Novellas read: Year's Best SF 14
I begun reading this book in 2009, then gave it to my mother and forgot about it. Now, cleaning up among the books, I found it again. It's been badly treated, poor thing; I don't know what mom does to books, but she can abuse them like nobody I know.
Most memorable story in this collection was, for me, Arkfall by C. I. Gilman. It's also the first and one of the longer stories. To borrow some words from the editors:
The ark Cormorin is a bio-ship, a partly biological submarine habitat for humans, in the dark seas of a very alien planet that is being colonized. A volcano eropts and the ark is lost in foreign depths.
It's a lovely story, with vivid and beautiful imaginary. The foreign sea on the other world, the culture that has been established there, all was perfectly described and the story itself intrigued me. This is a story I read months ago, and it's still the one I recall best.
I actually bought this book for the Neil Gaiman story "Orange" but that was. Meh. Not his best, felt mostly like an experiment in style.
Boojum by Elizabeth Bear and Sarah Monette was also a good story. Again, semi-sentient, biological ships. This time in space, however, and there are brains in jars and rebellish engineers. Good stuff.
Last time I read Alastair Reynolds, I really dislike the story (it was Diamond Dogs) because it felt not only hopeless, but denying the positive part of curiousity and discovery. And that's basically what I love about sf. So I was more than a little hesitant going into this story, but Fury was a slightly old-fashioned tale about robots, their rebellions and how certain loyalties go deep even in machines.
This was a good sf collection, I might buy the one for 2010 too.
Originally posted at Dreamwidth.
Most memorable story in this collection was, for me, Arkfall by C. I. Gilman. It's also the first and one of the longer stories. To borrow some words from the editors:
The ark Cormorin is a bio-ship, a partly biological submarine habitat for humans, in the dark seas of a very alien planet that is being colonized. A volcano eropts and the ark is lost in foreign depths.
It's a lovely story, with vivid and beautiful imaginary. The foreign sea on the other world, the culture that has been established there, all was perfectly described and the story itself intrigued me. This is a story I read months ago, and it's still the one I recall best.
I actually bought this book for the Neil Gaiman story "Orange" but that was. Meh. Not his best, felt mostly like an experiment in style.
Boojum by Elizabeth Bear and Sarah Monette was also a good story. Again, semi-sentient, biological ships. This time in space, however, and there are brains in jars and rebellish engineers. Good stuff.
Last time I read Alastair Reynolds, I really dislike the story (it was Diamond Dogs) because it felt not only hopeless, but denying the positive part of curiousity and discovery. And that's basically what I love about sf. So I was more than a little hesitant going into this story, but Fury was a slightly old-fashioned tale about robots, their rebellions and how certain loyalties go deep even in machines.
This was a good sf collection, I might buy the one for 2010 too.
Originally posted at Dreamwidth.