This week Gary and I start off discussing aspects of compiling ‘best of the year’ anthology, touch on genre drift and blur, move on to a few recent stories we’ve greatly admired, and then invite Sophie back at the very end of the ‘cast for a quick chat about her recent reading. As always, we hope you enjoy the podcast.
As I said in a tweet, personally, I just found that when reading Best of the Year anthologies and came across very different stories, I chalked it up to diversity in the field. “Okay, so these very different stories are both in the field and both considered worthy.Gotcha.”
Thanks for an entertaining hour. Your discussion of “Year’s Bests” from the past reminded me that I was probably an odd kid (yeah, “probably”) . . . because I discovered the sf magazines before I discovered the anthologies. In fact, the magazines led me to the anthologies rather than vice versa. In the early ’70s, I often bought GALAXY, F&SF, and WORLDS OF IF from drugstore newsstands (ASIMOV’S did not yet exist) — and eventually clipped a coupon from a 1973 issue of GALAXY to join the Science Fiction Book Club. And that was how I started reading the Wollheim annuals.
I, on the other hand, never realised as a 12-year-old that there could be more than one “Year’s Best” each year, and since my library ordered sporadically, it took a long time before I discovered the truth: that editors chose their favourites. Until then, I thought editors’ jobs were simply to collect the bestsellers of any given year, which was how my “Best Of” music compilations were usually assembled. I guess I didn’t think about short stories not actually being sold as singles :)