Strange but not true
Aug. 17th, 2005 09:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
threemonkeysI'm a big fan of David Hartwell's Year's best SF series. While not as comprehensive as the Gardner Dozois collections, the average quality and the cohesive nature of the stories chosen make it a better read. Not that the two collections are mutually exclusive - quite the contrary really.
However I was not so impressed by the fantasy equivalent. When I read the first volume, it did not seem to have either the quality or cohesiveness. A more random collection of stories of variable quality. I did wonder if this was down to Kathryn Cramer being part of the editorial mixture - there by necessity because fantasy not being such a strength of Hartwell. It may be coincidence, but the introduction of Cramer to the SF series also marked a more random nature to the structure of the collection even though the quality of the stories remained high.
I have skipped the last couple of fantasy anthologies, but I finally read volume 4 after picking it up second hand. There are a lot of very good stories in this collection. It seems fantasy short fiction is alive and well and trying some interesting things that are much less evident in the longer form (as is usually the case across most genres).
It still feels thrown together however. The stories in a basically random order with some odd juxtapositions. It seems to me that an anthologist should be able to structure a collection to aid the reading experience. I say "should" but in fact it isn't really that common as its a subtle art - when do you put similar writing styles together, when do you contrast, when do you put long stories beside very short ones etc. The reason I notice the order in this collection is just that Hartwell used to do it really well. Having said that if you just read a collection as individual stories and not as a whole then this isn't going to be a factor.
However I was not so impressed by the fantasy equivalent. When I read the first volume, it did not seem to have either the quality or cohesiveness. A more random collection of stories of variable quality. I did wonder if this was down to Kathryn Cramer being part of the editorial mixture - there by necessity because fantasy not being such a strength of Hartwell. It may be coincidence, but the introduction of Cramer to the SF series also marked a more random nature to the structure of the collection even though the quality of the stories remained high.
I have skipped the last couple of fantasy anthologies, but I finally read volume 4 after picking it up second hand. There are a lot of very good stories in this collection. It seems fantasy short fiction is alive and well and trying some interesting things that are much less evident in the longer form (as is usually the case across most genres).
It still feels thrown together however. The stories in a basically random order with some odd juxtapositions. It seems to me that an anthologist should be able to structure a collection to aid the reading experience. I say "should" but in fact it isn't really that common as its a subtle art - when do you put similar writing styles together, when do you contrast, when do you put long stories beside very short ones etc. The reason I notice the order in this collection is just that Hartwell used to do it really well. Having said that if you just read a collection as individual stories and not as a whole then this isn't going to be a factor.