The Science Fiction Century
Language: English
Pages: 992
ISBN: 0312863381
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
David G. Hartwell is a World Fantasy Award-winning editor and anthologist who has twice before redefined a genre--first the horror field with The Dark Descent, then the subgenre of hard science fiction with The Ascent of Wonder, coedited with Kathryn Cramer. Now, Hartwell has compiled the mother of all definitive anthologies, guaranteed to change not only the way the science fiction field views itself but also the way the rest of literature views the field.
The Science Fiction Century includes stories from the founding fathers of the field, such as H.G. Wells, C.S. Lewis, Jack London, and Rudyard Kipling; beloved mainstays of the genre, such as Philip José Farmer, Roger Zelazny, Jack Vance, and Poul Anderson; noted female writers, including Connie Willis, Nancy Kress, and James Tiptree, Jr.; and writers who have hit their stride in the last two decades, such as Bruce Sterling, William Gibson, Michael Swanwick, and James Morrow. Hartwell has also included writers widely recognized outside the genre, such as E.M. Forster, Michael Shaara, and John Crowley; and translations of foreign writers' formative works, including Dino Buzzati and Wolfgang Jeschke. This is must-have anthology for all literary interests.
birth, New Boston, the fine planned city far inland from the old metropolis which a rising sea had reclaimed after the earthquake of 1994. Such things, places and dates, were factual props, useful when Brian wanted to impose an external order on the vagueness of his immediate existence. He tried to make sure they became no more than that, to shut away the colors, the poignant sounds, the parks and the playgrounds of New Boston, the known faces (many of them loved), and the later years when he had
Brackett (who coauthored the script for The Big Sleep with William Faulkner, and later wrote the screenplay for The Empire Strikes Back). Science fiction did not aspire to take over literature, but reality. The field (an aggregation of people) as opposed to the genre (a body of texts) was originally a closely knit international group of passionate readers and writers of science fiction in the 1930s and 1940s, people who knew each other for the most part only through correspondence and rarely
we called germs. Remember that word—germs. A germ is a very small thing. It is like a woodtick, such as you find on the dogs in the spring of the year when they run in the forest. Only the germ is very small. It is so small that you cannot see it—” Hoo-Hoo began to laugh. “You’re a queer un, Granser, talking about things you can’t see. If you can’t see ‘em, how do you know they are? That’s what I want to know. How do you know anything you can’t see?” “A good question, a very good
above the left eyebrow-that was Mars. And this other one-way over here almost by his right ear-that was a girl named Melissa whom he had known back in the 1970s. But he wasn’t in the proper mood for the game now. He lowered his hands. He knew the wrinkles for exactly what they really were: age, purely and simply and honestly age. Each one meant nothing without the others. They represented impersonal and unavoidable erosion. On the outside, they reflected the death that was occurring on the
sooner. It will be necessary to make a thorough study of such a rival. I invite you to join our community on a permanent basis.” “What do you mean?” “I invite you to become a symbiote. I have here a male and a female, whose genes are altered and therefore without defects. You make a perfect breeding pair. It will save me a great deal of trouble with cloning.” “You think I’ll betray my race and deliver a slave species into your hands?” “Your choice is simple, Captain-Doctor. Remain an