What do you think?
Rate this book
The Best of Michael Swanwick
It's here at last the first comprehensive overview of the extraordinary career of master storyteller Michael Swanwick. Covering over a quarter of a century, from his first two published stories both of them Nebula finalists to his most recent, these works bear witness to one of the most vivid and far-ranging imaginations in contemporary fiction. From the hardest of hard science fiction to the purest of core fantasy, from the heartwarming to the despairing, these are works incandescent with literary brilliance.
In these pages, Janis Joplin is worshiped as a god, teenagers climb down the edge of the world, zombies are commodified, a vengeful man tracks a wizard across the surface of a planet-sized grasshopper, dinosaurs invade Vermont, a train leaves New York City bound for Hell, and those lovable Post-Utopian con men, Darger and Surplus, seek their fortunes in Buckingham Labyrinth.
Michael Swanwick is one of the most acclaimed and prolific writers of his generation, as well as being the only person ever to win five Hugo Awards for fiction in the space of six years. All five of those stories are included here plus much, much more, all of it beautifully written, critically acclaimed, and deeply satisfying to read.
Contents
1 • Introduction (The Best of Michael Swanwick) • (2008) • essay by Michael Swanwick
13 • The Feast of Saint Janis • (1980) • novelette by Michael Swanwick
43 • Ginungagap • (1980) • novelette by Michael Swanwick
75 • Trojan Horse • (1984) • novelette by Michael Swanwick
111 • A Midwinter's Tale • (1988) • shortstory by Michael Swanwick
125 • The Edge of the World • (1989) • shortstory by Michael Swanwick
139 • Griffin's Egg • (1991) • novella by Michael Swanwick
213 • The Changeling's Tale • (1994) • shortstory by Michael Swanwick
229 • North of Diddy-Wah-Diddy • (1995) • novelette by Michael Swanwick
249 • Radio Waves • (1995) • novelette by Michael Swanwick
269 • The Dead • (1996) • shortstory by Michael Swanwick
281 • Mother Grasshopper • (1997) • shortstory by Michael Swanwick
297 • Radiant Doors • (1998) • shortstory by Michael Swanwick
313 • The Very Pulse of the Machine • (1998) • novelette by Michael Swanwick
333 • Wild Minds • (1998) • shortstory by Michael Swanwick
343 • Scherzo with Tyrannosaur • (1999) • shortstory by Michael Swanwick
355 • The Raggle Taggle Gypsy-O • (2000) • shortstory by Michael Swanwick
371 • The Dog Said Bow-Wow • [Darger and Surplus] • (2001) • shortstory by Michael Swanwick
389 • Slow Life • (2002) • novelette by Michael Swanwick
413 • Legions in Time • (2003) • novelette by Michael Swanwick
437 • Triceratops Summer • (2005) • shortstory by Michael Swanwick
449 • From Babel's Fall'n Glory We Fled • (2008) • shortstory by Michael Swanwick (variant of From Babel's Fall'n Glory We Fled ...)
In these pages, Janis Joplin is worshiped as a god, teenagers climb down the edge of the world, zombies are commodified, a vengeful man tracks a wizard across the surface of a planet-sized grasshopper, dinosaurs invade Vermont, a train leaves New York City bound for Hell, and those lovable Post-Utopian con men, Darger and Surplus, seek their fortunes in Buckingham Labyrinth.
Michael Swanwick is one of the most acclaimed and prolific writers of his generation, as well as being the only person ever to win five Hugo Awards for fiction in the space of six years. All five of those stories are included here plus much, much more, all of it beautifully written, critically acclaimed, and deeply satisfying to read.
Contents
1 • Introduction (The Best of Michael Swanwick) • (2008) • essay by Michael Swanwick
13 • The Feast of Saint Janis • (1980) • novelette by Michael Swanwick
43 • Ginungagap • (1980) • novelette by Michael Swanwick
75 • Trojan Horse • (1984) • novelette by Michael Swanwick
111 • A Midwinter's Tale • (1988) • shortstory by Michael Swanwick
125 • The Edge of the World • (1989) • shortstory by Michael Swanwick
139 • Griffin's Egg • (1991) • novella by Michael Swanwick
213 • The Changeling's Tale • (1994) • shortstory by Michael Swanwick
229 • North of Diddy-Wah-Diddy • (1995) • novelette by Michael Swanwick
249 • Radio Waves • (1995) • novelette by Michael Swanwick
269 • The Dead • (1996) • shortstory by Michael Swanwick
281 • Mother Grasshopper • (1997) • shortstory by Michael Swanwick
297 • Radiant Doors • (1998) • shortstory by Michael Swanwick
313 • The Very Pulse of the Machine • (1998) • novelette by Michael Swanwick
333 • Wild Minds • (1998) • shortstory by Michael Swanwick
343 • Scherzo with Tyrannosaur • (1999) • shortstory by Michael Swanwick
355 • The Raggle Taggle Gypsy-O • (2000) • shortstory by Michael Swanwick
371 • The Dog Said Bow-Wow • [Darger and Surplus] • (2001) • shortstory by Michael Swanwick
389 • Slow Life • (2002) • novelette by Michael Swanwick
413 • Legions in Time • (2003) • novelette by Michael Swanwick
437 • Triceratops Summer • (2005) • shortstory by Michael Swanwick
449 • From Babel's Fall'n Glory We Fled • (2008) • shortstory by Michael Swanwick (variant of From Babel's Fall'n Glory We Fled ...)
469 pages, Hardcover
First published October 31, 2008
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 40 reviews
December 23, 2016
My search for online Christmas-themed science fiction led me to "A Midwinter's Tale," part of this collection. Currently this review is just for this short story, which is part of the free sample of this anthology here at Baen.com. Review first posted on Fantasy Literature:
4.5 stars. An interstellar soldier, suffering from some memory problems, meets an anonymous woman on one of the planets he is stationed on. He tells her a Christmastime story from his childhood on another planet, originally settled by a small group of humans, and their relationship with larls, the natives on this planet. Larls are large black puma-like predators, intelligent but non-speaking, and in Flip’s childhood they have a mutually beneficial working relationship with the humans on their planet.
Flip tells a story of this colony’s Christmas Eve celebration (which contains distinct echoes of Dylan Thomas’s classic A Child's Christmas in Wales), which ends with Flip sleepily lying by the fireplace. A large larl curls up around him and unexpectedly speaks, telling Flip the story of when humans first arrived on their planet, and about a chilling and game-changing encounter between a huntress, her baby and the predatory larls.
It’s a mystical and bittersweet tale, with some wonderful writing. I wasn’t entirely convinced by the soldier’s story used by Michael Swanwick as the framing device, which didn’t quite fit for me (or maybe I was missing Swanwick’s point with it), and his memory problems add some not entirely welcome haziness to the events he retells. But the stories within that framing device ― the soldier’s (older Flip’s) tale of a very strange Christmas Eve, reminiscent of the traditional fable of beasts speaking on Christmas Eve, and in turn the larl’s tale of first contact between their species ― were both memorable.
“A Midwinter’s Tale” was also included in the 2011 Alien Contact anthology. Editor Marty Halpern’s blog includes some fascinating insights from Michael Swanwick about the elements that went into this tale, which include not only the Dylan Thomas and animals talking on Christmas Eve stories, but also some paintings by Marc Chagall that Swanwick saw at an exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and several other inspirations and influences.
4.5 stars. An interstellar soldier, suffering from some memory problems, meets an anonymous woman on one of the planets he is stationed on. He tells her a Christmastime story from his childhood on another planet, originally settled by a small group of humans, and their relationship with larls, the natives on this planet. Larls are large black puma-like predators, intelligent but non-speaking, and in Flip’s childhood they have a mutually beneficial working relationship with the humans on their planet.
Flip tells a story of this colony’s Christmas Eve celebration (which contains distinct echoes of Dylan Thomas’s classic A Child's Christmas in Wales), which ends with Flip sleepily lying by the fireplace. A large larl curls up around him and unexpectedly speaks, telling Flip the story of when humans first arrived on their planet, and about a chilling and game-changing encounter between a huntress, her baby and the predatory larls.
It’s a mystical and bittersweet tale, with some wonderful writing. I wasn’t entirely convinced by the soldier’s story used by Michael Swanwick as the framing device, which didn’t quite fit for me (or maybe I was missing Swanwick’s point with it), and his memory problems add some not entirely welcome haziness to the events he retells. But the stories within that framing device ― the soldier’s (older Flip’s) tale of a very strange Christmas Eve, reminiscent of the traditional fable of beasts speaking on Christmas Eve, and in turn the larl’s tale of first contact between their species ― were both memorable.
“A Midwinter’s Tale” was also included in the 2011 Alien Contact anthology. Editor Marty Halpern’s blog includes some fascinating insights from Michael Swanwick about the elements that went into this tale, which include not only the Dylan Thomas and animals talking on Christmas Eve stories, but also some paintings by Marc Chagall that Swanwick saw at an exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and several other inspirations and influences.
November 25, 2020
Many of Swanwicks's best shorts, and an amazing Kindle bargain for 3 bucks. Not a weak story in the bunch, and has a lot of my personal favorites. Not to be missed! Best short-story writer working in SF, I think.
My Amazon review, with some story links (updated here):
https://www.amazon.com/review/R1V9OHI...
More sample stories: https://www.baen.com/Chapters/1596061...
* Ginungagap (1980). His first or second published story, and still great, 40 years on. Abigail Vanderhoek, gravity bum, has been hired to be the first person transmitted to the Spiders via an alien black-hole subway. Complications ensue. PLUS casual sex AND a cute cat 🐈. 4.5 stars!
https://www.baen.com/Chapters/1596061...
* From Babel’s Fall’n Glory We Fled (2008). "Hello. I’m Rosamund. I’m dead." 6 stars! Arguably the best short space-opera epic in SF history! I think so, anyway. 🚀 Nominated for the 2009 Hugo Award for Best Short Story -- and should have won!
Reprint: http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/swanw...
In essence, the story was salvaged from a failed novel. What a pity! It's "all that remains of what was originally going to be a novel. I put a lot of ideation into making notes, creating a stellar system, a way of moving humans into it, a version of information economics that went way beyond the predatory, an alien society, a human society... and then one day realized that it had been two years and I still didn't have any characters or a plot. So I got to work on a different novel." -- from Swanwicks's blog: http://floggingbabel.blogspot.com/201...
"Who can explain the transient enthusiasms that grip a working writer? I vividly remember the time several years ago when I was working on three separate stories at once and suddenly realized that all three stories featured a protagonist who was already dead by the time the story began. That was a creepy moment." https://michaelswanwick.wordpress.com...
Wikipedia has more interesting details https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_Ba..., including a diagram of the alien language that has "trilateral symmetry and a signed language, so that a single thought or statement transcribed into what I think of as an ergoglyph looks something like a verbal snowflake."
* Slow Life (2002), in Titan's hydrocarbon seas. 4 stars.
http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fic...
My Amazon review, with some story links (updated here):
https://www.amazon.com/review/R1V9OHI...
More sample stories: https://www.baen.com/Chapters/1596061...
* Ginungagap (1980). His first or second published story, and still great, 40 years on. Abigail Vanderhoek, gravity bum, has been hired to be the first person transmitted to the Spiders via an alien black-hole subway. Complications ensue. PLUS casual sex AND a cute cat 🐈. 4.5 stars!
https://www.baen.com/Chapters/1596061...
* From Babel’s Fall’n Glory We Fled (2008). "Hello. I’m Rosamund. I’m dead." 6 stars! Arguably the best short space-opera epic in SF history! I think so, anyway. 🚀 Nominated for the 2009 Hugo Award for Best Short Story -- and should have won!
Reprint: http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/swanw...
In essence, the story was salvaged from a failed novel. What a pity! It's "all that remains of what was originally going to be a novel. I put a lot of ideation into making notes, creating a stellar system, a way of moving humans into it, a version of information economics that went way beyond the predatory, an alien society, a human society... and then one day realized that it had been two years and I still didn't have any characters or a plot. So I got to work on a different novel." -- from Swanwicks's blog: http://floggingbabel.blogspot.com/201...
"Who can explain the transient enthusiasms that grip a working writer? I vividly remember the time several years ago when I was working on three separate stories at once and suddenly realized that all three stories featured a protagonist who was already dead by the time the story began. That was a creepy moment." https://michaelswanwick.wordpress.com...
Wikipedia has more interesting details https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_Ba..., including a diagram of the alien language that has "trilateral symmetry and a signed language, so that a single thought or statement transcribed into what I think of as an ergoglyph looks something like a verbal snowflake."
* Slow Life (2002), in Titan's hydrocarbon seas. 4 stars.
http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fic...
January 21, 2011
**UPDATED REVIEW**
4.5 Stars. I have not read all of the stories in this collection so this review is only for the story(ies) set forth below.
Scherzo with Tyrannosaur (5.0 to 5.5 stars): Excellent short story about time-travel, paradoxes and the choices we make as humans (or to stay human). The story follows the paleontological director of a research facility that has been created and placed in the Cretaceous period. The station occasionally brings "big wigs" back in time to do fund raisers. During one such fundraiser, the director must use a series of complex schemes to cover up his unethical activities. A great discussion of time paradoxes.
Winner: Hugo Award for Best Short Fiction. Nominee: Nebula Award and Locus Award for Best Short Fiction.
The Feast of Saint Janis (4.0 to 4.5 stars): Powerful novelette about an African diplomat visiting a post "Collapse" United States and becoming a part of a unique "tour" involving a Janis Joplin impersonator. A great ending and a powerful story.
Nominee: Nebula Award for Best Novelette.
"The Edge of the World" (4.0 stars): Alternative Earth story featuring three teenagers who travel to explore the "edge" of the flat Earth and find a way (used my ancient monks in the story) to gain wishes. All three gain their "hearts desire" unthinkingly with significant costs to themselves. Clever and poignant.
Nominee: Hugo, Locus and World Fantasy Award for Best Short Fiction. Winner: Sturgeon Award for Best Short Fiction.
4.5 Stars. I have not read all of the stories in this collection so this review is only for the story(ies) set forth below.
Scherzo with Tyrannosaur (5.0 to 5.5 stars): Excellent short story about time-travel, paradoxes and the choices we make as humans (or to stay human). The story follows the paleontological director of a research facility that has been created and placed in the Cretaceous period. The station occasionally brings "big wigs" back in time to do fund raisers. During one such fundraiser, the director must use a series of complex schemes to cover up his unethical activities. A great discussion of time paradoxes.
Winner: Hugo Award for Best Short Fiction. Nominee: Nebula Award and Locus Award for Best Short Fiction.
The Feast of Saint Janis (4.0 to 4.5 stars): Powerful novelette about an African diplomat visiting a post "Collapse" United States and becoming a part of a unique "tour" involving a Janis Joplin impersonator. A great ending and a powerful story.
Nominee: Nebula Award for Best Novelette.
"The Edge of the World" (4.0 stars): Alternative Earth story featuring three teenagers who travel to explore the "edge" of the flat Earth and find a way (used my ancient monks in the story) to gain wishes. All three gain their "hearts desire" unthinkingly with significant costs to themselves. Clever and poignant.
Nominee: Hugo, Locus and World Fantasy Award for Best Short Fiction. Winner: Sturgeon Award for Best Short Fiction.
January 17, 2016
Michael Swanwick is a hero. He’s apparently (unless this has changed very recently) the only living person to win five Hugo awards for his writing in six years. From what I can tell he doesn’t have an enormous output, and his works haven’t made him a household name among nerds like Gaiman or Le Guin, but he’s still a literary hero. His novel Stations of the Tide was critically acclaimed by people who like literary science fiction (and those are the kind of people I like). I knew he had written short stories, but most of them I had never read. So I was quite excited when I stumbled across Subterranean Press’s Best of Michael Swanwick anthology among the stacks at my local library.
Reviewing anthologies is difficult, especially when an anthology by a writer who can do as many different things as well as Swanwick can in his writing. Each story in this collection is a winner (literally, as all the Hugo winners are included). Each one cuts like a piece of glass in your mind’s eye, scintillating and lovely and dangerous. Each one puts you in your place and reminds you however much you like to think of yourself as a writer of science fiction and fantasy you should settle down and shut up because this is how it’s done. (Or at least, each one did for me.)
Anything you want is in here. Weird future versions of the United States in the vein of Gene Wolfe’s “Seven American Nights”? You get it from the start with “The Feast of St. Janis.” Science fiction that does new things with the idea of identity and technology applied to the human mind? You get that scattered throughout, starting with my favorite piece in the collection, “Ginungagap.”
In Swanwick’s science fiction, technology is not just FTL and spaceships. It’s at perhaps its most prescient with the idea of technology that is able, for better or worse, to re-map and re-wire the human mind. This becomes something of a theme in the anthology, treated at most length in “Wild Minds,” a subtle little piece that detonates like a mental hand-grenade.
Apart from questions of identity and mind, you also get science fiction pieces (and two of these won Hugos) that examine scenarios of encountering intelligent life— weirder and larger than the tropes you expect— within our own solar system: “The Very Pulse of the Machine” and “Slow Life.” Here Swanwick’s realism comes into play as he offers scientifically accurate vistas of worlds in our own solar system and thoughtful physical and philosophical treatments of what encountering life there might be like. Which is probably why they were so well received. They’re doing what science fiction is supposed to do: taking what we know about humans and what we know about our universe and putting them into possible and challenging juxtapositions to see what emerges.
Another theme I noticed in these stories in retrospect is an accident, an injury, or a death that plays a central role in transforming characters and their environment. It comes out in both of the first contact stories mentioned above, as well as “Trojan Horse,” “Griffin’s Egg,” “Radio Waves,” and “Mother Grasshopper.” The idea of knowledge through wounding or brokenness is sort of a tautology in literature in general, but science fiction often seems to feature (at least classically) the best and healthiest of humanity facing the worst the universe can offer. In Swanwick’s work, there’s something about being broken, wounded, less than whole that allows touching, interacting, and perceiving the universe in an important way. No one faces reality in these stories unbroken. (Does anyone really face reality another way?)
Swanwick also knows time-travel, and he knows what to do with it: either set up a perfect and heart-wrenching paradox (“Scherzo with Tyrannosaur”), use it to create an idyllic eternal (sort of) summer (“Triceratops Summer”), or go all mythic-poetical and throw out epic yarns that stretch time like taffy (“The Raggle Taggle Gypsy-O” and “Legions in Time”).
And then there are the tales that are most effective of all because they’re singularities. You can’t lump them into a group with anything. They’re alive and awful (as in both awe-filling and the other meaning but in a good way) and will stick with you long after you’ve closed the cover. I’m talking about “A Midwinter’s Tale,” which seems in my mind definitely a homage to Wolfe. It takes something of the strangeness of the alzabo from the New Sun and puts it in the atmospheric haze of Fifth Head of Cerberus or even Peace. “The Edge of the World” is a perfect story that is grimy and magic and reminiscent simultaneously of Bradbury, the Arabian Nights, and Stand By Me. “North of Diddy-Wah-Diddy” is a perfect story about hell and the train that goes there.
And then finally “The Dead” and “Radiant Doors” are horror stories that are horror not because of the creepy future-things in them (and there are creepy things and horrifying futures) but because the creepy things are mirrors. The creepy things are us, and they’re already here.
So this is a book to read (and preferably to own) if you want to surround yourself by living, breathing stories that can kick the crap out of you as a reader and hopefully let some of their technique rub off on you while they’re doing it. They’re aspirational stories in that sense. At least for me, as a writer, they made things start clicking and sparking in my brain (probably because they were kicking it so hard). Swanwick is a master, and this is a book of masterworks. If you love Gene Wolfe’s short stories, you should read this book.
But it’s not perfect, and the perfection of the stories within made a few glaring shortcomings of the book itself obvious. Firstly, there were typos. And not just little typos: huge, embarrassing typos that at times threatened to obscure the meaning of pivotal sentences. At one point, a character is making an important conclusion about understanding something that is “yours” when every other clue in the story and the context indicates he must have meant “ours”. If this was a carefully-edited volume I’d just assume there was a subtly in this exchange I must have missed (like in a Gene Wolfe story), but this is a volume that elsewhere put “arid” for “and” as well as a host of other mistakes. For the work of a wordcraft like Swanwick, that’s a crime. (Though either the editing got better as the volume went on or I stopped noticing it, because it didn’t seem as a bad in the second half— though misplaced, reversed, or dropped quotation marks continued to abound.)
Secondly, there was no listing at the beginning of where the stories first appeared. There was a copyright attribution that told when they were published, but not where. This is a shame, as one of my favorite things about anthologies is seeing where these stories first saw print. In my opinion at least, it’s kind of an essential historical record that goes along with story anthologies.
Editing faults aside though, the book is still worth its weight and shelf-space. It’s like a writer’s guide on how to be awesome. How to tell devastating stories with huge ideas.
But put it on a top shelf, out of reach of the kids, because another big theme in this work is sex. And not sex that’s just sort of a thing that happens to characters to keep things spicy but left sort of narratively vague. Nothing vague here. There’s pretty much a detailed climax scene in almost every story.
I don’t consider myself too much of a prude (I probably am) but to be honest after a while this was kind of off-putting. If there was a male protagonist, and a female character was introduced, you knew what was coming. To be fair, sometimes the details were essential to the plot or tone (as in the general dreadfulness of “The Dead” or the central paradox of “Scherzo with a Tyrannosaur”) but in most of the other cases it wasn’t. Yet that’s not to say it’s in there just for kicks. Michael Swanick obviously likes sex, his characters enjoy it, and he writes about it with the same vigor and description as he does the other aspects of his stories.
I’m not sure how I feel about this (besides prudishly embarrassed). It might be, I think, an illustration of what my colleague who teaches English and who wrote his dissertation on the work of the Catholic author Graham Greene has often said about Catholic literature. (And though Swanwick was raised Catholic I have no idea if he practices.) My friend says that a characteristic of Catholic authors (and perhaps a reason there are few real literary giants among evangelical Christians) is that for a Catholic writer nothing is off-limits. Everything in the created order belongs to God. It can therefore all be used in all its gritty and vivid reality. The camera never needs to pan away, as it were. All the physicality (sexual and otherwise) in all its brutality and beauty is okay to use to build story.
And Swanwick does.
Reviewing anthologies is difficult, especially when an anthology by a writer who can do as many different things as well as Swanwick can in his writing. Each story in this collection is a winner (literally, as all the Hugo winners are included). Each one cuts like a piece of glass in your mind’s eye, scintillating and lovely and dangerous. Each one puts you in your place and reminds you however much you like to think of yourself as a writer of science fiction and fantasy you should settle down and shut up because this is how it’s done. (Or at least, each one did for me.)
Anything you want is in here. Weird future versions of the United States in the vein of Gene Wolfe’s “Seven American Nights”? You get it from the start with “The Feast of St. Janis.” Science fiction that does new things with the idea of identity and technology applied to the human mind? You get that scattered throughout, starting with my favorite piece in the collection, “Ginungagap.”
In Swanwick’s science fiction, technology is not just FTL and spaceships. It’s at perhaps its most prescient with the idea of technology that is able, for better or worse, to re-map and re-wire the human mind. This becomes something of a theme in the anthology, treated at most length in “Wild Minds,” a subtle little piece that detonates like a mental hand-grenade.
Apart from questions of identity and mind, you also get science fiction pieces (and two of these won Hugos) that examine scenarios of encountering intelligent life— weirder and larger than the tropes you expect— within our own solar system: “The Very Pulse of the Machine” and “Slow Life.” Here Swanwick’s realism comes into play as he offers scientifically accurate vistas of worlds in our own solar system and thoughtful physical and philosophical treatments of what encountering life there might be like. Which is probably why they were so well received. They’re doing what science fiction is supposed to do: taking what we know about humans and what we know about our universe and putting them into possible and challenging juxtapositions to see what emerges.
Another theme I noticed in these stories in retrospect is an accident, an injury, or a death that plays a central role in transforming characters and their environment. It comes out in both of the first contact stories mentioned above, as well as “Trojan Horse,” “Griffin’s Egg,” “Radio Waves,” and “Mother Grasshopper.” The idea of knowledge through wounding or brokenness is sort of a tautology in literature in general, but science fiction often seems to feature (at least classically) the best and healthiest of humanity facing the worst the universe can offer. In Swanwick’s work, there’s something about being broken, wounded, less than whole that allows touching, interacting, and perceiving the universe in an important way. No one faces reality in these stories unbroken. (Does anyone really face reality another way?)
Swanwick also knows time-travel, and he knows what to do with it: either set up a perfect and heart-wrenching paradox (“Scherzo with Tyrannosaur”), use it to create an idyllic eternal (sort of) summer (“Triceratops Summer”), or go all mythic-poetical and throw out epic yarns that stretch time like taffy (“The Raggle Taggle Gypsy-O” and “Legions in Time”).
And then there are the tales that are most effective of all because they’re singularities. You can’t lump them into a group with anything. They’re alive and awful (as in both awe-filling and the other meaning but in a good way) and will stick with you long after you’ve closed the cover. I’m talking about “A Midwinter’s Tale,” which seems in my mind definitely a homage to Wolfe. It takes something of the strangeness of the alzabo from the New Sun and puts it in the atmospheric haze of Fifth Head of Cerberus or even Peace. “The Edge of the World” is a perfect story that is grimy and magic and reminiscent simultaneously of Bradbury, the Arabian Nights, and Stand By Me. “North of Diddy-Wah-Diddy” is a perfect story about hell and the train that goes there.
And then finally “The Dead” and “Radiant Doors” are horror stories that are horror not because of the creepy future-things in them (and there are creepy things and horrifying futures) but because the creepy things are mirrors. The creepy things are us, and they’re already here.
So this is a book to read (and preferably to own) if you want to surround yourself by living, breathing stories that can kick the crap out of you as a reader and hopefully let some of their technique rub off on you while they’re doing it. They’re aspirational stories in that sense. At least for me, as a writer, they made things start clicking and sparking in my brain (probably because they were kicking it so hard). Swanwick is a master, and this is a book of masterworks. If you love Gene Wolfe’s short stories, you should read this book.
But it’s not perfect, and the perfection of the stories within made a few glaring shortcomings of the book itself obvious. Firstly, there were typos. And not just little typos: huge, embarrassing typos that at times threatened to obscure the meaning of pivotal sentences. At one point, a character is making an important conclusion about understanding something that is “yours” when every other clue in the story and the context indicates he must have meant “ours”. If this was a carefully-edited volume I’d just assume there was a subtly in this exchange I must have missed (like in a Gene Wolfe story), but this is a volume that elsewhere put “arid” for “and” as well as a host of other mistakes. For the work of a wordcraft like Swanwick, that’s a crime. (Though either the editing got better as the volume went on or I stopped noticing it, because it didn’t seem as a bad in the second half— though misplaced, reversed, or dropped quotation marks continued to abound.)
Secondly, there was no listing at the beginning of where the stories first appeared. There was a copyright attribution that told when they were published, but not where. This is a shame, as one of my favorite things about anthologies is seeing where these stories first saw print. In my opinion at least, it’s kind of an essential historical record that goes along with story anthologies.
Editing faults aside though, the book is still worth its weight and shelf-space. It’s like a writer’s guide on how to be awesome. How to tell devastating stories with huge ideas.
But put it on a top shelf, out of reach of the kids, because another big theme in this work is sex. And not sex that’s just sort of a thing that happens to characters to keep things spicy but left sort of narratively vague. Nothing vague here. There’s pretty much a detailed climax scene in almost every story.
I don’t consider myself too much of a prude (I probably am) but to be honest after a while this was kind of off-putting. If there was a male protagonist, and a female character was introduced, you knew what was coming. To be fair, sometimes the details were essential to the plot or tone (as in the general dreadfulness of “The Dead” or the central paradox of “Scherzo with a Tyrannosaur”) but in most of the other cases it wasn’t. Yet that’s not to say it’s in there just for kicks. Michael Swanick obviously likes sex, his characters enjoy it, and he writes about it with the same vigor and description as he does the other aspects of his stories.
I’m not sure how I feel about this (besides prudishly embarrassed). It might be, I think, an illustration of what my colleague who teaches English and who wrote his dissertation on the work of the Catholic author Graham Greene has often said about Catholic literature. (And though Swanwick was raised Catholic I have no idea if he practices.) My friend says that a characteristic of Catholic authors (and perhaps a reason there are few real literary giants among evangelical Christians) is that for a Catholic writer nothing is off-limits. Everything in the created order belongs to God. It can therefore all be used in all its gritty and vivid reality. The camera never needs to pan away, as it were. All the physicality (sexual and otherwise) in all its brutality and beauty is okay to use to build story.
And Swanwick does.
May 9, 2009
It wasn't until I was about a third of the way through this book that I started to believe Michael Swanwick capable of writing a pretty awesome story, and it wasn't until reading "The Very Pulse of the Machine," and everything that comes after it, that Swanwick became a strong contender for my favorite writer ever.
For the first third of this collection I had to struggle to find a way in to these stories: "The feast of Saint Janis" and "Ginungagap" were snappy tales with interesting premises but which felt more like a surrealist writer's take on wacky science fiction. "A midwinter's tale" and "The edge of the world" were decent stories that had their moments but were otherwise unremarkable. And "Griffin's egg," "The changeling's tale," and "Trojan Horse" sailed clear over my head.
Maybe it took Swanwick a while to find his groove, or maybe it just took me a dozen or stories to get the feel of this wonderfully outlandish writer, but either way I'm glad I stuck with it. The flavor of these later stories is somewhat darker - refugees from a future holocaust whose horribly violent nature is only hinted at flee through a time portal in "Radiant Doors"; a woman stumbles into a far future slave earth in "Legions in Time"; scarcity-induced genocide is hard-wired into an alien society in "From Babel's fall'n glory we fled"; and in both "Very Pulse of the Machine" and "Slow Life" doomed women on distant planets in our solar system make incredible discoveries - but what makes these stories sing is the depth of the characters, typically a spunky woman, who, through their actions tell more of the strange worlds they inhabit than the spare and highly caffeinated prose (Swanwick's descriptions feel more like rough charcoal pencil sketches, all smudged and scribbly, than the clean Edward Hopper-esque scene painting I've come to love in the work of Lucius Shepard).
Despite the fact that the first third of the book left me somewhat cold, most of the stories in the final two thirds of this retrospective are so wildly good as to tax my capacity for hyperbole.
For the first third of this collection I had to struggle to find a way in to these stories: "The feast of Saint Janis" and "Ginungagap" were snappy tales with interesting premises but which felt more like a surrealist writer's take on wacky science fiction. "A midwinter's tale" and "The edge of the world" were decent stories that had their moments but were otherwise unremarkable. And "Griffin's egg," "The changeling's tale," and "Trojan Horse" sailed clear over my head.
Maybe it took Swanwick a while to find his groove, or maybe it just took me a dozen or stories to get the feel of this wonderfully outlandish writer, but either way I'm glad I stuck with it. The flavor of these later stories is somewhat darker - refugees from a future holocaust whose horribly violent nature is only hinted at flee through a time portal in "Radiant Doors"; a woman stumbles into a far future slave earth in "Legions in Time"; scarcity-induced genocide is hard-wired into an alien society in "From Babel's fall'n glory we fled"; and in both "Very Pulse of the Machine" and "Slow Life" doomed women on distant planets in our solar system make incredible discoveries - but what makes these stories sing is the depth of the characters, typically a spunky woman, who, through their actions tell more of the strange worlds they inhabit than the spare and highly caffeinated prose (Swanwick's descriptions feel more like rough charcoal pencil sketches, all smudged and scribbly, than the clean Edward Hopper-esque scene painting I've come to love in the work of Lucius Shepard).
Despite the fact that the first third of the book left me somewhat cold, most of the stories in the final two thirds of this retrospective are so wildly good as to tax my capacity for hyperbole.
April 7, 2019
3.5 stars. I'm not familiar with Swanwick's longer works, but based on these shorter writings he strikes me as an "idea man" who excels at big, creative SF concepts. Many in this collection revolve around time travel and ensuing paradoxes, which seems to be a favorite theme. The stories feel draped around these ideas, the prose unadorned and the characters merely functional. In those regards perhaps similar to Asimov, though there really aren't any hard science underpinnings here at all, it just doesn't seem to interest Swanwick. In fact, in the time travel stories I read here, the technology was exogenous, provided either by aliens or future humanity come back to the present, and remained wholly enigmatic. Interesting to note that Alastair Reynolds, one of my favorite present day SF authors, credits Swanwick for his hive-minded Conjoiners, one of the most interesting transhuman factions in Reynold's Revelation Space universe.
I have not read all of the stories in the collection, this review is based on the following:
Radiant Doors 3/5
The Very Pulse of the Machine 4/5
Scherzo with Tyrannosaur 3/5
The Dog Said Bow-Wow 3/5
Slow Life 4/5
Legions in Time 4/5
From Babel's Fall'n Glory We Fled 3/5
I have not read all of the stories in the collection, this review is based on the following:
Radiant Doors 3/5
The Very Pulse of the Machine 4/5
Scherzo with Tyrannosaur 3/5
The Dog Said Bow-Wow 3/5
Slow Life 4/5
Legions in Time 4/5
From Babel's Fall'n Glory We Fled 3/5
February 8, 2015
The title says it all. And the best of Michael Swanwick is the best there is for sf/f short stories.
April 1, 2019
Ebook has some puzzling spacing problems, which occasionally makes a new word by combining two (not easy to spot in stories where new words already appear).
I read some of these in Tales of Old Earth: Stories; I find I really enjoy Swanwick's ability to change his writing style to suit the story. (Also enjoy his use of the Philadelphia area in some stories.) Also, he plays well with dinosaurs.
Stories I enjoyed in Old Earth I enjoyed here, with some new ones. "The Dog Said Bow-Wow" built a world I'd be willing to read more about. Actually, just about every story in this book built a world I'd like to read about: Swanwick has an amazing ability to come up with the most bizarre situations/ locales (a giant grasshopper?!?)/ combinations (giant grasshopper plus immorality?!?) and make them ... believable.
A collection with something for just about every taste, by a writer with an excellent way with words.
(re: "date finished": finished at midnight, March 30/31)
I read some of these in Tales of Old Earth: Stories; I find I really enjoy Swanwick's ability to change his writing style to suit the story. (Also enjoy his use of the Philadelphia area in some stories.) Also, he plays well with dinosaurs.
Stories I enjoyed in Old Earth I enjoyed here, with some new ones. "The Dog Said Bow-Wow" built a world I'd be willing to read more about. Actually, just about every story in this book built a world I'd like to read about: Swanwick has an amazing ability to come up with the most bizarre situations/ locales (a giant grasshopper?!?)/ combinations (giant grasshopper plus immorality?!?) and make them ... believable.
A collection with something for just about every taste, by a writer with an excellent way with words.
(re: "date finished": finished at midnight, March 30/31)
Read
September 17, 2023Goblin Lake by Michael Swanwick — Review
The story “Goblin Lake” by Michael Swanwick tells the story about a young soldier who visits the underwater world of a mysterious lake, around which there are rumors and legends.
There he experiences a fabulous, beautiful world of underwater inhabitants, where he finds love. But he faces a choice: to stay in the illusion, in the static world of pleasure, or to return to the real world, which is not as beautiful, but full of life.
The story adhere to any specific genre - but there is an extraordinary combination of science fiction, fantasy, thriller, detective story against a backdrop of romance
Here is the link to the text of the story:
https://psv4.userapi.com/c536436/u500...
The story “Goblin Lake” by Michael Swanwick tells the story about a young soldier who visits the underwater world of a mysterious lake, around which there are rumors and legends.
There he experiences a fabulous, beautiful world of underwater inhabitants, where he finds love. But he faces a choice: to stay in the illusion, in the static world of pleasure, or to return to the real world, which is not as beautiful, but full of life.
The story adhere to any specific genre - but there is an extraordinary combination of science fiction, fantasy, thriller, detective story against a backdrop of romance
Here is the link to the text of the story:
https://psv4.userapi.com/c536436/u500...
September 7, 2018
An excellent taster of one author's versatility, and the scope of his imagination. As the blurb says, the stories range from Hard SF to the archetypes of mythology, from bleak and deadly serious, to light and humorous. Personally, I prefer the SF, but that's just one person's opinion; Swanwick has a knack for approaching his stories -- SF, Fantasy or near-future social commentary -- from "outside the box".
My personal favorites are
• "The Feast of Saint Janis" (1980), a diplomat from New Africa embarks on a journey through a nightmarish future America;
• "Slow Life" (2002), a member of the first research team on Titan faces deathly peril, and gets help from an unexpected source;
• "Legions in Time" (2003), a spunky widow discovers her calling when she stumbles into the business end of a time war;
• and "Triceratops Summer" (2005), a lovely little story about living in the "now." With triceratops ...
My personal favorites are
• "The Feast of Saint Janis" (1980), a diplomat from New Africa embarks on a journey through a nightmarish future America;
• "Slow Life" (2002), a member of the first research team on Titan faces deathly peril, and gets help from an unexpected source;
• "Legions in Time" (2003), a spunky widow discovers her calling when she stumbles into the business end of a time war;
• and "Triceratops Summer" (2005), a lovely little story about living in the "now." With triceratops ...
January 1, 2020
The problem with a book of short stories by one writer can be and often is, you become use to the formula. They all seem to flow the same and while the scenario changes the main characters often do not. Yes they have different names, ages, sex, live in different worlds, different time periods, but they all seem to think the same way, act the same way and express the same viewpoints. I found this especially true with the narrators and the principle female characters. The last five or six stories broke this pattern for me and got me to concede three stars. A good writer, if I had read these over time I think I would have had a much higher regard for Swanwick but all stories, consecutively? Well for me anyway, it wore me out.
December 13, 2018
I liked some of the stories in this collection a lot, others not so much. "Griffin's Egg" (the longest tale) was good for a possible future of the moon, although the brain alteration research seemed a bit farfetched-- I couldn't get a strong feel for how far into the future the story is set. I also liked the story about the wolf/dog-like creatures on another world who learn by ingesting the brains of the elders/dying of their species. It's fun to speculate on how a species could develop if we did not constantly lose the wisdom of prior generations.
This was my first reading of Swanwick's work, and I will certainly seek out more in the future.
This was my first reading of Swanwick's work, and I will certainly seek out more in the future.
June 19, 2019
Oftentimes, short story collection are a mixed bag...the quality cannot be consistent across many stories. This book is quite the exception. Most of the stories are good, though maybe not groundbreaking. Almost all of them, with the exception of "Changeling's Tale" can be safely classified as science fiction, though some (expecially in the middle of the book) border on the horror/surreal genre. Those are maybe the most effective.
September 25, 2023
What a bracing and amazing read! No duds here, and a several of these stories completely blindsided me. Michael is teaching a clinic, on the art of plotting, of characterization, pacing... I'm so glad I read this and wish I'd had recourse to it much earlier in my reading life. I can't recommend this enough, And I'll surely read the second volume before the year is out!
September 11, 2017
Most of these short stories i have read before in other compilations, but the new inclusions are truly best examples of Swanwick's writing. The best in the collection is possibly the 17th, a fast-paced precursor to the two Darger and Surplus novels.
January 3, 2021
a great collection of an author I'd not heard of before. I have another of his books now sitting in my 'to read' pile. Yes, some of the stories just didn't do it for me, but in general this is collection of quite well done stories.
September 8, 2023
This collection had a rather impressive variety of stories, given that it was a single-author anthology. I liked "Triceratops Summer" best. Some of the pieces I liked a bit less, and some did not age particularly well. Still, overall: an enjoyable read.
November 3, 2023
Excellent collection. I'd read some of these before, but I didn't realize that Swanwick wrote in such a wide variety of subgenres. I like the science fiction best, of course, but his writing quality is consistently good in the stories that are more fantasy or something else.
November 1, 2021
Plenty of equally great material published by Swanwick since this came out -- Best of Volume 2, anyone? :-)
March 11, 2015
Time for a proper review of all the stories in this anthology. I've had this anthology for quite a while, ever since it was published by Subterranean Press really, and looked forward to delve into its many stories, but so far I've only read a handful of them.
This is a review-in-progress, so expect to read short reviews of every story, in the proper order, of course.
Introduction by Michael Swanwick
A nice introduction by the author himself, in which he introduces all the stories with a few lines of how they came into being, or some fun fact related to them. If you like to know a bit more about the stories you read, this is a nice addition. If you ask me, every book should have an introduction, or at least every anthology.
The Feast of Saint Janis (29 pages)
Set in the future, this story follows Wolf, a young african on his first visit to the States. He has come to deal with the americans, because while prosperous, his people still need doctors and medicine. While waiting for an answer to his request, he meets a young woman who has taken on the face and personality of Janis Joplin. She still remembers her real name, though (Maggie Horowitz, btw) and invites Wolf to join her on her tour. He, like everyone else, is deeply fascinated with her, especially since the medical technology that made her is something that his people would like to get their hands on. The setting of this story is a post-apocalyptical America, after something called The Collapse. We don't get all the answers, but Michael Swanwick does a wonderful job at hinting of a sick and twisted world. The first time I read this, I didn't really get it, but the second time around... I was blown away, so I guess what I am saying... be prepared to give it a second chance. Highly recommended! (4 stars)
Ginungagap (31 pages)
This is the story of a woman, Abigail, who was hired to enter a black hole called Ginungagap, to meet and deal with a new alien race. This race, by the way, looks much like spiders, but is sulfur-based and speaks near perfect english (yes, I know, there is probably some sort of translator involved!). Anyways, this story lost me in the very first lines, as the main character used some sort of "translator" to travel, and honestly, I had no idea what the author was rambling about. It did not become better later on, as he uses so many alien terms that are no explained. By the end, I was just happy to see it finished, and cared little for Abigail's fate. (1 star)
Trojan Horse (36 pages)
A woman awakes on the moon colony, Magritte. She has been altered, or rather, she has been given a new personality. She soon learns that the very technology that was used to give her a new personality, was also used for a project called Star Maker. It seems like someone tried to make an artificial god. I apologize if any of this is wrong, because admittedly, I found it hard to read. Again, Michael Swanwick tries to tell too many stories, and also tries to invent too much new technology that I am not sure I've understood fully, like the wetware or why they wear face paint. Some sort of explanations would have been nice, but maybe I am just stupid. Anyways, this might be one of the stories I need to go back to someday. Perhaps a second read will be all it takes for me to understand it fully. (1 star)
This is a review-in-progress, so expect to read short reviews of every story, in the proper order, of course.
Introduction by Michael Swanwick
A nice introduction by the author himself, in which he introduces all the stories with a few lines of how they came into being, or some fun fact related to them. If you like to know a bit more about the stories you read, this is a nice addition. If you ask me, every book should have an introduction, or at least every anthology.
The Feast of Saint Janis (29 pages)
Set in the future, this story follows Wolf, a young african on his first visit to the States. He has come to deal with the americans, because while prosperous, his people still need doctors and medicine. While waiting for an answer to his request, he meets a young woman who has taken on the face and personality of Janis Joplin. She still remembers her real name, though (Maggie Horowitz, btw) and invites Wolf to join her on her tour. He, like everyone else, is deeply fascinated with her, especially since the medical technology that made her is something that his people would like to get their hands on. The setting of this story is a post-apocalyptical America, after something called The Collapse. We don't get all the answers, but Michael Swanwick does a wonderful job at hinting of a sick and twisted world. The first time I read this, I didn't really get it, but the second time around... I was blown away, so I guess what I am saying... be prepared to give it a second chance. Highly recommended! (4 stars)
Ginungagap (31 pages)
This is the story of a woman, Abigail, who was hired to enter a black hole called Ginungagap, to meet and deal with a new alien race. This race, by the way, looks much like spiders, but is sulfur-based and speaks near perfect english (yes, I know, there is probably some sort of translator involved!). Anyways, this story lost me in the very first lines, as the main character used some sort of "translator" to travel, and honestly, I had no idea what the author was rambling about. It did not become better later on, as he uses so many alien terms that are no explained. By the end, I was just happy to see it finished, and cared little for Abigail's fate. (1 star)
Trojan Horse (36 pages)
A woman awakes on the moon colony, Magritte. She has been altered, or rather, she has been given a new personality. She soon learns that the very technology that was used to give her a new personality, was also used for a project called Star Maker. It seems like someone tried to make an artificial god. I apologize if any of this is wrong, because admittedly, I found it hard to read. Again, Michael Swanwick tries to tell too many stories, and also tries to invent too much new technology that I am not sure I've understood fully, like the wetware or why they wear face paint. Some sort of explanations would have been nice, but maybe I am just stupid. Anyways, this might be one of the stories I need to go back to someday. Perhaps a second read will be all it takes for me to understand it fully. (1 star)
March 4, 2017
Has a couple of stories in common with 'The Dog Said Bow-Wow", but is a much better compilation overall.
September 22, 2011
I had began my review of this book at Amazon with the title: "Fiction, with some science, and lots of thought, with a smile!" Perhaps my entire review of this hefty volume had got summarised in that title. The author of this book is very-very respected in the arena of science fiction (broadly fantasy), but these stories use such pretexts (mostly in the form of a somewhat futuristic world which is really not a very nice place to stay) only to address a very basic human emotion: the will to live another day, against all odds, even when life gets tinged with poisonous blue, no matter how you try to look at it. This world is not very unlike ours in the sense that money calls all the shots there as well, but it is darker, even when the author liberally douses the stories with a wit that sparkles up the entire panorama.
The contents are:
1) The Feast of St. Janis
2) Ginungagap
3) Trojan Horse
4) A Midwinter's Tale
5) The Edge of the World
6) Griffin's Egg
7) The Changeling's Tale
8) North of Diddy-Wah-Diddy
9) Radio Waves
10) The Dead
11) Mother Grasshopper
12) Radiant Doors
13) The Very Pulse of the Machine
14) Wild Minds
15) Scherzo with Tyrannosaur
16) The Raggle Taggle Gypsy-O
17) The Dog Said Bow-Wow
18) Slow Life
19) Legions in Time
20) Triceratops Summer
21) From Babel's Fall'n Glory We Fled...
Most of these stories have graced the "Years Best" collections of Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror, etc. A large no. of them have also received almost all the awards that can be given in these genres. Biut I would like to classify them only as fiction, of a very high order, which entertains less, but makes the reader more thoughtful than he had expected before commencing his journey across the Swanwick-sea. Recommended.
The contents are:
1) The Feast of St. Janis
2) Ginungagap
3) Trojan Horse
4) A Midwinter's Tale
5) The Edge of the World
6) Griffin's Egg
7) The Changeling's Tale
8) North of Diddy-Wah-Diddy
9) Radio Waves
10) The Dead
11) Mother Grasshopper
12) Radiant Doors
13) The Very Pulse of the Machine
14) Wild Minds
15) Scherzo with Tyrannosaur
16) The Raggle Taggle Gypsy-O
17) The Dog Said Bow-Wow
18) Slow Life
19) Legions in Time
20) Triceratops Summer
21) From Babel's Fall'n Glory We Fled...
Most of these stories have graced the "Years Best" collections of Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror, etc. A large no. of them have also received almost all the awards that can be given in these genres. Biut I would like to classify them only as fiction, of a very high order, which entertains less, but makes the reader more thoughtful than he had expected before commencing his journey across the Swanwick-sea. Recommended.
February 18, 2017
Swanwick always delivers, whether it's hard SciFi or weird futurescapes with talking dogs that go about on two feet.
June 5, 2016
Swanwick's stories are excellently written—with a really entertaining variety of different narrative voices / styles—and extremely incentive. His main weakness, I think, is that many of his ideas seem too complicated or detailed for short stories, so there can be a lot of sometimes confusing background dumped on you in a short time. I generally don't like ambiguous or unresolved endings, and while Swanwick executes such endings better than most, this tendency did get on my nerves in a couple of stories. But I really appreciate Swanwick's ideas, even when they felt a bit too condensed. Maybe I'll like his novels a bit better, as the length will give him more space to clearly lay out ideas and have a bit more satisfying balance of worldbuilding and action than some of these stories manage.
Favorites:
"Scherzo with Tyrannosaur"
"Griffin's Egg"
"The Edge of the World" the most philosophical of the stories
"Radiant Doors" pretty terrifying if you think about it.
Honorable mention for most interesting / hardest to capture narrator / style / dialect: "North of Diddy-Wah-Diddy"
Least favorites / recommend skipping:
"Wild Minds" revolves around orgies, which made it a big "nope" for me
"The Feast of St. Janis" this story was mostly an excuse for a big sixties-style drugs-and-sex bender. My main problem, though, is that it hints all along at a big ending that I was really confused and not at all satisfied by.
Favorites:
"Scherzo with Tyrannosaur"
"Griffin's Egg"
"The Edge of the World" the most philosophical of the stories
"Radiant Doors" pretty terrifying if you think about it.
Honorable mention for most interesting / hardest to capture narrator / style / dialect: "North of Diddy-Wah-Diddy"
Least favorites / recommend skipping:
"Wild Minds" revolves around orgies, which made it a big "nope" for me
"The Feast of St. Janis" this story was mostly an excuse for a big sixties-style drugs-and-sex bender. My main problem, though, is that it hints all along at a big ending that I was really confused and not at all satisfied by.
September 12, 2016
I finally slogged through the last half of the book. Overall it isn't awful; 3/5 stars. One story made me want to read one of his books. Otherwise, it was (to me) highly uneven in quality and enjoyability factors. Oddly enough the stories I liked the least most often turn out to have won Hugos. Oh well. If we all liked the same things it would be a dull world.
Out of five stars I rated each story...
North of Diddy-Wah-Diddy: 3.5
Radio Waves: 3
The Dead: 1; well-written, but vile
Mother Grasshopper: 2.5; confusing
Radiant Doors: 3
The Very Pulse of the Machine: 3.5; odd
Wild Minds; 4. I'll take having a wild mind, with all its flaws, over optimization. No question.
Scherzo with Tyrannosaur: 4.5. Fascinating
The Raggle Taggle Gypsy-O: 2; confusing
The Dog Said Bow-Wow: 2; baffling and irritating
Slow Life: 4; baffling but beautiful and thought-provoking look at first contact with an alien being. Also two items made me laugh; VoiceWeb and Illiternet. LOL
Legions in Time: 2; annoying.
Triceratops Summer: 5; completely charming!
From Babel's Fallen Glory We Fled: 1; gibberish and annoying.
Out of five stars I rated each story...
North of Diddy-Wah-Diddy: 3.5
Radio Waves: 3
The Dead: 1; well-written, but vile
Mother Grasshopper: 2.5; confusing
Radiant Doors: 3
The Very Pulse of the Machine: 3.5; odd
Wild Minds; 4. I'll take having a wild mind, with all its flaws, over optimization. No question.
Scherzo with Tyrannosaur: 4.5. Fascinating
The Raggle Taggle Gypsy-O: 2; confusing
The Dog Said Bow-Wow: 2; baffling and irritating
Slow Life: 4; baffling but beautiful and thought-provoking look at first contact with an alien being. Also two items made me laugh; VoiceWeb and Illiternet. LOL
Legions in Time: 2; annoying.
Triceratops Summer: 5; completely charming!
From Babel's Fallen Glory We Fled: 1; gibberish and annoying.
March 30, 2013
Wow, Michael Swanwick is good.
This is a fantastic collection of Swanwick. It was my first introduction to his writing and his stories exceeded all expectation. What most intrigued me was the sense of reflection I had upon each story's conclusion. You know that feeling when a story sneaks up behind you and sticks its tongue in your ear and all the while you were unaware that it was even capable of doing this? Yeah, take that feeling, square it, and you'll get very close to how these stories affect the reader. And for the record, I like it when a story sticks its tongue in my ear! It's like literary lucidity with a touch of breathless quivery thrown it for good measure.
But back to Swanwick.
Many of these stories are brilliant. I only found one that I didn't care for.
If you are looking for a collection of science fiction and you're considering Swanwick, take the plunge and dive deep!
This is a fantastic collection of Swanwick. It was my first introduction to his writing and his stories exceeded all expectation. What most intrigued me was the sense of reflection I had upon each story's conclusion. You know that feeling when a story sneaks up behind you and sticks its tongue in your ear and all the while you were unaware that it was even capable of doing this? Yeah, take that feeling, square it, and you'll get very close to how these stories affect the reader. And for the record, I like it when a story sticks its tongue in my ear! It's like literary lucidity with a touch of breathless quivery thrown it for good measure.
But back to Swanwick.
Many of these stories are brilliant. I only found one that I didn't care for.
If you are looking for a collection of science fiction and you're considering Swanwick, take the plunge and dive deep!
February 19, 2009
I agree with the title. Even when one of these stories is not to my taste I still respect the construction. Then when everything hits right I feel Swanwick can make concoctions like no else, as shown by such masterful and bizarre events like “The Very Pulse of the Machine”, “Mother Grasshopper”, and “The Dog Said Bow Wow.” The heart and soul of his work is in these short stories more than his sometimes messy novels (some of which I like a lot). One theme that he definitely handles well is the acceptance of death and the many permutations this metaphysical moment can represent. But he is never gloomy even when it’s presented in something like the menacing “The Very Pulse of the Machine”, you still wonder whether this about death, an embrace, or an act of faith.
October 1, 2009
An interesting mix of stories, but none of them totally captured my attention in the way the that sci-fi greats have. Some inventive situations never got developed as far as they might have to really break out and shine. "Scherzo With Tyrannosaur" and "Triceratops Summer" were my faves (strange that the both involve dinosaurs...), with really interesting takes on time-travel and the havoc it might wreak. Also, I'm by no stretch a prude, but many of the stories contained sex scenes that were not germane to the story -- they seemed to be just added in to titillate his target audience, and not to further our understanding of the characters or themes.
November 20, 2014
I picked this up after reading one of his short stories in another book. He was a new author to me and I'm very happy to have discovered him.
The stories in this anthology cover a wide range of (mainly) hard sci-fi topics: colonization, brain-hacking, first contact, etc. with some really nice basic sci-fi thrown in (e.g. Radio Waves). I f I was to name an overall tone to the stories I would say disturbing but in a good way. He explores thorny questions through his stories and sometimes the conclusion is disturbing but in a good way.
The stories in this anthology cover a wide range of (mainly) hard sci-fi topics: colonization, brain-hacking, first contact, etc. with some really nice basic sci-fi thrown in (e.g. Radio Waves). I f I was to name an overall tone to the stories I would say disturbing but in a good way. He explores thorny questions through his stories and sometimes the conclusion is disturbing but in a good way.
May 20, 2015
Michael Swanwick is an incredibly good writer who should be far more popular than he is. However, after reading this batch of shorter fiction (some of which I read a while ago and is even better on a second reading), I think I know why and that's that he continually scares the heck out of me. Swanwick doesn't pull any punches when it comes to exploring what human beings might be capable of given the chance to alter our emotional brain circuitry. Great stuff.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 40 reviews