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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
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
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
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...
$25 cover price, marked down at BN.com, less 40% off coupon and free shipping = about 1200 pages of sci-fi goodness for less than $9. I've read "The Star" by Arthur C Clarke and "New Rose Hotel" by William Gibson (from back when he was good) and both are excellent. Looking forward to this one.
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...
How 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.(view spoiler)[Yoshio Aramaki, “Soft Clocks” 1968 (Japan) – translated by Kazuko Beh...
The Next 58Following 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 Ballard1969"Franz Kafka" by Jorge Luis Borges : Alvin GreenbergThe Holland of the Mind : Pamela ZolineSundance : Robert Silverberg 1970Heresies of the Huge God : Brian W Aldiss The Worm that Flies : Brian W AldissWhere No Sun Shines : Gardner Dozois 1971The Sliced-Crosswise Only-on-Thursday World...
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.
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
The Big Book of Science Fiction. edited by Ann and Jeff Vandermeer Rated 81% Positive. Story Score: 3.83 out of 5107 Stories : 26 Great / 52 Good / 18 Average / 8 Poor / 2 DNFFull 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 pleas...
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 sho...
The Big Book of Science Fiction is a book of marvelous adventures and different opinions. My opinion of the book depends on the story in which I read. If I read a story related to more adventure and philosophy, I enjoy it. If I read a book more about talking and a process, then I start to lose interest. Since there are so many different stories and plots in this book, I´m going to review one of my favorites so far called The Star by H.G. Wells. The basic plot of this book is that a dangerous sta...
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 retrans...
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.
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.
A 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.
The 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....
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 r...
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.