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The Best Ofs,Gardener Dozois. and the State of the Short Form
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weirdside
Posted 2009-06-17 11:37 AM (#1641)
Subject: The Best Ofs,Gardener Dozois. and the State of the Short Form



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So I have a few of these anthologies lying around and I just preordered the new one. I'm a nice guy and decided to give them one more chance.
Every now and again I'll pick up one of my Best Ofs and open to a random story. I'll begin reading, and then five pages in, I'll give up. I've never read a decent story in any of these anthologies. Come to think of it, the only modern short stories I've really enjoyed were Nancy Kress' Inertia , and that story is hardly science fictional at all, and China Mieville's Jack, which is derivative of Perdido Street Stationo.
I find a bunch of these modern SF/F short stories either: pretentious, contrived, poorly executed, shallow, combine, repeat. The characters almost always take a back seat, the science begins to border on philosophy it's so over-wraught and complicated, their is no clear idea. I just am perplexed because of the rich short fiction tradition science fiction and fantasy come from. Think about Clarke's The Nine Billion Names of God or Asimov's Nightfall or even Card's original Ender's Game novella. How can we have forgotten our roots?
Please suggest stories that will get me out of my jaded funk, or at least explain to me what happened. I mean come on, Trophy Wives won the Nebula this year?! It baffles the creativity right outta me.

Edited by weirdside 2009-06-17 11:38 AM
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Administrator
Posted 2009-06-17 10:01 PM (#1643 - in reply to #1641)
Subject: RE: The Best Ofs,Gardener Dozois. and the State of the Short Form



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I don't have any specific stories to throw your way but I've been hearing nothing but kudos for Fast Forward II edited by Lou Anders.  I've got it on my pile but have not read it yet.  I've been meaning to get to this one but I'm more of a novel fan so other books keep getting in the way.

Some reviews:

SF Site

SF Signal

Futurismic

Maybe some of the stories there will tickle your fancy.

Dave

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weirdside
Posted 2009-06-18 4:38 PM (#1644 - in reply to #1643)
Subject: Re: The Best Ofs,Gardener Dozois. and the State of the Short Form



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I've heard that the Fast Forward series is really good too. I'll probably go check it out. Oh, and the link you have for SF Signal also goes to Futurismic. Thanks for the links though!
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Posted 2009-06-18 4:45 PM (#1645 - in reply to #1644)
Subject: Re: The Best Ofs,Gardener Dozois. and the State of the Short Form



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Location: Dallas, Texas		D'oh!  Fixed the link.
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weirdside
Posted 2009-06-18 6:42 PM (#1646 - in reply to #1645)
Subject: Re: The Best Ofs,Gardener Dozois. and the State of the Short Form



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I just noticed that the SF Site goes to SF Signal.
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Administrator
Posted 2009-06-18 9:24 PM (#1647 - in reply to #1641)
Subject: Re: The Best Ofs,Gardener Dozois. and the State of the Short Form



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Location: Dallas, Texas		3rd time is the charm!
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