Again

[threemonkeys]

I didn't buy The Locus Awards 30 year collection when it first came out. I had read most of the stories and had them in other collections. But then it got remaindered and so seemed a better bit at a much reduced price even if only for the few stories I hadn't read before. I actually intended to only read those stories but I ended up reading the whole thing. A testament to the quality of the stories. It can be fun to try to second guess the minds of the editors of "best of" anthologies like this one. I.e. What does the selection of stories as a whole say about the tastes of the editors? In this case Jonathan Strahan and Charles N Brown.

What I noticed most clearly was that these stories almost all strongly feature the nature of the civilisation/society as an important aspect of the story. In many cases, the shape of the society was the whole point of the story. This is very interesting given that so much of the society represented on this genre is just our own transplanted or a standard one such as a variant of the pseudo medieval one used in much epic fantasy. If the culture is different, it is still usually just an element of world building rather than the main focus of the story. I would venture to suggest that of all the usual story focuses (technology, plot, character etc) that culture is one of the the least used. That is a pity as the SF genre is uniquely suited to exploration of the nature of culture and authors like Ursula Le Guin and John Varley illustrate how well it can be done. Clearly the editors of this anthology agree.

Comments

[thoatherder.livejournal.com]

So who is remaindering this book and where there any more copies?

[threemonkeys.livejournal.com]

Dymocks Lambton quay, but they have finished the sale now. You could ask Mark Fry there - he knows about the book and they may have one or two left out the back if you want one.