Well, so far, the best story by far has been "Merlin's Gun" by Alastair Reynolds. It will be pretty hard to top in my estimation, as it easily stand up against anything I've read by him. This is particularly satisfying because it is not set in the Revelation Space universe! I'd actually been a little bit hesitant to try his work outside of that setting, but upon reading this intense short story, I immediately put Century Rain on hold at the library!
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Anthologies
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 ljim2000 |
Re: Anthologies | ||
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Star Fleet Admiral
Posts: 5567 (04/01/08 01:31:55) Simulacrum Cretin |
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ljim2000 |
Re: Anthologies | ||
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Star Fleet Admiral
Posts: 5567 (04/05/08 01:03:08) Simulacrum Cretin |
As I progress, I am finding this to be an excellent collection of stories, well worth recommending. The theme does make some sense some of the time, though many of the stories just strike me as straight up SF (or cyberpunk in a couple cases, but not extreme or even post-cyberpunk). Interestingly, the story from 1909 does seem to be one of the most extreme. There is apparently also a collection called simply The Mammoth Book of Science Fiction also edited by Ashley, so it makes one feel that this title was somewhat forced to justify a new collection rather than putting "II" on the end.
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Custer1 |
Re: Anthologies | ||
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Star Fleet Admiral
Posts: 5603 (04/05/08 01:19:23) Man of Tomorrow |
There are plenty more sf type anthologies in the Mammoth stable: The Mammoth Book of Science Fiction , The Mammoth Book of Golden Age SF: Ten Classic Stories from the Birth of Modern Science Fiction Writing, The Mammoth Book of Vintage Science Fiction: Short Novels of the 1950s, Mammoth Book of New World Science Fiction, The Mammoth Book of Classic Science Fiction: Short Novels of the 1930's, The Mammoth Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Mammoth Book of Short Science Fiction Novels, The Mammoth Book of Modern Science Fiction: Short Novels of the 1980s, The Mammoth Book of Best New Science Fiction, Mammoth Book of Vintage Science Fiction, and plenty more... it looks as if they have been rebadging the Gardner Dozois "best of" series, and Martin Harry Greenberg's compilations too...
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ljim2000 |
Re: Anthologies | ||
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Star Fleet Admiral
Posts: 5567 (04/17/08 18:36:00) Simulacrum Cretin |
The Starry Rift is a new anthology aimed at young readers with an all-star cast of current SF greats including Neil Gaiman, Cory Doctorow, Kathleen Ann Goonan, Steven Baxter, Ian McDonald, Greg Egan, and more! I might have to pick up a copy to read, despite being sadly out of the demographic...
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eldritch00 |
Re: Anthologies | ||
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Starsip Commander
Posts: 162 (04/20/08 17:26:03) Starsip Commander |
That does sound promising, I think, given the editor and the authors included. I'll keep an eye out as well.
And oh, here's a review. |
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Custer1 |
Re: Anthologies | ||
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Star Fleet Admiral
Posts: 5603 (04/21/08 02:14:33) Man of Tomorrow |
Quote: All new stories, except for Cory Doctorow's "Anda's Game", which as I recall it is about gold-farming in games like "World of Warcraft". Sounds good! |
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ljim2000 |
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Star Fleet Admiral
Posts: 4541 (08/13/08 09:21:46) Simulacrum Cretin |
Seeds of Change is a new
anthology edited by John Joseph Adams which uses SF to examine today's social issues. Authors include Tobias S. Buckell, Ken MacLeod, and Jay Lake.
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Custer1 |
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Star Fleet Admiral
Posts: 4519 (08/14/08 00:47:26) Man of Tomorrow |
Quote:
The stories aim to confront some of the pivotal issues facing our society today, such as racism, global warming, peak oil, technological advancement, and political revolution. It features original fiction from Tobias S. Buckell, Ken MacLeod, and Jay Lake, among others. Sounds good - there is a danger of such projects appearing to be too earnest and PC, but I'm sure they've managed to avoid that.
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ljim2000 |
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Star Fleet Admiral
Posts: 4909 (12/08/08 20:14:51) Simulacrum Cretin |
This sounds rather cool: The Exquisite Copuscle is an anthology of sorts, but really a game of
"telephone" played by 22 science fiction authors and artists: Kenneth Brady, Alan DeNiro, Richard Doyle, Michaela Eaves, M.C.A. Hogarth , Michael J.
Jasper, Jay Lake, Aurora Lemieux, Kristin Livdahl, Mary Anne Mohanraj, Tim Pratt, Bruce Holland Rogers, Benjamin Rosenbaum, Nigel Sade, Maia Sanders, Heather
Shaw, Diana Sherman, Gary W. Shockley, Christina Sng, Matt Taggart, Greg van Eekhout, Frank Wu.
Each person responded to a work created by the last writer or artist before them that Jay Lake then tied together in his story in the anthology. Here's the official page of the whole compilation. 
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Custer1 |
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Star Fleet Admiral
Posts: 4843 (12/09/08 02:06:25) Man of Tomorrow |
The Exquisite Corpuscle is an unusual book in that it resembles an anthology, but only on the surface. The stories, poems, and art within its pages aren't united by theme, or form, or genre, but by a device -a creative game. That sounds like fun, particularly for the participants! 
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ljim2000 |
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Star Fleet Admiral
Posts: 5080 (02/01/09 17:24:44) Simulacrum Cretin |
ljim2000 wrote:This is from the second post in this thread, and I am just now getting to reading the stories in this anthology! I'll post them in the individual author thread since there are only three novellas contained in the book. |
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ljim2000 |
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Star Fleet Admiral
Posts: 5152 (02/18/09 16:01:00) Simulacrum Cretin |
Diamonds in the Sky
is a new hard-SF anthology available for free download, that is specifically picked to be scientifically accurate about astronomy (in fact it is in part
designed to be an astronomy teaching tool!) Contributors include such actual scientists and Hugo, Nebula and Campbell Award winners as
Jeffrey A. Carver, Daniel M. Hoyt, Alexis Glynn Latner, Mary Robinette Kowal, David Levine, and more!
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Custer1 |
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Star Fleet Admiral
Posts: 5036 (02/19/09 02:49:41) Man of Tomorrow |
Diamonds in the Sky - Contents
In the Autumn of Empire (Jerry Oltion) A cautionary tale about why scientific misconceptions can be important. This story will also be appearing in Analog soon. Keywords: The seasons. Misconceptions. End of the World (Alma Alexander) Nothing is forever, not even the earth and sky. Keywords: Evolution of the sun. The Freshmen Hookup (Wil McCarthy) An exploration of how the elements are built in stars using the antics of college freshmen as a metaphor. Keywords: Stellar nucleosynthesis. Galactic Stress (David Levine) You think your life is stressful? How about having to deal with the entire universe? Keywords: Scales of the Universe. The Moon is a Harsh Pig (Jerry Weinberg) Robert Heinlein's novel The Moon is a Harsh Mistress about a revolt on the Moon was a landmark novel of the 1960s. Jerry's story is also educational. Keywords: Phases of the Moon, Misconceptions. The Point (Mike Brotherton) What is the meaning of life in an expanding universe? This story previously appeared at www.mikebrotherton.com. Keywords: Cosmology Squish (Dan Hoyt) How would you like a whirlwind tour of the planets? Keywords: The Solar System. Jaiden's Weaver (Mary Robinette Kowal) So many things about life on Earth depend on the cycles of the sky, from the moon and tides to seasons and more. Well, what if the sky were different? How would humans adapt to life on a world with rings? Keywords: Planetary rings How I Saved the World (Valentin Ivanov) The movies Armageddon and Deep Impact featured nuclear bombs to divert asteroids headed for Earth, but this is really not the best way to deal with this threat. This story was originally published in Bulgaria, in the annual almanac "Fantastika", the 2007 issue. Publisher: "Human Library Foundation", Sofia. ISSN 1313-3632. Editors: Atanas P. Slavov and Kalin Nenov. Keywords: Killer asteroids Dog Star (Jeffrey A. Carver) It permeates space and has a subtle but important effect on our existence. What if the effect were not so subtle? Keywords: Dark Energy The Touch (G. David Nordley) Life in the Milky Way can be harsh depending the neighborhood you live in. You should hope you have helpful neighbors when the times are harsh. This story originally appeared in The Age of Reason, edited by Kurt Roth, at SFF.net in 1999. Keywords: Supernova (type 1a) Planet Killer (Kevin Grazier and Ges Segar) And sometimes the times are harsh but you have to depend on yourselves. It helps if you have a little unlikely but useful faster-than-light starships as in Star Trek. Keywords: That would be telling! The Listening-Glass (Alexis Glynn Latner) What's the future hold for astronomy and astronomers? What would it be like to work on the moon? An earlier version of the story was first published in the February, 1991 issue of Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact. Keywords: Radio astronomy, the Moon Approaching Perimelasma (Geoffrey A. Landis) A sophisticated tale about the ultimate journey. Previously published in Asimov's Science Fiction, Jan. 1998. Keywords: Black holes I see that one can read the individual stories online at the moment, and that a download version is "coming shortly"... |
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ljim2000 |
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Star Fleet Admiral
Posts: 5181 (03/03/09 21:29:39) Simulacrum Cretin |
I've been reading The Best of New Dimensions edited by Robert Silverberg for the past few days.
New Dimensions was a direct to anthology series that Silverberg ran through the '70s and which jumped around to several different publishers in it's existence. It seems that basically Silverberg was attempting to break new ideas in SF, but while staking the territory somewhere between the mainstream and the avant-garde of the previous decade's "New Wave". In a sense the territory his own fiction tended to fall in during those days. This contains stories by Phillip Jose Farmer, Harlan Ellison, Joanna Russ, R.A. Lafferty, Ursula K. Le Guin, Terry Carr, F.M. Busby, Felix C. Gotschalk, James Triptree Jr., Barry Malzberg, Gregory Benford, and a handful of lesser knowns. Silverberg is quite vocal that it was his intent from the beginning to put famed authors alongside unknowns, and he seems to have been consistent with that. He really goes into his editorial process in his introductions, which reveals a lot about his opinionated stance on the stories and the authors, some of which is not necessarily particularly endearing or flattering for him. So far, I've liked most of the stories, but loved not so many. The opener, "A Special Kind of Morning" by Gardner R. Dozois has been my clear favorite (and seemingly Silverberg's too as he opened the first New Dimensions with it as well, and takes credit for discovering this author who as of today has won multiple Hugo and Nebula awards including as an editor himself!) thus far (200 or so pages) into the collection. 
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Custer1 |
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Star Fleet Admiral
Posts: 5058 (03/04/09 01:32:38) Man of Tomorrow |
I see that I have the first four volumes of that series, two from Avon being followed by two from Signet, and the Fantastic Fiction site lists twelve volumes in all, the last two co-edited by
Marta Randall. The first four all contain Gardner R. Dozois tales, so Mr Silverberg certainly did help to launch that stellar career.
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ljim2000 |
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Star Fleet Admiral
Posts: 5183 (03/04/09 20:05:54) Simulacrum Cretin |
I must admit that what I liked particularly about the Dozois story was that it is the most "space opera" type of tale in the collection. Several of
the stories seem to be taking the concept of "science fiction" to literally fiction about science, i.e. about the people who experiment in
contemporary laboratories and what motivates them. Interesting, sure, but not as escapist as I must admit I like my SF.
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ljim2000 |
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Star Fleet Admiral
Posts: 5210 (03/23/09 20:51:50) Simulacrum Cretin |
I've started exercising more including daily walks during my lunch hour at work, which has led to a shorter time span for reading. Thus
anthologies are becoming a more dependable friend at the moment.
Currently, I'm reading Eclipse Two - New Science Fiction and Fantasy edited by Jonathan Strahan. This is the second in a new annual series that the editor hopes to establish in the tradition of such SF anthology series as Orbit and New Dimensions. This particular edition, much to my liking, he set out to make different from the first by focusing more on science fiction than fantasy (the first apparently was a more 50/50 mix of genres). I must admit, the primary reason I picked it up was that there is an Alastair Reynolds tale in it that I haven't read yet. However, there are plenty of other big names too including Nancy Kress, Stephen Baxter, and Ted Chiang. The first story, "The Hero" was by Karl Schroeder, and was really, really good. The type of SF story that creates a whole original universe in a few short pages and makes you long to see it again! If the rest of the collection can keep up (and the author list bodes well) this will be a very rewarding read. 
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Custer1 |
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Star Fleet Admiral
Posts: 5105 (03/24/09 01:02:19) Man of Tomorrow |
I see that Jonathan Strahan has a blog - which mentions that the Ted Chiang story from that
book, "Exhalation", nominated for the Hugo and the BSFA Awards, is available as a free podcast from Starship Sofa...
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 pecooper |
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Star Fleet Admiral
Posts: 951 (03/24/09 10:46:04) The Quiet Man |
Thanks for linking Jonathan Strahan's blog, Custer. I used to have it bookmarked, but I lost it in switching computer systems. He was the one who polled
the Jack Vance board for recommendations for The Jack Vance Reader a few years ago. Not only does
he like Vance, he also keeps up a bibliography for Howard Waldrop. A man of impeccable taste.
Immanuel Kant: sapere aude |
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ljim2000 |
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Star Fleet Admiral
Posts: 5211 (03/24/09 18:36:56) Simulacrum Cretin |
So far each of the stories I've read in the anthology above completely bears your statement out Mr. Cooper!
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- Welcome!
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