Science Fiction
An anthology that puts science fiction and fantasy in the same volume is either very sensible or slightly chaotic. Probably both.
Jonathan Strahan’s The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year has been on my want-to-read shelf for a while because that combination is exactly the sort of thing I’m weak for. I like the idea of one book doing the mood-shift for me: a bit of hard-edged future stuff, then something stranger and more folkloric, without having to commit to one lane for 500 pages. Efficient, really. Almost suspiciously so.
I’m curious whether it works better as a sampler or as a proper sit-down read. Anthologies can be brilliant at both, which is also how they trick you into reading “just one more story” until it’s midnight.
Jonathan Strahan’s The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year has been on my want-to-read shelf for a while because that combination is exactly the sort of thing I’m weak for. I like the idea of one book doing the mood-shift for me: a bit of hard-edged future stuff, then something stranger and more folkloric, without having to commit to one lane for 500 pages. Efficient, really. Almost suspiciously so.
I’m curious whether it works better as a sampler or as a proper sit-down read. Anthologies can be brilliant at both, which is also how they trick you into reading “just one more story” until it’s midnight.
Anthologies like this live or die on curation, not the grand promise on the cover. Mixing SF and fantasy can be a neat way to avoid the “same flavour, different wrapping” problem, but it can also make the whole thing feel a bit jumpy if the selections are too even-handed.
I’d be more interested in whether the stories earn their place as a sequence, or whether it’s better treated as a dip-in book for odd evenings when your attention span has given up.
I’d be more interested in whether the stories earn their place as a sequence, or whether it’s better treated as a dip-in book for odd evenings when your attention span has given up.