Charles N. Brown (1937–2009)

I found this book in a Little Free Library in the summer of 2020. It has sat at the side of my bed since then and every once in a while when I had finished one book and wasn't quite ready to start another I would read a story from it. As the subtitle says the stories span thirty years from the 1970s to the 2000s. Many of the authors are well-known: Octavia Butler, Harlan Ellison, Neil Gaiman, Ursula K. Le Guin, George R. R. Martin, Connie Willis. I enjoyed all the stories but some stood out for me. Ursula Le Guin's short story called "The Day Before the Revolution" evoked her fabulous book The Dispossessed as it is the final thoughts of the founder of the society explored in that book. Connie Willis is represented by the short story "Even the Queen" which postulates a society in which women control their reproductive cycles and don't even have menstrual periods unless they wish to conceive. The story "Rachel in Love" is by Pat Murphy, a writer I haven't encountered previously. The Rachel in the title is a primate who has been reared by Dr. Aaron Jacobs. Rachel thinks of Aaron as her father and so, when he dies of a heart attack, she is bereft. What follows is even worse for her.

At the back of the book is a list of all the works that have won Locus Awards up until 2003. Locus Awards are voted on by readers of the magazine so they represent what works have appealed to people the most in that year. Looking at the list for best science fiction novel I can see that I have read about half of them and they were all very good. So I'm going to see if I can get my hands on some of the rest.… (mehr)

Excellent collection. Of course, when you're aiming to select the best stories from the last 30 years, you're bound to get some good ones! I'd already read about half of them, which wasn't a bad ratio, and I only disliked a couple. The anthology really works as an overview and a retrospective of the genre - I'd recommend it highly to anyone who asked me, "So, why do you like SF, anyway?"


Contents:
The Death of Doctor Island • (1973) • Gene Wolfe
The Day Before the Revolution • (1974) • Ursula K. Le Guin
Jeffty Is Five • (1977) • Harlan Ellison
The Persistence of Vision • (1978) • John Varley
The Way of Cross and Dragon • (1979) • George R. R. Martin
Souls • (1982) • Joanna Russ
Bloodchild • (1984) • Octavia E. Butler
The Only Neat Thing to Do • (1985) • James Tiptree, Jr.
Rachel in Love • (1987) • Pat Murphy
The Scalehunter's Beautiful Daughter • (1988) • Lucius Shepard
Bears Discover Fire • (1990) • Terry Bisson
Buffalo • (1991) • John Kessel
Even the Queen • (1992) • Connie Willis
Gone • (1996) • John Crowley
Maneki Neko • (1998) • Bruce Sterling
Border Guards • (1999) • Greg Egan
Hell Is the Absence of God • (2001) • Ted Chiang
October in the Chair • (2002) • Neil Gaiman… (mehr)