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lucindashirreffs's review against another edition
3.0
I wish that - like the planet - the Vulcan story didn't exist
jimbus's review against another edition
3.0
This review was also posted to my blog here.
-
I’d read Science Fiction off and on, but it wasn’t until I had to study for a module on SF during my English Literature undergraduate days that I really got into it. In particular, I really enjoyed The Oxford Book of Science Fiction Stories, edited by Tom Shippey. I remember distinctly the moment I realised this was a literature I was seriously interested in; it was when I finished Frederik Pohl’s The Tunnel Under the World. Between that mind-blowing story, my first encounter with Ballard’s short fiction in Billenium, also in the same collection, and the sheer breadth of the other stories. I knew this was something I needed to investigate further.
One of the first things I did was read some of PKD’s short fiction. Up until then I was only familiar with his major novels, but it was the short fiction where his ideas are most concentrated and effective, in my opinion. The intense blasts of paranoia and weirdness these stories aimed directly at my brain encouraged me to start writing my own weird short fiction (some of which I published and are available here).
I’d been meaning to read more SF short stories for a while as a kind of long term, free form project, partly for enjoyment and partly for research purposes, because if you intend to write good fiction, you should read a lot of the kind of fiction you intend to write.
Browsing in the library, I discovered a series from The British Library called Science Fiction Classics, themed anthologies of SF stories, edited by Mike Ashley, who I hadn’t encountered before, but who apparently also edits the Mammoth Book of… series. There were a few of these British Library anthologies in the library, I borrowed them and will be making my way through them as and when I can. I also had a lot of fun reviewing each story in the form of a single tweet, #onetweetreviews, like I did for the first volume of Ballard’s short fiction. I have copied the tweets below, but if you’d rather read them in a twitter thread, you can find it here.
The first anthology I had a look at was Born of the Sun: Adventures in our Solar System. There’s a story for every planet in our solar system, and a couple of interesting additions to fill it out. Each story is introduced by Ashley, fitting the story into its proper context both within SF as a whole and among other stories about the same planet. These introductions might be old news to a lot of hardcore SF fans, but they probably wouldn’t be looking at these anthologies. To interested newcomers like me, who might have heard of Robert Silverberg and read one of his stories in another anthology but otherwise know little, these introductions are great.
I could say the same thing about this anthology that you can say about any anthology; there are a few dull stories, a few that blew my mind. I did enjoy Ashley’s focus on stories that haven’t been anthologised before, I suppose that’s him flexing his knowledge as a historian of popular fiction. I’d never heard of E.R. James for example, but if I see his name in another anthology at some point, I’ll know to be excited.
I liked this anthology a lot. I look forward to reading the other ones.
-
Sunrise on Mercury by Robert Silverberg
Mercury
There's nothing quite like a touch of Space Madness. SF and horror are often very close. Have you seen Event Horizon?
The Hell Planet by Leslie F. Stone
Vulcan
An anti-colonial SF story from 1931 with some horrifying Ancient Mariner elements. Enjoyable but overlong, imo.
Foundling on Venus by John and Dorothy De Courcy
Venus
Who knew a story where a little alien man tears off his human child skin costume could be so heartwarming?
The Lonely Path by by John Ashcroft
Mars
A first contact and time travel story rolled into one. If you ever wondered how the aliens who sent down the monolith in 2001 felt about Earth, this story will intrigue you.
Garden in the Void by Poul Anderson
Asteroid Belt
There are some environments you don't want to adapt to.
Desertion by Clifford D. Simak
Jupiter
And some environments that you just might. What a beautiful story in its way. And also, wow, Avatar was even less original than I'd thought.
How Beautiful with Banners by James Blish
Venus
You just can't trust single celled organisms.
Where No Man Walks by E.R. James
Uranus
There's always a new market. Space as resource to be extracted regardless of cost.
A Baby on Neptune by Clare Winger Harris & Miles J. Breuer
Neptune
A story for those who've ever wondered about the damage they wreak on the ants by walking across grass.
Wait It Out by Larry Niven
Pluto
Reminds me of Ubik, do wonder if Dick read this while he was writing it. As much as I like a space adventure, I do love a story that acknowledges how easy it is for everything in space to go totally wrong.
-
I’d read Science Fiction off and on, but it wasn’t until I had to study for a module on SF during my English Literature undergraduate days that I really got into it. In particular, I really enjoyed The Oxford Book of Science Fiction Stories, edited by Tom Shippey. I remember distinctly the moment I realised this was a literature I was seriously interested in; it was when I finished Frederik Pohl’s The Tunnel Under the World. Between that mind-blowing story, my first encounter with Ballard’s short fiction in Billenium, also in the same collection, and the sheer breadth of the other stories. I knew this was something I needed to investigate further.
One of the first things I did was read some of PKD’s short fiction. Up until then I was only familiar with his major novels, but it was the short fiction where his ideas are most concentrated and effective, in my opinion. The intense blasts of paranoia and weirdness these stories aimed directly at my brain encouraged me to start writing my own weird short fiction (some of which I published and are available here).
I’d been meaning to read more SF short stories for a while as a kind of long term, free form project, partly for enjoyment and partly for research purposes, because if you intend to write good fiction, you should read a lot of the kind of fiction you intend to write.
Browsing in the library, I discovered a series from The British Library called Science Fiction Classics, themed anthologies of SF stories, edited by Mike Ashley, who I hadn’t encountered before, but who apparently also edits the Mammoth Book of… series. There were a few of these British Library anthologies in the library, I borrowed them and will be making my way through them as and when I can. I also had a lot of fun reviewing each story in the form of a single tweet, #onetweetreviews, like I did for the first volume of Ballard’s short fiction. I have copied the tweets below, but if you’d rather read them in a twitter thread, you can find it here.
The first anthology I had a look at was Born of the Sun: Adventures in our Solar System. There’s a story for every planet in our solar system, and a couple of interesting additions to fill it out. Each story is introduced by Ashley, fitting the story into its proper context both within SF as a whole and among other stories about the same planet. These introductions might be old news to a lot of hardcore SF fans, but they probably wouldn’t be looking at these anthologies. To interested newcomers like me, who might have heard of Robert Silverberg and read one of his stories in another anthology but otherwise know little, these introductions are great.
I could say the same thing about this anthology that you can say about any anthology; there are a few dull stories, a few that blew my mind. I did enjoy Ashley’s focus on stories that haven’t been anthologised before, I suppose that’s him flexing his knowledge as a historian of popular fiction. I’d never heard of E.R. James for example, but if I see his name in another anthology at some point, I’ll know to be excited.
I liked this anthology a lot. I look forward to reading the other ones.
-
Sunrise on Mercury by Robert Silverberg
Mercury
There's nothing quite like a touch of Space Madness. SF and horror are often very close. Have you seen Event Horizon?
The Hell Planet by Leslie F. Stone
Vulcan
An anti-colonial SF story from 1931 with some horrifying Ancient Mariner elements. Enjoyable but overlong, imo.
Foundling on Venus by John and Dorothy De Courcy
Venus
Who knew a story where a little alien man tears off his human child skin costume could be so heartwarming?
The Lonely Path by by John Ashcroft
Mars
A first contact and time travel story rolled into one. If you ever wondered how the aliens who sent down the monolith in 2001 felt about Earth, this story will intrigue you.
Garden in the Void by Poul Anderson
Asteroid Belt
There are some environments you don't want to adapt to.
Desertion by Clifford D. Simak
Jupiter
And some environments that you just might. What a beautiful story in its way. And also, wow, Avatar was even less original than I'd thought.
How Beautiful with Banners by James Blish
Venus
You just can't trust single celled organisms.
Where No Man Walks by E.R. James
Uranus
There's always a new market. Space as resource to be extracted regardless of cost.
A Baby on Neptune by Clare Winger Harris & Miles J. Breuer
Neptune
A story for those who've ever wondered about the damage they wreak on the ants by walking across grass.
Wait It Out by Larry Niven
Pluto
Reminds me of Ubik, do wonder if Dick read this while he was writing it. As much as I like a space adventure, I do love a story that acknowledges how easy it is for everything in space to go totally wrong.
spacebornfew's review against another edition
adventurous
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
impla77's review against another edition
adventurous
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? N/A
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
3.75
Nicely presented, I like these anthologies a lot, but let down for me by the strength of the later short stories, particularly after the excellent Mars one, which I will continue to think about for a long while
cattytrona's review against another edition
4.0
The stories in here range from forgettable to really very good, and they’re well introduced too.
I remember liking the Mercury, Vulcan, Mars, Asteroid Belt, Jupiter and Neptune stories in particular. That’s a big hunk of the planets (and non planets)! A good selection, then
I remember liking the Mercury, Vulcan, Mars, Asteroid Belt, Jupiter and Neptune stories in particular. That’s a big hunk of the planets (and non planets)! A good selection, then
fictionfan's review against another edition
5.0
Touring the Solar System…
This collection of ten vintage science fiction stories takes us on a tour of our Solar System. There are six of the seven actual planets in the system (excluding Earth). Saturn’s moon Titan is included instead of the planet itself. Pluto is included because it was considered a planet until Neil De Grasse Tyson viciously demoted it to lump of rock or some such. The Asteroid Belt gets its own entry since there have been lots of stories about it. And there’s a mysterious planet, Vulcan – never seen but once postulated to exist by scientists trying to explain the oddness of Mercury’s orbit before Einstein’s theories provided a better explanation; and exercising a considerable magnetic pull on the imaginations of SF writers of the time.
The editor, Mike Ashley (who is wonderful at these anthologies, by the way), has chosen most of the stories from the ‘40s and ‘50s, with just a couple of earlier ones and a couple from the ‘60s. He explains that this is because he wanted to “select stories that took at least some notice of the scientific understanding of the day”. Before each story there is an introduction to the planet, giving its dual history – the advances in scientific understanding of its physical properties over the decades, along with a potted history of how it was viewed and used over time by SF writers. These intros are fantastic – pitched at absolutely the right level for the interested non-scientist and packed full of examples of authors and specific stories to investigate further. Each story is also prefaced with fabulous pictures of the relevant planetscape, mostly as envisioned by Lucien Rudaux, a French artist and astronomer of the early 20th century. I must say that, much though I enjoyed most of the stories, it was the intros in this one that made it extra special – of all the great anthologies the BL has produced this year, this one is my favourite by miles… or I should probably say, by light-years!
Onto the actual stories! Of the ten, I gave six either 4 or 5 stars, and only a couple were duds for me, one which went on too long and another which I simply didn’t understand, so it may work fine for the more science-minded reader. Here’s a flavour of a few of those I most enjoyed:
Foundling on Venus by John and Dorothy De Courcy. A story of the various races and species all living in New Reno, a frontier town on Venus, with all the violence and vice that usually comes with that. The story tells of a child found in the street by a young woman, and we gradually learn how he, and she, came to be there.
The Lonely Path by John Ashcroft. Mars! The first manned flight has landed on Mars, sent to examine a strange tower standing hugely high in the desolate landscape. The astronauts gradually discover the purpose of the tower and what happened to its builder. It’s an excellent, novelette-length story, well-told, interesting and thoughtful.
Garden in the Void by Poul Anderson. Set in the Asteroid Belt, this tells of two prospectors, hoping to strike it rich so they can return to earth. One day they spot a green asteroid and land to investigate. They find it is covered in vegetation and has its very own gardener – a human who was stranded there many years before and has developed a kind of symbiotic relationship with the plants. I found this quite a creepy story, very well told, with lots of science that mostly went right over my head, but I was still able to follow the story easily.
Wait It Out by Larry Niven. This is “hard” SF – i.e., based on real science, but explained well enough that there’s no need to be an astrophysicist to understand the story! Our narrator is one of the two men aboard the first ship to land on Pluto. But they land on ice, and their nuclear powered engine temporarily melts it. As soon as they switch their engine off, the ice refreezes and their ship is trapped. This is a bleak story but very well told, and I found the ideas in it left me feeling a bit discombobulated.
So some excellent stories in here, enhanced by the fantastic introductions. If you’re interested in science fiction in even the mildest way, then I heartily recommend this anthology to you. Great stuff!
NB This book was provided for review by the publisher, the British Library.
www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com
This collection of ten vintage science fiction stories takes us on a tour of our Solar System. There are six of the seven actual planets in the system (excluding Earth). Saturn’s moon Titan is included instead of the planet itself. Pluto is included because it was considered a planet until Neil De Grasse Tyson viciously demoted it to lump of rock or some such. The Asteroid Belt gets its own entry since there have been lots of stories about it. And there’s a mysterious planet, Vulcan – never seen but once postulated to exist by scientists trying to explain the oddness of Mercury’s orbit before Einstein’s theories provided a better explanation; and exercising a considerable magnetic pull on the imaginations of SF writers of the time.
The editor, Mike Ashley (who is wonderful at these anthologies, by the way), has chosen most of the stories from the ‘40s and ‘50s, with just a couple of earlier ones and a couple from the ‘60s. He explains that this is because he wanted to “select stories that took at least some notice of the scientific understanding of the day”. Before each story there is an introduction to the planet, giving its dual history – the advances in scientific understanding of its physical properties over the decades, along with a potted history of how it was viewed and used over time by SF writers. These intros are fantastic – pitched at absolutely the right level for the interested non-scientist and packed full of examples of authors and specific stories to investigate further. Each story is also prefaced with fabulous pictures of the relevant planetscape, mostly as envisioned by Lucien Rudaux, a French artist and astronomer of the early 20th century. I must say that, much though I enjoyed most of the stories, it was the intros in this one that made it extra special – of all the great anthologies the BL has produced this year, this one is my favourite by miles… or I should probably say, by light-years!
Onto the actual stories! Of the ten, I gave six either 4 or 5 stars, and only a couple were duds for me, one which went on too long and another which I simply didn’t understand, so it may work fine for the more science-minded reader. Here’s a flavour of a few of those I most enjoyed:
Foundling on Venus by John and Dorothy De Courcy. A story of the various races and species all living in New Reno, a frontier town on Venus, with all the violence and vice that usually comes with that. The story tells of a child found in the street by a young woman, and we gradually learn how he, and she, came to be there.
The Lonely Path by John Ashcroft. Mars! The first manned flight has landed on Mars, sent to examine a strange tower standing hugely high in the desolate landscape. The astronauts gradually discover the purpose of the tower and what happened to its builder. It’s an excellent, novelette-length story, well-told, interesting and thoughtful.
Garden in the Void by Poul Anderson. Set in the Asteroid Belt, this tells of two prospectors, hoping to strike it rich so they can return to earth. One day they spot a green asteroid and land to investigate. They find it is covered in vegetation and has its very own gardener – a human who was stranded there many years before and has developed a kind of symbiotic relationship with the plants. I found this quite a creepy story, very well told, with lots of science that mostly went right over my head, but I was still able to follow the story easily.
Wait It Out by Larry Niven. This is “hard” SF – i.e., based on real science, but explained well enough that there’s no need to be an astrophysicist to understand the story! Our narrator is one of the two men aboard the first ship to land on Pluto. But they land on ice, and their nuclear powered engine temporarily melts it. As soon as they switch their engine off, the ice refreezes and their ship is trapped. This is a bleak story but very well told, and I found the ideas in it left me feeling a bit discombobulated.
So some excellent stories in here, enhanced by the fantastic introductions. If you’re interested in science fiction in even the mildest way, then I heartily recommend this anthology to you. Great stuff!
NB This book was provided for review by the publisher, the British Library.
www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com
orlaelan's review against another edition
adventurous
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
4.75
wyeaye84's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
4.0