[bookshare-discuss] Scifi meeting is archived.
- From: "Robert Acosta" <boacosta@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <bookshare-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 15 Dec 2014 20:22:10 -0800
Science Fiction club Twenty-First Century Science Fiction has been posted to
the Science Fiction Discussion Group Archives and can also be found on the
front page of http://accessibleworld.org/ under the "Recent Content"
heading.
The link to the full description of the archive is below:
http://accessibleworld.org/content/science-fiction-club-twenty-first-century
-science-fiction
The link to download the file is below:
http://accessibleworld.org/sites/default/files/science-fiction-club-meeting-
12-11-14.mp3
Science Fiction Discussion Group description:
For our next book, we sample the work of many modern SF authors in the short
story anthology Twenty-First Century Science Fiction, edited by two of the
best in the field, David G. Hartwell and Patrick Nielsen Hayden.
Our book, Twenty-First Century Science Fiction is available as a digital
download from BARD at:
http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.nls/db.77946
Here is the NLS annotation:
Thirty-four short stories from authors who came to prominence in the early
twenty-first century. Includes work from Paolo Bacigalupi, John Scalzi, Mary
Robinette Kowal, Catherynne M. Valente, Jo Walton, and Cory Doctorow.
In Vandana Singh's "Infinities" an Indian mathematician has a life-changing
vision.
And here is a review from one of the most awarded editors and anthologizers
of all time, Gardner Dozois, from Publishers Weekly, taken from Amazon's
page for this book:
In my more than 40 years working in the science fiction publishing industry,
I've seen this notion crop up every 10 years or so:
Science
fiction has exhausted itself. There are no good new writers coming along
anymore.
The genre is finished! Tor editors Hartwell and Nielsen Hayden thoroughly
refute such claims with their huge reprint anthology featuring 34 stories
published between
2003 and 2011 by writers who came to prominence since the 20th century
changed into the 21st. Here in the second decade of the 21st century, some
of these new writers, like Charles Stross, John Scalzi, and Cory Doctorow,
have become big names; others, like Elizabeth Bear, Paolo Bacigalupi,
Catherynne M. Valente, and Hannu Rajaniemi, have multiple novels and major
awards to their credit; and some, like Ken Liu, Yoon Ha Lee, Tobias S.
Buckell, and Vandana Singh, are just starting out, but will almost certainly
be among the most recognizable names of the next decade.
Twentieth-century
Campbellian SF-the sort published in John W. Campbell's Astounding/Analog
magazine of the '30s, '40s, and '50s-was often about space travel,
colonizing other worlds, space warfare, contact with aliens, and the far
future. By contrast, most of these stories stay closer to the present, and
many don't leave Earth at all. Common topics include posthumans,
interrogations of the nature and existence of human consciousness, and the
exponentially expanding possibilities of information-processing and
virtuality technologies. There are also many robots and artificial
intelligences, including human-mimicking dolls, companions, and sexbots.
It's worth noting that many of these authors would have been excluded from
Campbell's largely white, male, middle-class American stable of writers. The
face of science fiction has changed as well as its subject matter. It's hard
to pick favorites with so many good stories on offer, but my personal
selections would be Bear's Tideline, in which a dying robot in a devastated
war-torn future teaches some of the human survivors how to become more
human; Moles's Finisterra, a vivid adventure in which people engage in
internecine warfare among huge living dirigibles in a layer of Earthlike
atmosphere on a Jupiter-sized planet; and Watts's The Island, in which a
work crew building a series of wormhole transport gates across the galaxy
encounters a living intelligent creature the size of a sun.
I'd like to have seen something by Lavie Tidhar, one of the most exciting
new SF writers of the last few years, as well as some work by Aliette de
Bodard and Kij Johnson, and while the late Kage Baker certainly deserves to
be here, I'm not sure I would have picked Plotters and Shooters, one of her
minor works, to represent her.
However, these are just quibbles. Twenty-First Century Science Fiction will
certainly be recognized as one of the best reprint science fiction
anthologies of the year, and it belongs in the library of anyone who is
interested in the evolution of the genre.
Sounds like some really exciting stuff in here. Since this is an anthology,
there's bound to be something to please just about any SF fan, so come join
us on Thursday, December 11 to talk about the book, and SF literature in
general.
Evan
Host: Evan Reese
E-Mail: mentat1@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Follow Accessible World on Twitter:
http://www.twitter.com/accessibleWrld
The Accessible World, a division of Helping Hands For The Blind, a 501(c)(3)
not-for-profit organization, seeks to educate the general public, the
disabled community and the professionals who serve them by providing highly
relevant information about new products, services, and training
opportunities designed specifically to eliminate geographic and access
barriers that adversely affect them.
http://accessibleworld.org/
Robert Acosta, President
Helping Hands for the Blind
(818) 998-0044
www.helpinghands4theblind.org
Other related posts:
