From The Wall Street Journal:
This year has swung a wide arc through the world of speculative fiction, from alternate-earth kaiju to ghost mushrooms. While it was hard to select just five, this year’s “best of” has something for everyone: horror, aliens, folktale fantasies, dystopia and an anthology of shorts for our newly reduced attention spans.
In his introduction to the Macmillan Collector’s Library “Classic Science Fiction Stories,” Adam Roberts does a masterful job of retelling the history of the genre in the introduction, focusing on how it’s an older form than most people understand.
It’s his choice of stories that really distinguishes this anthology from others. There are some beloved classics like “The Colour Out of Space,” but most casual readers of science fiction will probably not have read Voltaire’s “Micromégas.” “Sultana’s Dream” is a fascinating utopian tale about a society with flying cars by Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain, a Bengali feminist from the turn of the last century. And even serious fans of science fiction’s Golden Age may not know about the short but profound career of Stanley Weinbaum, represented here by his groundbreaking “A Martian Odyssey.”
This is a forever book, a beautiful little volume—complete with gilt on the page edges and a bookmark ribbon—to dip into whenever you’re feeling the need for wonder, nostalgia and a fresh look at a favorite genre.
Readers may remember “Leech” by Hiron Ennes from just a couple of weeks ago: In the far future, an evolved parasite, a biological distributed consciousness, controls all the human doctors and humanity’s remaining medical knowledge. The hero is a single point of view of this parasite who must solve the mystery of why one of its hosts killed itself. The brilliant narration from a single iteration of the parasite’s hosts puts “Leech” on the year’s short list. Also a must-read for horror aficionados, especially those who prefer tentacles.
Link to the rest at The Wall Street Journal