When I get into a rhythm, boy can I really get things done. I don’t have the best track record with short stories. I always feel like they are too short, and that in the best of circumstances they end just as I am getting into them. In the worst of circumstances, I just can’t ever get into the short story at all.
Someone suggested to me that I work through the short stories from shortest to longest, particularly if they are in one book from one author, as that will help you acclimatize yourself to the author’s style. That helped me get through Zelazny’s short story collection. That helped.
Because one of these were digital, I had to do the page numbers on my computer. I put that into a spreadsheet, and it ended up making the collecting of a little more information for this review.
America’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy 2017
This collection was given to me as a gift. I don’t think I would have bought it on my own (unless I was looking to read a specific work from a specific author – oddly enough, I am trying to track down a copy of the 2018 edition of this because it has a work from Delany I’ve not yet read). I truly hope that everyone who reads this understands just how persnal reviews are, definitionally. Anything that is a “Best of” is likely not going to be my cup of tea, because one thing that I enjoy in a book is some kind of cohesion. It is not fault of this book that it lacks it. All this book is is just a collection of really good short stories.
And hey! They were good. I won’t say this collection was great, as it had a couple (more) issues that didn’t click with me. I am not the biggest fan of fantasy, and a lot of the stories were fantasy (and a surprising number were homages/reactions to C.S. Lewis). But frankly, many of the stories were just forgettable. I said they were good, and they were. But they didn’t have a lot of staying power. I am not sure I can tell you why. Not all were though, and some of them even motivated me to work on some of my own writing, which is not something that happens to frequently.
The absolute winner of this collection was Alexander Weinstein’s Openness, which motivated me to track down Weinstein’s own short story collections to read (and as of this writing, I have already torn through one of them). It was a truly exceptional piece of work.
But here is a weird tidbit that bothered me – I came across the series editor (John Joseph Adams) on twitter, and saw that “America’s Best SF&F 2022” was selected by June of 2022, and the book would be hitting shelves by November 2022. One imagines that if in early June 2022 the book is read to hit the shelves, then it can’t possibly be the best of the year 2022, as there are still a whopping 6 months left to the year. I feel really bad for anyone publishing stories in the later half of the year. This is truly a very poorly named collection.
Pwning Tomorrow
So this is a little different. In 2015 the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) decided to celebrate its anniversary by releasing a short story collection. I recall when this happened, and I recall that the short story collection was given out for free. Science-fiction writer and activist Cory Doctorow has (or did have) some kind of a role within the organization, and so it was likely pretty easy for him to pick up the phone and reach out to like minded friends, calling in favors to get this collection accomplished.
The stories in here were good. There wasn’t a single one of them that I thought was too boring, or made me wonder whose nephew the writer was to be included in the collection. It also introduced me to a number of writers I had not heard of before, but made me curious about. Thanks to reading this I have put Hannu Rajaniemi on my reading list.
Unlike the previous title, this was per-dominantly science-fiction, and that might be why I did better with it, although it does end with a kinda weird urban fantasy novella. The collection’s title alone should clue you in that this was going to be about the future. Being something released by the EFF, a lot of the stories center around internet and internet liberty themes, but even the stories that didn’t were really enjoyable. This also gave the collection something I really enjoy in short-story books – a sense of theme and cohesion.
It feels strange to not have as much to say about this as I did the previous one, despite having liked it more. It was good, and sometimes I guess that is all you need to say. If you are looking for a selection of short stories that is worth well more than the asking price, track this down. I kinda wish the EFF has another one of these coming out at some point.
Failures in Polymathy 