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I think this one set a record for the book that's been on my "currently reading" shelf the longest since I started tracking stuff on Goodreads. I've been dipping into this collection for about two years now whenever I was in the mood for a random short story. There's no unifying theme to this anthology other than it being a "greatest hits" of all the SF authors I've come to love over the last thirty years or so. It's taken me so long to get through that I can't honestly rate the individual stori...
A collection of seventeen stories culled from three decades of the multiple award-winning “Asimov’s Science Fiction” magazine, featuring an eclectic assortment of both classic and contemporary tales that originally appeared in the pages of the visionary magazine. Renowned science fiction authors such as Isaac Asimov, Robert Silverberg, Kim Stanley Robinson, Connie Willis, and Ursula K. LeGuin provided stories for this volume; also included are the Locus Award-winning stories “Robot Dreams” and “...
The Happy Man reminded me a lot of my dreams: vivid, lucid, unbelievably real, but with much less brutal raping. The story involves a main character who's soul will randomly be transported back into Hell, not necessarily real Hell, but certainly Hell for him. While his soul is in Hell, his body continues it's day to day comings and goings it's just that he shows almost no emotion. Most people don't even notice, except his family where it is a painfully obvious reality that they must live with. H...
The title is a bit misleading as some of the stories are based more in fantasy than in SF. The opening story,John Varley's AIr Raid has been widely anthologised but most of the others were new to me. Jonathan Lethem's Happy Man was a standout,reminiscent of Orson Scott Card's Lost Boys. Lucius Shepard's rumination on 9-11,Only Partly Here is very well written and could have been published in a mainstream literary magazine.Some of the other stories didn;t quite hit the spot,especially Charles Str...
Enjoyed them - especially middle time period ones.
This was an okay anthology. Some stories were very vivid, some were disturbing, but most were pretty neutral. There were only a couple that I found particularly moving.
This is a fantastic collection of short stories by some of the masters of the genre.
3 Stars We all know how much I love Isaac Asimov's writing. So, when I saw he had his own bimonthly publication of short stories in the sci-fi and fantasy genre I was super excited. However, this did not live up to expectations.I don't really have a ton to say about this. There were 2 stories in here that I LOVED (and one of them was written by Asimov himself). Everything else was just meh. I didn't hate any of the stories here I just thought they were all pretty average. I just expected more f
The editor warns us in the introduction that the magazine’s award winning stories are not included, every year is not represented, many great authors are left out, and it is really just a sampling. Oh-kay...that explains why I had difficulty and why I gave up reading the pulp mags so many years ago. Too much inconsistency. The impulse is to read the next story to see if it’s better, but I hate wasting my reading time. It was a book group selection so I persevered and found a few better stories l...
Some stories were better, some were worse, but I gave up in the middle of "Ether, OR" by Ursula K. LeGuin.
I read the stories as they originally appeared in Asimov's. Most of them are all right taken individually, but taken as a whole, this particular batch of stories is kind of depressing. You could even call it something of a Debbie Downer. And I was extremely disappointed that, other than "Air Raid" (which appeared in the first issue), the first five years of the magazine was ignored.
Good solid selection across the years. The editor admits that the Greatest Hits aren't here, but that's fine because I've read them elsewhere. These are mostly good, suitably different in style and tone. I may not be able to go to Oregon again without looking for Ether. And I wonder if "Air Raid" was the very first of the many similar stories on that theme. One of them had to be.
Another collection, and again mostly winners. My favorite was "Lobsters", by Charles Stross, so his novel Accelerando is on my to-read list.
Many of these stories I wish were truncated versions of novels. I WANT MORE!I'm somewhat new to sci fi, so this has been a nice introduction to some really great authors! The boyfriend is cranky that a few of them don't qualify, in his mind, as "sci fi." Perhaps for the 30th anniversary, they decided to put in some stories that really push the definition. One in particular: Is it sci fi? His definition is NO. Mine is not really, but it's interesting that it was included and we've talked about th...
I was disappointed...the collection featured one story that was captivating enough to keep my interest.
A delightful romp through 30 years of "Asimov's Science Fiction" magazine with the opportunity to re-read some of the classics. My (biased) favourites are Varley's "Air Raid", Butler's "Speech Sounds", Asimov's "Robot Dreams" and Stross's "Lobsters".But the one I most vividly remember was Lethem's disturbing "The Happy Man" about a man who 'migrates' to and from Hell. His only exit from Hell is after an 'act' is performed on him - an act from his forgotten past that will come back to haunt him a...
Mixed bag, but overall an entertaining read.
A nice mix of stories. One or two i wouldn't have classed as science fiction though.
