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| "This colossal anthology covers the return of sf to themes based in the hard sciences. . . . A very satisfactory overview of a major portion of contemporary sf and a sterling achievement by Tor and the Hartwell-Cramer team."
Booklist
From Paul McAuley's tale of runaway technology ("Gene Wars") to Gregory Benford's story of evolution and murder ("Immersion"), the 41 stories in this annotated anthology provide a strong argument for the revival of hard sf as a major force in the genre in the 1990s. Library Journal |
Sarah Zettel: Kinds of Strangers
Sarah Zettel (1966- ) lives in Michigan with her husband Tim. She has published five SF novels to date, Reclamation (1996), Fools War (a New York Times Notable Book for 1997), Playing God (1998), The Quiet Invasion (2000), and Kingdom of Cages (2001). A Sorcerer's Treason is the first of a fantasy trilogy, new in 2002. Most of her short fiction has appeared in Analog, as did this story. She sold her first story in 1986 to a small press magazine. "About six years and a billion and three rejection slips later," she says, "Stan Schmidt at Analog bought my story "Driven by Moonlight"(1991), and truly launched my professional career."
She says on her web site, "I'm mainly known as a hard science fiction author. I used to wonder how that happened. I used to say "I love science fiction, but I hate science. I know nothing about science." Then, the truth came to me. What I actually hate is physics, which bores me to tears. On the other hand, I love biology, sociology, psychology, sociobiology, anthropology, archeology and planetology, and will cheerfully delve into any and all of them for hours, if not days, at a time. And, as I've found, I will equally cheerfully write about them."
And in a Locus interview, she says,
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I wrote a lot of short fiction, did a bunch of stories for Stan Schmidt at Analog -- now there's a learning experience! One he sent back because I didn't have the lunar calendar right. One he sent back because my engines were impossible -- he said it was 'an improbably neat trick. How would you do that?' And another he sent back because I didn't have the right type of fish. One person is not allowed to know all this, but he does! And you have to keep writing and working to get the answers to the questions that your reader (as voiced by Stan) is going to have. And that is a tremendous way to learn your craft. I regard him as a really great teacher . . . Analog isn't part of the main SF dialog any more, but we still need what is being said in Analog. Maybe not the strong libertarian philosophy, but it's a rarified atmosphere. It's the people who are still in love with the technology and still believe technology holds all the answers. If we can get the hardware working properly, all will be good and right with the world. Newton and Schroedinger and Einstein will be at the controls, and we'll have it all sorted out! We want to teach people to use the machines better, rather than taking into account humanity's needs, rather than teaching the technology to fit human beings more. We have to do both, which is why I think it's a shame Analog's not fully into the SF dialog anymore. |
"Kinds of Strangers" is a problem-solving story in the Analog tradition, with a satisfyingly spectacular action climax, but it also deals with human issues often left out of SF stories. Why shouldn't a space crew marooned without hope of rescue experience depression?