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What's New
Review Features
S - Science Fiction
F - Fantasy
H - Horror
Complete Listing
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Adams, Douglas (S)
Asher, Neal (S)
Aylett, Steve (S)
Banks, Iain M (S)
Barclay, James (F)
Barker, Clive (H)
Baxter, Stephen (S)
Brin, David (S)
Bury, Stephen (S)
Card, Orson Scott (S)
Cherryh, CJ (S/F)
Clute, John (S)
Cockayne, Steve (F)
Cook, Glen (F)
Danielewski, Mark (H)
Dick, Philip K (S)
Egan, Greg (S)
Feist, Raymond (F)
Gaiman, Neil (F)
Gibson, William (S)
Goodkind, Terry (F)
Grimwood, Jon C (S)
Hamilton, Peter (S)
Jeter, K.W. (S)
Jordan, Robert (F)
Lethem, Jonathan (S)
McAuley, Paul (S)
MacLeod, Ken (S)
Martin, George RR (F)
McMullen, Sean (S)
Miéville, China (S)
Moran, Daniel K (S)
Morgan, Richard K (S)
Nagata, Linda (S)
Niven, Larry (S)
Noon, Jeff (S)
Robinson, Kim S. (S)
Rucker, Rudy (S)
Simmons, Dan (S)
Smith, Michael Marshall (S)
Stephenson, Neal (S)
Sterling, Bruce (S)
Vinge, Vernor (S)
Westerfeld, Scott (S)
Williams, Sean (S)
Williams, Tad (S/F)
Collections (S/F)
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| The Classics |
Bradbury, Ray (S/H)
Burgess, Anthony (S)
Tolkien, JRR (F) |
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| Collections |
| Vanishing Acts |
Added 3/2/02 |
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 Our
Ranking Vanishing Acts is a compilation of short
stories edited by Ellen Datlow. Datlow apparantly has a great track record of
compiling quality collections, since every review I have read of this, she was
one of the main reasons the readers grabbed this book. To be perfectly honest,
I grabbed this because I saw it had a story by Paul
McAuley in it and wanted to check it out. The $15 price tag almost scared
me off (it's unbelievable how expensive paperbacks are getting) but I grabbed
it anyway. Turned out to be worth it. All of the short stories here are centered
around the theme of extinction. What wound up being surprisingly impressive is
the different cuts at extinction all of the authors took. The various endangered
subjects range from plants to animals to humans to aliens to even insects, in
what turned out to be a pretty diverse set of stories. Another pleasant surprise
was that besides McAuley, every other author was completely new to me and most
did not disappoint. As a side note, since these are short stories, I'm not really
going to mention much about the plots. I feel giving away anything would really
diminish the reading experience of these. My favorite story was the very short
story, "Faded Roses" by Karen Joy Fowler which was about a somewhat futuristic
zoo. I'd love to track down some more stuff by her. I was very impressed with
the gentle, subtle writing style and the story itself I felt was the best written.
I've already reread this one twice now I enjoyed it so much. The opening story
"Listening to Brahms" by Suzy McKee Charnas was also very well written and was
an excellent story to kick the collection off with. The ending left was very well
done. Another story that really jumped out at me was "Dance of the Yellow-Breasted
Luddites" by William Shunn. This one sort of surprised me, since when I started
it, it took me a bit to get into, but it wound up developing into a terrific story.
Generally, with a short story, if you're not into it from the start, you're finished,
but this one pulled it out. Overall, all of the stories were well done (and it
figures that the most disappointing story was McAuley's which was why I bought
the thing). It's such a different change of pace to read short stories versus
novels and when I finished I really wondered to myself why I don't read more of
these (especially considering I write short stories myself). Due to this, I added
the collections sector to the site and hope to try and read more of these. Datlow,
also edits the annual "The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror" so I think that one
might be next. All in all a terrific collection. |
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