A science fiction blog featuring science fiction book reviews and with frequent ramblings on fantasy, computers and the web.
In episode 179 of the SF Signal Podcast, Patrick Hester and Jaym Gates gather a second group of panelists to talk about the past, present and future of Cyberpunk.
[Do you have an idea for a future Mind Meld? Let us know!]
Last week I attended my son’s high school’s open house. In the English Literature class we were informed that the kids had started reading the Arthur Miller play The Crucible which the kids would enjoy because, in the teacher’s words, “It’s got witches and adultery.” Many SF/F stories have those elements (if not in the same form) but, of course, there is nary a SF/F book on the agenda for the year. And in any case, stories can be interesting to teenagers without either or both.
Here’s what they said…
My list is by no means extensive or complete, but I thought of stories that contained elements of North American–Mexican, Appalachian–folklore, or that discussed current events and issues–struggles with religion in everyday life, culture clashes and war, discrimination–in ways that weren’t preachy.
Elizabeth Moon: “Knight of Other Days” — one of my favorite stories by Moon. When I first read it, I got the sense of a subtle Twilight Zone/Outer Limits-type tale, grounded in the setting of a Texas border town. The blend of history, mystery, influence of Mexican culture, and legend of the Knights Templar combine to form a multi-layered tale.
Terry Pratchett: Small Gods, Jingo, Feet of Clay — religion, culture clash/war, discrimination, set in a world different enough from ours to qualify as fantasy yet similar enough to equate to everyday life, news headlines. One of Pratchett’s many writing gifts.
Manly Wade Wellman: John the Balladeer tales, esp “Vandy, Vandy” — the Southern/Appalachian folklore, and the sense of how events in history can take on a fantasy spin when some details are scrambled and others are associated with magical intervention. And in “Vandy, Vandy,” there’s a witch! Well, a warlock. And a King, of sorts.
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Here’s the for the upcoming anthology Nebula Awards Showcase 2012 edited by James Patrick Kelly and John Kessel:
Tachyon has sent us the table of contents for the upcoming anthology Digital Rapture: The Singularity Anthology edited by James Patrick Kelly & John Kessel. It arrives on August 1, 2012:
Description:
When the Singularity arrives, and computers possess superhuman intelligence, will there be an ecstatic merging of machine and mind—or an instantaneous techno-apocalypse? Will there be the enslavement of humanity or “the Rapture of the Nerds”? The post-human future is here in its wildest science-fictional imaginings and intriguing scientific speculations. This far-reaching anthology traces the path of the Singularity, an era when advances in technology will totally transform human reality. It travels to the alien far-future of H. G. Wells (Mind at the End of Its Tether), to the almost human near-future of Ray Kurzweil (The Singularity is Near), from Elizabeth Bear’s fusion of woman, machine, God, and shark (“The Inevitable Heat Death of the Universe”), to Isaac Asimov’s evolution of ineffable logic (“The Last Question”). As intelligence both figuratively (and possibly literally) explodes, science fiction authors and futurists have dared to peek over the edge of the event horizon. Do you dare to join them there?
Table of Contents:
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REVIEW SUMMARY: Bring on the Li-Fi!
MY RATING: 
BRIEF SYNOPSIS:
19 stories and one introduction attempting to reconcile mainstream
literature that’s science fiction and science fiction that’s accepted
by the mainstream.
MY REVIEW:
PROS: A lot of well-written reprint stories, 5 of which were outstanding.
CONS: No outright bad story, but there were 3 which didn’t really entertain me as much as the others.
BOTTOM LINE: Terrific collection of stories featuring authors both the genre and non-genre readers wouldn’t have otherwise read.
In light of last week’s Mind Meld, nothing seems more apt than reviewing The Secret History of Science Fiction
edited by James Patrick Kelly and John Kessel. At first glance, the
selection of authors seem contrary: T.C. Boyle and Margaret Atwood for
example are authors whom we associate with the “we don’t write science
fiction” crowd. And then there’s the science fiction writers who’ve
been accepted by the mainstream (and by mainstream, I really mean the
literary): Ursula K. Le Guin, Jonathan Lethem, Karen Joy Fowler. This
is, in many ways, the anthology that presents the best of both worlds:
the mainstream stories that are science fiction, and the science
fiction stories that have been accepted as literary.
We also shouldn’t forget the “History” is The Secret History of Science Fiction
as the book features stories from the past few decades, and are easily
some of the best stories from the included authors, such as “The Ones
Who Walk Away from Omelas” by Le Guin or “The Hardened Criminals” by
Jonathan Lethem. I really enjoyed a lot of the stories here, perhaps
because I’m the perfect target audience: someone who wants to reconcile
literary writing with genre (or tear down those borders as the case may
be). There’s less focus here on adventure and space opera elements, or
hard science fiction for that matter, but more on the human condition,
and how we see the world. Having said that, there’s a lot of enjoyable
stories here, but my personal favorites include:
Individual story reviews follow…
Short fiction anthologies come in many flavors: some contain original fiction and some are comprised of reprints; they can be themed or non-themed; they may restrict themselves to a certain sub-genre of speculative fiction… But one thing they all have in common is that it’s Editors that put them together.
Continuing from Part 1 last week, we asked a handful of Editors the following question:
Read on to see their illuminating responses (and check out Part 3 when you’re done!) …
We have edited three reprint anthologies; the genesis of each was different. Jacob Weisman at Tachyon Publications approached Jim to do a slipstream book and he enlisted John as his co-editor; the result was Feeling Very Strange: The Slipstream Anthology. We proposed a book about post-cyberpunk and Jacob greenlighted Rewired: The Post-Cyberpunk Anthology. And it was Jacob and the perspicacious Bernie Goodman who suggested the idea for The Secret History Of Science Fiction; the book is due out next month.
We’ve a long history of collaboration and we’ve shared a similar vision for these reprint anthologies. In each of them we were trying to put forward an argument about the recent history of the genre. So we first had to gather our thoughts about slipstream and post-cyberpunk and the divide between mainstream and genre sf. Creating reprint anthologies like these involves figuring out what we think about a subject, or what we can credibly say about it. Selecting the stories has involved a couple of methods: (1) we decided on who we wanted in the book and then read intensively for stories that best illustrated our thesis, and (2) we decided what kind of stories we wanted and then cast the net widely to see who might have written the sort of thing we needed to support our thesis. In each of the books we have had some disagreements that have involved negotiations between us, and the final table of contents has been affected by practical considerations that made the end result different from our initial intentions.
Here is the table of contents for the upcoming Tachyon Publications anthology The Secret History of Science Fiction edited by James Patrick Kelly and John Kessel, which reprints stories published from 1971-2007 making the case for the convergence of mainstream fiction and literary sf:
