Now then, I’ve gone a bought a new non-Years Best anthology of SF, the first in years, there’s a turn up for the books. Several reasons behind this :
- Reason #1 The First, First of That Name : I’m getting through Neil Clarke’s ‘The Best Science Fiction of the Year, Volume 7’, but for some reason that hefty tome isn’t calling to me from it’s place on the writing desk next to ‘my chair’
- Reason #2 The Second, Second of That Name : Jonathan Strahan gives good anthology, and I’ve read many of his previous anthologies, and, most pertinent to this volume the two excellent anthologies he edited with the late Gardner Dozois viz The New Space Opera (2007) and The New Space Opera 2 (2009). As those books were published by Eos then this couldn’t be The New Space Opera 3, but personally I would have titled it The Newerer Space Opera
- Reason #3 the Third, Third of That Name :
I realised that next year it will be the 50th anniversary of the first SF anthology that I bought. Yup, in 1975, as a 15 year old, having bought and read a lot/most of Asimov and ERB, and a lot of Arthur C. Clarke and Harry Harrison, I espied a copy of Brian Aldiss’s ‘Space Opera’ in paperback and bought it, and it did indeed open new vistas, having previously (not really being aware of it) been reading stories and novels from previous decades, rather than current material. As an aside, I still have that book (the version with the somewhat non-Space Opera monsters on the cover), and it’s marked inside as being accession number #60. Two things about that : i) I discovered girls, beer and punk rock not long after and my initial SF collection only reached 200 as my time and spending money went in other directions, ii) having put accession numbers on my books in my teens I did qualify as a librarian in my early 20s
So I’ll be working my way through this anthology adding reviews of stories as I read them.
First up is Tobias S. Buckell’s ‘Zen and the Art of Starship Maintenance’. I read it a few years back in Neil Clarke’s ‘The Best Science Fiction of the Year: Volume Three’ and noted that it was a clever story to end that volume. Before you go any further, just to note that the story is reprinted in Lightspeed Magazine and I would urge you to read it. It will only take 30 minutes (45 maybe if you move your lips when reading) and if you like SF you’ll enjoy it.
As it’s only a short story I decided to read it again, and whilst I remembered the gist of the plot, I had forgotten just how good the story is. It really is, very very good. Buckell starts Big Picture, laughing in the face of Robert Reed’s ‘Great Ship’, as his ship ‘With All Sincerity’ is a vast conglomeration of many big ships, planetoids, Dyson Rings, and the like, with several trillion inhabitants, all protected and enveloped by a powerful shield that has seen them victorious in battle. There’s a lot of great description by Buckell. Then the story narrows down into a two person interaction in a very small room, as Asimovian rules seem to tie the protagonist ‘robot”s hands when dealing with a person who has very much eschewed uploading himself to a longer lived non-biological form. But only seems to…. [25th September 2024]
Second up is Yoon Ha Lee’s ‘Extracurricular Activities’ which was originally published on Tor.com and can now be read on line on Reactor Mag. It was also in Neil Clarke’s ‘The Best Science Fiction of the Year: Volume Three’ where I noted that whilst “there was stuff I *really* did like – gender fluidity, non-CIS sexuality and flirting, but the undercover spy thing and the generally light tone of the story didn’t work for me” and I baled out before the end. Well I decided to re-read it again, and came to the same conclusion. The main action of the story felt very much like a Roger Moore era James Bond movie, with the protagonist smoothly making his way around the enemy headquarters, dressing up and masquerading as a local, knocking people out and having them staying knocked out for a long time so they don’t raise the alarm, and then making a slightly dubious escape. The story features lubrication at the beginning of the story, in the middle of the story (a major plot element) and, deliciously, in the final scene, which was very James Bondy, but in this case Bond gets the boy not the girl, and the lubrication for their forthcoming activities of a sexual nature is at issue. TBH I was glad I had read through the story to the end just for this. [2nd October 2024]
