Customer Reviews

Redshift:: Extreme Visions of Speculative Fiction

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

 

 

Ignore the hype -- this isn't a taboo-busting anthology, nor is it the best SF anthology of the past 25 years. But it is solid collection of stories. It's pretty thick, and their are several stinkers and some mediocre stuff, but there are several excellent stories, as well, including all the longer stories.

Let's highlight the excellent stories here. The three longest stories include two novellas and a long novelette. The weakest novella, surprisingly enough, is Gene Wolfe's "Viewpoint," which is a gripping enough story, about a man given $100,000 -- if he can keep it while the government and ordinary people track him with the help of the media. It's a thrilling read, but it fails due to overly strident politics and a certain lack of plausibility. The other novella is Elizabeth Hand's "Cleopatra Brimstone." This is beautifully written, line by line, but it is way too long (as Sarrantonio all but admits in his introduction). Still, it's a very pleasing read, about a woman, studying insects in college, who goes to London to recuperate from a rape, and finds that she has developed a curious sort of alter ego with a strange power. The story is absorbing throughout, but the thematic payout and the telegraphed twist ending don't really reward 20,000-plus words. Dan Simmons' long opening novelette, "On K2 With Kanakaredes," is a satisfying story of mountain climbing with an inscrutable alien guest. Simmons both tells a gripping mountain adventure, and tells an interesting SF story about contact with aliens.

Perhaps the strangest story in the book is the closing story, Neal Barrett, Jr.'s "Rhido Wars." It's difficult to precisely describe -- I'm not sure I understand it anyway. It seems to be the story of a group of humans under the control of some baboons, and a war between the main character's "tribe" and another "tribe," featuring "rhidos." The main focus is on the main character, a young man in charge of his four younger siblings. His love for his brothers and especially his sister, and his fatalistic acceptance of their position, are very well portrayed, in a bleak and moving tale.

I was also taken with a couple of more satirical pieces. James Patrick Kelly's brief "Unique Visitors" takes a look at a person awakened sometime in the future, and his slow realization of his condition. Paul Di Filippo is at his most all out viciously satirical in "Weeping Walls," about a near future businesswoman who markets the title products to help people deal with their grief fashionably. Also fine are "The Building," another of Ursula K. Le Guin's excellent essays in "anthropological" SF, with a subtle moral point; and Thomas M. Disch's "In Xanadu," an extended riff on death and cyberspace, built on references to Coleridge's poem. Another interesting take on death and the afterlife is P.D. Cacek's "Belief," which familiarly enough shows a soldier sent to the after-life to continue fighting -- but who he is fighting is a well-sprung surprise. And, finally, Stephen Baxter's "In the Un-Black" is a nearly incomprehensible but still evocative tale of the changes humans have inflected on themselves to fight their extended war with the Xeelee.

So, even if Redshift doesn't live up to the editor's hype, and even if it features quite a few stories that aren't really up to snuff, it is a long book, and the best stories in it are certainly worth the price of the book, and worth your reading attention.

This is a good, solid collection of speculative fiction. It's not the ground-breaking force that Sarrantonio predicts it will be in his introduction, but it's a nice collection nonetheless.
Sarrantonio compares _Redshift_ to Ellison's 'Dangerous Visions' series, saying that many of the stories in _Redshift_ are too 'dangerous' or controversial to be published in traditional sources. In my opinion, the only controversial story in the anthology is Sarrantonio's own 'Billy the Fetus', which I assume wouldn't be published in traditional outlets because it's too disgusting. The remainder of the stories are far more mainstream.

My favorite stories in this anthology are 'In the Un-Black' by Stephen Baxter and 'Cleopatra Brimstone' by Elizabeth Hand. Hand's story is a novella about a student studying entomology who discovers she has supernatural powers while integrating the London goth scene. The student, who was a victim of a rape earlier in the story, takes her revenge on men by somehow turning them into butterflies. It's a haunting story that stays in mind long after it's over.

Baxter's contribution to the volume is set in his familiar Xeelee universe. This story concerns a race of drones who work the entirety of their short lives in slavery to a master race in the hopes that they can win passage out of their imprisonment. The story centers around two drones who flaunt their master's rules and fall in love. Less hard science than most of Baxter's pieces, which is why I enjoyed it so much.

Other good stories come from Dan Simmons, Harry Turtledove, P.D. Cacek, Kit Reed, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, David Morrell, and Rudy Rucker & John Shirley. There were only two stories in the collection that didn't work for me, those by Gene Wolfe and Neal Barrett, Jr. (particularly disappointing since both authors are among my personal favorites).

On the whole this was an enjoyable anthology. Nearly 550 pages of fiction from the biggest names in SF. This is a SF-lovers dream come true. It's a fat collection with good stories from favorite authors. Recommended.

Redshift, a collection of science fiction, edited by Al Sarrantonio, is described as the best collection of new science fiction in recent memory. It contains forty short stories by various science-fiction writers. Sarrantonio describes this book as an anthology of speculative fiction stories. His goal was to collect and expand on works of science fiction. He received submissions from new writers as well as established science fiction writers. This collection contains three novellas, five novelettes, and twenty-two short stories.

Their are many stories in this collection, some of them are gems while others seem to lack a plot. Overall I found many of the stories interesting and entertaining. The first story, on K2 with Kanakaredes, a short story by Dan Simmons, really grabbed my attention. It is a story about climbing Everest sometime in the future. The twist to this story is that the three mountain climbers are accompanied by a spider-like alien who is a representative of his visiting species. Immediately following the story, Ursula Le Guin shares her story The Building. After the first story I was expecting more but found the plot to the short story lacking. The next few stories also seem to lack much of a plot. I did find some of the ideas interesting and unique, but there wasn't enough "meat" for me to continue finishing reading the book.

I was a little disappointed by this book. I love reading science fiction, but felt that the book could have been edited differently with higher-quality stories. I did not feel that this book lived up to its tagline of "the best collection", or that these authors "had shaped the evolution of science fiction". On the contrary, I would suggest reading classic science-fiction rather than spend time on this compendium.

"Redshift: Extreme Visions of Speculative Fiction," edited by Al Sarrantonio, brings together 30 pieces of fiction of varying lengths; in his intro the editor breaks the pieces down as 22 short stories, 3 novellas, and 5 novelettes. Mainly science fiction, the collection also encompasses fantasy, horror and satire.

In his intro, Sarrantonio notes that he was inspired by Harlan Ellison's important 1967 anthology "Dangerous Visions." Many of the stories in this book deal with adult themes: rape, addiction, bondage, war, etc. There is some graphic sex and violence, but I did not find these elements to be gratuitous.

Some of the most memorable pieces in the collection include Laura Whitton's "Froggies," about the difficulty of interspecies communication; Harry Turtledove's "Black Tulip," a stylish tale set during the Soviet-Afghan conflict; Robert E. Vardeman's "Feedback," a stunning tale about telepaths and illicit sexuality; Rudy Rucker & John Shirley's "Pockets," a story of higher dimensions which draws on the classic "Flatland"; and Joe Haldeman's "Road Kill," about "a serial murderer with an interesting specialty."

Other authors represented in the anthology include Michael Moorcock, Ursula K. LeGuin, and Joyce Carol Oates. Overall, this is a solid collection. There are some vivid characters, intriguing sci-fi concepts, and memorable scenes.

There are a few good stories here, but I strongly suspect that when Saratonio began pestering the authors for "cutting edge" material for this anthology that many of them sent in the first thing they could find in their reject piles.

Here's a collection that is a little too big for its own good. Of course the focus is on "extreme visions of speculative fiction," but what exactly is extreme is a matter of opinion. Just because something is different doesn't necessarily make it good or readable. This book does contain some very intriguing and enjoyable stories that are great in their uniqueness. Favorites include the submissions from Dan Simmons, Stephen Baxter, Robert E. Vardemann, Catherine Wells, and the newcomer Laura Whitton. Probably two-thirds of the stories here are successful for the reader looking for strange new horizons. However, there is a lack of editorial focus that leads to the inclusion of just too many sub-par stories, like the inane and pointless offering from Joyce Carol Oates (whose strengths clearly do NOT include speculation, as shown embarrassingly here), the self-indulgent story from Thomas M. Disch, the sappy and syrupy submission from David Morrell, or the completely unreadable closer by Neal Barrett Jr. Another mistake is most of the story introductions from Sarrantonio, who is a pretty good writer himself but is low in the sense of humor department. This collection could have been much leaner and meaner, and often proves that "cutting edge" isn't always cutting.

I really liked Baxter's "In the Un-Black", Moorcock's "A Slow Saturday Night at the Surrealist Sporting Club" and Wells's "'Bassador", and liked the stories by Whitton, Kelly, Rucker+Shirley and Niven. But 7 stories out of 30 is not a good yield.

The goals of REDSHIFT are to "influence the course of SF for the next twenty-five years" and to pay homage to Harlan Ellison's world shattering 1960s anthology that contained stories considered taboo by most publishing companies. The lofty first objective of new grounds means little when most genre barriers have vanished. Still most of the stories are fun to read and well written as some prime players and a few newcomers provide overall strong contributions. If readers are looking for the new revolution, they need to wait, but if the audience desires a fine collection they will relish those tales that tried to meet the two stretch goals.

Harriet Klausner

A good collection of 'speculative' fiction. Mainly sci-fi, but some just 'what if' type scenarios. The one about James Dean and Marilyn Monroe was just boring, and there was one less than a page long that seemed rather pointless. Overall though, good to try out some stories like this that you might not come across in mainstream science fiction. I definitely recommend it.

Redshift isn't just another gathering of much-printed favorites, but presents all new stories of speculative fiction by such notables as LeGuin, Niven, Turtledove, Baxter and more. The all-star line-up of fantasy and science fiction writers paired with all-new stories assures that any fan of the genre will have fine reading here.