A collection of 12 short stories edited by world-famous best-selling author Orson Scott Card (Ender's Game), and Keith Olexa, former managing editor of Starlog, the preeminent Science Fiction news magazine.
Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Phobos Books launches its first title, Empire of Dreams and Miracles: The Phobos Science Fiction Anthology, edited by Orson Scott Card and former Starlog managing editor Keith Olexa. Lawrence Kraus (The Physics of Star Trek, etc.) supplies a foreword. While the contributors are all unknowns, selected in the First Annual Phobos Fiction Contest, the big names associated with this project should ensure plenty of attention within the SF world.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
About the Author
Nobody had ever won the Hugo and Nebula Awards for best novel two years in a row, until Orson Scott Card received them both for Ender’s Game and its sequel Speaker for the Dead. Card continued the evolving saga of Ender Wiggin in Xenocide and Children of the Mind, and returned to the events of Ender’s Game through the perspective of one of Ender’s fellow battle school cadets, Bean, in a novel published by TOR in 1999 entitled Ender’s Shadow.
The Ender series has reached over 20 million readers worldwide, and the original novel is currently being developed as a movie by Lynn Hendee and Robert Chartoff, co-producer of The Right Stuff, Raging Bull and the Rocky series, with Card writing the screenplay. These books comprise only the beginning of this prolific author’s bibliography.
Card has broken new ground with each of his major works. "The Homecoming Saga" (the novels The Memory of Earth , The Call of Earth, The Ships of Earth, Earthfall and Earthborn) was a retelling of ancient scripture as science fiction. Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus is the sine qua non of alternative history novels, in which time travelers return from the future to keep Columbus from discovering America. Card’s innovative "American Fantasy" series (The Tales of Alvin Maker) reexamines American history in a magical version of the Western frontier.
Card has written two books on writing, Character and Viewpoint and How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy, the latter of which won a Hugo Award in 1991. He has taught writing courses at several universities, including a novel-writing course at Pepperdine, and workshops at Antioch, Clarion, Clarion West, and the Cape Cod Writers Workshop. Card says he enjoys teaching dedicated writers because he believes they will contribute to the overall quality of literature available to avid readers like him. "The writers I like to help," he explains, "are the ones who have the initiative to write and the confidence to mail things off to publishers. At that point, the reason I like to help them is simple: I love to read good stories, and there aren’t enough of them. If I can help increase the quantity of good storytellers in the world then my odds of finding more good stories to read, and of living in a community where good stories are widely read, vastly improves."
Card received degrees from Brigham Young University (1975) and the University of Utah (1981). He currently lives in Greensboro, North Carolina with his wife Kristine, and their five children: Geoffrey, Emily, Charles, Zina Margaret, and Erin Louisa.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
One good story after another,
By Scanningtext2002 (Alabama) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Empire of Dreams and Miracles: The Phobos Science Fiction Anthology (v. 1) (Paperback)
A friend of mine suggested I check out this anthology saying he'd liked almost every story in it. Now that I've read it, wow, was he right! Lots of anthologies I've read will have one or two strong stories plus a lot of filler. This one was all winners. The anthology gets off to a great start with "They Go Bump" by David Barr Kirtley. In this story a squad of soldiers are sent on a mission to test alien equipment that renders them invisible. It's a marvelous study in paranoia as one soldier grows increasingly convinced that his invisible friends are one by one being replaced by aliens. Other highlights: "Great Theme Prisons of the World," one of the freshest ideas I've seen in science fiction in years. In it, people can choose to alter their sentences by choosing their prisons. Choose to serve your time beachfront in the Bahamas and you triple your sentence. Serve your time in a dank medieval dungeun and cut your time in half. "Who Lived in a Shoe" is the funniest story in the book, a tale of a couple househunting on an alien planet. The alien real estate agent is increasingly bewildered by the human's reactions as he shows them houses made of goo, houses underwater, etc. The title story also deserves special mention. It's set in a future Atlantis where people are immortal and to pass the time they hunt each other for sport. It's the most atmospheric and sensual of the stories, but sometimes a little jokey. Many of the stories do remind me of my favorite stories from years ago, but not because they are based on the same ideas. These stories are just told well, with strong beginnings, middles, and satisfying conclusions. The craft of storytelling is alive and well in these pages.
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent stories, but I wanted more,
By Joanna Daneman (Middletown, DE USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 10 REVIEWER) (VINE VOICE) (COMMUNITY FORUM 04) (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)
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This review is from: Empire of Dreams and Miracles: The Phobos Science Fiction Anthology (v. 1) (Paperback)
I must say that each one of these twelve science fiction stories is truly a winner. I can hardly pick which one I liked best, which is unusual for an anthology; most of the time, for me, only one or two short stories will stand out from the rest. Here, Card and the judges who picked these have collected the best of the best. In particular, I liked "They Go Bump", a story about invisible soldiers (being invisible is not as much of an advantage as one would suppose) and "22 Buttons"--a futuristic tale about social mores and isolation. I read every one work in this book with total amazement at the writing skill. If you want to try your hand at writing science fiction, these wonderful examples can inspire (or discourage) you.My only complaint is that the book was not what I would consider a good value, even with the excellence of each of the works in this anthology. I expected more than twelve stories--twenty would be more like it. I hope future volumes of this series will be bigger books.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Not Bad...Not Bad At All...,
By "smapdi76" (New York, NY) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Empire of Dreams and Miracles: The Phobos Science Fiction Anthology (v. 1) (Paperback)
Like many other people I bought this book just because of Orson Scott Card. Even though he didn't write much more than the forward and intro's to every story, I am really glad I got this. I think that anthologies exist to introduce readers to new writers, new ideas, and new ways of telling a story. I had gotten so sick of reading the same sci-fi stories over and over again that "Empire" was a welcome change. Of course I liked some stories more than others, but I thought that they were all well executed and all trying to bring out new ideas. I think that even non-sci-fi readers will like a lot of these, especially "22 Buttons" and "Great Theme Prisions". I hope that this is just the first of many new anthologies and I look forward to hearing from many of these new authors again.
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