2008 books

[peteryoung]

42) Farah Mendlesohn & Graham Sleight, eds., Foundation #100: the Anthology, 2007
To celebrate its 100th issue the editors of Foundation set aside the literary criticism and instead pulled in eleven short stories, diverse yet themed on futures that are mostly post-apocalyptic or at least post-traumatic. It has to be said they're also of variable quality; some, such as Margot Lanagan's 'Reflecting Glory', seem either tortured or overworked while others are very hard to pin down, such as Nalo Hopkinson's 'Soul Case'. It's subjective, sure, but there is also some excellence here: the thinking behind Una McCormack's 'Sea Change' is sharp and understated, John Kessel's 'The Last American' is both scary and believable, while Greg Egan's 'Induction' is a perfectly formed masterclass in short, hard SF.

Comments

[drasecretcampus.livejournal.com]

And he said nothing about the cover...

[peteyoung.livejournal.com]

...which is stunningly post-modern, minimalist yet deceptively complex. To the unobservant, the image may seem quasi-necessary and absent of any cohesive doctrine, but in future ages humanity will look back upon this cover as the cardinal event in all history when Everything Changed. It is, at last, a suitably dark and dramatic answer to our musings about life, death and the price of a packet of 20 Marlboro. Indeed, isn't this where we all end up, caught like a basketball in the tight mesh of a Tholian web, our true destiny lying no further than our dreams lost in the haze of cigarette smoke and drowned in a bottle of cheap Scotch while we are left with nothing else to do but read the futuristic musings of a select bunch of elite skiffy writers. This is how your cover speaks, as a masterpiece illumination of the shadows of the human psyche. Have you by chance also exhibited at the Royal Academy?