World Fantasy Award-winner Jonathan Strahan delivers the fourth volume of this series, once again demonstrating his keen editorial eye. The multi-award winning Eclipse series (Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, Locus, Aurealis) is the only on-going anthology for original non-themed science fiction and fantasy, and its contents have been regularly recognized as some of the most compelling stories of the year, both on awards ballots and on best-of-the-year lists. Eclipse 4 delivers new fiction by some of the genre's most celebrated authors, including Peter Beagle, Emma Bull, Andy Duncan, Elizabeth Hand, Gwyneth Jones and Michael Swanwick and Many others.
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The latest volume in Strahan's unthemed anthology series has almost no weak links. The highlight is Rachel Swirsky's "Fields of Gold," a diabetic ghost's witty and melancholy tale of his life and death. Other standouts are Andy Duncan's folksy, Twainesque "Slow as a Bullet," Kij Johnson's metafictional "Story Kit," and Caítlin R. Kiernan's uncommonly beautiful Lovecraftian "Tidal Forces." Even familiar tropes are handled elegantly by top talents like Michael Swanwick (whose "The Man in Grey" explores the idea that human reality is controlled by others), Jeffrey Ford (playing with doppelgängers in "The Double of My Double Is Not My Double"), and Eileen Gunn (nicely twisting time travel and paradox themes in "Thought Experiment"), as well as relative newcomers like Peter M. Ball (whose "Dying Young" is a surprisingly fresh postapocalyptic western). Less successful contributions from Gwyneth Jones and Emma Bull are still entertaining but outshone by their companions. Strahan continues to raise the bar for original genre anthology series. (June)
Eileen Gunn is the author of the story collection Stable Strategies and Others and the co-editor of The WisCon Chronicles Two. Her fiction has received the Nebula Award in the US the and Sense of Gender Award in Japan, and been nominated for the Hugo, Philip K. Dick, and World Fantasy awards and short-listed for the James Tiptree, Jr. award. She is the editor/publisher of the late Infinite Matrix webzine and served for twenty-two years on the board of directors of the Clarion West Writers Workshop.
Recent Gunn stories available free online include 'Zeppelin City' (with Michael Swanwick), 'The Steampunk Quartet', and 'The Trains that Climb the Winter Tree,' (also written with Michael Swanwick) on Tor.com. Other stories are available on her website at www.EileenGunn.com.
With 14 stories that fall into various science fiction and fantasy genre slots, there's no specific theme to Eclipse Four, other than to showcase these authors and their writing.
As such, the tone and approach of each story can be a bit of a toss-up.
Overall, though, Eclipse Four is a unique and entertaining collection. And even if the stories don't give you all the answers, they at least never fail to tweak your imagination hard. What more can you ask for?
Continue reading on Examiner.com Review: Eclipse Four, edited by Jonathan Strahan - National speculative fiction | Examiner.com [...]
Somehow I expected more. Halfway through the book I find myself not caring to finish the second half. Yes, there have been some interesting ideas, but I haven't gotten to the end of any of the stories so far caring about them at all beyond whether the next one will be any better. Of course maybe the second half of the book is amazing, I doubt I'll be finding out anytime soon.
