Justin Landon

A collection of shorts published on the Tor website. Very much a curate's egg of a book; some stories I liked very much, others I thought not very good (either stylistically or subject matter). Some authors are better at writing short fiction than others or have some short pieces that serve as a good introduction to their work, others, let's say I won't be looking out for them! The stories were mostly science fiction or urban fantasy; there wasn't much in the way of more traditional fantasy show more (but it's rather difficult to pack a multi-volume epic into a short story).

On the whole enjoyable, and good reading for the daily commute as you can easily fit a story in each way. show less

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2307449.html

I am easily pleased sometimes. This is a collection of online commentary on sf which was published in 2012, pulling together the sorts of essays I always like reading and wish I could write more often. All the usual suspects are here - in-depth examinations of race and gender as they are manifested in the genre, but also simple critiques of writing as writing. It's not perfect - the internal ordering of the pieces seems half thought through (is it show more alphabetical by author's first name? Not quite, but if not, then what?) and I would have dropped most of the shorter pieces in favour of some more long ones - but I was pretty sure from an early stage that I would give it a high place on my Hugo ballot. Then I reached page 297 and found my own name in the first line. Yep, I'm easily pleased. show less

For me, Ellen Datlow is one of the finest anthologists around, so it should be no surprise that this is a superb collection of fiction. If there is any surprise at all, it is perhaps that she could only pick from short fiction published by tor.com the previous year, but I think that the quality of the volume says a great deal about the quality of the work on Tor.



There's not a single story on here that i would consider poor - the vast majority I scored 4- or 5- stars and, for those I didn't, show more it was more that they were simply not my type of thing. For instance, there were a couple that I thought more vignettes for sketches, not fleshed out enough to be trues stories, but I know that is something of a personal taste issue.



The real joy of this collection, though, is that it has introduced me to so many authors I may otherwise never have come across but are now no-questions-asked purchases. I can't wait to get to the other tor.com "some of the best" volumes.




I've reviewed the tales individually as I've gone along, so will just give the ratings here.


Clover by Charlie Jane Anders - 5/5

The Art of Space Travel by Nina Allen - 4/5

The Destroyer by Tara Isabella Burton 4/5

Traumphysik by Monica Byrne 2/5

The High Lonesome Frontier by Rebecca Campbell - 4/5

Lullaby for a Lost World by Aliette de Bodard 3/5

A Dead Djinn in Cairo by P. Djeli Clark 5/5

Breaking Water by Indrapramit Das 5/5

Autobiography of a Traitor and a Half Savage by Alix E. Harrow 5/5

The City Born Great by N.K. Jemisin 5/5

Everything that isn't winter by Margaret Killjoy 4/5/

The Weight of Memories by Cixin Liu 3/5

The Maiden Thief by Melissa Marr 4/5

The Caretakers by David Nickle 3/5

Your Orisons May Be Recorded by Laurie Penny 4/5

meat drink by Daniel Polansky 3/5

The Three Lines of Sonata James by Lettie Prell 4/5

The Great Detective by Delia Sherman 3/5

Finnegan's Field by Angela Slatter 4/5

The Weather by Caughlan Smith 3/5

Terminal by Lavie Tidhar 5/5

Her Scales Shine Like Music by Rajnar Vajra 5/5

La beaute sans vertu by Genevieve Valentine 5/5

That Game We Played During the War by Carrie Vaughn 5/5

A Fist of Permutations in Lightning and Wildflowers by Alyssa Wong 5/5 show less

This is a series of reviews and blogs from the year 2012 about speculative fiction--reviews of specific books and authors and fantasy and science fiction in general and a few controversies that I hadn't actually heard about.
As all anthologies, the quality varies, but on the whole this was very engaging and interesting to anyone who enjoys SciFi/Fantasy.