Old Mars (Bantam Books, October 8, 2013). Cover by Stephen Youll This isn’t a Sword & Planet collection per se but is likely to prove interesting to readers of S&P. It’s a big book, 548 pages of reading in 15 longish stories and an introduction by Martin. All the tales evoke the kind of Mars that readers of Burroughs, Bradbury, and Brackett will recognize — a red desert world full of mystery.
The Year’s Best Science Fiction, Third Annual Collection (Bluejay Books, April 1986). Cover by Tom Kidd I saw a copy of the third volume in Gardner Dozois’ Year’s Best Science Fiction anthology series on eBay for $11.45 last week, and decided to take a chance. Turned out to be the Book Club edition, a reprint that’s a smaller size than my other volumes, which was a disappointment. But at least I finally had a copy. On the back of the…
Supernatural Sleuths and Sci-Fi Private Eye (Roc, 1996 and 1997), and Isaac Asimov’s Detectives (Ace, 1998). Covers by Romas Kukalis, uncredited, and Andy Lackow Science fiction detectives have been a popular theme for anthologies for a couple of generations now. We’ve covered a few (including Tin Stars, edited by Isaac Asimov, Martin H. Greenberg, and Charles G. Waugh), but there’s lot more out there for the curious and the collector alike. I’ve recently been dipping into some themed anthologies from…
An unappealing cover by Wayne Barlowe, more on that in a second After the somewhat uninspiring November 1989 Analog, I turned next to Asimov’s, and found it to be pretty good. Editorial — “Half Done” by Isaac Asimov Starting with the quote ‘Half done is hardly begun,’ Isaac Asimov (That’s Dr. Asimov, if you’re nasty) jumps into looking at how we conceptualize and compare time. Starting with the fact the Earth is 15 billion years old, half of that is…
Modern Classics of Science Fiction (St. Martin’s Press, 1992). Jacket illustration courtesy of NASA Back in October I wrote about Gardner Dozois’ 1994 anthology Modern Classic Short Novels of Science Fiction, saying it was one of my favorite fall reads. I noted at the time that it was part of a trilogy of books Gardner did for St. Martin’s that also included Modern Classics of Fantasy (1997), which I called “a book that makes you yearn to be stranded on a…
Modern Classic Short Novels of Science Fiction (St. Martin’s Griffin, 1994). Cover by Kim Poor When I talked about Gardner Dozois’ 1997 anthology Modern Classics of Fantasy a few years ago, I called it “a book that makes you yearn to be stranded on a desert island” (or anywhere you could read interrupted for a few days, really.) That description applies equally well to his 1994 volume Modern Classic Short Novels of Science Fiction, a book that over the last few decades…
We lost Gardner Dozois, one of the greatest editors the SF field has ever seen, in May of last year. As devastating as that was, many of us took some solace in the fact that he had a handful of very exciting books still in the pipeline, and we’d have the opportunity to celebrate and remember him a few times yet. The first of those, the 35th and final volume in his legendary Year’s Best anthology series, was published last July, and the…
We lost Gardner Dozois unexpectedly in May of this year. Certainly there were bigger names, but somehow Gardner always seemed to be the heart of science fiction to me. Fan, historian, gifted writer and brilliant editor — indeed, perhaps the greatest editor science fiction has ever seen — Gardner had his finger on the pulse of the field better than anyone I knew. It was a terrible blow to lose him. But I took some consolation in the fact that…
The impending release of Gardner Dozois’ 35th and final Year’s Best anthology next month brings us to the end of an era. Hard as it is to believe, after his final books are released in the next few months, there will be no more magazines, stories or anthologies from one of the most gifted editors the field has ever seen. Many readers are unaware that, as prolific as Gardner was as a magazine and Year’s Best editor — 17 years at…
We lost Gardner Dozois last month. It was a terrible blow to the field. I’ve seen plenty of somber discussion among fans about whether or not Gardner was the finest editor science fiction has ever seen, and there’s no doubt in my mind he’s in the running. Gardner devoted his entire career to science fiction, and his accomplishments were extraordinary. He won the Hugo Award for Best Professional Editor 15 times during his 19-year tenure at Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction…