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I started reading this series of best short stories from a male gay perspective in the 2010 edition. I've come to this one late as 2012's edition is coming soon... in July I believe.http://www.amazon.com/Wilde-Stories-2...Generally I was glad to have read these stories. Editor Steve Berman is to be credited with putting together a well thought out and perceptive collection of a very unique genre.Most of the stories this year did have a Horror cast and I think that the work should be about twice
Man, it's so hard to rate story collections!I will say that my favorites were "How to Make Friends in Seventh Grade" by Nick Poniatowski, "Lifeblood" by Jeffrey A. Ricker, and "Beach Blanket Spaceship" by Sandra McDonald. The longest story, "Mysterium Tremendum" by Laird Barron, did not work for me at all. And if you have sexual assault trigger issues, I would skip "The Noise" by Richard Larson, or at least read with care.
These are hauntingly beautiful and intricately detailed stories with a twist. Each story is engaging and unexpected. The byte-size stories also make for a quick read.
Wanted to read the collection I already had before moving on to this year's! There's certainly nothing wrong with this, it's fine, but usually the Wilde Stories collection gets me all kinds of fired up and this one just didn't connect, for the most part.
I'm lucky enough to have an ARC of Wilde Stories 2011, and I'm making my way through it so I can have a review up before the August 2011 publication date.* * * * * WILDE STORIES 2011 is the fourth installment in editor and publisher Steve Berman's annual collection of the best gay speculative fiction. This time he's drawn from a variety of anthologies and magazines to compile 14 stories with strong gay characters at the center of the action. The stories skew heavily to the fantasy and horror qua...
Probably one of the strongest anthologies I've ever read in a really long time. I literally have no idea who the writers are (well, I know Hal Duncan, but that's about it), but I must look out for their work in the future. "Mysterium Tremendum" by Laird Barron is actually one of my favourites: I can't even tell you how it works, but it reminds me a bit of M.R. James's stories (except gay, and with a lot of violence). I slept with the lights on, I'm not even ashamed to admit. :P
This is a interesting collection of shorts. Mostly set present day, often with well written unusual supernatural elements. In particular I enjoyed the Cthulhuesq almost short novel Mysterium Tremendum by Laird Barron and Hothouse Flowers or The Discreet Boys of Dr Barnabas by Chaz Brenchley (the author of the very enjoyable Dead of Light and Light Errant stories).
This is a collection of gay fiction that delves more into the fantasy/supernatural side of things. I really enjoyed Christopher Barzak's "Map Of Seventeen", Jeffrey A. Ricker's "Lifeblood", Richard Larson's "The Noise" and Sandra McDonald's "Beach Blanket Spaceship".
As we all know, speculative fiction stories are tough to categorize. That is particularly evident in the Wilde Stories 2011: The Year's Best Gay Speculative Fiction collection of 14 stories gathered and edited by Steve Berman, where you will find horror intertwined with weird fantasy, weird fantasy love stories, and even a mix of science fiction and pop culture.It is also true that often within fantastical, horror-based and science fiction tales, the reader will find underlying pertinent social
This is an absolutely cracking collection.All interest in gay fiction aside it deserves to be read and appreciated by all fans of speculative fiction, though some will find the collection too heavy on horror, it's time to throw our hands up and admit that horror is on the ascendant and will eclipse both fantasy and scifi for the next few years. All we can do is seek out the good stuff.Reviews of individual stories, as I can be bothers to add them, are below the spoiler cut(view spoiler)[ Love Wi...
My review for this series:This is an excellent anthology series. The stories are thought-provoking, imaginative, and affecting. These days it feels as though gay culture has been largely assimilated into the mainstream (at least, it feels this way up here in progressive-ish northern New England), and for those of who remember how liberating and exhilarating it felt to finally discover that there were others like us and a whole culture of novels, movies, and songs about our experience, this serie...
On the whole, a pretty great and often creepy collection. A few that stuck out like sore thumbs, one a particularly long and particularly sore one right in the middle, but tucked around it a selection of pretty fantastic queer spec fic that was a pleasure to read. Loses a star though because of that one long slog through the middle.
I found this book to be patchy at best, and a number of the stories have characters I really was not invested in. I like the conceit that all the stories have gay characters featuring prominently, but several of the stories themselves (and the characters too) where just unpleasant in ways that didn't seem to be necessary. I didn't pick the book to read gritty literary fiction, I picked it because it said "best speculative fiction", a genre I read widely in, and with great pleasure. While there a...