The
typical speculative fiction anthology of original material that appears on
shelves these days is a selection of stories intended to reach a particular
niche of readers while finding as many tangents within that niche as possible
to avoid monotony. The themed anthology
self-limiting, rarely do great or superb anthologies appear, average to
slightly above average the usual result.
It is the retrospective anthology, with its ability to glean the years
for quality stories, that has a chance at greatness. If you’re the editor of Fantasy & Science Fiction Magazine, well, the possibilities are
all the brighter. The magazine
publishing speculative fiction for more than half a century, and best-of every five to ten years since 1970, in 1999 Gordon van
Gelder took the reins from Edward L. Ferman and produced a 50th Anniversary edition from the magazine’s
backlog. A success, he came back with
another ‘very best of’ selection of stories in 2009 for the 60th anniversary
anthology. The magazine’s archives deep
(perhaps like no other magazine can boast) and van Gelder's editorial skills consistent, the 60th is just as consistently
good as the 50th. (And for the record,
so is the 65th.)
The
anthology opens on a scattershot shot of color from the genre’s past. Three stories in a row—rat-a-tat-tat—anticipate
the reader’s hopes all will be as good.
“Of Time and Third Avenue” by Alfred Bester is the result of an author
trying to write the best time travel story, ever. A brief few pages, indeed it is a perfect
little specimen (for whatever it’s worth) written in Bester’s supremely
confident, dynamic hand that captures one magical possibility of time
travel. “All Summer in a Day” by Ray
Bradbury is a tiny, sparkling jewel of a story.
A breathtaking moment of juxtaposed beauty and pain, the rain does stop
falling on Venus—but only for a moment. “One Ordinary Day, with Peanuts” by Shirley
Jackson is a charming and delightful story of a man who… well, it’s best just
to read the story and find out. A bit of
post-WWII Americana, its sentiment produces nostalgia for simpler days.
With
Theodore Sturgeon’s “A Touch of Strange”, the anthology shifts gears into
stories longer in the tooth—and stories that continue to move at different yet
complementary wavelengths. An ordinary
man who had previously met a mermaid meets an ordinary woman who had previously
met a merman. As if it could be any
other way, their encounter proves mythic yet in a personal way. “Eastward Ho!” by William Tenn is the wild
west coming east—a reverse Manifest Destiny in a post-apocalyptic future. Like many other Tenn pieces, it is sparkling
satire. The novelette the successful
novel would be based on, “Flowers for Algernon” by Daniel Keyes is the sixth
story in the anthology. Something of
Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men in
science fiction form, a man with a low IQ is taken to participate in laboratory
experiments that make him smarter.
Smarter he does become, but that is not the end of his heart-touching
tale. Nature makes us different and Kurt
Vonnegut made us equal. In the sardonic
“Harrison Bergeron”, a free-wheeling vignette of a truly equal America is
portrayed. Half a poke at political
correctness and half socialism, masks are worn by the handsome, bags of lead
shot are carried by wives to equal their husband’s weight, and other bizarre
accoutrements equalize society physically.
But when a genius super athlete escapes from prison one day, all things
lose equality, meaning short, laughable Vonnegut.
From
vintage Vonnegut to vintage Roger Zelazny, “This Moment of the Storm” presents
the writer’s classic hero (coffee drinking, cigarette smoking, suave-line
uttering, left hook throwing hero) living on a stop-over planet, working as a meteorology
monitor. A rain storm unlike the planet has ever seen on the horizon, when it
rains, it pours, sweeping up the lives of those around the hero. In many ways a predecessor to Ted Chiang’s
magnificent “Exhalation”, “The Electric Ant” by Philip K. Dick is a more
paranoid rendering of a man discovering he’s a robot, and then researching and
testing himself to discover the limits of his existence. Remarkably humanist despite the seemingly
cheesy premise (and title), the twenty pages capture much of what made Dick
such an intriguing and influential writer.
Myth, experimentation, Faust, mortality, irreverence—such are the
variety of terms possible to use in reference to Harlan Ellison’s inimitable
“The Deathbird”. Divided into sections
the author states can be read in any order (though not true), it is the other
half of the Genesis creation story in all its bittersweet glory. Ellison is a tour de force, and the novelette
is one reason why.
Though its
title is direct, the story is not. “The
Women Men Don’t See” by James Tiptree Jr. is not a fantasy about invisible
ladies, rather, of a fisherman on his way to Belize when he is stranded on a
spit of sand on the Yucatan with a mother, daughter and their pilot. Perhaps a backhanded swipe at Hemingway, what
unravels is a bizarre narrative, expertly presented for ‘alien’ impact. Announced in its title, “I See You” by Damon
Knight is a story unusually written in the second person, and given the subject
matter, is entirely appropriate for it.
What would the world be like if a device existed, like an iPhone, that
could allow a person to see anything they desire past, present, and
future? Knight answers the
question. Expertly crafting a
post-apocalyptic western atmosphere, “The Gunslinger” by Stephen King is the
second seminal story in the anthology (after Keyes’ “Flowers for Algernon”),
though in King’s case it would go on to spawn more than just a novel. Story embedded within story, the lone
gunslinger crosses a barren wasteland in search of a man in black, and, after
stopping at a corn farmer’s home, tells of the events, and the madness and
desolation, that have brought him to his search.
“The Dark”
by Karen Joy Fowler is a genre story through and through. About the ‘real’ reason for the plague and
other mass die-offs of humanity, it is well written but remains rather empty in
hindsight. (Yes, there’s a cheesy horror/sci-fi reason lurking behind the
die-off.) Not the animal rather the
city, “Buffalo” by John Kessel is the story of America’s “industrial
proletariat” pre-WWII. Free market
economy, socialism, H.G. Wells, and a tree-cutting operation round out this
well-written and heartfelt immigrant’s tale.
“Solitude” by Ursula Le Guin is story set in her Hainish universe, in
particular a society with strong taboos regarding contact and communication
between men and women. Resulting in a
world where the two sexes live apart, they meet only in secret rendezvous to
carry on the species. A subtly powerful
story about the desire for solitude and the desire for companionship, Le Guin
strikes a perfect, bittersweet note between the two. Would being able to kill a cloned terrorist
to release feelings of vengeance actually satisfy? That is the premise of Terry Bisson’s “macs”. Only ten pages, it is a simple but powerful
story that says more about human nature than terrorism, and sticks in the
reader’s memory whether they want it to or not.
God
supposedly made Adam and Eve, Dr. Frankenstein created a monster, and in “Creation”
by Jeffrey Ford, a young boy going through catechism decides to bring to life
his own stick man in the forest. A
smoothly written piece with a bite of cynicism at the conclusion, Ford does the
heritage proud. “Other People” by Neil
Gaiman is an obvious (and very brief) story that, in near Biblical form,
rehashes territory rehashed a million times by all genres of literature. A
successful follow up to a successful novel, “Two Hearts” by Peter Beagle is a
coda, of sorts, to The Last Unicorn. The story of a young girl who goes into a
forest to get revenge on a griffin who has taken her friend, she learns
tackling a monster so big is best to go about with friends—powerful friends. A classically styled fairy tale by a modern
writer, the novelette possesses all of the delightful charm of the novel but
wants for depth. “Journey into the Kingdom” by Mary Rickert is a love story,
but an uncommon one running parallel to the ghostly experiences had by a young
girl growing up beside the sea. Shifting
into a present tense narrative, Rickert looks at the expanse and fragility of
giving one’s heart over into, yes, a kingdom. And the last story in the
anthology, “The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate” by Ted Chiang, is an 1,001 Arabian Nights-esque tale (with
suitably embedded tales) about the meaning of regret as seen through the
experiences of people traveling through regularly spaced gates in time.
Spanning
six decades (1951-2007), The Very Best of
Fantasy & Science Fiction: 60th Anniversary Anthology is an all-star
cast of short stories the genre can be proud of. Most nominated or winning awards, each
possesses some radiance. Whether the
prose, innate storytelling, or profundity, the selections come from speculative
fiction’s memory or are becoming part of it, and as such can be enjoyed by
genre and non-genre readers alike.
Moreover, for modern readers of speculative fiction who have not dipped
into its short fiction history, this is as good a place as any to start. With names like Bradbury, Le Guin, Ellison,
Sturgeon, Zelazny, Tiptree Jr., there’s no shortage of quality starting points
that blend with the more modern.
The
following are the twenty-three stories in the anthology:
Of Time
and Third Avenue by Alfred Bester
All Summer
in a Day by Ray Bradbury
One
Ordinary Day, with Peanuts by Shirley Jackson
Touch of
Strange by Theodore Sturgeon
Eastward
Ho! by William Tenn
Flowers
for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
Harrison
Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
This
Moment of the Storm by Roger Zelazny
The
Electric Ant by Philip K. Dick
The
Deathbird by Harlan Ellison
The Women
Men Don't See by James Tiptree, Jr.
I See You
by Damon Knight
The
Gunslinger by Stephen King
The Dark
by Karen Joy Fowler
Buffalo by
John Kessel
Solitude
by Ursula K. Le Guin
Mother
Grasshopper by Michael Swanwick
macs by
Terry Bisson
Creation
by Jeffrey Ford
Other
People by Neil Gaiman
Two Hearts
by Peter S. Beagle
Journey
into the Kingdom by M. Rickert
The
Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate by Ted Chiang
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