Far Horizons: All New Tales from the Greatest Worlds of Science Fiction [Paperback]

Robert Silverberg (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 22, 2005

The universe of the mind is a limitless expanse of wonders, filled with worlds and secrets that cannot be fully explored within the pages of a single novel. Here, science fiction's most beloved and highly honored writers revisit their best-known worlds in perhaps the greatest concentration of science fiction ever in one volume.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Far Horizons is the science fiction equivalent of Robert Silverberg's bestselling fantasy anthology Legends. For both books, Silverberg invited some of the most renowned authors in the field to write a new story based on their most popular series or settings. For instance, the first story in Far Horizons is Ursula K. Le Guin's "Old Music and the Slave Women," which takes place in the same Hainish universe as her famous novels The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed. Dan Simmons wrote a piece set in the realm of Hyperion, Anne McCaffrey turned in a Helva story from the world of The Ship Who Sang, and so on.

Like Legends, the list of writers in Far Horizons reads like a Who's Who of the genre: Le Guin, Joe Haldeman, Orson Scott Card, David Brin, Simmons, Nancy Kress, Frederik Pohl, Gregory Benford, McCaffrey and Greg Bear, as well as Silverberg himself. And like Legends, the authors take a page or two to introduce their stories so that newcomers won't be totally lost. The average story in Far Horizons is, as you might expect, a significant cut above the average SF story, although this anthology is not quite as successful as its predecessor. Authors like Le Guin and Simmons have come up with some first-rate stuff, but Card and McCaffrey have produced stories that are mediocre at best. Overall, though, the book has far more ups than downs, and serious readers won't want to miss this one. Those new to the world of SF will also find Far Horizons an invaluable reference when they're looking for good authors to read. --Craig E. Engler --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Silverberg (The Alien Years) now does for SF what his recent anthology Legends did for fantasy, collecting new tales by a number of the world's greatest SF writers set in the universes of their best-known series. Some entriesAsuch as Ursula K. Le Guin's "Old Music and the Slave Women," from her Ekumen series; Dan Simmons's "Orphans of the Helix," a further tale of the Hyperion Cantos; and Greg Bear's "The Way of All Ghosts," set in his Thistledown universeAstand more or less independent of what has preceded them. OthersAsuch as Joe Haldeman's "A Separate War," set in the future of The Forever War, or Orson Scott Card's "Investment Counselor," which relates an episode in the early life of Ender WigginAare essentially engaging footnotes, filling in worthwhile bits of information that never made it into previous novels. Still others, David Brin's "Temptation," for example, from his Uplift series, continue an author's on-going stories beyond the reach of the major works. Also included are a new tale by Nancy Kress, set in the world of the Sleepless; an interesting addition to Frederik Pohl's Tales of the Heechee; an early episode in Gregory Benford's Galactic Centers series; a new story by Silverberg himself, set in the alternate universe of Roma Eterna; and the first solo tale of the Ship Who Sang that Anne McCaffrey has written in years. All the stories are, at a minimum, very good, and several are outstanding. The Le Guin and Simmons contributions are particularly worthy of award consideration. This is an important anthology that should appeal to all serious readers of SF.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 496 pages
• Publisher: Harper Voyager (November 22, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060817127
• ISBN-13: 978-0060817121
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,666,145 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Hyperion Story Was Great, May 16, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Far Horizons:: All New Tales From The Greatest Worlds Of Science Fiction (Hardcover)

I was so excited to find another story in Dan Simmons' Hyperion Cantos. It was great. While it does not directly tie in characters from the earlier books, it was nice to be in Hyperion universe once again. The rest of the book is a treasure of original stories by some of my favorite authors in their best series like Card and Brin. I may even pick up a few of the authors that I have yet to read that are featured in this book.

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Only a couple winners here, August 28, 2000

By 

Richard R. Horton (Webster Groves, MO United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Far Horizons:: All New Tales From The Greatest Worlds Of Science Fiction (Hardcover)

Robert Silverberg returns with a new anthology, similar in form to 1998's well-received Legends. While the previous book featured eleven stories by well-known fantasy writers, working in their famous "worlds", this volume features eleven stories by well-known science fiction writers, again working in their famous "worlds".

I have some mild misgivings about the concept behind these books, really just a personal thing. I tend to think that we do well to encourage writers to branch out in new directions, to invent new universes. A book like this guarantees that the writers will be rehashing somewhat familiar territory. I also like to see anthologies feature a mix of established talent and new writers: partly because I'm interested in seeing what new voices have to say, and partly because I think it helps new writers to have venues in which to publish their work which will be promoted, as it were, by the presence of big names alongside them. But I emphasize that these are quibbles, and that despite all that a book like this is an attractive package, and that most of the series involved have plenty of room for interest further explorations.

That said, I was mildly disappointed by the final results. Most of the stories are pretty good, but not a one of them quite bowled me over, though the Simmons and Le Guin pieces came close. Dan Simmons' entry, "Orphans of the Helix", is set in the universe of his Hyperion Cantos. Some centuries following the events of that series, a "spinship" carrying frozen colonists looking for a new world to settle detects a distress signal. A few of them are wakened, and they deal with a desperate problem involving an ancient colony of "Ousters" (space adapted humans) and some unusual aliens. The plot is not the interesting part of this story: Simmons is having fun with a passel of big, "Space Opera", ideas. Simmons' reputation is as a somewhat "literary" writer, and I think this obscures his impressive Sfnal imagination at times. This story considers Ringworld-sized forests, some very odd humans indeed, some interesting political speculation, aliens living inside a sun, a really big, really scary spaceship, and several more sense-of-wonder inducing ideas. Le Guin's story, on the other hand, is much quieter in tone. It's another story set on Werel, the setting of her collection of linked novellas, Four Ways to Forgiveness. "Old Music and the Slave Women", like the previous Werel stories, treats of the revolution against the long-established slave-owning societies on Werel. The protagonist, called Old Music, is a Hainish diplomat, that is a representative of the interstellar organization called the Ekumen. As war rages, the Ekumen has been prevented from gaining information about conditions on Werel, and Old Music jumps at a chance to speak to the rebels. But he is betrayed, and ends up at a compound of slaveholding loyalists. As the war rages back and forth across this area, he learns at first hand a great deal about this culture. It's a fine story, and it fits in very well with the other stories in its series, so much so that I wouldn't be surprised to see Le Guin reissue her collection including this story: Five Ways to Forgiveness, anyone?

Many of the other stories are enjoyable but minor: in the nature of things they tend to be sidelights to the existing series of which they are parts. There are two outright stinkers, Orson Scott Card's wish-fulfillment story "Investment Counselor" about how Ender meets Jane (the latter character one of my least favorite characters ever), and Anne McCaffrey's awful "The Ship That Returned".

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Silverberg does it again, again., May 15, 2000

By 

Shu Shiung Low - See all my reviews

This review is from: Far Horizons: All New Tales From The Greatest Worlds Of Science Fiction (Mass Market Paperback)

A collection of the biggest names in contemparory science fiction return to their most famous creations for another fling. Rob Silverberg, himself a big name science fiction writer, follows up Legends, a collection of new stories in classic fantasy worlds with this impressive editorial effort in his own field. A must-read if only because of the scope and ambition of the project, the stories themselves are mostly of a higher than average standard, although none of them break much new ground in their respective worlds, many of them serving as postscripts, parallel visions, or the tying up of loose ends. Some of them come perilously close to what the industry calls "infodump", elaborating on the peripheral world-building information inherent but not explicit in the original works, but generally stay on the right side of tasteful. Only on very rare occasions do the stories disappoint significantly, for various reasons, most prominantly the departure of style or mood from the classic which first birthed the world. Introductions to the worlds and other background info at the start of every story by their respective authors, in themselves worth the price of admission, is a great initiative giving the reader an insight into the workings of the creative mind and other interesting behind-the-scene tidbits. All in all an impressive effort, definitely worth a look.