Let there be no doubt, in my opinion the best non-years best reprint science fiction anthology published in 2006 was James Patrick Kelly and John Kessel‘s Feeling Very Strange: The Slipstream Anthology. Where most slipstream or interstitial anthologies I’d seen were touchy-feely, wishy-washy poorly thought out exercises, Feeling Very Strange was smart, savvy, and very, very well edited.
For that reason, and for that reason only, I was interested to see that Kelly and Kessel had agreed to edit a cyberpunk anthology. In all honesty, it didn’t seem to me that the world was exactly crying out for such a book, but given their track record, it seemed worth giving the book the benefit of the doubt.
Well, the details are now online over at amazon.com, and Rewired: the Post-Cyberpunk Anthology looks very interesting indeed. It basically seems to cover what happened to cyberpunk after Sterling’s Mirrorshades – cyberpunk after cyberpunk, if you like. All things considered, that’s an interesting idea. This one has gone straight on to my ‘must buy’ list, and should be on yours too, if you’re at all interested in science fiction. Very cool, indeed.