Christopher Rowe wondered what might be in an "SF Hall of Fame" anthology going back a similar period that the original SF Hall of Fame covered in 1970 -- about 30 years, from a few years prior to that. And I decide to make my own list of stories that fits that specification. I posted it in a comment at Christopher's FB wall, but here's the same list, with some additional "just misses" added, for preservation at my own blog!
Best stories 1989-2018
Here's a list I put together today. I have lists of "short stories" (up to approximately 10,000 words) for a rough analog to the SF HOF Volume I, and novellas (10,000 to 40,000 or so) as a rough analog to Volumes IIA and IIB. I purposely slanted the list heavily to SF and not fantasy -- much as the first books were -- but there is some fantasy on these lists. I stuck to the 1989-2018 timeframe. I chose 30 short stories and 22 novellas -- just a bit more than the original books had. (So sue me!) If I did this tomorrow, the list might change by 1/3! ??
It was great fun putting this together, and especially choosing some somewhat forgotten stories that I think deserve more attention ("The Spade of Reason", "Sailing the Painted Ocean", "Three Days of Rain", "Sadness", "Milo and Sylvie" ...)
Short Stories
"Game Night at the Fox and Goose", by Karen Joy Fowler (1989)
"Bears Discover Fire", by Terry Bisson (1990)
"Buffalo", by John Kessel (1991)
"Another Story; or, The Fisherman of the Inland Sea", by Ursula K. Le Guin (1994)
"Think Like a Dinosaur", by James Patrick Kelly (1995)
"Wang's Carpets", by Greg Egan (1995)
"Starship Day", by Ian R. MacLeod (1995)
"The Lincoln Train", by Maureen McHugh (1995)
"The Spade of Reason", by Jim Cowan (1996)
"Gone", by John Crowley (1996)
"Get a Grip", by Paul Park (1997)
"Suicide Coast", by M. John Harrison (1999)
"Stellar Harvest", by Eleanor Arnason (1999)
"Scherzo With Tyrannosaur", by Michael Swanwick (1999)
"Sailing the Painted Ocean" by Denise Lee (1999)
"Lull" by Kelly Link (2002)
"The House Beyond Your Sky" by Benjamin Rosenbaum (2006)
"Eight Episodes", by Robert Reed (2006)
"Three Days of Rain" by Holly Phillips (2007)
"Exhalation" by Ted Chiang (2008)
"26 Monkeys, also the Abyss", by Kij Johnson (2008)
"Flower, Mercy, Needle, Chain" by Yoon Ha Lee (2010)
"The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees", by E. Lily Yu (2011)
"Sadness" by Timons Esaias (2014)
"Cimmeria: From the Journal of Imaginary Anthropology", by Theodora Goss (2014)
"Mutability" by Ray Nayler (2015)
"Red in Tooth and Cog" by Cat Rambo (2016)
"Everyone From Themis Sends Letters Home" by Genevieve Valentine (2016)
"Empty Planets" by Naomi Kanakia (2016)
"An Account of the Land of Witches" by Sofia Samatar (2017)
Novellas:
"Great Work of Time", by John Crowley (1989)
"Forgiveness Day", by Ursula K. Le Guin (1994)
"The Ziggurat", by Gene Wolfe (1995)
"The Flowers of Aulit Prison" by Nancy Kress (1996)
"Animae Celestes", by Gregory Feeley (1998)
"Story of Your Life", by Ted Chiang (1998)
"Dapple", by Eleanor Arnason (1999)
"New Light on the Drake Equation", by Ian R. MacLeod (2000)
"Milo and Sylvie", by Eliot Fintushel (2000)
"The Path of the Transgressor" by Tom Purdom (2003)
"The Voluntary State" by Christopher Rowe (2004)
"Magic for Beginners", by Kelly Link (2005)
"A Billion Eves", by Robert Reed (2006)
"Tenbrook of Mars" by Dean McLaughlin (2008)
"Eros, Philia, Agape" by Rachel Swirsky (2009)
"The Maiden Flight of McCauley’s Bellerophon" by Elizabeth Hand (2010)
"In the House of Aryaman, a Lonely Signal Burns" by Elizabeth Bear (2012)
"A Guide to the Fruits of Hawai’i" by Alaya Dawn Johnson (2014)
"Fifty Shades of Greys" by Steven Barnes (2016)
The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe by Kij Johnson (2016)
"And Then There Were (N-One)" by Sarah Pinsker (2017)
"Dayenu" by James Sallis (2018)
Stories that just missed, were too many by the same writer, or more fantastical than I wanted
"The Faery Handbag" by Kelly Link
"The Sandal-Bride" by Genevieve Valentine
"Pip and the Fairies" by Theodora Goss
"A Small Price to Pay for Birdsong" by K.J. Parker
"Isabel of the Fall" by Ian R. MacLeod
"Journey Into the Kingdom" by M. Rickert
"Salt Wine" by Peter S. Beagle
"Another Word for Map is Faith" by Christopher Rowe
"The Small Door" by Holly Phillips
"The Tear" by Ian McDonald
"The Island" by Peter Watts
"A Letter from the Emperor" by Steve Rasnic Tem
"Stereogram of the Gray Fort, in the Days of her Glory" by Paul M. Berger
"Walking Stick Fires" by Anya Johanna de Niro
"The Bridge of Dreams" by Gregory Feeley
"Martyr's Gem" by C. S. E. Cooney
"Three Twilight Tales" by Jo Walton
"Aberration" by Genevieve Valentine
"Project Empathy" by Dominica Phetteplace
"Grace's Family" by James Patrick Kelly
"Clearly Lettered in a Mostly Steady Hand" by Fran Wilde
"Exclusion" by Daniel Abraham
"More Adventures on Other Planets" by Michael Cassutt
"Stories for Men" by John Kessel
"Ten Bears; or, A Journey to the Weterings" by Henry Wessells
"The Empire of Ice Cream" by Jeffrey Ford
"Seven Guesses of the Heart" by M. John Harrison
"The Price of Oranges" by Nancy Kress
"Buddha Nostril Bird" by John Kessel
"Steelcollar Worker" by Vonda McIntyre
"Stairs" by Neal Barrett, Jr.
"Exogamy" by John Crowley
"Erase, Record, Play" by John M. Ford
Rich, thanks. As you know, I love lists like this. I will definitely be both reviewing this to see a) which I have or have not read (or perhaps read but did not document), and b) thinking about stories I might have selected.
ReplyDeleteI wish I could buy these in an anthology! I’ve missed most of these.
ReplyDeleteRich, not to be critical. However, looking at your list, I suspect the Jeffrey Ford piece is really "The Empire of Ice Cream", although I'd love to see a story by him called "The Empire of Ice Dream", perhaps a somewhat Wolfean play on the original.
ReplyDeleteTypo! Sorry, will fix.
DeleteBy the way, Jeffrey told me he intended not connection to Wallace Stevens' great poem "The Emperor of Ice Cream", which I found hard to believe. Later, as I recall, he said any connection was completely unconscious.
DeleteI think I’m taken by Jo Walton’s suggestion that you closer you get today the harder it is assess these things.
ReplyDeleteThe first HoF volume covered approx 1934-1966. If you ignore the novella volumes and so on, wouldn’t the logical volume be maybe 1970-2000?
Well, I do agree with Jo. But in this case the first SF Hall of fame volume appeared in 1970, and stories until 1964 were considered. So considering stories until 2018 for this exercise made sense.
DeleteI just checked the contents of the originals in ISFDB and don't see anything I'd call fantasy; without the books in hand so I can read the introductions, I don't know whether that was deliberate (corresponding to the full names of the books) or just that there wasn't much fantasy available then. (It wasn't absent -- "That Hell-Bound Train" was one of the first Hugo winners, and _F&SF_ was around for the last 14 years of the period covered -- but there wasn't much of it.) I'd be interested to see how your list changes if you don't have a ~quota for fantasy.
ReplyDeleteYou are right that none of the SF Hall of Fame stories present as fantasy, though one could make arguments for "Mars is Heaven!" and "A Rose for Ecclesiastes". I suspect that was partly by intent, and partly because SF stories still outnumbered Fantasy in genre magazines until a bit later. The LOTR boom didn't really happen until after 1964. Many stories that nowadays would probably be written as secondary world fantasies were written as "sword and planet" stuff back in the day -- though none of the SF Hall of Fame stories really fit that.
DeleteMy list has a few fantasies, and there are several more on my list of "just-misses".