{"id":323,"date":"2007-09-04T06:24:39","date_gmt":"2007-09-04T06:24:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/?p=323"},"modified":"2012-02-27T14:22:40","modified_gmt":"2012-02-27T14:22:40","slug":"the-solaris-book-of-new-science-fiction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/?p=323","title":{"rendered":"The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction <\/em>edited by George Mann<\/h3>\n

This meeting drew ten people to A. T.\u2019s home. Our topic was an anthology of original fantasy stories, the first book from new publisher Solaris. Most of the authors represented in the book are relatively new and seem to have books forthcoming from Solaris. Seven of us had started the book, with only two finishing.<\/p>\n

The stories in this anthology do not have a common theme, but we found that many of them were memorable. We enjoyed \u201cC-Rock City\u201d by Jay Lake and Greg van Eekhout, which explores futuristic history on an asteroid colony. Several of us were entertained by \u201cJellyfish\u201d, Mike Resnick and David Gerrold\u2019s humorous riff on a famous 60s science fiction writer. The imagery of Ian Watson\u2019s \u201cCages\u201d was striking, although most of us could not figure out the plot. Stephen Baxter\u2019s \u201cLast Contact,\u201d a touching character story about two women facing the end of the world, has a classic sf feel, although some of us found flaws in the story\u2019s physics. Paul Di Filippo\u2019s \u201cPersonal Jesus\u201d cleverly explores issues with religion and iPods.\u00a0 Peter F. Hamilton\u2019s \u201cIf At First\u2026\u201d is a well-executed, though predictable, time travel story. James Lovegrove\u2019s \u201cThe Bowdler Strain\u201d, about a virus that affects language, was hilarious to some of us but left others cold. We were disturbed by Simon Ings\u2019s horror story \u201cThe Wedding Party.\u201d \u201cThird Person\u201d by Tony Ballantyne, a military sf story that plays games with point of view, was confusing at first but ultimately interesting and satisfying.<\/p>\n

This was an unusual anthology. Usually the first and last stories in an anthology are its best, but we found neither the opening \u201cIn His Sights\u201d by Jeffrey Thomas nor the closing \u201cThe Farewell Party\u201d by Eric Brown to be anything special. None of the book\u2019s stories had stereotypical American happy endings, which we attributed to the editor and many of the authors being British. In general we thought many of these stories were good, but we don\u2019t expect to see any of them nominated for a major award.<\/p>\n

After the meeting, several of us had a nice dinner at Mongolian Grille.<\/p>\n

— A. T. Campbell, III<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction edited by George Mann This meeting drew ten people to A. T.\u2019s home. Our topic was an anthology of original fantasy stories, the first book from new publisher Solaris. Most of the authors represented in the book are relatively new and seem to have books forthcoming from Solaris. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-323","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=323"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":583,"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323\/revisions\/583"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}