2008 books
34) Walter M. Miller Jr., Dark Benediction, 1980
A short story collection that migrated to Gollancz's SF Masterworks series from their SF Collectors' Editions, where its original title was The Best of Walter M. Miller Jr. Miller's preoccupation with religious themes is not that much in evidence, though it does crop up in memorable imagery such as a crucifixion on Mars and a monk's retreat for people infected with an alien biology. Miller had a knack of making the reader think as much about the context and background to his stories as the stories themselves, which somehow makes them all the more whole and self-contained. Best ones: the far-future mini-space opera 'The Big Hunger', the hard-hitting 'Vengeance for Nikolai', and my favourite 'The Will', about a young terminally ill boy who uses science fiction to cure himself. All these put Miller's 1955 Hugo winning novelette 'The Darfsteller' at least partially in the shade, though that particular story is a good example of how to sustain a reader's interest by making a small idea go a very long way.