Virginia Kidd (1921–2003)

Set in the very earliest 20th century Congo, this white man at home among Africans tale is almost worse because it is trying not to be racist af while still basically racist af - after all it was written for a market of white men. There are dinosaurs, hidden valleys, a python that takes our hero as a pet, a witch doctor that conjures a storm, but the most outrageous piece of fantasy is that a man would be expelled from the US for an affair with a 14yr old girl, and have to live his life as a show more king in the Congo. Yes, there is the compulsory red haired green eyed beauty for our hero. show less

This is an anthology of original sf put together by Ursula Le Guin and her agent, Virginia Kidd, back in 1980. Between this and Le Guin's other anthology that I've read, the Norton Book of Science Fiction (1993), I think I have to conclude that while Le Guin's short fiction is very much to my taste, Le Guin's taste in short fiction is not exactly to my taste. There's a whiff of the Ellisonian form of the "New Wave" in here, stories that trade a bit too much on sex or violence or literary show more effect but forget to be an interesting story. I'm not enthusiastic to write up stories I dislike, though, so you'll mostly just have to infer those by omission. (The book has fifteen stories and two sets of poems.)

Still, there was some good stuff. "The Reason for the Visit" by John Crowley didn't totally make sense to me, but I was fine with that, because the conceit was interesting and the way it was told was very well done. (I don't want to give away the premise, because working it out for yourself is one of the story's pleasures.) I liked the narrative voice of "The New Zombies" by Avram Davidson and Grania Davis, though otherwise found the story trite and obvious. "Earth and Stone" by Robert Holdstock was weird and I didn't exactly get what happened, but I did enjoy the ride. Gene Wolfe's "A Criminal Proceeding" was a great little piece of dystopian satire, I found it hilarious and sadly prescient. I enjoyed Edward Bryant's "Precession," though mostly for its depiction of grading student essays and dealing with student freakouts, which was apparently little better forty-five years ago. I did not totally get James Tiptree, Jr.'s "Slow Music," about those who opt not to become immortal, but I liked what I did get.

My favorite story, though was Michael Bishop's "A Short History of the Bicycle: 401 B.C. to 2677 A.D." The story does one of my favorite sfnal moves, which is to take a pretty absurd premise and extrapolate with utter seriousness; in this case, it's the idea that bicycles are a creature that independently evolved on an alien planet; the story alternates between the scientist studying the ecology of bicycles and extracts from scientific writing. It's a weird idea well told; it's also a strong metaphor for the human treatment of nature. Lots of well done little details and good jokes, a perfect little tale. From the ISFDB it seems to have only been reprinted the once, in a collection of Bishop's work from 1983, which seems a real shame, as it deserves a wider audience. show less

A slightly strange collection as I expected short stories and got about four of those, one novelette (Joan D Vinge's Phoenix in the Ashes, and one actual novel 'Eye of the Heron' by Ursula K Le Guin. I didn't find the short stories at all memorable, but I did enjoy the two longer works.

The Vinge is set after a (probable nuclear war) event has cut off communities into small enclaves, some of which are less technological than others. A man from one that still has powered flight is prospecting show more for sites where metal can be dug out of ruins and crashes in a community where such things are looked on as works of the devil. He is lucky to survive, helped by a woman who has been disowned by her father for refusing to marry the man her father picked out.

The Le Guin novel is set on a planet where two communities have grown up, descendants from people sent out from Earth to get rid of them - the first a city dwelling people whose ancestors were criminals, the second a country and farming dwelling group who are descending from people who were non violent protestors and believers in peace. The city dwellers exploit the country folk who have sent out an expedition to find out if there is somewhere they can set up another community away from the 'bosses' in the city. The novel centres around the character of the boss' daughter, and a young man of the peace/farming community, against a backdrop of the city folk using increasingly violent means to subjugate the farmers. show less

A poem about the rise and fall of buildings. Written in the 1970s, I found it didn't resonate well in a post-9/11 world.