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krpalmerStill working my way through the ebooks from my library I’ve gathered over time in a reader application’s queue-like function, I signed out at last an anthology of science fiction and fantasy with a somewhat generic title. I’m often conscious of a feeling, at least, that “I don’t read as much science fiction as I used to”; a complicated and unfortunate combination of things went into that over a number of years. The thought that short stories could be a way back was appealing (Ellen Datlow’s introduction talked up their appeal), but just getting started can remain a little intimidating.
One part of my feeling of disconnection is “not reading new stories,” and for all of my impressions it’s not easy to just browse back in the ebook catalog the anthology did happen to be copyrighted 2008. That would still mean newer stories than many I’ve read, but one unfortunate feeling there, perhaps, was wondering if I’d run into “forget about global warning finishing off civilization; oil will give out tomorrow and finish us off that much sooner.” Before I’d got very far into the anthology, though, I did start wondering about the “fantasy” listed second in the title predominating in the number of stories, and the “fantastic” elements in some of them only becoming obvious near their ends. To demand “fixed genre boundaries” or any other boundaries could ask for trouble, of course, and some of the genre-blurring, such as Jeffrey Ford’s “Daltharee,” was intriguing. As for one distinction that didn’t quite have to do with that, I did wonder a bit about three stories involving the 1960s; Elizabeth Bear’s “Sonny Liston Takes the Fall,” which just happened to be mentioned in the ebook blurb seen before signing it out, was the most interesting of them for me.
So far as the more clearly science fictional works in the collection went, Maureen McHugh’s “Special Economics” was set in a near-future China (and just happens to allude to a considerable number of deaths in a “bird flu plague,” although it also mentions “flat plastic cell phone kits” reshaped in boiling water, and I took more interest than I probably should have in some of them having “animé characters” on them). It turned out to be an interesting setting that didn’t pound me on the head with dystopia. Lavie Tidhar’s “Shira” was billed in its introduction as “alternative history,” although without that billing I might not have thought of it as that. It did make a subtle shift from “a better world follows an alluded-to catastrophe” to something more like “metafiction.” The long piece at the end of the volume, Paul McAuley and Kim Newman’s “Prisoners of the Action,” did seem very much of its time with “incomprehensible aliens” imprisoned in a remote military base serving more than anything to illustrate man’s inhumanity. I could acknowledge some of those human boogiemen invoked there while recognizing they’d at least be a little different now. Maybe, once I’d finished reading, I had to draw a distinction between “wanting one thing to plug me back into something that just happens to agree with me” and “acknowledging positives and moving along,” but at least the experience worked out all right for me.
One part of my feeling of disconnection is “not reading new stories,” and for all of my impressions it’s not easy to just browse back in the ebook catalog the anthology did happen to be copyrighted 2008. That would still mean newer stories than many I’ve read, but one unfortunate feeling there, perhaps, was wondering if I’d run into “forget about global warning finishing off civilization; oil will give out tomorrow and finish us off that much sooner.” Before I’d got very far into the anthology, though, I did start wondering about the “fantasy” listed second in the title predominating in the number of stories, and the “fantastic” elements in some of them only becoming obvious near their ends. To demand “fixed genre boundaries” or any other boundaries could ask for trouble, of course, and some of the genre-blurring, such as Jeffrey Ford’s “Daltharee,” was intriguing. As for one distinction that didn’t quite have to do with that, I did wonder a bit about three stories involving the 1960s; Elizabeth Bear’s “Sonny Liston Takes the Fall,” which just happened to be mentioned in the ebook blurb seen before signing it out, was the most interesting of them for me.
So far as the more clearly science fictional works in the collection went, Maureen McHugh’s “Special Economics” was set in a near-future China (and just happens to allude to a considerable number of deaths in a “bird flu plague,” although it also mentions “flat plastic cell phone kits” reshaped in boiling water, and I took more interest than I probably should have in some of them having “animé characters” on them). It turned out to be an interesting setting that didn’t pound me on the head with dystopia. Lavie Tidhar’s “Shira” was billed in its introduction as “alternative history,” although without that billing I might not have thought of it as that. It did make a subtle shift from “a better world follows an alluded-to catastrophe” to something more like “metafiction.” The long piece at the end of the volume, Paul McAuley and Kim Newman’s “Prisoners of the Action,” did seem very much of its time with “incomprehensible aliens” imprisoned in a remote military base serving more than anything to illustrate man’s inhumanity. I could acknowledge some of those human boogiemen invoked there while recognizing they’d at least be a little different now. Maybe, once I’d finished reading, I had to draw a distinction between “wanting one thing to plug me back into something that just happens to agree with me” and “acknowledging positives and moving along,” but at least the experience worked out all right for me.