to run simultaneously, thereby infusing consciousness with unconsciousness and occasioning some intentionally disjointed writing. The ultimate effect of all this is ... ?
“Snow,” byJohn Crowley (1985): 9
- The rare genre story whose ho-hum sfnal conceit is salvaged by some exceptional prose. Especially strange, in this instance, as the conceit was not incidental — despite that, like I said, seen-it premise — but basically the content in whole, and not simply a lax frame around which a domestic drama is constructed (as some of these “literary” sf stories are wont to do). Instead, the strong writing is built into the progression of that conceit, and thereby central to it (see: the very at-home-in-lit-fic small details pertaining to the “Director’s” discomfort at facing potential complaints from clients). It is most fully seen in the initial quick-sketch layout of our protagonists relationship to his older, rich wife, and the constant hint of tumult in the background of this world (AND, even more amazingly, the double subtle turnaround: ie the aside that all is again okay in the world in the final paragraphs!). Good stuff.
"Desertion," by Clifford Simak, 14 pg. (1944): 9
- The rare GA story whose writing amplifies a rather cut-and-dry story, rather than the other way around (although, I should keep in mind the era, and the novelty of the bio-tampering for alien environments possibility here).
"Crying in the Rain" by Tanith Lee: 8.75
- The power of a novel perspectival lens, for here we have the common trope of post-apocalypsia, and some expected byproducts, although often seen only from afar, or configured as just a practice of the "villain" (namely, the sexual slavery / marketplace / survival strategies of women in a world of lawlessness and brutal social division), but now focused upon from the obscured angle, which serves to make them all both more realistic and terrifying at the same time.
- wonderfully essentialist feminist tale. I like the complete reversal of oppression rather than gleichberechtigkeit. and you can guess a lot about the authors class and education therefrom. enjoyable nonetheless, esp. the abrupt ending!
“Burning Sky,” by Rachel Pollack (1989): 7.75
- A clear fantasia, but too fitting to pass up. Fitting in the sense of matching the anthology’s outré sensibilities — in terms of both provenance and subject matter. Condoned. Here we have a strictly bifurcated fable (one can argue about the nature and degree of linkage between story halves), in which mimetic and speculative strands trade off, building — when considered in retrospective whole — a picture of sexual frustration, arousal, and discovery and it’s complex relationship to the vicissitudes of real world danger and the intertwined stances of empowerment and submission. A common understanding (if more so now than 1989, admittedly), even if Pollack’s originality comes in the degree to which she pulls thoroughly on the thread, finding not the root of sexuality in fantasy, but the inverse. As she noted, the vanilla think “fantasies exist to intensify arousal,” while the adepts know “sex exists to lay traps for fantasies.”
“Baby HP,” by Juan Jose Arreola (1952): 5
- Inclusion as homage, as reference to and stand-in for a whole swath of extant sf literature we’d like to acknowledge (or, we’d like to be seen as acknowledging) in lieu of more thorough engagement with the thing itself. (And that’s not to say it need be engaged with — genres have borders, and books have covers.) As is, however, inclusion on this micro-level, and at this level of quality, surely does more to demean the literary world of which Arreola was a part than its simple exclusion would have. For the thing is a toss-off—an allegorical sf thinkpiece that missed even the mark of its satire: if we’re considering the economization of domestic space or intrusion upon the family by conjoined techno-capitalist forces, then the whole host of human history offers itself up as a field at least as fruitful as the backend of the century in which childhood itself is (re)invented as a distinct, free-floating zone of development. STORY: faux ad for device that generates electricity from your kid’s movements (does have the tersely sinister line at the end: “all of its joints are extendable,” implying a potential indeterminate extension of the exploitation.
"September 2005: The Martian," by Ray Bradbury (1949): 8.25
- The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing everybody that Ray Bradbury wrote science fiction. Sure, it’s clear that much early sf — or pulp space opera genauer gesagt — is largely interchangeable with Horatio-Hornblower-like naval fiction, albeit with ports of call switched out for planets, sea ships for star ships, and colonial for alien encounters. But, something about the Bradbury bait and switch—the simplicity of it, the almost brazen Midwestern nostalgia underlying the geography and realm of the possible in his Martian stories — has always seemed so transparent as to be infinitely more grating than the Edmond Hamiltons of the world. This isn’t to say, naturally, that the resultant stories are worthless. They can be great; they’re just so rarely worthy of inclusion within sense-making discussions of mid century sf (save as a sort of example of the genre’s rather long tradition of boundaryless-ness. And this is one of the good ones, which, not coincidentally for him, coincides more readily (if one were pressed to name a genre) with horror rather than sf.
"The Doom of Principal City," by Yefim Zozulya (1918): 7
- it's kind of blank vagueness is both asset and detriment, as the former allows it to remain timeless, as we can fill the gap and flush out the illusion to our own satisfaction, while the latter demonstrates The difficulty of finding anything to hold onto, even in the allegory, let alone the characters
"Death is Static Death is Movement," by Misha Nogha (1990): n/a
- Life's too short to read novel excerpts.
"The Triumph of Mechanics," by Karl Hans Strobel (1907): 6.5
- more noteworthy as an historical curio than piece of leisure entertainment reading now but interesting nonetheless in its clear german- and period-markers (taylorism, American innovation and mechanical prowess) which I can't see many others getting excited by.
"Baby Doll," by Johanna Sinisalo (2002): 4.5
- a one-trick pony and even that trick is quite unimpressive. the same story could exist, with the actual same (conservative) message, even if you aged-up each character to "appropriate" ages: a sin that the gimmick was both pointless and not essential to the point trying to be made. still, some good: I did like the muted undertones of disintegrating morality, esp. in the nice delayed reveal that she stopped the boy not because he was raping her, but because she was jealous (and that she took a positive message away from dollhouse). still, a big ehh
"Craphound," by Cory Doctorow (1998): 6
- eh, the charm's lost on me here. allegory-wise. at first was thinking capitalism, then colonialism, then I actually think it's just relative consumerism, and a kind of uninteresting whack at it at that. a bit like the final baby doll story-stale symbolism wrapped in lackluster storytelling. but eh. maybe it's the fault of the book title and the unrealistic expectations it heaps upon each story (both in terms of story AND thematic relevance).
"The Star," by H.G. Wells (1897): 9
- great. the wide lens. the martian astronomers.
"Slynx," by Tatiana Tolstoya (2000): 8
- hard to know exactly what to give, as its an excerpt from a novel, but if measured by wanting to read the novel then pretty good. the tone was that affected simplicity that worked well considering the context here and I liked the suggestions and implications about the world (the half human Degenerants and the sense that they don't know why they call enemies Chechens).
"The Gorgonoids," by Leena Krohn (1993): 6.5
- the truest yet to the form of "philosophical disquisition " with speculative elements as means of investigating larger questions. This, unfortunately, went too much in favor of the later at the expense of fleshing out the former at all.
"The Fate of the Poseidonia," by Clare Winger Harris (1927): 8.5
- I hope I'm not tinging too many of my scores with a patronizing 'appreciation' of things in older stories that I would find irredeemable in newer ones, but I enjoyed this kind of paranoid big-scale and small-window adventure, and more in spite of its obvious flaws than many others: those being, namely, clunky prose and characterization, a fairly muddled timeline, and loose ends galore [does anything come of the Profs visit at the end?]. Still, a fun macro vision here and little threads nicely untied [the "German" spy and others], as well as a pleasingly actual malevolence in the character of Martell.
"The Poetry Cloud," by Cixin Liu (1997): 9
- strange enough to outweigh the obvious Borges replication and otherwise staid scifi trope of artistic glorification in confrontation with cold science.
"The Star Stealers," by Edmond Hamilton (1929): 9
- okay, so this seems to be what is meant by 'classic sci fi,' what all the conservative readers want a return to. indeed, this seems to set the template for all the, again, 'classic' images I have in my head, even without knowing their provenance: the bridge with the mighty vistas; the dually new/retrograde gender politics [the beauty parlor seemed even too much]; the strangely omnipotent, strangely understandable, strangely defeatable, fully malign alien force; and, basically the complete re-tread of a long history of pulpy naval adventures translated to space [dashing escapes; huge ports; sudden rescues].
"The Conquest of Gola," by Leslie F. Stone (1931): 8.5
- nice little playing with gender here, although in a decidedly antebellum way (ie without contemporary gender tropes, such that the 'gender power reversal' here is entirely malign and simply a women dominating men instead of the other, while, similarly, the invading men here are entirely malicious in their intent, AND the clear anti-capitalism, a marker of prewar fiction). Still, a successful early perspective shift in both the gender way and protagonist, as this is clearly taking place on Venus and these are earth men (and an effective 'othering' of the human anatomy as well).
"The Last Poet and the Robot," by A. Merritt (1934): 7.5
- got some of that big thinking and sweep of classic sf I enjoy, although some of the negatives of that style came out in their negative manifestations here [Big Great Man; confusing exposition; clunky dialogue]. Yet, interesting sinister nuggets spread throughout that benefit from his minimal engagement with them [the "truth" of the robot malevolence; the ship attacking].
"Vacancy for the Post of Jesus Christ," by Kojo Laing (1992): 6.5
- Didn't read closely enough to suss out larger metaphor, so total take depends on the effectiveness of the allusions for the reader. But a bit narratively scattershot and not purposefully always, if with some good panoramic views of the society. Does giantman represent secular rulers or man, presupposing power to upset old socio-religious orders, only to be laid low by same?
"The Universe of Things," by Gwyneth Jones (1993): 6.5
- So, I might not totally have all of the actual mechanics down and intricacies of plot, I couldn't read the thing that closely, but as just simple story of alienation and difference and the inescapability of self, no matter how different the other, it kind of worked. Kind of. More so as a reflection on this strange melancholy alien, and not on the mechanic, who I could've spent even less time with it in an already short story. But the writing was too hackneyed to be profound and the plotting a bit clunky
"The Remoras," by Robert Reed (1994): 9.25
- such a strange story that's doing such a common thing; transplanting the narrative of the rich lady, bored as housewife, allured by the poor cool underworld and strange subculture into a place in which she's out of her depths until that dislocation is made abundantly clear. So, the question then is whether this is good BEYOND that smart Scifi allusion to mainstream tropes or if it can even stand on its own apart from that. here i think it does; there's enough strange compelling stuff going on in this Cruise Ship in Space and allusions to a broader world that work
"The Ghost Standard," by William Tenn (1994): 8.75
- strange little story with the philosophy foregrounded, rather than latent, which I imagine'll be more common in the "great" SF stories. narratively, I enjoyed it, although I don't know how formally inventive it was--language game as different means of demonstrating engineering problems. might have dug a bit more into its central Phil. quandary, ie give us more of comp. but good.
"Remnants of the Virago-Crypto System," by Geoffrey Maloney (1995): 7.5
- (quite) affecting, although is it anything more than the sum of its (one) parts?? the hit comes from the machine's question and his answer back, yet that doesn't require really any of the preceding action, his desultory aimlessness, or, especially, her maudlin end.
"How Alex Became A Machine," by Stephan Chapman (1997): 7.25
- picked up towards the end, or at least the strangeness overwhelmed me, or I just gave into it. But still, there's little to hold onto on either a character or narrative level, unless you want to put a whole lot into it
"The Microscopic Giants," by Paul Ernst (1936): 7.5
- Altogether a little trifle, and one, at that, not doing much more than these things from this time tend to do: big theme, exposition, clunky prose, concluding action, and out. The story: the operators at a deep mineshaft have discovered, down at the bottom, a very small race of humanoids who possess great power and the ability to walk through solid-ish pieces of matter that we cannot. Two people confront them, one dies, and the other narrowly escapes, [*50s genre film voice*] hoping, nay, praying(!) that he won’t be alive when they inevitably come once again to the surface to wreak havoc upon the earth! A solid B-movie narrativization, then. Yet, what it does do well--and what precisely these eras stories can do quite wonderfully that ones now would be less likely to--is imbue this ‘other’ with a straight, uncomplicated, and unvarnished malevolence that, at its best, makes the narrative at times read like a strange horror story just as much if not more than a science fiction story.
"Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius," by Jorge Luis Borges (1940): 8.5
- My thoughts on Borges are even less necessary than these lesser-known stories. I've read this story of unknown worlds and the slow blending of reality and fantasy before, and this time laughed at the ending, a wetdream ending for the authoritarian-disposed antiquarians, in that they achieve near complete victory in the ascension of their own creation and worldview -- as closely as our Argentian might've preferred.
"Before I Wake," by Kim Stanley Robinson (1989): 8
- Happenstance--happy or not, I'm unsure--to have read at an in-and-out moment of exhaustion myself, this story of scientists trying (in vain?) to combat the effects of some celestial event causing three human states--awake, sleep, and dream--to run simultaneously, thereby infusing consciousness with unconsciousness and occasioning some intentionally disjointed writing. The ultimate effect of all this is ... ?
“Snow,” byJohn Crowley (1985): 9
- The rare genre story whose ho-hum sfnal conceit is salvaged by some exceptional prose. Especially strange, in this instance, as the conceit was not incidental — despite that, like I said, seen-it premise — but basically the content in whole, and not simply a lax frame around which a domestic drama is constructed (as some of these “literary” sf stories are wont to do). Instead, the strong writing is built into the progression of that conceit, and thereby central to it (see: the very at-home-in-lit-fic small details pertaining to the “Director’s” discomfort at facing potential complaints from clients). It is most fully seen in the initial quick-sketch layout of our protagonists relationship to his older, rich wife, and the constant hint of tumult in the background of this world (AND, even more amazingly, the double subtle turnaround: ie the aside that all is again okay in the world in the final paragraphs!). Good stuff.
"Desertion," by Clifford Simak, 14 pg. (1944): 9
- The rare GA story whose writing amplifies a rather cut-and-dry story, rather than the other way around (although, I should keep in mind the era, and the novelty of the bio-tampering for alien environments possibility here).
"Crying in the Rain" by Tanith Lee: 8.75
- The power of a novel perspectival lens, for here we have the common trope of post-apocalypsia, and some expected byproducts, although often seen only from afar, or configured as just a practice of the "villain" (namely, the sexual slavery / marketplace / survival strategies of women in a world of lawlessness and brutal social division), but now focused upon from the obscured angle, which serves to make them all both more realistic and terrifying at the same time.
January 10, 2023
I didn't count novel excerpts.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ The Star H. G. WELLS
⭐⭐ Sultana's Dream ROKEYA SAKHAWAT HOSSAIN
⭐⭐ The Triumph of Mechanics KARL HANS STROBL
⭐ The New Overworld PAUL SCHEERBART
/ Elements of Pataphysics ALFRED JARRY
⭐⭐⭐ Mechanopolis MIGUEL DE UNAMUNO
⭐⭐ The Doom of Principal City YEFIM ZOZULYA
⭐⭐⭐ The Comet W. E. B. DU BOIS
⭐⭐ The Fate of the Poseidonia CLARE WINGER HARRIS
⭐⭐⭐⭐ The Star Stealers EDMOND HAMILTON
⭐⭐ The Conquest of Gola LESLIE F. STONE
⭐⭐⭐ A Martian Odyssey STANLEY G. WEINBAUM
⭐⭐ The Last Poet and the Robots A. MERRIT
⭐⭐⭐ The Microscopic Giants PAUL ERNST
⭐⭐⭐⭐ Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius JORGE LUIS BORGES
⭐⭐⭐⭐ Desertion CLIFFORD D. SIMAK
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ September 2005: The Martian RAY BRADBURY
⭐⭐⭐ Baby H. P. JUAN JOSÉ ARREOLA
⭐⭐⭐ Surface Tension JAMES BLISH
⭐⭐⭐ Beyond Lies the Wub PHILIP K. DICK
⭐⭐⭐ The Snowball Effect KATHERINE MACLEAN
⭐⭐⭐ Prott MARGARET ST. CLAIR
⭐⭐⭐ The Liberation of Earth WILLIAM TENN
⭐⭐⭐⭐ Let Me Live in a House CHAD OLIVER
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ The Star ARTHUR C. CLARKE
⭐⭐ Grandpa JAMES H. SCHMITZ
⭐⭐⭐ The Game of Rat and Dragon CORDWAINER SMITH
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ The Last Question ISAAC ASIMOV
⭐⭐⭐⭐ Stranger Station DAMON KNIGHT
⭐⭐⭐ Sector General JAMES WHITE
⭐⭐ The Visitors ARKADY STRUGATSKY / BORIS STRUGATSKY
⭐⭐⭐⭐ Pelt CAROL EMSHWILLER
⭐⭐⭐ Le monstre GÉRARD KLEIN
⭐⭐⭐⭐ The Man Who Lost the Sea THEODORE STURGEON
⭐⭐ Las ondas SILVINA OCAMPO
⭐⭐⭐ Plenitude WILL MOHLER
⭐⭐⭐⭐ The Voices of Time J. G. BALLARD
⭐⭐⭐ The Astronaut VALENTINA ZHURAVLYOVA
⭐⭐⭐⭐ El calamar opta por su tinta ADOLFO BIOY CASARES
⭐⭐ 2 B R 0 2 B KURT VONNEGUT, JR.
⭐⭐ A Modest Genius VADIM SHEFNER
⭐⭐⭐⭐ Day of Wrath SEVER GANSOVSKY
⭐⭐⭐ The Hands JOHN BAXTER
⭐⭐⭐⭐ A escuridão ANDRÉ CARNEIRO
⭐⭐⭐⭐ "Repent, Harlequin!" Said the Ticktockman HARLAN ELLISON
⭐⭐⭐⭐ Nine Hundred Grandmothers R. A. LAFFERTY
⭐⭐⭐ Day Million FREDERIK POHL
⭐⭐⭐⭐ Student Body F. L. WALLACE
⭐⭐⭐ Aye, and Gomorrah... SAMUEL R. DELANY
⭐⭐⭐ The Hall of Machines LANGDON JONES
⭐⭐⭐ Soft Clocks YOSHIO ARAMAKI
⭐⭐⭐ No Cracks or Sagging DAVID R. BUNCH
⭐⭐ New Kings Are Not for Laughing DAVID R. BUNCH
⭐⭐ The Flesh Man from Far Wide DAVID R. BUNCH
⭐⭐ Let Us Save the Universe (An Open Letter from Ijon Tichy) STANISLAW LEM
⭐⭐⭐ Vaster Than Empires and More Slow URSULA K. LEGUIN
⭐⭐ Good News from the Vatican ROBERT SILVERBERG
⭐⭐⭐ When It Changed JOANNA RUSS
⭐⭐⭐⭐ And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill's Side JAMES TIPTREE, JR.
⭐⭐⭐ Where Two Paths Cross DMITRI BILENKIN
⭐⭐ Standing Woman YASUTAKA TSUITSUI
⭐⭐⭐⭐ La IWM mil ALICIA YÁÑEZ COSSÍO
⭐⭐⭐ The House of Compassionate Sharers MICHAEL BISHOP
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Sporting with the Chid BARRINGTON J. BAYLEY
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Sandkings GEORGE R. R. MARTIN
⭐⭐⭐⭐ Wives LISA TUTTLE
⭐⭐⭐⭐ The Snake Who Had Read Chomsky JOSEPHINE SAXTON
⭐⭐⭐ Reiko's Universe Box KAJIO SHINJI
⭐⭐⭐⭐ Swarm BRUCE STERLING
⭐⭐⭐ Mondocane JACQUES BARBÉRI
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Blood Music GREG BEAR
⭐⭐⭐⭐ Bloodchild OCTAVIA E. BUTLER
⭐⭐⭐ Variation on a Man PAT CADIGAN
⭐⭐ Passing as a Flower in the City of the Dead SHARON N. FARBER
⭐⭐⭐ New Rose Hotel WILLIAM GIBSON
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Pots C. J. CHERRYH
⭐⭐⭐ Snow JOHN CROWLEY
⭐⭐⭐ The Lake Was Full of Artificial Things KAREN JOY FOWLER
⭐⭐⭐ El inconfundible aroma de las violetas silvestres ANGÉLICA GORODISCHER
⭐ The Owl of Bear Island JON BING
⭐⭐ La carte du Tendre ÉLISABETH VONARBURG
⭐⭐⭐ A Gift from the Culture IAIN M. BANKS
⭐⭐ Paranamanco JEAN-CLAUDE DUNYACH
⭐⭐⭐ Crying in the Rain TANITH LEE
⭐⭐⭐ The Frozen Cardinal MICHAEL MOORCOCK
⭐⭐⭐⭐ Rachel in Love PAT MURPHY
⭐⭐⭐ Sharing Air MANJULA PADMANABHAN
⭐⭐⭐ Schwarzschild Radius CONNIE WILLIS
⭐⭐⭐⭐ All the Hues of Hell GENE WOLFE
⭐⭐⭐⭐ Vacuum States GEOFFREY A. LANDIS
⭐⭐⭐⭐ Two Small Birds HAN SONG
⭐⭐ Burning Sky RACHEL POLLACK
⭐⭐⭐⭐ Before I Wake KIM STANLEY ROBINSON
/ Death Is Static Death Is Movement MISHA
⭐⭐⭐ The Brains of Rats MICHAEL BLUMLEIN
⭐⭐⭐ Gorgonoids LEENA KROHN
⭐⭐ Vacancy for the Post of Jesus Christ KOJO LAING
⭐⭐⭐ The Universe of Things GWYNETH JONES
⭐⭐⭐⭐ The Remoras ROBERT REED
⭐⭐⭐⭐ The Ghost Standard WILLIAM TENN
⭐⭐ Remnants of the Virago Crypto-System GEOFFREY MALONEY
/ How Alex Became a Machine STEPAN CHAPMAN
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ The Poetry Cloud CIXIN LIU
⭐⭐⭐⭐ Story of Your Life TED CHIANG
⭐⭐⭐ Craphound CORY DOCTOROW
/ The Slynx (excerpt) TATYANA TOLSTAYA
⭐⭐⭐⭐ Baby Doll JOHANNA SINISALO
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ The Star H. G. WELLS
⭐⭐ Sultana's Dream ROKEYA SAKHAWAT HOSSAIN
⭐⭐ The Triumph of Mechanics KARL HANS STROBL
⭐ The New Overworld PAUL SCHEERBART
/ Elements of Pataphysics ALFRED JARRY
⭐⭐⭐ Mechanopolis MIGUEL DE UNAMUNO
⭐⭐ The Doom of Principal City YEFIM ZOZULYA
⭐⭐⭐ The Comet W. E. B. DU BOIS
⭐⭐ The Fate of the Poseidonia CLARE WINGER HARRIS
⭐⭐⭐⭐ The Star Stealers EDMOND HAMILTON
⭐⭐ The Conquest of Gola LESLIE F. STONE
⭐⭐⭐ A Martian Odyssey STANLEY G. WEINBAUM
⭐⭐ The Last Poet and the Robots A. MERRIT
⭐⭐⭐ The Microscopic Giants PAUL ERNST
⭐⭐⭐⭐ Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius JORGE LUIS BORGES
⭐⭐⭐⭐ Desertion CLIFFORD D. SIMAK
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ September 2005: The Martian RAY BRADBURY
⭐⭐⭐ Baby H. P. JUAN JOSÉ ARREOLA
⭐⭐⭐ Surface Tension JAMES BLISH
⭐⭐⭐ Beyond Lies the Wub PHILIP K. DICK
⭐⭐⭐ The Snowball Effect KATHERINE MACLEAN
⭐⭐⭐ Prott MARGARET ST. CLAIR
⭐⭐⭐ The Liberation of Earth WILLIAM TENN
⭐⭐⭐⭐ Let Me Live in a House CHAD OLIVER
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ The Star ARTHUR C. CLARKE
⭐⭐ Grandpa JAMES H. SCHMITZ
⭐⭐⭐ The Game of Rat and Dragon CORDWAINER SMITH
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ The Last Question ISAAC ASIMOV
⭐⭐⭐⭐ Stranger Station DAMON KNIGHT
⭐⭐⭐ Sector General JAMES WHITE
⭐⭐ The Visitors ARKADY STRUGATSKY / BORIS STRUGATSKY
⭐⭐⭐⭐ Pelt CAROL EMSHWILLER
⭐⭐⭐ Le monstre GÉRARD KLEIN
⭐⭐⭐⭐ The Man Who Lost the Sea THEODORE STURGEON
⭐⭐ Las ondas SILVINA OCAMPO
⭐⭐⭐ Plenitude WILL MOHLER
⭐⭐⭐⭐ The Voices of Time J. G. BALLARD
⭐⭐⭐ The Astronaut VALENTINA ZHURAVLYOVA
⭐⭐⭐⭐ El calamar opta por su tinta ADOLFO BIOY CASARES
⭐⭐ 2 B R 0 2 B KURT VONNEGUT, JR.
⭐⭐ A Modest Genius VADIM SHEFNER
⭐⭐⭐⭐ Day of Wrath SEVER GANSOVSKY
⭐⭐⭐ The Hands JOHN BAXTER
⭐⭐⭐⭐ A escuridão ANDRÉ CARNEIRO
⭐⭐⭐⭐ "Repent, Harlequin!" Said the Ticktockman HARLAN ELLISON
⭐⭐⭐⭐ Nine Hundred Grandmothers R. A. LAFFERTY
⭐⭐⭐ Day Million FREDERIK POHL
⭐⭐⭐⭐ Student Body F. L. WALLACE
⭐⭐⭐ Aye, and Gomorrah... SAMUEL R. DELANY
⭐⭐⭐ The Hall of Machines LANGDON JONES
⭐⭐⭐ Soft Clocks YOSHIO ARAMAKI
⭐⭐⭐ No Cracks or Sagging DAVID R. BUNCH
⭐⭐ New Kings Are Not for Laughing DAVID R. BUNCH
⭐⭐ The Flesh Man from Far Wide DAVID R. BUNCH
⭐⭐ Let Us Save the Universe (An Open Letter from Ijon Tichy) STANISLAW LEM
⭐⭐⭐ Vaster Than Empires and More Slow URSULA K. LEGUIN
⭐⭐ Good News from the Vatican ROBERT SILVERBERG
⭐⭐⭐ When It Changed JOANNA RUSS
⭐⭐⭐⭐ And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill's Side JAMES TIPTREE, JR.
⭐⭐⭐ Where Two Paths Cross DMITRI BILENKIN
⭐⭐ Standing Woman YASUTAKA TSUITSUI
⭐⭐⭐⭐ La IWM mil ALICIA YÁÑEZ COSSÍO
⭐⭐⭐ The House of Compassionate Sharers MICHAEL BISHOP
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Sporting with the Chid BARRINGTON J. BAYLEY
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Sandkings GEORGE R. R. MARTIN
⭐⭐⭐⭐ Wives LISA TUTTLE
⭐⭐⭐⭐ The Snake Who Had Read Chomsky JOSEPHINE SAXTON
⭐⭐⭐ Reiko's Universe Box KAJIO SHINJI
⭐⭐⭐⭐ Swarm BRUCE STERLING
⭐⭐⭐ Mondocane JACQUES BARBÉRI
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Blood Music GREG BEAR
⭐⭐⭐⭐ Bloodchild OCTAVIA E. BUTLER
⭐⭐⭐ Variation on a Man PAT CADIGAN
⭐⭐ Passing as a Flower in the City of the Dead SHARON N. FARBER
⭐⭐⭐ New Rose Hotel WILLIAM GIBSON
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Pots C. J. CHERRYH
⭐⭐⭐ Snow JOHN CROWLEY
⭐⭐⭐ The Lake Was Full of Artificial Things KAREN JOY FOWLER
⭐⭐⭐ El inconfundible aroma de las violetas silvestres ANGÉLICA GORODISCHER
⭐ The Owl of Bear Island JON BING
⭐⭐ La carte du Tendre ÉLISABETH VONARBURG
⭐⭐⭐ A Gift from the Culture IAIN M. BANKS
⭐⭐ Paranamanco JEAN-CLAUDE DUNYACH
⭐⭐⭐ Crying in the Rain TANITH LEE
⭐⭐⭐ The Frozen Cardinal MICHAEL MOORCOCK
⭐⭐⭐⭐ Rachel in Love PAT MURPHY
⭐⭐⭐ Sharing Air MANJULA PADMANABHAN
⭐⭐⭐ Schwarzschild Radius CONNIE WILLIS
⭐⭐⭐⭐ All the Hues of Hell GENE WOLFE
⭐⭐⭐⭐ Vacuum States GEOFFREY A. LANDIS
⭐⭐⭐⭐ Two Small Birds HAN SONG
⭐⭐ Burning Sky RACHEL POLLACK
⭐⭐⭐⭐ Before I Wake KIM STANLEY ROBINSON
/ Death Is Static Death Is Movement MISHA
⭐⭐⭐ The Brains of Rats MICHAEL BLUMLEIN
⭐⭐⭐ Gorgonoids LEENA KROHN
⭐⭐ Vacancy for the Post of Jesus Christ KOJO LAING
⭐⭐⭐ The Universe of Things GWYNETH JONES
⭐⭐⭐⭐ The Remoras ROBERT REED
⭐⭐⭐⭐ The Ghost Standard WILLIAM TENN
⭐⭐ Remnants of the Virago Crypto-System GEOFFREY MALONEY
/ How Alex Became a Machine STEPAN CHAPMAN
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ The Poetry Cloud CIXIN LIU
⭐⭐⭐⭐ Story of Your Life TED CHIANG
⭐⭐⭐ Craphound CORY DOCTOROW
/ The Slynx (excerpt) TATYANA TOLSTAYA
⭐⭐⭐⭐ Baby Doll JOHANNA SINISALO
September 11, 2022
I didn’t read *all* the stories in this massive anthology, but every single story I did read was a masterpiece. Well worth dipping into every now and again.
August 31, 2021
I feel this book should have a subtitle, to better explain itself. Perhaps:
"Classic Stories, Contemporary Concerns, Futuristic Visions."
Overall, I think the editors have done an excellent job of presenting stories that fulfill their intent and reflect their philosophy (promoting gender and racial equality, advocating for a deep commitment to slow climate change, etc).
To use an a music analogy, this isn't the greatest hits of the biggest stars, rather deep tracks by often underappreciated artists.
Maybe it only deserves 4.5 stars, but I'll round up because some of 1-star reviews seem to condemn it just because they want it to be the greatest hits.
"Classic Stories, Contemporary Concerns, Futuristic Visions."
Overall, I think the editors have done an excellent job of presenting stories that fulfill their intent and reflect their philosophy (promoting gender and racial equality, advocating for a deep commitment to slow climate change, etc).
To use an a music analogy, this isn't the greatest hits of the biggest stars, rather deep tracks by often underappreciated artists.
Maybe it only deserves 4.5 stars, but I'll round up because some of 1-star reviews seem to condemn it just because they want it to be the greatest hits.
November 29, 2016
Just got this to read "Story of Your Life" by Ted Chiang and holy shit.
It took me a while to get into the beat/pace of the short tale but after I did, and near the end, I was pretty blown away.
The story was a lot more subtle and mysterious than the movie adaptation too. But both the movie and this story were good in their own right. I do like the story a bit better though.
It took me a while to get into the beat/pace of the short tale but after I did, and near the end, I was pretty blown away.
The story was a lot more subtle and mysterious than the movie adaptation too. But both the movie and this story were good in their own right. I do like the story a bit better though.
January 19, 2023
Don't bother.
The bio's of the authors are boring. Most of the stories seem to have no plot. Many seem like nothing more than words strung together at random. It's the least satisfying book I've read in years. It was a struggle to get through it.
The bio's of the authors are boring. Most of the stories seem to have no plot. Many seem like nothing more than words strung together at random. It's the least satisfying book I've read in years. It was a struggle to get through it.
January 2, 2021
An anthology does a number of things on at least two levels. On the larger, social level a good comprehensive anthology (as this one is) sets out to redefine a canon: it confirms or reworks boundaries of what "is" or "is not" "good" science fiction (or American fiction or mystery fiction or African-American fiction and so on). Not only does this include stories and longer works but also which authors should be considered to be significant (both historically and on the contemporary scene). It should adequately deal with the numerous subgenres of the kind of work being anthologized (especially important in a literary genre like science fiction which has several subgenres, all of which have their own fan base and are more-or-less important to the larger genre as a whole). "Lost" or "forgotten" works should be presented to new readers and placed in their proper historic and literary context within the genre. An evenness of "spread" should be achieved along any axes you might care to name: gender, ethnicity, timespan, and (back to this again) subgenres. An anthology should do all of this as well as provide adequate scholarly material (introductions, thematic essays, author bios, microanalyses that place works and authors in their place in the canon and justify their inclusion).
On the personal level, an anthology should please, entertain, and interest most readers.
Unlike the VanderMeers' previous anthology _The Weird_, which was excellent and necessary (see my review), this anthology of science fiction is not quite up to par.
Admittedly, science fiction is a large (and arguably old) genre and, as in any anthology project that aims to be "complete," it is difficult to please everyone. With only a few exceptions I want to address this work without talking about the "choice" of a certain story or lack thereof (as I briefly discuss in my review of _The Weird_ such choices often come down to personal taste, which simply isn't much of a factor when _seriously_ reviewing a work). I do, however, want to address some problems I detect with this particular anthology. I _will_ include a short discussion of works that have been ommitted that (I believe) should have been included.
To start, though, these are the things that this anthology did right. First, the introduction and other scholarly material is very good. The introduction, in particular, provides a cogent summary of the genre's development over the past century or so, talks about several "movements" and subgenres in science fiction writing and fandom, and presents the VanderMeers' rationale for organizing the work as a whole and including the writers and works that they chose (more on this in a moment). They are at great pains to place science fiction in an international framework, something that should be applauded and supported (most anthologies up to very recently have focused almost solely on work produced in the United States and the United Kingdom). So far so good.
Second, the VanderMeers find some very good "lost" or "forgotten" works (and in some cases, draw on the work of more canonical writers like W. E. B. Du Bois and reclassify them as science fiction). There are numerous stories included here from the 1920s and 1950s in particular that are worthy of being more widely read and appreciated. The number of works from the former Soviet Union is considerable (though I found their quality and enjoyability uneven), and the other works from non-Western writers were also interesting and worthy of being read and appreciated.
Third, as the Vandermeers mention in their introduction, pressures of space and (in at least one important case) lack of cooperation from an author's estate did place a limit on what they wished to include. The mention, for example, Frank Herbert's _Dune_ (justly considered a classic of ecological fiction, as well as of good, complex social science fiction in general), which is obviously too long to include (although they _do_ excerpt other novels in this collection). They also specifically mention that they wished to include Robert A. Heinlein's "All You Zombies" but were unable to obtain (or perhaps afford) the rights. (On a side-note: the Heinlein estate might think that their author is important enough and well-known enough in his own right that they could afford _not_ to allow one of his stories to be included in an anthology like this; however, as a teacher of science fiction in a high school, I can inform them that _none_ of my students is familiar with Heinlein's work, and, when I try to encourage them to read something by him, they profess lack or interest or complete boredom when faced with the actual article. This, frankly, does not bode well for Heinlein's longevity as an American writer.)
I also think that the inclusion of some authors chosen was vitally important, both to generate continuing interest in their work and to introduce them to new audiences. I was pleased to find an early J. G. Ballard story ("The Voices of Time") that is an excellent exemplar of his importance to the genre. Although I personally thought David Bunch's "Moderan" stories were well-known, I discovered that they have suffered neglect since their author's demise; the inclusion of three of them in this anthology is heartening. Similarly I was pleased with the inclusion of stories by John Crowley (whom I consider to be one of the finest writers of his generation, and unjustly ignored in his own country, the US) and Tanith Lee were excellent choices indeed.
So here is where some of the problems with this anthology begin: of all the subgenres of science fiction, arguably one of the most popular (Harry Turtledove has created his own cottage industry out of it for crying out loud) is the alternate history story. This anthology lacks any example of this subgenre. I find this somewhat baffling (while noting that inclusion of Heinlein's "All You Zombies" would have rectified this by providing at least one exemplar text). Admittedly, alternate histories are difficult to do in short form...but there are numerous examples of short stories that fall in this subgenre: why on Earth are there _none_ in this volume? Similarly troubling is a certain selectivity of inclusion of members of some demographic groups over other members of those groups. To speak plainly: of course it is important to include Ursula K. LeGuin, Joanna Russ, and Octavia Butler as examples of important American women science fiction writers. But what about Leigh Brackett? What about Marion Zimmer Bradley (even if you object to her because she was only _sometimes_ considered "feminist" by the general readers she was still one of the first women authors in the genre to seriously deal with issues like gay/transgender relationships in works such as _The Heritage of Hastur_ and _The World Wreckers_)?
Along similar lines, one of the absences I found somewhat puzzling was John Varley. Although current literary taste (and Varley's own willingness to play up this in his writing) might relegate him to "merely" a continuation of the Heinleinian (and ultimately Twainian) voice in American science fiction, his story "The Persistence of Vision" is still one of the most groundbreaking and important works of late 1970s science fiction (and much more important and valuable than George R. R. Martin's "Sand Kings" from roughly the same year). In turn, Varley demonstrably has affected later writers in the genre such as Cory Doctorow and Charles Stross (Doctorow is included; Stross is not) whose works are innovative and important in their own right.
These gaps and lacunae puzzle and disappoint me greatly. Along with these author issues are time issues as well. The decades most represented in this anthology are the 1950s and 1980s. Both of these choices are reasonable: the 1950s, even more than the 1930 and 1940s, is the true "Golden Age" of science fiction in the sense that this is the period when the genre made great gains in readership and canonical acceptance by critics; the 1980s simply had a plethora of interesting, groundbreaking, and experimental writing in its own right. However, other decades of equal importance (for their own reasons) are slighted: in particular the 1960s coverage is very brief and does not include some of the more important "New Wave" writers, let alone others, and the 1970s is barely included at all (where is Barry N. Malzberg? Sorry to harp again on a single author, but Malzberg encapsulates both of those decades as well as later ones, but there not a single story by him in tis volume).
Along with this, although the anthology is supposedly laid out in chronological order by work, there are severe lapses from this principle for no apparent reason I could detect (indeed, one 1950s story is included around where 1965 ought to be: the introduction to that story explains that the story is an important work with ecological themes similar to Herbert's _Dune_ of that year...but fails to explain why it does not take its proper place in the volume chronology during the previous decade). Indeed, if you're hoping to "place" stories in a precise historical context, this is often impossible because (particularly during the 1980s pages) the stories follow no discernible chronology at all.
Despite these serious issues, I did find some excellent work (particularly in the 1990s and 2000s) that I had not been introduced to, including the excerpt from Stepan Chapman's _The Troika_ and the final story in the volume, Johanna Sinisalo's "Baby Doll" (which is unfortunately even more socially relevant today than when it was first published 28 years ago).
There is much to admire and like and learn in this volume...but I hope there is a second edition or companion volume on the way that will make this selection a _better_ and more inclusive one.
On the personal level, an anthology should please, entertain, and interest most readers.
Unlike the VanderMeers' previous anthology _The Weird_, which was excellent and necessary (see my review), this anthology of science fiction is not quite up to par.
Admittedly, science fiction is a large (and arguably old) genre and, as in any anthology project that aims to be "complete," it is difficult to please everyone. With only a few exceptions I want to address this work without talking about the "choice" of a certain story or lack thereof (as I briefly discuss in my review of _The Weird_ such choices often come down to personal taste, which simply isn't much of a factor when _seriously_ reviewing a work). I do, however, want to address some problems I detect with this particular anthology. I _will_ include a short discussion of works that have been ommitted that (I believe) should have been included.
To start, though, these are the things that this anthology did right. First, the introduction and other scholarly material is very good. The introduction, in particular, provides a cogent summary of the genre's development over the past century or so, talks about several "movements" and subgenres in science fiction writing and fandom, and presents the VanderMeers' rationale for organizing the work as a whole and including the writers and works that they chose (more on this in a moment). They are at great pains to place science fiction in an international framework, something that should be applauded and supported (most anthologies up to very recently have focused almost solely on work produced in the United States and the United Kingdom). So far so good.
Second, the VanderMeers find some very good "lost" or "forgotten" works (and in some cases, draw on the work of more canonical writers like W. E. B. Du Bois and reclassify them as science fiction). There are numerous stories included here from the 1920s and 1950s in particular that are worthy of being more widely read and appreciated. The number of works from the former Soviet Union is considerable (though I found their quality and enjoyability uneven), and the other works from non-Western writers were also interesting and worthy of being read and appreciated.
Third, as the Vandermeers mention in their introduction, pressures of space and (in at least one important case) lack of cooperation from an author's estate did place a limit on what they wished to include. The mention, for example, Frank Herbert's _Dune_ (justly considered a classic of ecological fiction, as well as of good, complex social science fiction in general), which is obviously too long to include (although they _do_ excerpt other novels in this collection). They also specifically mention that they wished to include Robert A. Heinlein's "All You Zombies" but were unable to obtain (or perhaps afford) the rights. (On a side-note: the Heinlein estate might think that their author is important enough and well-known enough in his own right that they could afford _not_ to allow one of his stories to be included in an anthology like this; however, as a teacher of science fiction in a high school, I can inform them that _none_ of my students is familiar with Heinlein's work, and, when I try to encourage them to read something by him, they profess lack or interest or complete boredom when faced with the actual article. This, frankly, does not bode well for Heinlein's longevity as an American writer.)
I also think that the inclusion of some authors chosen was vitally important, both to generate continuing interest in their work and to introduce them to new audiences. I was pleased to find an early J. G. Ballard story ("The Voices of Time") that is an excellent exemplar of his importance to the genre. Although I personally thought David Bunch's "Moderan" stories were well-known, I discovered that they have suffered neglect since their author's demise; the inclusion of three of them in this anthology is heartening. Similarly I was pleased with the inclusion of stories by John Crowley (whom I consider to be one of the finest writers of his generation, and unjustly ignored in his own country, the US) and Tanith Lee were excellent choices indeed.
So here is where some of the problems with this anthology begin: of all the subgenres of science fiction, arguably one of the most popular (Harry Turtledove has created his own cottage industry out of it for crying out loud) is the alternate history story. This anthology lacks any example of this subgenre. I find this somewhat baffling (while noting that inclusion of Heinlein's "All You Zombies" would have rectified this by providing at least one exemplar text). Admittedly, alternate histories are difficult to do in short form...but there are numerous examples of short stories that fall in this subgenre: why on Earth are there _none_ in this volume? Similarly troubling is a certain selectivity of inclusion of members of some demographic groups over other members of those groups. To speak plainly: of course it is important to include Ursula K. LeGuin, Joanna Russ, and Octavia Butler as examples of important American women science fiction writers. But what about Leigh Brackett? What about Marion Zimmer Bradley (even if you object to her because she was only _sometimes_ considered "feminist" by the general readers she was still one of the first women authors in the genre to seriously deal with issues like gay/transgender relationships in works such as _The Heritage of Hastur_ and _The World Wreckers_)?
Along similar lines, one of the absences I found somewhat puzzling was John Varley. Although current literary taste (and Varley's own willingness to play up this in his writing) might relegate him to "merely" a continuation of the Heinleinian (and ultimately Twainian) voice in American science fiction, his story "The Persistence of Vision" is still one of the most groundbreaking and important works of late 1970s science fiction (and much more important and valuable than George R. R. Martin's "Sand Kings" from roughly the same year). In turn, Varley demonstrably has affected later writers in the genre such as Cory Doctorow and Charles Stross (Doctorow is included; Stross is not) whose works are innovative and important in their own right.
These gaps and lacunae puzzle and disappoint me greatly. Along with these author issues are time issues as well. The decades most represented in this anthology are the 1950s and 1980s. Both of these choices are reasonable: the 1950s, even more than the 1930 and 1940s, is the true "Golden Age" of science fiction in the sense that this is the period when the genre made great gains in readership and canonical acceptance by critics; the 1980s simply had a plethora of interesting, groundbreaking, and experimental writing in its own right. However, other decades of equal importance (for their own reasons) are slighted: in particular the 1960s coverage is very brief and does not include some of the more important "New Wave" writers, let alone others, and the 1970s is barely included at all (where is Barry N. Malzberg? Sorry to harp again on a single author, but Malzberg encapsulates both of those decades as well as later ones, but there not a single story by him in tis volume).
Along with this, although the anthology is supposedly laid out in chronological order by work, there are severe lapses from this principle for no apparent reason I could detect (indeed, one 1950s story is included around where 1965 ought to be: the introduction to that story explains that the story is an important work with ecological themes similar to Herbert's _Dune_ of that year...but fails to explain why it does not take its proper place in the volume chronology during the previous decade). Indeed, if you're hoping to "place" stories in a precise historical context, this is often impossible because (particularly during the 1980s pages) the stories follow no discernible chronology at all.
Despite these serious issues, I did find some excellent work (particularly in the 1990s and 2000s) that I had not been introduced to, including the excerpt from Stepan Chapman's _The Troika_ and the final story in the volume, Johanna Sinisalo's "Baby Doll" (which is unfortunately even more socially relevant today than when it was first published 28 years ago).
There is much to admire and like and learn in this volume...but I hope there is a second edition or companion volume on the way that will make this selection a _better_ and more inclusive one.
March 21, 2024
It's hard to explain what the overarching selection criteria is, but it's still worth it. My sense is that it not only depicts a history of science fiction, but also gives the reader a wide-sense of the scope of the "genre" and of writers. There is a concentrated effort to present writers from around the world at a high level of skill and works that still have relevance today, even though many are more than 80 years old. That sense of scope in terms of what science fiction can be about adds another element to reading - - it reminds us the field is as much about ideas as it is about entertainment.
With a larger anthology, not every entry is going to be a winner, but there are few clunkers, and my bias may be showing when I say most of the clunkers in my mind were in the 1990s.
One challenge the editors acknowledge is that many authors gained their fame through novels, and the editors felt that they only had room for short stories. In addition, a couple of estates said no, and that included the Heinlein estate. Combine that with the wide scope goal of the editors, there is a possibility that one of your favorites might not be there.
Still, you shouldn't let that steer you away from the work. If anything, the worst that will happen is that you will gain a greater respect for the field.
And there are plenty of great works. You'll be shocked that W. E. B. Dubois can write great science fiction, you'll realize the Strugatsky Brothers are as great as everyone says they are, and Connie Willis is just as skilled at writing literary science fiction without time travel as anyone out there. Relax: Bradbury, Clarke, Asimov, Sturgeon, and Pohl are all there, but so is Moorcock, Gibson, Robinson, Liu, Doctorow, and Tolstaya. I ran into a couple authors I had been originally led to believe were bad only to discover those who told me not to read them were wrong.
There are authors in here who are not seen as science fiction and primarily wrote literary works. Borges is one of several in this work who demonstrated he could take on the genre.
Two last notes: Some may be concerned with subject matter. There are a few pieces over the last 20 years that may make a few a little squeamish, but nothing overwhelming.
Secondly, the editors said they tried to avoid novel excerpts. When they got to the 1990s, they had to go away from that rule from time to time.
With a larger anthology, not every entry is going to be a winner, but there are few clunkers, and my bias may be showing when I say most of the clunkers in my mind were in the 1990s.
One challenge the editors acknowledge is that many authors gained their fame through novels, and the editors felt that they only had room for short stories. In addition, a couple of estates said no, and that included the Heinlein estate. Combine that with the wide scope goal of the editors, there is a possibility that one of your favorites might not be there.
Still, you shouldn't let that steer you away from the work. If anything, the worst that will happen is that you will gain a greater respect for the field.
And there are plenty of great works. You'll be shocked that W. E. B. Dubois can write great science fiction, you'll realize the Strugatsky Brothers are as great as everyone says they are, and Connie Willis is just as skilled at writing literary science fiction without time travel as anyone out there. Relax: Bradbury, Clarke, Asimov, Sturgeon, and Pohl are all there, but so is Moorcock, Gibson, Robinson, Liu, Doctorow, and Tolstaya. I ran into a couple authors I had been originally led to believe were bad only to discover those who told me not to read them were wrong.
There are authors in here who are not seen as science fiction and primarily wrote literary works. Borges is one of several in this work who demonstrated he could take on the genre.
Two last notes: Some may be concerned with subject matter. There are a few pieces over the last 20 years that may make a few a little squeamish, but nothing overwhelming.
Secondly, the editors said they tried to avoid novel excerpts. When they got to the 1990s, they had to go away from that rule from time to time.
January 30, 2023
this is an excellent book for its purpose, which is to survey the entire history of science fiction. which means that a lot of it isnt still too enjoyable to a modern reader. (if you want a more enjoayble survey of science fiction classics i highly recommend Masterpieces, The Best Science Fiction of the 20th Century, edited by Orson Scott Card. its also a lot shorter.)
but i guarantee you'll find a lot of stories that you do like. this book include a story from every important science fiction writer starting with H G Wells. Before each story is a brief biography and bibliography of the author. so if you like the story you can add the author's important other works to your To-Read list. now i wish i had kept track of how many authors and books i had discovered as i worked my way through it. oh well. bt my To-read went up a lot during the last 7 months.
As the title suggests this book is very big. in fact i think it may be the longest book i have ever read. it has 1160 large pages, each page with two columns like the big old bibles. the trick to getting through a book like this is to come up with a system that breaks it up. for example i read this only on mondays. the rest of the week i read my mainline book schedule. and it took me about 7 months. or about 30 mondays.
(this book was so long that when i marked it finished on my personal spreadsheet my total number of pages-to-read for the month went negative for the first time since last summer)
but i guarantee you'll find a lot of stories that you do like. this book include a story from every important science fiction writer starting with H G Wells. Before each story is a brief biography and bibliography of the author. so if you like the story you can add the author's important other works to your To-Read list. now i wish i had kept track of how many authors and books i had discovered as i worked my way through it. oh well. bt my To-read went up a lot during the last 7 months.
As the title suggests this book is very big. in fact i think it may be the longest book i have ever read. it has 1160 large pages, each page with two columns like the big old bibles. the trick to getting through a book like this is to come up with a system that breaks it up. for example i read this only on mondays. the rest of the week i read my mainline book schedule. and it took me about 7 months. or about 30 mondays.
(this book was so long that when i marked it finished on my personal spreadsheet my total number of pages-to-read for the month went negative for the first time since last summer)
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