Over at SF Signal they held a Mind Meld asking sixteen of their favorite SF fans and writers to assemble their own anthologies of personally favorite science fiction short stories. This produced several hundred short stories with annotations and commentaries to think about reading. Strangely, there is damn little overlap. Just from eyeballing the list without using any kind of tallies, “A Rose for Ecclesiastes” by Roger Zelazny got the most recommendations, with three. I think the participants consciously tried to avoid the obvious classics.
Science fiction is at its purist in the shorter lengths of fiction where ideas dominate. Reading any good science fiction anthology should showcase the true potential of science fiction, and any recent anthology of the best SF will show the furthest edge of the speculative universe.
Robert Sabella did pick my all-time favorite SF novella, “The Star Pit” by Samuel R. Delany, and he picked several other of my favorite stories so I need to check out his unfamiliar selections. Tinkoo Valia, whose web site Variety SF is devoted to short SF produced a rather novel list that shows he reads far and wide. Jason Sanford made a nice selection of Then and Now stories, and since I remember fondly many of his Then stories, I figure I better go after his Now stories. Before seeing his list this morning, I read his number 19 choice last night, “Eros, Philia, Agape” by Rachel Swirsky, a rather tender story about a woman and child in love with a robot.
Since Nancy Jane Moore picked “Empire Star” another all-time favorite that I reread regularly, I’ll need to track down the stories on her list too. And I’d definitely have to check out Rick Klaw’s quirky anthology of ape stories – his list comes with a nice enticing historical introduction.
The trouble will be finding all of these great stories. Lucky for us many are reprinted on the Internet just waiting for readers, like “The Man Who Lost the Sea” by Theodore Sturgeon. Other stories like “Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones” by Samuel R. Delany require a visit to ISFDB to find which books have reprinted the story over the years. Of course you can jump over to Free Speculative Fiction Online and check there. Quite often its possible to put the title and author in Google and if you’re lucky, the actual story will be in the top search returns.
But what I really wish for is a totally different way to find these stories. What if science fiction writers could load their stories into a database at Amazon.com, and Amazon allow their customers to build their own Kindle anthologies at bargain rates – maybe 24 stories for $9.99 (the latest Dozois The Years’s Best Science Fiction has 32 stories for that price).
Readers could build their own anthologies to order, or the contributors of the Mind Meld could have assembled their lists with links to Amazon with their collections pre-assembled for purchase. Amazon could also keep tabs on the most popular stories to help Kindle users easily build new collections, and maybe even offer a voting system. And it would be fantastic if Amazon offered Kindle editions of all the classic past SF anthologies, like Adventures of Time and Space, or Before the Golden Age, or reprint all the Judith Merrill, Donald Wollheim, Terry Carr past annual best of anthologies.
This would be a good time to also recommend to Amazon that they redesign the Kindle with folders, so I could have a Science Fiction Short Story folder, and within it have something like playlists, or virtual folders so I could organize my short story collection by publication year, author and theme.
JWH – 10/19/10
Auxiliary Memory 
Hey, Jim,
You always write about the best stuff. 🙂
My favorite part of SF Signal is always the Mind Meld category. I’m sure you heard about the Kindle Singles that Amazon is putting out now. I think they’re priced more than the price point you describe but still a step in the right direction.
On a related note I’ve been keep an eye on the upcoming audiobooks on Amazon and it looks like have a lot of classics of science fiction coming down the road.
Dan, is there a page at Amazon to see the forthcoming audiobooks? Blackstone sent me an email about their upcoming titles, and there are many classic SF among them, including Tunnel in the Sky by Heinlein. See:
http://www.blackstoneaudio.com/newrelease.cfm
There’s no specific page that I’ve been able to find but if you drill down through Books -> Science Fiction and Fantasy -> Science Fiction and then select Format -> Audiobooks on the left and Sort By -> Publication Date in the upper right you can see every SF Audiobook that has an assigned publication date from the farthest date out (currently August 2011) and work your way backwards.
I’m be interested in hearing…
This Immortal by Roger Zelazny
The Big Time by Fritz Leiber
More Than Human by Theodore Sturgeon
Mindswap by Robert Sheckley
The Dying Earth by Jack Vance
Some Will Not Die by Algis Budrys
I’m also really intrigued by these BBC Classic Radio-Sci-Fi titles that they have. They appear to be BBC radio stagings of classic stuff like The Time Machine, Solaris, R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots), The Midwich Cuckoos, The Kraken Wakes and something called The Slide by Victor Pemberton. I’ve never heard of The Slide, and I’m always especially intrigued by things I’ve never heard of, so I’m wondering it’s one of those only-popular-in-the-UK titles I’ve often come across.
Many of those titles are already available at Audible.com – which is owned by Amazon. Audible.com is the absolute cheapest way to buy audiobooks, but you have to commit to volume. I was thinking about getting Mindswap and This Immortal the other night. I listened to More Than Human months ago. Of course, audiobooks at Audible.com are digital downloads and you have to play them on an iPod, iPhone, Sansa Clip, etc.
Thanks for the link, Jim. I’m impressed at the variety of stories mentioned. As you say, there’s very little overlap.
I’d like to check out more of the stories Nancy Kress recommended, since I recognized – and loved – many of them. Have you ever read “Lincoln Train” by Maureen McHugh? That one sure sticks in my mind.