YA
I keep getting pulled toward old-school SF short fiction collections like this one, partly because the mix of authors is usually the real draw. Robert Moore Williams, Rog Phillips, Jerry Sohl. That’s a decent spread.
Still, I’m always wary of “gems” in a title. Sometimes that means genuinely sharp, strange stories. Sometimes it means “this aged badly but we’re hoping you won’t notice.” I’m curious which side this lands on. Short fiction can survive a lot if the ideas are strong enough, but it can also feel very of its time very quickly.
Still, I’m always wary of “gems” in a title. Sometimes that means genuinely sharp, strange stories. Sometimes it means “this aged badly but we’re hoping you won’t notice.” I’m curious which side this lands on. Short fiction can survive a lot if the ideas are strong enough, but it can also feel very of its time very quickly.
“Gems” is doing a lot of work there. It can mean sharp little classics, or it can mean the editor had a very generous definition of the word. I’m usually more interested in whether a collection has a clear mood than whether every story is a winner. With old SF, the atmosphere and the ideas can still carry it, even when the clothes and assumptions are doing something else entirely.