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Hear ye, hear ye, lords and ladies. Come with me now to the year 2004, where apparently sci-fi writers decided to write about colonialism a lot. Or at least, those stories that made it into ‘The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Twenty Second Annual Collection’. I will talk briefly about the collection in general, select a couple stories, and crown one of them Best Sci-Fi Short Story. Oh, and next time I shall write notes after reading each short story.
Since I can hardly afford to subscriptions to sci-fi fantasy, I love short story collections; at least sci-fi fantasy ones. For some odd reason, plain old fiction short stories don’t intrigue me. The only stories I truly liked: a story about a magician who mysteriously disappears, (“Eisenheim the Illusionist”), and s story about a voice that is piped into a building to scream truth (“The Reverse Bug”). Anyway. Maybe I should give it another go; this time with an author I like picking the stories, like Barbara Kingsolver (should’ve done that when I was still at my old library, which actually had the book). Also, I enjoyed the old Clue books; maybe the Year’s Best Mystery stories would be good. Anyway. The bad thing about them, though, is that I have different tastes from the author. This was proven many years ago when I read the We Name Drop A Guy Who Went Batshit Nuts Sci-Fi Writers of the Future Collection (L Ron Hubbard, he gave money to it), which had some contests for new writers and put the medalists and honorable mentions in the book. I enjoyed basically all of them, but the ones that were honorable mentions I would have given first place and the ones that were first place I would have given an honorable mention to.
The best stories, to my mind, were the first ones. Maybe my perspective was altered by the fact that I read those when the grandparents had just arrived for the summer, and then decided to read The Series I Am Trying To Forget About for my sanity, but I doubt it. As I mentioned, colonialism is touched upon, mostly briefly, by quite a few of them. Of course, all of them are about human nature. Sadly, most of the writers are male, but this collection does not lack for female MCs. I’m not sure why most of them are male, when there seem to be plenty of women in the List of the People Who Almost Made It In that all these Year’s Best have. >_<
( Spoilery Talk About the Stories )
( And the winner is... )
Since I can hardly afford to subscriptions to sci-fi fantasy, I love short story collections; at least sci-fi fantasy ones. For some odd reason, plain old fiction short stories don’t intrigue me. The only stories I truly liked: a story about a magician who mysteriously disappears, (“Eisenheim the Illusionist”), and s story about a voice that is piped into a building to scream truth (“The Reverse Bug”). Anyway. Maybe I should give it another go; this time with an author I like picking the stories, like Barbara Kingsolver (should’ve done that when I was still at my old library, which actually had the book). Also, I enjoyed the old Clue books; maybe the Year’s Best Mystery stories would be good. Anyway. The bad thing about them, though, is that I have different tastes from the author. This was proven many years ago when I read the We Name Drop A Guy Who Went Batshit Nuts Sci-Fi Writers of the Future Collection (L Ron Hubbard, he gave money to it), which had some contests for new writers and put the medalists and honorable mentions in the book. I enjoyed basically all of them, but the ones that were honorable mentions I would have given first place and the ones that were first place I would have given an honorable mention to.
The best stories, to my mind, were the first ones. Maybe my perspective was altered by the fact that I read those when the grandparents had just arrived for the summer, and then decided to read The Series I Am Trying To Forget About for my sanity, but I doubt it. As I mentioned, colonialism is touched upon, mostly briefly, by quite a few of them. Of course, all of them are about human nature. Sadly, most of the writers are male, but this collection does not lack for female MCs. I’m not sure why most of them are male, when there seem to be plenty of women in the List of the People Who Almost Made It In that all these Year’s Best have. >_<
( Spoilery Talk About the Stories )
( And the winner is... )
