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FMK #33: Single-Author Anthologies
I have not read any new FMK books since the last time we had a poll, alas. I did a bunch of re-reading for Yuletide and a bunch of reading comics trades to try to make my Goodreads goal at the last minute (I was ten books down for the year after reading twenty on New Year's Eve. I blame FMK.) And then made the mistake of checking out more library books. On the plus side, I got less than ten new books for Christmas this year, which I think is a record. \o/
I did finally read the newest Young Wizards book, Games Wizards Play. I'd started it a few times and put it down because I was bored, which I did not like, because that's one of my favorite series, so I was afraid to try reading it again, but I finally blew through it for Yuleitde background, and I will admit to continuing to be bored most of the way through. Also I really, really don't like the increasing emphasis on wizarding dynasties and wizardry being primarily heritable. And I am so beyond tired of token ace characters showing up in YA just to cheerfully explain that just because they don't like sex doesn't mean they can't fall in love! It did redeem itself by a) sneaking an explicit sex scene into a series still marketed as junior-grade (There were orbital resonances!) and b) the revelation that DD has moved on to just blatantly trolling her fanbase on the question of Tom/Carl.
I have a lot of anthologies left, so this week is another anthology week! These are all single-author SF anthologies. Some of them are authors where I've read and liked their novels, some of them are classic authors where I haven't read much and felt like I needed a sampler. Hopefully I am correct about what kind of anthologies these are...
How FMK works, short version: I am trying to clear out my unreads. So there is a poll, in which you get to pick F, M, or K. F means I should spend a night of wild passion with the book ASAP, and then decide whether to keep it or not. M means I should continue to commit to a long-term relationship of sharing my bedroom with it. K means it should go away immediately. Anyone can vote, you don't have to actually know anything about the books.
I pick a winner on Friday night (although won't actually close the poll, people can still vote,) and report results/post the new poll on the following Tuesday, and write a response to the F winner sometime in the next week.
Link to long version of explanation (on first poll)
The Trouble With Humans by Christopher Anvil (2009)
Nightfall and Other Stories by Isaac Asimov (1969)
Moral Disorder by Margaret Atwood (2006)
Bradbury Classic Stories 2: Medicine for Melancholy and S is for Space by Ray Bradbury (1990)
The Other Side of the Sky by Arthur C. Clarke (1958)
...Who Needs Enemies? by Alan Dean Foster (1984)
What's It Like Out There? And Other Stories by Edmond Hamilton (1974)
Assignment in Eternity by Robert A. Heinlein (1971)
Werehunter by Mercedes Lackey (1999)
The Unreal and the Real by Ursula Le Guin (2012)
The Secret Books of Paradys 1 & 2 by Tanith Lee (1988)
The Tomb and Other Tales by H. P. Lovecraft (1965)
Playgrounds of the Mind by Larry Niven (1991)
Before the Universe by Frederick Pohl (1980)
A Blink of the Screen by Terry Pratchett (2012)
Resnick's Menagerie by Mike Resnick (2012)
Men, Martians, and Machines by Eric Frank Russell (1955)
Next Stop the Stars by Robert A. Silverberg (1977)
The Worlds of A. E. van Vogt by A. E. van Vogt (1974)
The Doors of his Face, the Lamps of his Mouth and other stories by Roger Zelazny (1971)
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Anyway, fuck that one.
I'd never heard of A Blink of the Screen by Terry Pratchett, but wiki says it's got Discworld stories in it, so THANK YOU FOR BRINGING THIS TO MY ATTENTION :D I'll see about if my library has a copy or something. I'm still holding out on reading the last Tiffany book, so hey, new-to-me Discworld stuff! :D
The only other one I have any opinions are authors I hold a grudge against. ;)
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lol, yeah ;)
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Also K for the Niven because Niven.
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I figured it was all repackaging of previously anthologized stories or something, which is why no buzz, but it's not like Terry Pratchett short stories are easy to find.
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....I am interested in why the multiple people hate-voting for Niven when everybody is voting F on Asimov. Is it just that he made the mistake of living too long?
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Mind, I still want you to go F for the Niven collection, if only so I can read your reaction to it – I'm not sure whether I read that particular collection, but I've read the prior collection of his shorts (N-Space) and did devour quite a lot of his fiction back when I was 13 and didn't know better.
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I mean, I still like a lot of his stuff (although not most of his stuff that he's well-known for) but I like a lot of Niven's stuff too.
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I voted F on Asimov and K on Niven because I like Asimov's writing and haven't read Niven, and I tend to vote K if I don't have a reason to be enthusiastic about the work. (I also wasn't really aware that Niven had A Reputation.)
I also don't think "smart enough to realize he was terrible at writing women" is quite what's going on in Asimov: I think there's a split where early Asimov (the stuff from the '50s) is OK at writing women, but he mostly doesn't see the point of putting them in his stories. Whereas when he gets back to writing novels in the '80s (eg the Foundation prequels and sequels), he's happy to include female characters, but the treatment is *super* cringeworthy, especially knowing what Asimov was like IRL.
(I mean, I like Dors Venabili, but she deserves a *much* better resolution to the "Hari Seldon won't stop hitting on her" plotline.)
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And, yeah, I haven't read much of Asimov's later stuff. Mostly because the few I did read I wasn't impressed by.
I'm basing the bit about writing women on something in an author's note in one of his earlier anthologies where iirc he said outright that he doesn't write many women or romances because he's no good at writing them. I guess he changed his mind later...
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None of those things can be said of Niven. I've tried reading a couple, but the women were noticeably poorly-written as compared to his contemporaries, I didn't enjoy the stories or find them interesting, AND I felt like I got hit over the head by politics.
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For A.E. van Vogt, I've read Slan, and I think I read a couple of others that have completely vanished from my memory. I read Slan at 11 or 12, and I think that was the right age because I got into the adventure side and didn't shriek with rage at the sexism (just plain didn't notice because it was the 1970s) or really notice that protagonist had no depth because I was the right age to project depth onto him.
At any rate, I voted F for that book because pulp can be fun. I just also think that that one and several of the others are more in the realm of 'meet somewhere public for coffee and then decide whether or not to give your real name' than they are straight up F's. Or maybe 'Find a hotel room, but for God's sake, use protection!' instead?
I voted K on Lovecraft because when I try to hack my way through his prose, I get beyond cranky. I just don't fit with him stylistically. And that's quite apart from the questions of -isms in his work. I haven't gotten deep enough into any of his work to see any of that because I tend to have book meets wall moments in the first handful of sentences.
I have liked some of Eric Frank Russell's novels. He tends to the over-competent man syndrome (which I take as meaning 'Mary Sue but no girl cooties') with a good bit of either being prepared for each eventuality or having no problems rolling with them. My recollection is that there's humor, some of it fairly biting, but it's been at least twenty five years, so I might be misremembering why I kept his books.
I'm not keen on Pohl, Niven, or Lee. For Lee, I'm pretty sure it's that the things she found important/interesting in stories aren't quite the things I find important/interesting. Pohl and Niven go the same way for me, really, except that I tend to look at their stories and wonder why anyone at all would read them. I understand why people read Tanith Lee; I don't get Pohl and Niven so much. I've read more Niven than Pohl because my father liked Niven, but I generally found myself asking why I should be bothering to spend time with the characters in the stories when they were terrible people in a way that I found boring. I don't mind terrible people as characters as long as they're fun to spend time with.
I know I've read the Zelazny (pretty sure I own it), but I can never remember his short stories after I read them. Well, I remember the style and a certain amount of beauty, but the plots evaporate because they're pretty much never the point. I read a biography of Zelazny that was published while he was alive and based mostly on interviews with him. Zelazny stated outright that he pretty much never knew where a story was going to end up when he started writing it.
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