Newer York (Paperback)

by Lawrence Watt-Evans (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal
From Susan Shwartz's unusual look at the lives of "temporary" workers ("Getting Real") to Don Sakers's poignant glimpse of a New York at civilization's sunset ("Candelabra and Diamonds"), this collection of 24 original stories by contemporary writers of imaginative fiction pays homage to one of the world's most popular (and written about) cities. Piers Anthony, Esther Friesner, Mike Resnick, John Shirley, and others also contribute to this varied and consistently solid theme anthology. Recommended for most libraries.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Roc (June 1, 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0451450450
• ISBN-13: 978-0451450456
• Product Dimensions: 7 x 5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #2,233,244 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Speculative Stories from the City that Never Sleeps, May 21, 2004

By	Shanshad "shanachie_shadowfax" (Discworld) - See all my reviews

Take a trip down Broadway as you've never seen it! This themed anthology series contains 25 different visions of the Big Apple. Visions of the city as it will be, as it may be now in the dark corners and mysterious alleys, and, as it never was. Lawrence Watt-Evans has collected a wide variety of stories from to create an anthology that takes readers from Central Park to the Upper East Side, to Chinatown and Wall Street.

The collection has a decent balance of stories, from the patently absurd, to the deadly serious; SF, fantasy and horror are all well represented. Unfortunately my least favorite story is also the first in the anthology. An off-the-wall pun-fest from Piers Anthony, Cloister is a bit too ludicrous for my taste, and a poor choice for a kick off story for this collection, as it is misleading in setting the overall tone of the anthology. I strongly recommend readers skip Cloister (unless you like some seriously painful puns) and open with Getting Real by Susan Shwartz, which is my particular favorite story in the entire anthology.

Overall, this anthology is brimming with good picks: Getting Real takes readers down into the subways, and the shadow life of Temps. Wild Thing by Eric Blackburn is an out and out horror story of the ancient terrors that can lurk in Central Park. The Baby Track by Howard Mettelmark is a short-short with a hysterical take on an infant on the fast track to success. Slow Burn in Alphabettown by S. N. Lewitt looks at a future NYC with a big trash problem. Fans of Michael Resnick's STALKING THE UNICORN will recognize the alternate NYC in Post Time in Pink, where Resnick revisits his characters in yet another strange adventure. There are more than enough good stories to outshine the less spectacular fare. I was not thrilled with the somewhat pedestrian The Cleanest Block in Town by Janet Asimov, and, as I mentioned, found Cloister to be painful to read.

Perhaps the most glaring fact is that NEWER YORK was published in 1991, and so is out of date by more than ten years. Long before 9/11 happened and altered the cityscape of Manhattan--therefore the futures rendered in this anthology cannot reflect on those events. Nevertheless, it is a commendable collection and I'm grateful to Lawrence Watt-Evans for putting this book together. Readers who are fans of themed anthologies should also check out the anthologies edited by Martin Greenberg and Andre Norton for some other excellent reading material.

Happy Reading ^_^ Shanshad

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Nugglenortz!!!, June 15, 2006

By	Coroner "The Original Dangerous Competitor" (Guam) - See all my reviews

Born, raised, and still living in that Scrappy-Doo state known as NU JOY-ZEE, the sole motivation for me to purchase this book was to read about the dystopian environments concocted regarding the future of the glorious metropolis EN-WHY-SEE. Believe when I declare the shorter stories in the collection are vastly superior to the longer ones; the inclusion of "cyberpunk" and "cyberpunk-not-so-cleverly-disguised-as-anti-cyberpunk" stories really dooms the book. It's a lousy genre, trite and despondent and self-indulgent without a semblance of legit wit. Minus those stories, my rating for this book would have been higher.

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars New York, New York, October 27, 2000

By	Mary Carol Scherb (Irvine, CA USA) - See all my reviews

24 of the best sci-fi and fantasy tales ever written about the Big Apple, edited and compiled by the award-winning Lawrence Watt-Evans. From invasions by aliens and long-forgotten gods to city survivors and babies on the fast track, how can even Newer York encompass it all? Lawrence Watt-Evans tries and succeeds. A great book!