Modern Classics of Science Fiction - Softcover

Dozois, Gardner

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0312088477 ISBN 13: 9780312088477

Verlag: St. Martin's Griffin, 1993

Inhaltsangabe

Brian Aldiss
William Gibson
R.A. Lafferty
Ursula K. Le Guin
Lucius Shepard
Bruce Sterling
Theodore Sturgeon
Howard Waldrop
Connie Willis
Gene Wolfe
Roger Zelazny

"The best stories are timeless. Long years from now the stories here may still touch someone, cause that person to blink, and put the book down for a second, and stare off through the hallow air, and shirver in wonder."

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Edited by Gardner Dozois

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Tastes being as subjective as they are, I can't claim that these are the best science fiction stories of the last four decades, but certainly it is safe to say that they are among the best, at the very least. There is not a story in this book that i wouldn't buy today, if it were somehow crossing my desk for the first time, not even the oldest story here, which will be thirty-eight years old by the time you read these words. Long years from now, long after everyone in this anthology or involved with it have gone to dust, the stories here may still touch someone, and cause that person touched to blink, and put the book down for a second, and stare off through the hollow air, and shiver in wonder.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Modern Classics of Science Fiction

By Gardner Dozois

St. Martin's Press

Copyright © 1991 Gardner Dozois
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-312-08847-7

Contents

Title Page, 
Copyright Notice, 
Acknowledgements, 
Epigraph, 
Preface, 
The Country of the Kind Damon Knight, 
Aristotle and the Gun L. Sprague de Camp, 
The Other Celia Theodore Sturgeon, 
Casey Agonistes Richard McKenna, 
Mother Hitton's Littul Kittons Cordwainer Smith, 
The Moon Moth Jack Vance, 
The Golden Horn Edgar Pangborn, 
The Lady Margaret Keith Roberts, 
This Moment of the Storm Roger Zelazny, 
Narrow Valley R. A. Lafferty, 
Driftglass Samuel R. Delany, 
The Worm That Flies Brian W. Aldiss, 
The Fifth Head of Cerberus Gene Wolfe, 
Nobody's Home Joanna Russ, 
Her Smoke Rose Up Forever James Tiptree, Jr, 
The Barrow Ursula K. Le Guin, 
Particle Theory Edward Bryant, 
The Ugly Chickens Howard Waldrop, 
Going Under Jack Dann, 
Salvador Lucius Shepard, 
Pretty Boy Crossover Pat Cadigan, 
The Pure Product John Kessel, 
The Winter Market William Gibson, 
Chance Connie Willis, 
The Edge of the World Michael Swanwick, 
Dori Bangs Bruce Sterling, 
Afterword, 
Copyright, 

CHAPTER 1

DAMON KNIGHT

The Country of the Kind

A multi-talented professional whose career as writer, editor, critic, and anthologist spans almost fifty years, Damon Knight has long been a major shaping force in the development of modern science fiction. He wrote the first important book of SF criticism, In Search of Wonder, and won a Hugo Award for it. He was the founder of the Science Fiction Writers of America, cofounder of the prestigious Milford Writers' Conference, and, with his wife, writer Kate Wilhelm, is still deeply involved in the operation of the Clarion workshop for new young writers, which was modeled after the Milford Conference. He was the editor of Orbit, the longest-running original anthology series in the history of American science fiction, and the most prominent American avant-garde market during the New Wave days of the mid to late '60s. Knight has also produced important works of genre history such as The Futurians and Turning Points, as well as dozens of influential reprint anthologies, such as A Science Fiction Argosy, Worlds to Come, Dimension X, The Dark Side, and Science Fiction of the Thirties.

Knight has also been highly influential as a writer, and may well be one of the finest short-story writers ever to work in the genre. Like Bradbury, Ellison, Tiptree, and a number of other SF writers, Knight's reputation rests almost entirely on his short fiction, for somehow his novels, though entertaining, have never reached the level of quality of his best short fiction (although – before the disappointing ending – he wrote half of one of the best novels of the '80s in The Man in the Tree). Like a handful of other writers during the '50s (Theodore Sturgeon, Alfred Bester, Fritz Leiber, C. M. Kornbluth, Brian W. Aldiss, William Tenn, Ray Bradbury, and Algis Budrys, among others), Knight at his best was engaged in the chore of redrawing the boundaries of the science-fiction short story, redefining its possibilities, and greatly expanding its limits. For this alone – ignoring his accomplishments as a critic and as an editor – the new writers of the '60s and '70s, who would build on the foundations laid in the '50s (and several of whom – at the very least, inarguably, Michael Bishop, James Tiptree, Jr, and Kate Wilhelm – were directly influenced by him), owe him a great deal.

There are a number of Knight stories I've never been able to forget, and which would have served for this anthology – "Stranger Station," "The Dying Man," "What Rough Beast?," "Masks," "Rule Golden," "The Earth Quarter," "Mary" – but in the final analysis, the one that could not be excluded was "The Country of the Kind," a story which still strikes me as one of the best SF stories of our times, and which James Blish once referred to as "one of the most uncomfortable parables in our language."

Knight's other books include the novels A For Anything, The Other Foot, and Hell's Pavement, and the collections Rule Golden and Other Stories, Turning On, Far Out, and The Best of Damon Knight. His most recent books are the novels CV, and its sequel, The Observers. Coming up is a new novel, A Reasonable World, and a new collection, One Side Laughing. Knight lives with his family in Eugene, Oregon.

The attendant at the car lot was daydreaming when I pulled up – a big, lazy-looking man in black satin chequered down the front. I was wearing scarlet, myself; it suited my mood. I got out, almost on his toes.

"Park or storage?" he asked automatically, turning around. Then he realized who I was, and ducked his head away.

"Neither," I told him.

There was a hand torch on a shelf in the repair shed right behind him. I got it and came back. I knelt down to where I could reach behind the front wheel, and ignited the torch. I turned it on the axle and suspension. They glowed cherry red, then white, and fused together. Then I got up and turned the flame on both tires until the rubberoid stank and sizzled and melted down to the pavement. The attendant didn't say anything.

I left him there, lookng at the mess on his nice clean concrete.

It had been a nice car, too; but I could get another any time. And I felt like walking. I went down the winding road, sleepy in the afternoon sunlight, dappled with shade and smelling of cool leaves. You couldn't see the houses; they were all sunken or hidden by shrubbery, or a little of both. That was the fad I'd heard about; it was what I'd come here to see. Not that anything the dulls did would be worth looking at.

I turned off at random and crossed a rolling lawn, went through a second hedge of hawthorn in blossom, and came out next to a big sunken games court.

The tennis net was up, and two couples were going at it, just working up a little sweat – young, about half my age, all four of them. Three dark-haired, one blonde. They were evenly matched, and both couples played well together; they were enjoying themselves.

I watched for a minute. But by then the nearest two were beginning to sense I was there, anyhow. I walked down onto the court just as the blonde was about to serve. She looked at me frozen across the net, poised on tiptoe. The others stood.

"Off," I told them. "Game's over."

I watched the blonde. She was not especially pretty, as they go, but compactly and gracefully put together. She came down slowly, flat-footed without awkwardness, and tucked the racket under her arm; then the surprise was over and she was trotting off the court after the other three.

I followed their voices around the curve of the path, between towering masses of lilacs, inhaling the sweetness, until I came to what looked like a little sunning spot. There was a sundial, and a birdbath, and towels lying around on the grass. One couple, the dark-haired pair, was still in sight farther down the path, heads bobbing along. The other couple had disappeared.

I found the handle in the grass without any trouble. The mechanism responded, and an oblong section of turf rose up. It was the stair I had, not the elevator, but that was all right. I ran down the steps and into the first door I saw, and was in the top-floor lounge,...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: St. Martin's Griffin
• Erscheinungsdatum: 1993
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0312088477
• ISBN 13: 9780312088477
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 688
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: gpsr@libri.de; gpsr@libri.de; ; Europaallee 1; Bad Hersfeld; 36244; Deutschland