The Big Book of Science Fiction. edited by Ann and Jeff Vandermeer. 2016
The Big Book of Science Fiction. edited by Ann and Jeff Vandermeer
Rated 81% Positive. Story Score: 3.83 out of 5
107 Stories : 26 Great / 52 Good / 18 Average / 8 Poor / 2 DNF
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By any definition, The Big Book of Science Fiction was a massive undertaking for Ann and Jeff Vandermeer. Attempting to cover the entire history of science fiction: from 1897 to 2007 is to find yourself awash in a supernova of stories. No one’s choices were going to please everyone and this book certainly can be polarizing. In a Facebook group that I belong to, we read this book over many months and responses ranged from consistent “That’s my favorite story from that author” to “That isn’t Science Fiction” to “Too much horror” to “This is quite the slog.”
In lieu of highlighting the Stories that made my All Time Great List - and there were 26 of them (!) - I’ll got brief thoughts that emerged during my reading of this book.
This reads like a textbook. Most of the stories seem to be selected to inspire discussion in a classroom or to illustrate some point about either the genre or its history.
The introductions from the Vandermeers are worth the price of the book. Even when I didn’t like a story, that introduction was insightful and detailed.
“Curation is Creation.” The Vandermeers are writing the history of Science Fiction from the perspective of the present. The stories selected embody the values and emphasis of the 21st century reader.
Many of the genre’s legendary authors and stories have been replaced with stories by women, minorities, and foreign language authors. A reader who thinks they are getting an anthology full of the classics of the genre will be disappointed.
This is book of SF as “Literature” not as storytelling. Stories with messages and stories with innovation prose techniques are prioritized over fun adventures. There is definitely a chip on this book’s shoulder. It wants Science Fiction to be ‘taken seriously.”
I recommend that you buy it and read it, but know what it is.
And PLEASE don’t make this your first foray into short Science Fiction.
The Big Book of Science Fiction. edited by Ann and Jeff Vandermeer is rated 81%
107 Stories : 26 Great / 52 Good / 18 Average / 8 Poor / 2 DNF
The Star • (1897) • short story by H. G. Wells
Great. An almost dreamlike tale of apocalyptic disaster started with a collision in the sky.
Sultana's Dream • (1905) • short story by Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain
Good. A woman dreams a tour of a feminist utopia where women rule everything and men are kept secluded.
The Triumph of Mechanics • short story by Karl Hans Strobl (trans. of Der Triumph der Mechanik 1907)
Good. A mechanic toy maker is fired from his firm and gets revenge with rapidly multiplying robotic rabbits.
The New Overworld • short story by Paul Scheerbart (trans. of Die neue Oberwelt. Eine Venus-Novellette 1911)
Average. Turtle people and many-handed people coexist on the face of Venus.
Elements of Pataphysics • short story by Alfred Jarry (trans. of Éléments de pataphysique 1911)
DNF. A bunch of pseudoscience and thought experiments that never comes together into any story.
Mechanopolis • short story by Miguel de Unamuno (trans. of Mecanópolis 1913)
Good. At an oasis, a man stumbles into a world run only by machines.
The Doom of Principal City • short story by Ефим Зозуля? (trans. of Гибель Главного города? 1918) [as by Yefim Zozulya]
Average. Kindly (?) conquerors build a city overtop of the city that they just conquered.
The Comet • (1920) • short story by W. E. B. Du Bois
Good. A comet apocalypse finds a poor black man and a rich white woman the only people left in the world.
The Fate of the Poseidonia • (1927) • short story by Clare Winger Harris
Average. Are the Martians stealing Earth’s water? And also the protagonist’s girlfriend?
The Star Stealers • (1965) • novelette by Edmond Hamilton (variant of The Star-Stealers 1929)
Great. Frolicking Space Opera! A captain in the space navy is sent on a mission to prevent a planet in Dark Space from stealing the Sun.
The Conquest of Gola • (1931) • short story by Leslie F. Stone
Good. Feminist Venus is invaded by Men from Earth. Suffering ensues.
A Martian Odyssey • (1934) • novelette by Stanley G. Weinbaum
Great. A masterpiece featuring a spaceman who crashed on Mars, met an interesting alien named Tweel, and trekked across the surface of the planet.
The Last Poet and the Robots • (1934) • short story by A. Merritt
Poor. An underground brilliant poet helps deal with a robot menace on the surface of earth.
The Microscopic Giants • (1936) • short story by Paul Ernst
Good. An exploration for copper is disrupted when very small, but powerful beings are discovered. They can move through concrete.
Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius • (1998) • short story by Jorge Luis Borges (trans. of Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius? 1940)
Good. The discovery of a fictional city and its legend of a fiction planet works as commentary about ‘modern day’ Argentina.
Desertion • (1944) • short story by Clifford D. Simak
Great. Men are being transformed and sent into Jupiter’s inhospitable maul. Non have returned. One of the most memorable end scenes in all of science fiction.
September 2005: The Martian • (1951) • short story by Ray Bradbury (variant of The Martian 1949)
Good. A elderly couple meet a Martian who wants to live with them as their son.
Baby HP • short story by Juan José Arreola (trans. of Baby H. P. 1952)
Good. “You too can harness your baby’s energy to run your household!”
Surface Tension • [Pantropy] • (1952) • novelette by James Blish
Great. An epic adventure of small aquatic humans - seeded by a galactic civilization - and their exploration above the surface of their watery world.
Beyond Lies the Wub • (1952) • short story by Philip K. Dick
Good. Should you eat the pig-like Wub after it has shown sentience?
The Snowball Effect • (1952) • short story by Katherine MacLean
Good. A science experience gone wrong as a sewing society is given the tools for rapid expansion.
Prott • (1953) • short story by Margaret St. Clair
Average. Telepathic attempt at communication with a very strange alien species in deep space.
The Liberation of Earth • (1953) • short story by William Tenn
Great. Absolute brutal satire of Cold War justifications for foreign intervention, retold as an alien invasion story.
Let Me Live in a House • (1954) • novelette by Chad Oliver
Good. Creepy tale of two couples living in a controlled environment where nothing every changed. One day there is a knock on the door.
The Star • (1955) • short story by Arthur C. Clarke
Good. A science-minding priest loses his faith with the discovery of a supernova that killed a beautiful civilization.
Grandpa • (1955) • novelette by James H. Schmitz
Good. A young man - a troublemaker on a new world - must rise to the occasion when a semi-sentient large raft starts behaving in new and dangerous ways.
The Game of Rat and Dragon • [The Instrumentality of Mankind] • (1955) • short story by Cordwainer Smith
Great. A shockingly original look at the manner and costs of war amongst the stars through the lives of damaged people and their strange partnerships.
The Last Question • (1956) • short story by Isaac Asimov
Great. Classic story of a giant computer which tries to discover how entropy might be reversed.
Stranger Station • (1956) • novelette by Damon Knight
Great. On a space station, a man and an alien suffer because of the other’s presence. Slowly, the man starts to understand why.
Sector General • (1957) • novelette by James White
Good. A sprawling adventure story about doctors on a space station who treat all sorts of aliens.
The Visitors • novelette by Аркадий Стругацкий? and Борис Стругацкий? (trans. of Извне? 1958) [as by Arkady Strugatsky and Boris Strugatsky]
Average. Matter-of-fact story of first contact with aliens.
Pelt • (1958) • short story by Carol Emshwiller
Good. Hunting on an alien planet, told from the perspective of a sentient hunting animal.
The Monster • (1965) • short story by Gérard Klein? (trans. of Le monstre 1958)
Good. A compelling story of a woman who hears about the police dealing with an arrived alien, and instinctively knows it has absorbed/eaten her husband.
The Man Who Lost the Sea • (1959) • short story by Theodore Sturgeon
Great. A literary masterpiece of a dying astronaut and his entire life.
The Waves • short story by Silvina Ocampo (trans. of Las ondas 1959)
Poor. Science will classify people in the future based on their ‘waves.”
Plenitude • (1959) • short story by Will Mohler
Good. A family that lives in the wild is intensely affected by a trip to ‘the city’ where people have are changed in horrific ways. Intense and sharp vignette.
The Voices of Time • (1960) • novelette by J. G. Ballard
Great. A serious literary story that balances death, symbols, sleeping, radiation, and life legacy in a way that is very adult and complex.
The Astronaut • short story by Валентина Журавлёва? (trans. of Астронавт? 1960) [as by Valentina Zhuravlyova]
Good. A story of heroic sacrifice with astronauts that have to take hobbies and the importance that hobbies can embed in your life.
The Squid Chooses Its Own Ink • short story by Adolfo Bioy Casares (trans. of El calamar opta por su tinta 1962)
Average. A comic Argentine sci-fi story about a small town dealing with an alien that has come to protect us from crazy people with The Bomb.
2 B R 0 2 B • (1962) • short story by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
Good. A comic dystopia of a future where each new life must cause the end of another … and one man’s wife is going to have triplets.
A Modest Genius • (1973) • short story by Вадим Шефнер? (trans. of Скромный гений? 1963) [as by Vadim Shefner]
Good. Light romantic science fiction about a fantastic inventor and the women in his life. Very cute.
Day of Wrath • novelette by Север Гансовский? (trans. of День гнева? 1965) [as by Sever Gansovsky]
Great. A journalist and a forester travel out into the wilderness to study the Otarks. The Otarks are super-intelligent creature that escaped from a lab years ago. Brutal and powerful.
The Hands • (1965) • short story by John Baxter
Great. Creepy bit of alien body horror. Earthmen, captured and tortured by an alien, arrive back home with very deformed bodies; multiple arms, heads, torso, etc….
Darkness • (1972) • short story by André Carneiro (trans. of A Escuridão 1963)
Good. In a world strangely plunged into darkness, one man survives with help from the blind.
"Repent, Harlequin!" Said the Ticktockman • (1965) • short story by Harlan Ellison
Good. The Harlequin disrupts the perfectly scheduled work as a protest and is hunted by the Ticktockman.
Nine Hundred Grandmothers • (1966) • short story by R. A. Lafferty
Average. Asteroid miners with unusual names meet a race of people who may never die.
Day Million • (1966) • short story by Frederik Pohl
Good. A snarky, tongue-in-cheek tale of dating and society a million days in our future.
Student Body • (1953) • novelette by F. L. Wallace
Average. A bit of fluff about space settlers who must deal with an evolving rodent issue.
Aye, and Gomorrah • (1970) • short story by Samuel R. Delany (variant of Aye, and Gomorrah ... 1967)
Great. Masterful new age sexual allegory about neutered spacers and the perverse(?) human who pay to have sex with them.
The Hall of Machines • (1968) • short story by Langdon Jones
Great. A haunting description of complex machines in the Hall of Machines.
Soft Clocks • (1989) • short story by 荒巻義雄? (trans. of 柔らかい時計? 1968) [as by Yoshio Aramaki]
Average. Psychiatrist summoned to Mars to evaluate potential husbands for Dali’s granddaughter. Surreal and strange, but not engaging.
No Cracks or Sagging • [Moderan] • (1970) • short story by David R. Bunch (variant of No Cracks or Saggings)
Average. Amateurish story of a traveler from far away that meets a foreman whose robots are stretching and flattening everything.
New Kings Are Not for Laughing • [Moderan] • (1971) • short story by David R. Bunch
Good. A traveler - converted to a cyborg - meets a severely injured man with whom he fought in the war.
The Flesh Man from Far Wide • [Moderan] • short story by David R. Bunch (variant of The Flesh-Man from Far Wide 1959)
Good. The man in a Stronghold meets a traveler who has traveled far to discover a happiness machine.
Let Us Save the Universe (An Open Letter from Ijon Tichy) • [Ze wspomnień Ijona Tichego / From the Memoirs of Ijon Tichy] • (1981) • short story by Stanisław Lem? (trans. of Ratujmy kosmos 1964)
Great. Hilarious and masterful. Ijon Tichy reports on the effects of exploitation and tourism on the solar system. Some highlights are the strange animals that prey on unwary tourists.
Vaster Than Empires and More Slow • [Hainish] • (1971) • novelette by Ursula K. Le Guin
Good. A crew that is seething at each other starts to explore a planet with a strange expansive type of consciousness.
Good News from the Vatican • (1971) • short story by Robert Silverberg
Good. The Catholic Church is about to elect a robot Pope.
When It Changed • [Whileaway] • (1972) • short story by Joanna Russ
Good. On a world made up of only women, men have finally arrived and they pose a creeping threat.
And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill's Side • (1972) • short story by James Tiptree, Jr.
Great. A reporter meets a ragged worker at a spaceport who tells about how fascination with aliens has lead to his ruin …. and will lead to the ruin of humanity. Brilliantly written with incredible things to say about humanity, culture, sexual addiction, and much more.
Where Two Paths Cross • short story by Дмитрий Биленкин? (trans. of Пересечение пути? 1973) [as by Dmitri Bilenkin]
Good. Fun SF adventure with humans arriving on a planet and running afoul of the dimly-sentient plant-based aliens. A nice alien creature and a pleasant story.
Standing Woman • (1981) • short story by 筒井康隆? (trans. of 佇むひと? 1974) [as by Yasutaka Tsutsui]
Good. A sad strange story of a world where people are planted like trees as punishment for disobedience to the state.
The IWM 1000 • short story by Alicia Yánez Cossío (trans. of La IWM mil 1975)
Poor. Short short where humans become reliant on small machines and lose their ability to read and write.
The House of Compassionate Sharers • [Glaktik Komm] • (1977) • novelette by Michael Bishop
Good. A rebuilt man who has a phobia of the human body get treatment at an interesting facility that doubles as an offbeat brothel.
Sporting with the Chid • (1979) • short story by Barrington J. Bayley
Good. To save an injured friend, two hunters break the rules and interact with the Chid who have disgusting, but effective, medical skills.
Sandkings • [Thousand Worlds] • (1979) • novelette by George R. R. Martin
Great. A psychopath buys small creatures that war in his terrarium and worship him as a god. Of course, they escape and this ends badly. A classic of SF action horror.
Wives • (1979) • short story by Lisa Tuttle
Great. To survive occupation by men, an alien race has turned themselves into ‘wives.’ One of the ‘wives’ starts to think there may be another way. One of the best feminist and colonialist analogies I've ever seen in science fiction.
The Snake Who Had Read Chomsky • (1981) • novelette by Josephine Saxton
Poor. Very unpleasant people try to get one up on each other through parties with rich people.
Reiko's Universe Box • (2007) • short story by 梶尾真治? (trans. of 玲子の箱宇宙?) [as by Kajio Shinji]
Good. Poetic story of a Japanese woman who becomes fascinated at the universe she sees in a box.
Swarm • [Shaper/Mechanist] • (1982) • novelette by Bruce Sterling
Good. A special agent from a branch of humanity that is bred for intelligence arrives on a symbiotic space station with a mission that will secure victory in an ongoing war. The Swarm is very well described and there is more than enough here for a novel.
Mondocane • short story by Jacques Barbéri? (trans. of Mondocane 1983)
Poor. Surrealists SF where war has resulted in extreme changes for all people.
Blood Music • (1983) • novelette by Greg Bear
Great. A brilliant scientist goes to a friend for help after injecting himself with the intelligent results of illegal experiments.
Bloodchild • (1984) • novelette by Octavia E. Butler
Great. A visceral and amazing story of the bond between humans and an insect-like race. A young boy who is to be host for the aliens offspring is forced to help with an emergency c-section on a pregnant man who is being eaten from within by the aliens larva. Powerful, complex, horrifying, and strangely realistic. With overtones of slavery and colonial oppression.
Variation on a Man • [Deadpan Allie] • (1984) • short story by Pat Cadigan
Good. A woman enters the mind of a man who has had his memories stolen. He once was a famous composer, but now appears to be an entirely different person.
Passing as a Flower in the City of the Dead • short story by Sharon N. Farber [as by S. N. Dyer]
Good. In a sterile environment of an orbital station, people with rare blood diseases are treated. They hate “Fidos:” people who aren’t sick but tag along to be with their loved ones.
New Rose Hotel • (1984) • short story by William Gibson
Good. A beatnik influenced, cyberpunk crime story about a beautiful woman and the attempt to kidnap a corporate genetic engineer.
Pots • (1985) • novelette by C. J. Cherryh
Average. A representative of the Lord Magistrate comes down to a planet to check on an archeological site, but finds that it contradicts the desires of the Lord Magistrate. Good start, but falls apart.
Snow • (1985) • short story by John Crowley
Good. A man remembers his old lover in video snippets recorded and preserved by a video “Wasp.”
The Lake Was Full of Artificial Things • (1985) • short story by Karen Joy Fowler
Average. A woman engages in virtual reality therapy to deal with emotional pain around an ex-lover who died in Vietnam.
The Unmistakable Smell of Wood Violets • short story by Angélica Gorodischer (trans. of El inconfundible aroma de las violetas silvestres 1991)
Poor. In a strange variant of our political world, a poor country launches a woman into space and she explores the very end of the universe.
The Owl of Bear Island • (1986) • short story by Jon Bing (trans. of Ugle på Bjørnøya?)
Good. At a remote icy research station, a man’s body is taken over repeatedly by an alien doing research.
Readers of the Lost Art • (1996) • short story by Élisabeth Vonarburg? (trans. of La carte du Tendre 1986)
Average. Extreme content warning: torture. At a decadent art show in a bar, the idle rich watch torture as a form of art.
A Gift from the Culture • [Culture] • (1987) • short story by Iain M. Banks
Good. A man who has rejected the luxury of The Culture finds himself compelled to do an act of terrorism because only people of the Culture can use the high tech gun.
Paranamanco • short story by Jean-Claude Dunyach (trans. of Paranamanco 1988)
Great. On a city-sized animal that traverses the stars, an expedition goes badly when one of the members becomes enthralled by the being.
Crying in the Rain • (1987) • short story by Tanith Lee
Great. In a post-apocalyptic world of acid rain and nearly certain death by cancer, a mother and daughter travel to a protected domed city. The daughter is to be sold in marriage to one of the men there. A superb use of this trope and wonderful character study of both the daughter and the mother.
The Frozen Cardinal • (1987) • short story by Michael Moorcock
Good. On an icy expedition on an alien world, the explorers find a Catholic Cardinal stuck in the ice.
Rachel in Love • (1987) • novelette by Pat Murphy
Great. A young girl’s mind is placed in a chimpanzee’s body after death by the girl’s father. When he dies and the ape is taken by scientists, Rachel must find a way to escape to a better life.
Sharing Air • (1984) • short story by Manjula Padmanabhan
Good. Short political tale of a future where everyone has access to the necessities of life. The protagonist explores a group of “toxics” who enjoy sharing air with each other.
Schwarzschild Radius • (1987) • short story by Connie Willis
Good. Life and death in the trenches of World War One becomes an analogy for getting caught in a black hole.
All the Hues of Hell • (1987) • short story by Gene Wolfe
Good. The crew of a shuttle (man, woman, & AI) retrieve a possibly demonic alien from a strange world.
Vacuum States • (1988) • short story by Geoffrey A. Landis
Good. At a conference, two experimental scientists have made a discovery that could created unlimited energy for mankind …. or destroy the universe.
Two Small Birds • short story by Han Song (trans. of 两只小鸟? 1998)
Great. Beautiful prose in a story that covers tens of thousands of years in a very few pages. An energy being tries to free a crashed spaceship, but there are two birds that are always watching in the library. Poetic and hypnotic.
Burning Sky • (1989) • short story by Rachel Pollack
Poor. Lesbian BDSM superheroes with no real purpose or interest.
Before I Wake • (1989) • short story by Kim Stanley Robinson
Average. A cosmic event makes it impossible to tell the difference between dreaming and being awake.
Death Is Static Death Is Movement • short story by Misha [as by Misha Nogha]
Good. Excerpt from a novel, not a story. Part girl, part animal, reconnects with an old lover to draw a neo-nazi street gang into a trap. And zombies.
The Brains of Rats • (1986) • short story by Michael Blumlein
Average. A man contemplates sex, genre, and more because he has found the ability to make humanity either entirely male or entirely female.
Gorgonoids • (2016) • short fiction by Leena Krohn
Poor. Gorgonoids are being on a computer. You can see them. Does that make them real. Deep thoughts, but no story.
Vacancy for the Post of Jesus Christ • (1992) • short story by Kojo Laing
Poor. Alien being descends in a lorry and say he is looking for the next Jesus Christ.
The Universe of Things • (1993) • short story by Gwyneth Jones
Average. A mechanic has an interaction with alien that wants to have their car fixed.
The Remoras • [The Great Ship Universe] • (1994) • novelette by Robert Reed
Good. A wealthy woman, traveling on The Great Ship, is drawn into a fascination with the people who have adapted their bodies to live on the surface of the ship.
The Ghost Standard • (1994) • short story by William Tenn
Average. A human, a sentient lobstermorph, and a computer get shipwrecked in space. They realize they need to eat one or the other to survive, so they play a game for it.
Remnants of the Virago Crypto-System • (1995) • short story by Geoffrey Maloney
Good. A strange, yet haunting story of a relationship coming apart, an old rural house that contains alien communications tech, and an alien’s question to all humanity.
How Alex Became a Machine • novelette by Stepan Chapman
DNF. The bland tropey, life is bad when you work in a boring factory. Anti-captialist propaganda that doesn't have the dignity to be interesting.
The Poetry Cloud • short story by Cixin Liu (trans. of 诗云? 2003)
Good. A poet who is trapped by a race of warlike, space-faring, dinosaurs starts a poetry competition with a being who is so powerful that he might as well be a god.
Story of Your Life • (1998) • novella by Ted Chiang
Great. One of the most brilliant science fiction stories ever written. The story of alien first contact is told with a strong focus on very smart scientific thoughtfulness. The story of a mother and her relationship with her daughter is deeply human and nuanced in the way of the best Fiction.
Craphound • (1998) • short story by Cory Doctorow
Great. An human and an alien rummage through yard sales to find the junk that they find precious. An interesting story that highlights the self destructive impulses of humanity and the true weirdness that alien life would exhibit.
The Slynx (excerpt) • short fiction by Татьяна Толстая? [as by Tatyana Tolstaya]
Average. A picture of a mutilated and changed Russian town in the period of time “after the blast,” but not so distant that people cannot remember what came before.
Baby Doll • (2007) • novelette by Johanna Sinisalo (trans. of Baby Doll 2002)
Good. Young children are sexually exploited, by media, their parents, and themselves. Within this very near future, one girl tries to negotiate her family relationships as her sister become a sex idol.
