Short Story Sunday 27: Johanna Sinisalo and H. G. Wells

There was a fair amount of hubbub in 2016 around the release of The Big Book of Science Fiction edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer. I knew of their reputation even though wasn’t very familiar with their work. Still, a new collection of science fiction stories by dozens of authors spanning roughly 100 years of publishing history carefully curated by two knowledgeable editors and anthologist in the field does call for some attention. That and its very reasonable price point and easy availability led me to purchase a copy. The goal was to read each story and write about it here on the blog. Five years lately, I’m finally starting.

I’ll be taking a specific approach to these reviews. For starters, the VanderMeers wrote wonderfully detailed introduction to each story. Part biography, part career overview, sometimes structured like a miniature essay about an author’s work, these text pieces are as much a draw of the book as the written contents. They also have a great and lengthy introduction to the whole collection in which they write about the difference phases of science fiction writing in the English language while also making mention of non-English authors and their work. They present their criteria in compiling the collection and it makes for a compelling read as well as an excellent contextualization for the reader to sample all of these stories.