Jonathan returns and our heroes spend some time discussing the history and nature of short story collections in science fiction and fantasy. Warning: Contains some facts and a lot of wild speculation.
Next week: William Gibson!
Jonathan returns and our heroes spend some time discussing the history and nature of short story collections in science fiction and fantasy. Warning: Contains some facts and a lot of wild speculation.
Two observations: I think Isaac Asimov deserved a mention for the clever way he presented his leftovers – The Early Asimov – by interspersing the stories with biographical anecdotes, and in this way succeeded in creating an entertaining book out of stories that mostly weren’t worthy!
Secondly, I disagree with Gary (it’s the first time) about The Illustrated Man. The concept of the tattoos coming alive and becoming the stories is quite original and arresting – more so when a tattoo depicts a murder, and a character realises he is the victim in the tattoo!
Sturgeon’s 1948 Gnome Press-published “Without Sorcery†not only opens with an introduction to the collection but each story has its own little introduction dispensing a little patter about its creation, theme, personal meaning to Sturgeon, so that the book is pervaded in an authorial odour a la Ellison.
This year, Ian MacLeod has a short story collection coming out. Also, Yves Meynard’s first English collection has just been published by ChiZine.
A look at either of these on the podcast would be exciting!