From Publishers Weekly
With the help of SF author Karen Joy Fowler (billed as "consultant"), editors Le Guin ( Tehanu ) and Attebery ( Strategies of Fantasy ) have assembled a massive volume of admirable scope and ingenuity that includes most--no one could include all --of the influential North American science fiction writers of the past 30 years. From Fritz Leiber and Samuel R. Delany through Zenna Henderson, James Tiptree Jr. and Barry N. Malzberg to Harlan Ellison, Joanna Russ, John Varley, Octavia Butler, Orson Scott Card and Connie Willis, the table of contents reads like an SF Who's Who. But the editors have collected "rarely anthologized gems," an approach that may not serve readers unfamiliar with the genre: by and large, they've chosen lesser-known works by these well-known authors, rather than the stories that best exemplify their contributions to the field. All the selections are quite good, but in many cases they don't demonstrate what makes these writers important: for instance, William Gibson is represented by "The Gernsback Continuum" instead of one of the cyberpunk tales that made him famous. For those well-versed in futuristic fiction, this volume offers a treasure trove of more obscure but eminently worthwhile stories. For the newcomer, it will serve as only a partial introduction to the subject.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
The distinguished publisher of a library-full of canon-establishing anthologies finally embraces science fiction. As an sf master and critic whose reputation transcends the genre, LeGuin is ideal for overseeing the project, albeit assisted by an academic. The resulting collection limits its scope to North American writers of the last three decades--a period said to contain "science fiction in its maturity"--but its more than 60 stories by as many authors include some of the most brilliantly crafted works the field has to offer. They represent the full range of thematic possibilities, from alternate history (e.g., Kim Stanley Robinson's "The Lucky Strike," a plainspoken revision of the A-bomb's first drop) to alien culture (e.g., Vonda McIntyre's evocative "The Mountains of Sunset, the Mountains of Dawn"). Such veterans as Knight, Silverberg, and Ellison as well as many considerably less-known names prove equally adept at every stylistic maneuver from postmodernist plot inversion to dystopian satire. Indeed, by ignoring mere reputation (notably absent, for instance, are Asimov and Clarke) and focusing on less-anthologized stories, the editors have produced a compilation of intelligent and entertaining sf that belongs in virtually every fiction collection.
Carl Hays
