Mammoth Book of Somewhat Obscure Stories by Writers Who Are Famous for Other Works, or Who Are Not as Celebrated As The...
Let other anthologists package the award-winners, the classics or stories clinging to a critical theme. What makes the Mammoth series interesting is editor Ashley's penchant for including stories that have come and gone without arousing much attention, or that deserve a second look for the light they shed on the genre as a whole. Ashley's Connie Willis's Hugo-winning time-travel tale, “Firewatch,” drops a 21st-century historian into the WWII London blitz. This resonates beautifully with Kim Stanley Robinson's “Vinland the Dream,” in which a mere discussion of the meaning of history changes the perceptions of archaeologists exposing a century-old hoax. “A Death in the House, a sentimental pastoral alien visitation story by Clifford Simak reflects ironically on the two original alien encounter stories, Eric Brown's “Ulla, Ulla,” a postmodern glance backward on H.G. Wells's War of the Worlds, and Stephen Baxter's “Refugium,” a Malenfant family adventure in which unseen aliens create a cosmic refuge for intelligent life. Not all the selections work so well. When compared with “A Ticket to Tranai,” Robert Sheckley's tiresome dystopian farce, Philip K. Dick's “The Exit Door Leads In,” an absurdist take on a far-future college education (originally published in the Rolling Stone College Papers), seems a slap-dash exercise in campy surrealism. Among the oldies that haven't aged well: “Shards,” Brian Aldiss's heavy-handed 1962 flirtation with stylized prose that anticipated the New Wave of the 1970s. Obscurantists will enjoy Frank Lillie Pollock's end-of-it-all account in “Finis” and Mark Clifton's unabashedly despairing “What Have I Done?”
Mammoth Book of Somewhat Obscure Stories by Writers Who Are Famous for Other Works, or Who Are Not as Celebrated As The Editor Thinks They Should Be.Pub Date: June 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-7867-1004-7
Page Count: 512
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2002
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A quiet tale that considers the way small, human connections can disrupt the callous powers of authority.
A novelist tries to adapt to her ever changing reality as her world slowly disappears.
Renowned Japanese author Ogawa (Revenge, 2013, etc.) opens her latest novel with what at first sounds like a sinister fairy tale told by a nameless mother to a nameless daughter: “Long ago, before you were born, there were many more things here…transparent things, fragrant things…fluttery ones, bright ones….It’s a shame that the people who live here haven’t been able to hold such marvelous things in their hearts and minds, but that’s just the way it is on this island.” But rather than a twisted bedtime story, this depiction captures the realities of life on the narrator's unnamed island. The small population awakens some mornings with all knowledge of objects as mundane as stamps, valuable as emeralds, omnipresent as birds, or delightful as roses missing from their minds. They then proceed to discard all physical traces of the idea that has disappeared—often burning the lifeless ones and releasing the natural ones to the elements. The authoritarian Memory Police oversee this process of loss and elimination. Viewing “anything that fails to vanish when they say it should [as] inconceivable,” they drop into homes for inspections, seizing objects and rounding up anyone who refuses—or is simply unable—to follow the rules. Although, at the outset, the plot feels quite Orwellian, Ogawa employs a quiet, poetic prose to capture the diverse (and often unexpected) emotions of the people left behind rather than of those tormented and imprisoned by brutal authorities. Small acts of rebellion—as modest as a birthday party—do not come out of a commitment to a greater cause but instead originate from her characters’ kinship with one another. Technical details about the disappearances remain intentionally vague. The author instead stays close to her protagonist’s emotions and the disorientation she and her neighbors struggle with each day. Passages from the narrator’s developing novel also offer fascinating glimpses into the way the changing world affects her unconscious mind.
A quiet tale that considers the way small, human connections can disrupt the callous powers of authority.Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-101-87060-0
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: May 12, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2019
Too much puzzle-solving, not enough suspense.
Video-game players embrace the quest of a lifetime in a virtual world; screenwriter Cline’s first novel is old wine in new bottles.
The real world, in 2045, is the usual dystopian horror story. So who can blame Wade, our narrator, if he spends most of his time in a virtual world? The 18-year-old, orphaned at 11, has no friends in his vertical trailer park in Oklahoma City, while the OASIS has captivating bells and whistles, and it’s free. Its creator, the legendary billionaire James Halliday, left a curious will. He had devised an elaborate online game, a hunt for a hidden Easter egg. The finder would inherit his estate. Old-fashioned riddles lead to three keys and three gates. Wade, or rather his avatar Parzival, is the first gunter (egg-hunter) to win the Copper Key, first of three. Halliday was obsessed with the pop culture of the 1980s, primarily the arcade games, so the novel is as much retro as futurist. Parzival’s great strength is that he has absorbed all Halliday’s obsessions; he knows by heart three essential movies, crossing the line from geek to freak. His most formidable competitors are the Sixers, contract gunters working for the evil conglomerate IOI, whose goal is to acquire the OASIS. Cline’s narrative is straightforward but loaded with exposition. It takes a while to reach a scene that crackles with excitement: the meeting between Parzival (now world famous as the lead contender) and Sorrento, the head of IOI. The latter tries to recruit Parzival; when he fails, he issues and executes a death threat. Wade’s trailer is demolished, his relatives killed; luckily Wade was not at home. Too bad this is the dramatic high point. Parzival threads his way between more ’80s games and movies to gain the other keys; it’s clever but not exciting. Even a romance with another avatar and the ultimate “epic throwdown” fail to stir the blood.
Too much puzzle-solving, not enough suspense.Pub Date: Aug. 16, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-307-88743-6
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: April 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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