It Doesn't Have To Be Right…

… it just has to sound plausible


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For every step forward…

… someone somewhere will be determined to drag you backwards. Everyone is talking about women in sf and the fact they’re appallingly under-represented… and Technology Review goes and publishes a list of The Best Hard Science Fiction Novels of All Time, which includes ten books, only one of which is by a woman sf writer. Sigh.

As if that weren’t enough, number two on their list is that well-known paragon of scientific rigour, The Time Machine by HG Wells. And, of course, there has to be a book by Asimov there too, though thankfully it’s not Foundation. Instead they picked I, Robot. I must admit, I’ve never understand the reverence in which the Three Laws are held. I mean, they’ve never been implemented in robots, there would be no point in doing so – robots, or “computer numerical control” machines, do exactly what their programming instructs them to do, and nothing more. So if you want a robot to kill a person, you simply put that in its instruction set.

As for the rest of Technology Review’s list… they’ve not made entirely embarrassing choices, though I wouldn’t actually classify many of the books on the list as hard sf. Still, as lists of science fiction works go, it’s a pretty poor job.


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It’s not just the women of sf

Though I’ve posted here about women sf writers – on both the sf mistressworks list and SF Mistressworks blog – I do read fiction of other genres written by women. And I thought it might be worth mentioning some of the non-sf works by women writers I’ve enjoyed and admired in the past:

Helen Simpson is one of my favourite mainstream short story writers, and has been ever since I came across her story ‘Heavy Weather’ in a collection of modern short fiction (it’s also in her Dear George And Other Stories). Simpson has yet to write a novel but she’s had six collections of short stories published. I have them all.

Given the amount of time I spent in the Middle East, it’s no surprise I’m fascinated by Arab culture – and yet I’ve not read that many Arabic authors. Of the few I have, the best book I’ve read so far is Hanan Al-Shaykh’s Women of Sand and Myrrh. Which reminds me: I must get hold of one of Freya Stark’s books…

Kate Ross wrote four novels set in Regency England featuring an upper-class dandy who turns amateur detective. As crime novels go, they’re a bit fluffy, but the last one, The Devil in Music, is an all together different matter. It is masterfully-plotted, surprisingly dark, and nothing like the consciously-Austenesque comedy of manners that are the earlier three books.

I’ve always preferred female crime writers to male; I’ve no idea why. The best of them is easily Sara Paretsky. But I’d be hard-pressed to pick a favourite VI Warshawski novel. Guardian Angel, perhaps; or Toxic Shock. Hell, just read them all.

Fisher’s Face, Jan Morris, is a sort of biography of Admiral of the Fleet Jackie Fisher, who was instrumental in building up the Royal Navy during the early years of the twentieth century. Fisher was responsible for HMS Dreadnought, the battleship which made every other warship on the planet obsolete the moment it was launched. Fisher’s Face is a fascinating meditation on the man.

You can blame the Acnestis APA for the fact that I’ve read most of Georgette Heyer’s books. Several of the members were fans, and their comments led me to try one of her novels. And so I too became a fan. The history is dubious at best, and some of her later books were a little too romantic for my tastes, but they’re also witty and great fun. I’m not sure I have a favourite – The Talisman Ring, perhaps; or An Infamous Army. It’s proper comfort reading, for when it’s chucking it down outside, there’s nothing on the telly, and you’re feeling a bit down in the dumps.

Years ago in my middle or late teens, while spending the holidays with my parents in the Middle East, the only books I had access to where the ones they’d bought. I worked my way through my father’s handful of thrillers quickly, but then I was stuck. So I picked up one of my mother’s books: MM Kaye’s The Far Pavilions. And I thoroughly enjoyed it. So much so I read her other historical novels and, years later, I tracked down and read her crime novels.

It was the Lawrence Durrell connection which brought Olivia Manning to my attention. She was in Cairo during World War II, as he was, and they both belonged to the same loose group of poets and writers in the city. So I read The Balkan Trilogy and thought it excellent, and then read The Levant Trilogy and thought that excellent too. I even bought the DVD of the BBC adaptation, Fortunes Of War, starring Emma Thompson and Kenneth Branagh. It’s also very good.

Finally, a couple of cheats…

RA MacAvoy is on the sf mistressworks list, but she has written both science fiction and fantasy. And her fantasy trilogy of Lens of the World, King of the Dead, and Winter of the Wolf is very, very good indeed. The books are out of print now, but definitely worth tracking down.

Also on the sf mistressworks list is Susan Shwartz, but she too wrote fantasy as well. Her The Grail of Hearts was a novel I never expected to like as much as I did. The title suggests it’s a fantasy romance, but it’s actually a clever re-telling of the Matter of Britain featuring a female Wandering Jew. It’s also worth hunting down.


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SF Mistressworks: one week on

On the 1st June, in response to a call for action by Nicola Griffith, I set up the SF Mistressworks blog, a site devoted to reviews of science fiction books by women writers. I had no desire, nor did I think it was fair, to provide the content entirely by myself, so I put out a call for volunteers. And lots of people responded – over a dozen, at the last count. I also said I was happy to take previously-published reviews, and a number of people subsequently donated old reviews they had written. As a result, in the past seven days I’ve posted fourteen reviews by various hands to the site, and have several days’ worth scheduled. The blog has also been averaging 300 hits a day.

So the response has been very good – better, in fact, than I expected. But there’s a danger interest might fade away as the year progresses. And I don’t want that; I don’t think anyone wants that. So I’m always on the look-out for new reviews and reviewers, and happy to take either (there’s an FAQ on the blog, explaining the sort of thing I’m after). It’s also good if other people promote the blog – link to it, mention it in passing, encourage discussion regarding it, whatever you think is appropriate.

For the record, the following books have been reviewed on SF Mistressworks (each title links to the review):

China Mountain Zhang, Maureen F McHugh
Grass, Sheri S Tepper
Ammonite, Nicola Griffith
The Journal of Nicholas the American, Leigh Kennedy
The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K Le Guin
The Female Man, Joanna Russ
Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang, Kate Wilhelm
The Steerswoman, Rosemary Kirstein
The Dispossessed, Ursula K Le Guin
Pennterra, Judith Moffett
The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood
Rebel Sutra, Shariann Lewitt
Escape Plans, Gwyneth Jones
Halfway Human, Carolyn Ives Gilman

Still to come, reviews of:

And Chaos Died, Joanna Russ
Hermetech, Storm Constantine
Doomtime, Doris Piserchia
Black Wine, Candas Jane Dorsey
Winterlong, Elizabeth Hand
Starmother, Sydney J Van Scyoc
The Sword of Rhiannon, Leigh Brackett
Queen City Jazz, Kathleen Ann Goonan
The City Long After, Pat Murphy

… plus several more. I also intend to link to the website of as many woman sf writers as I can find, and list those sf books by women writers which have won prizes.

So, keep watching the site.


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Women in sf reading challenge #5: China Mountain Zhang, Maureen F McHugh

China Mountain Zhang has been on my radar for a number of years – it’s one of those books I’ve heard many good things about, but have never really got around to buying or reading. Until now. And, in one of those moments of serendipity that confirm you’ve chosen the right time to do something, no sooner had I picked the book for my reading challenge then I found a copy in a local charity shop. It could simply be, of course, that I’d not been looking for it before, but since I’d been wanting to read it for many years I don’t think that’s the case.

Whatever. I’ve now read China Mountain Zhang. And I’m very glad I have done so. It is a very good novel. Zhang Zhong Shan is an ABC, American Born Chinese – except he is not really: his father is Chinese, but mother is Latino and he was genetically-engineered to appear pure Chinese. He is also gay. He works as a construction technician in New York in a United States dominated culturally, economically and politically by communist China. Zhong Shan translate roughly as “China Mountain” and is also the Mandarin equivalent of the Cantonese Sun Yat-sen. It is considered a name worth remarking on: as Zhang himself says, “To be named Zhang Zhong Shen is like being named George Washington Jones” (26).

China Mountain Zhang is the story of Zhang, opening in New York on a construction site, and finishing in New York with Zhang working as a freelance organic engineer. In between, he spends time on Baffin Island and at university in Nanjing. The narrative also breaks away from Zhang on several occasions to tell the stories of Angel, a kite-flyer in New York, and Martine, a settler on Mars. Though both narrative threads seem unrelated, by the end of the novel they have touched, or have been touched by, Zhang.

Not one of the characters changes the world though their lives do so. But neither is this a novel of accommodation – no one changes to in order to fit better. In fact, Zhang finds himself less employable, having qualified as a construction engineer, than he had been as a construction tech. And despite homosexuality being illegal in both the socialist USA and China, Zhang never questions his sexuality.

And yet he questions his racial identity repeatedly. He is not really Chinese, though he appears to be. His mother named him Rafael, and he still uses the name among some of his friends. As China Mountain Zhang opens he has been invited to the home of his foreman Qian to meet his daughter. Qian is Chinese but has fallen from grace and been exiled to the US. He does not know that Zhang is not wholly-Chinese, nor that he is gay. Trapped in the identity he presents to Qian, Zhang reluctantly meets Qian’s daughter, San-xiang, and takes her out. They become friends, of a sort – she imagines more to the relationship than is ever going to be the case.

In a later break-away narrative, Xan-siang, who is not attractive – “She is astonishingly ugly. More than ugly, there is something wrong with the bones of her face” (p12) – has cosmetic surgery to correct her appearance… only to fall victim to a predatory man. Her ugliness had protected her, and now she is pretty she does not have the social skills to cope with the attention her looks now cause. Her story is the one unhappy one in China Mountain Zhang.

But before that, Xan-siang runs away from her parents and goes to stay with Zhang. Her father tries use to this to force them into marriage, so Zhang reveals he is half-Hispanic. Qian fires him. Which is how Zhang ends up working on Baffin Island. There, Zhang’s identity – racial or otherwise – is mostly irrelevant. The scientists of the station are more interested in their jobs. However, Zhang’s six-month stint there does qualify him for special entry into a university in China. Which is where he qualifies as an organic engineer. The sections set in Nanjing don’t seem to quite gel as effectively as those set in New York or even on Mars. Zhang is a foreigner, though he does not look like one, and his personal interactions appear mostly limited to his tutor, also gay and with whom he has a relationship. Admittedly, China Mountain Zhang is Zhang’s story, told from his point of view, so perhaps that’s unfair. Perhaps too it’s because Nanjing follows Baffin Island, and Baffin is a very limited environment.

Martine’s narrative, set mostly in her holding on Mars, initially seems to belong to a different novel. A link with Zhang eventually appears, but it is peripheral. Martine is an ex-soldier, now land-owner, on a collectivist Mars. A chance encounter with a new settler and his young daughter – both are living in dorms and have no credit and so cannot afford a parcel of land – brings Martine out of her self-imposed seclusion. There’s actually little in the narrative thread which demands it be set on Mars, other than a need for a society on which China has little or no direct influence.

There is a strand of utopianism to China Mountain Zhang. The world McHugh has built is by no means perfect – homosexuality is illegal, for example – but neither is it as unfair or unequal as the real world. It is, however, mostly prosperous and advanced – I think the story is set somewhere near the middle of this century, though I don’t recall an exact decade being named – but the world of the book has settlers on Mars, and people can “jack” into tools and computer systems. Inasmuch as it carries the story,  I found it convincing; but then I’m not wedded to capitalist ideals so I will happily accept a world built on alternative principles.

China Mountain Zhang was very well regarded when it first appeared. It was short-listed for the Hugo and Nebula, and went onto win the James Tiptree Jr Award and Lambda Award. Not bad for a first novel (in fact, it came top in the Locus Poll that year for Best First Novel too). On the strength of China Mountain Zhang, I certainly plan to seek out and read more of McHugh’s fiction.

(This review has been cross-posted on the SF Mistressworks blog.)


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June’s VideoVista is now up…

… containing, among many excellent reviews, my reviews of brilliant Norwegian actioner pastiche Norwegian Ninja (review here), a true story based on the life of Norway’s very own quisling, Arne Treholt; terrible spoof country-house murder-mystery Dark and Stormy Night (review here), about which the less said the better; and low-budget fantasy film Journey to Promethea (review here), which is a possible candidate for the worst film ever made…


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The women sf writers men won’t see

A call on the Guardian for people’s favourite science fiction novels last Monday resulted in a list of over 500 titles (tellingly listed as best science fiction novels). The list prompted both Nicola Griffith and Cheryl Morgan to point out how few novels by women sf writers had been named. The Guardian then added to the debate with an article ‘The incredible shrinking presence of women sf writers‘, only for its comments thread to prove how shockingly bad the situation actually is.

And so Nicola Griffth has asked people to take the Russ Pledge, “to make a considerable and consistent effort to mention women’s work which, consciously or unconsciously, has been suppressed”. And while my reading challenge this year has been to read one book by a women sf writer each month, and blog about it, I decided to do more.

So I’ve set up the SF Mistressworks blog. Which will comprise reviews of classic and twentieth century science fiction by women writers. It will offset all those “classic sf” and “50 sf novels you must read” and “best sf novels” lists you see all over the internet which have few or no women writers on them. It will demonstrate that women have been writing sf since the genre’s beginnings, and that many of their books are as good as, if not better, than many sf “classics”.

A number of people have all ready volunteered to write reviews, but more are certainly welcome. I have no intention of providing the content alone. I also don’t mind if there are multiple reviews – by different hands, of course – of the same book.

The SF Mistressworks blog is part of the conversation about women sf writers; but it will never direct it.


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All watched over by the machine-like prose of science fiction

In the first two episodes of All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace, Adam Curtis lays the blame for the current economic crisis and last century’s ecological crisis on ideas propagated by two works of science fiction masquerading as non-fiction. The first is Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, a frankly risible book, whose philosophy of Objectivism led to decades of fiscal mismanagement and economic blunders. The second is Eugene P Odum’s Fundamentals of Ecology, which posited a deeply-flawed model of nature and society that corrupted several branches of science and technology for much of the twentieth century.

And while it may be stretching a point, given that Atlas Shrugged was a work of fiction but Fundamentals of Ecology claimed to be scientific non-fiction, I have to wonder how healthy has been science fiction’s magpie and indiscriminate approach to scientific and pseudo-scientific theories through the decades. Not just John W Campbell’s championing of Dianetics, or even L Ron Hubbard’s creation of Scientology, but also, for example, Jack Vance basing his The Languages of Pao on the Sapir-Worf Hypothesis. In fact, it might be said that science fiction has been little more than a delivery mechanism for bad ideas to impressionable members of society.

It could be argued, in other words, that science fiction is, and always has been, intellectually bankrupt.

But is this really surprising? Remember how the genre began, as a predictive and didactic mode of fiction invented by Hugo Gernsback, the author of Ralph 124C 41+ and publisher of several home electronics magazines. Science fiction is essentially prescriptive – it takes ideas and from them defines plot and world. The idea may be a thought experiment, albeit one that’s in service to a plot, but thought experiments built on flawed concepts cannot generate useful results.

Science fiction, unlike mimetic fiction, has never been observational. It models, rather than presents empirical evidence. It is machine-fiction, built upon calculated extrapolation from an initial position, presenting simplified conclusions drawn from simplified data sets. Because it seeks to explain.

I’ve written before of hard limits in science – these are not hypotheses or inventions, but known physical laws and theories, like gravity, chemical reactions, the speed of light… Our understanding of how chemicals react may change, but that altered understanding will not affect the amount of energy generated when two specific chemicals are mixed together. Likewise, no matter what we learn about the universe, the distances between stars will remain unchanged and, at present, far beyond our current ability to cross. There is room within the genre for fictions predicated on this approach to science and technology. Marry it with a mimetic mode of fiction, a mode which is first and foremost observational, and perhaps you have a new direction for the genre, or a new sub-genre.

Call it “hard-limits science fiction”.


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A critical bookshelf

Over the years I’ve picked up a number of book about science fiction and about science fiction writers. These are books I’ve mostly dipped into, rather than read from cover to cover. Not all of them cover authors I still read, and some of them aren’t at all useful as critical works… but still I hang onto them. And here they are:


First up, four books by Gary K Wolfe: Soundings, Bearings, Sightings and Evaporating Genres. Wolfe writes sharp incisive reviews of genre books, and the first three books are collections of his reviews. Evaporating Genres is a more general critical work, and I’ve yet to read it (it was only published this year).

On this side of the Atlantic, we have sf critic John Clute, whose reviews are collected in these four books: Strokes, Look at the Evidence, Scores and Canary Fever. A new book of his essays has just been published, Pardon This Intrusion, but I’ve yet to buy a copy. Clute’s reviews can be difficult, if not willfully obscure, but he is also extremely sharp and clever.

These three books do exactly what it says on the tin: annotated lists of the top one hundred genre books, as chosen by the editors. Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels and Fantasy: The 100 Best Books are sister-works; I’m guessing Pringle wanted to do both but ended up approaching another publisher for his Modern Fantasy: The Hundred Best Novels . Interesting books, but I can’t say I agree with the majority of their choices.

Two important critical works, New Maps of Hell by Kingsley Amis and Trillion Year Spree by Brian Aldiss, and a couple of general guides to sf, David Wingrove’s The Science Fiction Source Book and David Pringle’s The Ultimate Guide to Science Fiction.

I’m not sure what use is The Complete Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy Lists, but never mind. Likewise, the Good Reading Guide to Science Fiction and Fantasy (Zool is actually the Oxford SF Group). Essential SF is, well, just that – at least according to the authors. Who’s Who in Science Fiction lists the pseudonyms used by genre writers.

Four critical works. Bretnors’ Science Fiction Today and Tomorrow is a collection of essays by many big name authors of the 1970s and earlier: Frederik Pohl, Frank Herbert, Theodore Sturgeon, Jack Williamson, Gordon R Dickson, Ben Bova… Of Worlds Beyond is a series of essays on science fiction and writing science fiction by big name authors of an earlier generation: AE van Vogt, Robert Heinlein, EE ‘Doc’ smith, John W Campbell, and, er, Jack Williamson (most of the writing advice in the book is actually quite useless). Flame Wars and Storming the Reality Studio are academic studies of cyberpunk. Wizardry and Wild Romance is Michael Moorcock biting the hand that kept him in whisky for several decades.

I seem to recall Gary Westfahl’s The Mechanics of Wonder causing something of a fuss when it was published in the late 1990s. I enjoyed it and, like Westfahl, I’ve always felt science fiction began in 1926 with the publication of the first issue of Amazing Stories. The Arthur C Clarke Award: A Critical Anthology is just that, and the title of British Science Fiction and Fantasy: Twenty Years, Two Surveys pretty accurately describes its contents too.

A pair of British critics: Paul Kincaid’s A Very British Genre and What It Is We Do When We Read Science Fiction; and Gwyneth Jones’ Deconstructing the Starships and Imagination / Space.

Some books about writers: Snake’s Hands is a study of the fiction of John Crowley; The Cherryh Odyssey covers CJ Cherryh’s works; Parietal Games is criticism about, and by, M John Harrison; Heinlein in Dimension is about Robert Heinlein; and The Universes of EE Smith is about the works of EE ‘Doc’ Smith.

Some books about one writer: Gene Wolfe. The Long and the Short of It does not cover any specific work of Wolfe’s, unlike Solar Labyrinth, Lexicon Urthus, Second Edition and Attending Daedalus, all of which are about The Book Of The New Sun. I reviewed Lexicon Urthus, Second Edition for Interzone.

I picked these up years ago in a publishers’ clearance bookshop. I’m not sure why the series is titled Writers of the 21st Century, as only one – Le Guin – is still writing. Mind you, Philip K Dick is still being published, and having his stories adapted for the cinema, even though he died in 1982 (the book is copyrighted 1983). Jack Vance‘s last novel, Lurulu, was published in 2004, but we’re extremely unlikely to ever see anything new from him.

The Delany Intersection and the Starmont Reader’s Guide are both about Delany’s fiction. The Jewel-Hinged Jaw is Delany’s first and probably best-known work of criticism, though he’s written nearly a dozen such books. Jack Vance – Critical Appreciations and a Bibliography is just that.

Finally, two books about Edgar Rice Burroughs, Master Of Adventure about his fiction and A Guide to Barsoom specific to his Mars books. Who Writes Science Fiction? and Wordsmiths of Wonder are both collections of interviews with genre writers.

As well as the above books, I also have a number of science fiction and fantasy encyclopaedias and reference works. But that’s a post for another day.


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Let’s do the meme

I seem to have been strangely busy the past week or so, and, I have to admit, somewhat short on inspiration for a subject to write about here. So here’s some cheap content: a meme. This was originally put together by Charles Tan. As usual: bold it if you’ve read it, italicise it if you own it but haven’t read it.

1. The Monkey’s Wedding and Other Stories by Joan Aiken
2. Rashomon and Seventeen Other Stories by Ryunosuke Akutagawa
3. The Kite of Stars and Other Stories by Dean Francis Alfar
4. I, Robot by Isaac Asimov
5. Black Projects, White Knights by Kage Baker
6. The Best of J. G. Ballard by J.G. Ballard – well, I have volume one of the Complete Stories, so I assume that counts.
7. Perpetuity Blues and Other Stories by Neal Barrett, Jr.
8. The Imago Sequence and Other Stories by Laird Barron
9. Occultation by Laird Barron
10. Mirror Kingdoms: The Best of Peter S. Beagle
11. The Collected Stories of Greg Bear by Greg Bear
12. The Chains That You Refuse by Elizabeth Bear
13. The Girl With The Flammable Skirt by Aimee Bender
14. Lord Stink & Other Stories by Judith Berman
15. Trysts: A Triskaidecollection of Queer and Weird Stories by Steve Berman
16. A Book of Endings by Deborah Biancotti
17. Blooded on Arachne by Michael Bishop
18. One Winter in Eden by Michael Bishop
19. The Poison Eaters & Other Stories by Holly Black
20. Labyrinths: Selected Stories and Other Writings by Jorge Luis Borges
21. From the Files of the Time Rangers by Richard Bowes
22. Streetcar Dreams by Richard Bowes
23. The Stories of Ray Bradbury by Ray Bradbury
24. Graveyard People: The Collected Cedar Hill Stories by Gary Braunbeck
25. Home before Dark: The Collected Cedar Hill Stories by Gary Braunbeck
26. Particle Theory by Edward Bryant
27. Tides from the New Worlds by Tobias S. Buckell
28. Bloodchild and Other Stories By Octavia E. Butler
29. Dirty Work: Stories by Pat Cadigan
30. The Night We Buried Road Dog by Jack Cady
31. The Panic Hand by Jonathan Carroll
32. Burning Your Boats: The Collected Short Stories by Angela Carter
33. Fireworks: Nine Stories in Various Disguises by Angela Carter
34. The Bloody Chamber: And Other Stories by Angela Carter – er, why the “collected stories” and then two more collections?
35. Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang
36. The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke by Arthur C. Clarke – I’ve read half a dozen or so Clarke collections so I must have read the contents of this,
37. The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories by Susanna Clarke
38. Novelties & Souvenirs, Collected Short Fiction by John Crowley
39. The Avram Davidson Treasury by Avram Davidson
40. The Enquiries of Dr. Eszterhazy by Avram Davidson
41. Driftglass: Ten Tales of Speculative Fiction by Samuel R. Delany
42. We Can Remember It for You Wholesale by Philip K. Dick
43. Strange Days: Fabulous Journeys with Gardner Dozois by Gardner Dozois
44. Beluthahatchie by Andy Duncan
45. What Will Come After by Scott Edelman
46. Axiomatic by Greg Egan
47. I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream by Harlan Ellison
48. The Beast that Shouted Love at the Heart of the World by Harlan Ellison
49. Deathbird Stories by Harlan Ellison
50. The Collected Stories of Carol Emshwiller by Carol Emshwiller
51. Dangerous Space by Kelley Eskridge
52. Fugue State by Brian Evenson
53. Harsh Oases by Paul Di Filippo
54. The Fantasy Writer’s Assistant and Other Stories by Jeffrey Ford
55. The Empire of Ice Cream by Jeffrey Ford
56. The Drowned Life by Jeffrey Ford
57. Returning My Sister’s Face and Other Far Eastern Tales of Whimsy and Malice by Eugie Foster
58. Artificial Things by Karen Joy Fowler
59. What I Didn’t See and Other Stories by Karen Joy Fowler
60. Smoke and Mirrors by Neil Gaiman
61. Fragile Things by Neil Gaiman
62. Burning Chrome by William Gibson
63. In the Forest of Forgetting by Theodora Goss
64. Take No Prisoners by John Grant
65. A Separate War and Other Stories by Joe Haldeman
66. Last Summer at Mars Hill by Elizabeth Hand
67. Saffron & Brimstone: Strange Stories by Elizabeth Hand
68. Things That Never Happen by M. John Harrison
69. The Past Through Tomorrow by Robert Heinlein
70. 20th Century Ghosts by Joe Hill
71. Skin Folk by Nalo Hopkinson
72. The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian by Robert E. Howard
73. The Lottery and Other Stories by Shirley Jackson
74. Unexpected Magics: Collected Stories by Diana Wynne Jones
75. Minor Arcana by Diana Wynne Jones
76. Grazing the Long Acre by Gwyneth Jones – though I have read all of Jones’ other collections.
77. The Wreck of the Godspeed and Other Stories by James Patrick Kelly
78. The Baum Plan for Financial Independence and Other Stories by John Kessel
79. Night Shift by Stephen King
80. Different Seasons by Stephen King
81. Hearts in Atlantis by Stephen King
82. Portable Childhoods by Ellen Klages
83. Scenting the Dark and Other Stories by Mary Robinette Kowal
84. Nano Comes to Clifford Falls and Other Stories by Nancy Kress
85. Nine Hundred Grandmothers by R.A. Lafferty
86. Objects of Worship by Claude Lalumiere
87. Black Juice by Margo Lanagan
88. Red Spikes by Margo Lanagan
89. Yellowcake by Margo Lanagan
90. Mr. Gaunt and Other Uneasy Encounters by John Langan
91. The Best of Joe R. Lansdale by Joe R. Lansdale
92. The Wind’s Twelve Quarters by Ursula K. Le Guin
93. The Compass Rose by Ursula K. Le Guin
94. The Birthday of the World and Other Stories by Ursula K. Le Guin
95. Red as Blood, or Tales from the Sisters Grimmer by Tanith Lee
96. The First Book of Lankhmar by Fritz Leiber
97. The Second Book of Lankhmar by Fritz Leiber
98. The Nightmare Factory by Thomas Ligotti
99. Stranger Things Happen by Kelly Link
100. Magic for Beginners by Kelly Link
101. Engines of Desire: Tales of Love & Other Horrors by Livia Llewellyn
102. H. P. Lovecraft: Tales by H.P. Lovecraft
103. Breathmoss and other Exhalations by Ian R. MacLeod
104. You Might Sleep by Nick Mamatas
105. Dreamsongs: A RRetrospective by George R. R. Martin
106. Invisible Country by Paul McAuley
107. Harrowing the Dragon by Patricia McKillip
108. The Bone Key by Sarah Monette
109. The Best of Michael Moorcock by Michael Moorcock
110. Black God’s Kiss by C.L. Moore
111. The Cat’s Pajamas and Other Stories by James Morrow
112. Dreams of the Compass Rose by Vera Nazarian
113. Unforgivable Stories by Kim Newman
114. The Secret Files of the Diogenes Club by Kim Newman
115. The Original Dr. Shade and Other Stories by Kim Newman
116. Monstrous Affections by David Nickle
117. The Best of Larry Niven by Larry Niven
118. I Am No One You Know: Stories by Joyce Carol Oates
119. The Complete Stories by Flannery O’Connor
120. Zoo by Otsuichi
121. Lesser Demons by Norman Partridge
122. Mr. Fox and Other Feral Tales by Norman Partridge
123. Night Moves and Other Stories by Tim Powers
124. Little Gods by Tim Pratt
125. Map of Dreams by M. Rickert
126. Holiday by M. Rickert
127. The Best of Kim Stanley Robinson by Kim Stanley Robinson
128. The Ant King and Other Stories by Benjamin Rosenbaum
129. Unacceptable Behaviour by Penelope Rowe
130. The Adventures of Alyx by Joanna Russ
131. Long Walks, Last Flights, and Other Journeys by Ken Scholes
132. Filter House by Nisi Shawl
133. Love Songs for the Shy and Cynical by Rob Shearman
134. The Jaguar Hunter by Lucius Shepard
135. Trujillo and Other Stories by Lucius Shepard
136. Phases of the Moon: Stories from Six Decades by Robert Silverberg
137. Are You There and Other Stories by Jack Skillingstead
138. The Girl With No Hands and Other Tales by Angela Slatter
139. Crystal Express by Bruce Sterling
140. Ascendancies: The Best of Bruce Sterling
141. Houses Without Doors by Peter Straub
142. Magic Terror: 7 Tales by Peter Straub
143. Absolute Uncertainty by Lucy Sussex
144. The Best of Michael Swanwick by Michael Swanwick
145. Gravity’s Angels: 13 Stories by Michael Swanwick
146. Monterra’s Deliciosa & Other Tales & by Anna Tambour
147. The Ice Downstream by Melanie Tem
148. The Far Side of the Lake by Steve Rasnic Tem
149. Her Smoke Rose Up Forever by James Tiptree, Jr.
150. Ten Thousand Light-Years from Home by James Tiptree, Jr.
151. In the Mean Time by Paul Tremblay
152. My Pathology by Lisa Tuttle
153. Ventriloquism by Catherynne M. Valente
154. The Jack Vance Reader by Jack Vance – have read half a dozen of his collections, so have probably read the contents of this.
155. City of Saints and Madmen by Jeff VanderMeer
156. The Third Bear by Jeff VanderMeer
157. Strange Things in Close-up; the Nearly Complete Howard Waldrop
158. Dead Sea Fruit by Kaaron Warren
159. Everland and Other Stories by Paul Witcover
160. The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories and Other Stories by Gene Wolfe
161. The Very Best of Gene Wolfe by Gene Wolfe – have read three or four Wolfe collections, so have probably read contents of this.
162. Impossible Things by Connie Willis
163. Fire Watch by Connie Willis
164. The Doors of His Face, The Lamps of His Mouth and Other Stories by Roger Zelazny
165. Impossible Stories by Zoran Zivkovic
166. The Writer, The Book, The Reader by Zoran Zivkovic

Not a good list for me: too many writers I have no desire to read. I also suspect there’s a lot of overlap for those authors who have more than one collection listed, especially where one of them is a “best of” or “collected stories”. Many of the authors I’ve probably read the contents of their “collected stories” volumes as I’ve read so many of their short stories.

If I were to put a list of collections together, I suspect it would look very different from this one.


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Alternate reading material

My story ‘Disambiguation’ is now up on the website of Alt Hist, the magazine of historical fiction and alternate history. It was originally published here on my blog a couple of months ago, but now it’s found a better home. It’s something of an experimental piece since it’s constructed from a series of real and fake Wikipedia articles. It also has flying boats in it. Go read it. Please.