Customer Reviews

The Best of Strange Horizons: Year One (The Best of Strange Horizons, 1)

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Since Amazon doesn't have this information, I thought it might be interesting and helpful to show the list of the 46 articles, interviews, fiction, poetry, and reviews in this anthology:

- Strange New Horizons, by Mary Anne Mohanraj
- A Winter's Tale, by Nora M. Mulligan
- Last Call in Temperance, by Alan DeNiro
- Ghost Lakes, by David C. Kopaska-Merkel
- Grief, by Wendy Rathbone
- Explosions, by Michael J. Jasper
- Medusa at Morning, by Beth Bernobich
- A Gardener Betrayed by Roses, by Benjamin Rosenbaum
- The Medieval Agricultural Year, by Rachel Hartman
- Discovering the Earth in Earthsea: Ursula K. Le Guin's Tales from Earthsea, by Christopher Cobb
- Sittin' a Spell at Miz Love's, by Nancy Proctor
- Words of Love, Soft and Tender, by Mark Rudolph
- The Heat of the Moon, by Gary Lehmann
- Exogenous Origins of Life, by Dr. Max Bernstein
- Frank Herbert's Dune: It can be filmed!, by Fred Bush
- Icarus, by Wendy A. Shaffer
- In a Mirror, by Kim Fryer
- One-Eyed Jack, by Connie Wilkins
- Surreal Domestic, by Bruce Boston
- Sophisticated Renaissance Fantasy: The Astrology, Necromancy, and Phytomancy of Melissa Scott's & Lisa Barnett's Point of Dreams, by Rob Gates
- Major-League Entertainment: Moore & O'Neill's The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, by Bryan A. Hollerbach
- A Private Unbinding of Time, by James Allison
- The Palm Tree Bandit, by Nnedi Okorafor
- The God of the Crossroads, by Tim Pratt
- The Bridge Between Truth/Death and Power/Knowledge: Ted Chiang's "72 Letters", by Greg Beatty Passing Through, by Kurt Newton
- The Fen-Queen's Bride, by P. K. Graves
- Something on the Bed, by D. K. Latta
- accidental series, by Charles Coleman Finlay
- Harrowing Urban Fantasy: Robert Charles Wilson's The Perseids and Other Stories, by John Aegard
- Can a TV Tie-In Novel Achieve Excellence? Jeanne Cavelos's The Passing of the Techno-Mages, by R Michael Harman
- Eliyahu ha-Navi, by Max Sparber
- The Green Corn Dance, by Emily Gaskin
- In the Shade of the Tree of Knowledge, by Michael Chant
- Love Versus Corruption in a Psychological Space Opera: C.J. Merle's Of Honor and Treason, by Christopher Cobb
- If the Dead Must Speak, by Ward Kelley
- I Know Why Sales Clerks Fall From the Sky, by Mark Heath
- Little Brother (TM), by Bruce Holland Rogers
- Voodoo Corner Bus Stop, by Nancy Ellis Taylor
- Alien or Human? Humanity's Orphan Children in Scott Mackay's The Meek, by Greg Beatty
- Kubrick's A.I. and Square's Final Fantasy: Plastics for the People, by Danyel Fisher & R Michael Harman
- A Tale of Collaboration, by Marge Simon & Bruce Boston
- With Open Eyes, by Cecilia Tan
- Interview: Pamela Dean, by Mary Anne Mohanraj
- Interview: Gary A. Braunbeck, by Lucy A. Snyder
- Late for Dinner, by Ursula Pflug
- Toaster of the Gods, by Randall Coots

...as I've been an editor in the Reviews department since the magazine's inception. (There used to be an "I'm an editor/author and I'd like to comment" link. What happened to that?) In any case, I will note that I certainly don't HAVE to take time to keep track of our other departments. I do so because I find the fiction and poetry compelling (most of the time -- there's enough diversity that a few pieces fall outside my interests, but I tend to think that just means we're appealing to a wider audience), the articles and interviews informative, and the art beautiful.

As for whether we're mostly read by our writers, as implied by one of the other reviewers -- I know this to be false. We get hits from thousands of unique hosts each month (which is a reasonable stand-in for readership -- people behind cable lines get grouped together, while people on dialup get represented multiple times, but in the end, it's pretty clear our readership is at least on the order of a thousand, and probably more like several). I have on several occasions had the experience of having people I've known for a while find out about my work with SH, and respond with expressions of admiration.

In any case, since almost everything we've ever published is available for your perusal online, for free, you don't have to take anybody's word that it's good stuff. Go see for yourself! I think you'll find that we produce a better product, on a tighter budget, than anybody else in our field -- and we do it because we love it; the editors are all volunteers, and any money that comes in goes to authors, supporting the site itself, etc.

If you find you do like our work, hey, buy the book, and we'll like you too. :-)

Strange Horizons is a web-based literary journal with a science fiction focus which occasionally spins off hard copy books such as The Best of Strange Horizons. It's a not-for-profit magazine which is both slick and savvy. It features poems, short stories, art, articles, interviews, and reviews from the best of the new breed of science fiction writers. It's a good read cover to cover.

There is nothing dull or amatuerish about Strange Horizons, the website or this anthology. Visit the site and you'll see they only publish professional work (and are recognized by SFWA as a professional-level magazine) and many of the stories have been nominated for the Nebula or included in various Year's Best titles.

The book holds a rich mix of prose and poem, of fantasy and science-fiction, of whimsy and seriousness. I can tell who are the up-and-coming authors by looking at the Table of Contents. I look forward to reading more 'annuals' from the magazine. There is something, no more like many things, about the book that will appeal to a wide variety of readers.

Strange Horizons has become of the premier online magazines for speculative fiction and this collection offers some of the choicest pieces from that site's first year. I especially enjoyed "The Medieval Agricultural Year" an article by Rachel Hartman and the stories by P.K. Graves ("The Fen-Queen's Bride") and Nancy Proctor ("Sittin' a Spell at Miz Love's").

I have been reading Strange Horizons since they first began publishing online and have been impressed by the magazine's diverse selecton of authors and subjects. This anthology collects some of my favorite pieces from the past few years -- an eclectic, entertaining and thought-provoking selection!

You get a lot of bang for your buck out of this anthology. Stories, articles, poems, and commentary, all related to speculative fiction, and of varying styles and lengths. Every time I browse this book, I find something of interest.

Well done, SH staff. Nice selection, good read. Cenizas de Rosas

Strange Horizons is recognized as a professional publication by the Science Fiction Writers of America. It has an extensive readership, and I'm a regular reader. It's nice to be able to read it on the web, but it's doubly nice to have a printed volume to lend to friends who don't read magazines online. I'd call this selection of stories from their pages uneven (I'm not much for sf poetry) but overall entertaining and a great insight into the very newest writing in short science fiction and fantasy. I woke this morning with this entire review in my head, so Strange Horizons must have made a good impression on me,

Mediocre writing at best, mostly in need of editing, or better writers. Not worth the price