Orson Scott Card's Masterpieces: The Best Science Fiction of the Century is, like most short story anthologies, hit and miss. But it's also true that most anthologies are worth picking up, and the collection Card edits here is certainly that.

Card organizes this anthology by era, with stories representing "The Golden Age," "The New Wave," and "The Media Generation." This structure is somewhat loose: Isaac Asimov's "Robot Dreams" was written in 1986, but because it's an Asimov robot story it's placed in the Golden Age. And Edmond Hamilton predates the Golden Age, but his lackluster "Devolution" is classed there as well.

There are commonly anthologized stories, like Ursula K. Le Guin's "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas," George R. R. Martin's "Sandkings," John Crowley's "Snow," and the seemingly ubiquitous "Bears Discover Fire," by Terry Bisson. Of these, "Sandkings" never ceases to horrify me, and "Snow" and "Bears Discover Fire" are imprecisely intriguing. And I'm not sure Le Guin's story is really science fiction, or even a story, but it's certainly profound.

There were at least eight of the twenty-seven stories I didn't care for, including Harry Turtledove's "The Road Not Taken," which left my wife and me laughing like we haven't since Pierre Boulle's Planet of the Apes. Of the stories new to me, I was pleasantly surprised by "Inconstant Moon," Larry Niven's tale of a science journalist who realizes the sun has gone nova and he has until dawn to live. Karen Joy Fowler's "Face Value" is an examination of regret and identity, brought to crisis by the characters' isolation as they study incomprehensible aliens. George Alec Effinger's "One" shares that focus on an isolated couple and the loneliness of exploration.

Brian W. Aldiss's "Who Can Replace a Man?" may pose an interesting question, but I loved it for its wry humor, and the quirky personalities of the robots left to sort things out in the absence of humans. R. A. Lafferty reveals that "Stupidity is the mother of invention" and makes the case that incompetence is the foundation of genius. His story, "Eurema's Dam," had me laughing nonstop. It's not at all flattering, but eggheads and geeks like me will not hesitate to make its pathetic protagonist their champion.

Card's introduction offers opinions on the genrefication of science fiction, arguing that marginalization has been a blessing and a curse. He doesn't fail to get in his usual jabs at the literary establishment: "Instead of realizing that their standards were inadequate because they did not apply to science fiction, they reached the much safer and easier conclusion that science fiction must be bad. . . . The fact is that by the mid 1940s, science fiction was the most vibrant, most productive, most innovative, and, eventually, the most accomplished of literary communities."

For this anthology he selected stories representative of the genre's evolution, stories with a wide appeal, written by major authors. But his most important criterion was simply that he liked the stories, both on first reading them, and years later. This, in contrast to the book's overblown title, gets at the heart of what the collection is: the stories that define the genre for Orson Scott Card. For example, Poul Anderson's "Call Me Joe" and Lloyd Biggle, Jr.'s "Tunesmith" were the stories that first sucked him into the genre. That understood, it's not at all a bad collection. Most of the stories are indeed masterpieces, though few would call this a definitive collection of "the best" science fiction stories. Still, the authors are certainly among the masters of the genre: Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke, Harlan Ellison, Robert A. Heinlein, William Gibson, and John Kessel, among others.

If Masterpieces is largely influenced by Card's personality, what might be a more objective attempt at collecting the best science fiction? The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, created by polling members of the Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA), is the best collection of short work written prior to 1965, when SFWA began handing out Nebula Awards. Similarly, The Best of the Nebulas collects the "best" (as voted by SFWA) Nebula-winning stories from 1965-1986. Another anthology I quite like is The Norton Book of Science Fiction, a large collection of what are sometimes lesser known stories by significant authors written 1960-1990, edited by Ursula K. Le Guin and Brian Attebery.


– Panguitch



Masterpieces: The Best Science Fiction of the Century

The Golden Age
• "Call Me Joe" by Poul Anderson
• "All You Zombies—" by Robert A. Heinlein
• "Tunesmith" by Lloyd Biggle, Jr.
• "A Saucer of Loneliness" by Theodore Sturgeon
• "Robot Dreams" by Isaac Asimov
• "Devolution" by Edmond Hamilton
• "The Nine Billion Names of God" by Arthur C. Clarke
• "A Work of Art" by James Blish
• "Dark They Were, and Golden-Eyed" by Ray Bradbury

The New Wave
• "'Repent, Harlequin!' Said the Ticktockman" by Harlan Ellison
• "Eurema's Dam" by R. A. Lafferty
• "Passengers" by Robert Silverberg
• "The Tunnel Under the World" by Frederik Pohl
• "Who Can Replace a Man?" by Brian W. Aldiss
• "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" by Ursula K. Le Guin
• "Inconstant Moon" by Larry Niven

The Media Generation
• "Sandkings" by George R. R. Martin
• "The Road Not Taken" by Harry Turtledove
• "Dogfight" by William Gibson and Michael Swanwick
• "Face Value" by Karen Joy Fowler
• "Pots" by C. J. Cherryh
• "Snow" by John Crowley
• "Rat" by James Patrick Kelly
• "Bears Discover Fire" by Terry Bisson
• "A Clean Escape" by John Kessel
• "Tourists" by Lisa Goldstein
• "One" by George Alec Effinger



Recommended: Yes