Short SF is the website where I review every Science Fiction Short Story anthology and collection that I read.

Austin Beeman

The Good New Stuff: Adventure SF in the Grand Tradition. edited by Gardner Dozois. 1999

The Good New Stuff: Adventure SF in the Grand Tradition. edited by Gardner Dozois. 1999

Austin Beeman
Rated A - 90-100%

THE GOOD NEW STUFF

RATED 91% POSITIVE. STORY SCORE 4.00 OF 5

17 STORIES : 3 GREAT / 11 GOOD / 3 AVERAGE / 0 POOR / 0 DNF

Towards the end of this book, a peculiar phrase starts to work its’ way into Gardner Dozois story introductions - “New Baroque Space Opera.” That is such a good way to describe the stories in this anthology. Rich world-building overflows in a torrent of references and images. This is something of the Dozois-style which embraced long stories with evocative language and imaginative descriptions that are scattered across the story like so much birdseed. If you like this kind of Science Fiction, this is a good volume for you.

As I hope to demonstrate in this anthology, you can still find science fiction adventure stories today every bit as wild and woolly and mind-blowing as anything from the old pulp days, stories as full of swashbuckling action, dash, and élan as any of the Planetary Romances from the old Planet Stories and Thrilling Wonder Stories, stories just as full of cosmic sweep and scale and grandeur and the immense, sun-shattering, planet-busting clash of titanic forces in conflict as anything from the old “Superscience” days of the thirties when Edmond Hamilton was earning his nickname of “World-Wrecker Hamilton” (except with much more accurate, up-to-date, cutting-edge science!). - Gardner Dozois (from the Preface)

Three Stories Make the All-Time Great List:

  • Cilia-of-Gold • [Xeelee] • (1994) • novelette by Stephen Baxter. Alternating storyline taking place on Mercury. One is an intelligent being “Cilia-of-Gold”, who has a rich life, but is infected with a parasite that is pushing her to burrow upwards to the cold ice where she will certainly die. The second storyline is that of humans on Mercury looking for resources to use and discovering that the planet already has life on it.

  • A Dry, Quiet War • (1996) • novelette by Tony Daniel. A dark, sadistic, and Western-inflected tale of a future time warrior back home after the war is over. He is barely recognizable anymore, but rekindles a relationship with his old lover who runs an inn. Glims, thuggish infantry types, arrive a cause lots of trouble, but the soldier can do anything or it will make all his violence and suffering in the future worthless.

  • All Tomorrow's Parties • [The Book of Confluence] • (1997) • short story by Paul J. McAuley. An immortal woman and her multitude of clones decadently party over recreated 20th century Earth in this New Baroque Space Opera. For the original woman, very little satisfies for long as she sees various versions of an ex-lover (portrayed to imply Ernest Hemingway.). But underneath the wild creativity, war is being waged against her. A war that she doesn’t even know is happening.

THE GOOD NEW STUFF IS RATED 91%

17 STORIES : 3 GREAT / 11 GOOD / 3 AVERAGE / 0 POOR / 0 DNF

How do I arrive at a rating?

  1. Goodbye, Robinson Crusoe • [Eight Worlds] • novelette by John Varley (1977)

    Good. On a beach paradise within Pluto, a man experiences a second childhood (physically) as a gilled boy. Until it all comes crashing down around him.

  2. The Way of Cross and Dragon • [Thousand Worlds] • (1979) • novelette by George R. R. Martin

    Good. An inquisitor who has traveled the universe in his spaceship stamping out heresy against the Catholic Church. He is sent to a planet where Judas Iscariot has been canonized for his use of dragons during biblical times.

  3. Swarm • [Shaper/Mechanist] • (1982) • novelette by Bruce Sterling

    Good. A special agent from a branch of humanity that is bred for intelligence arrives on a symbiotic space station with a mission that will secure victory in an ongoing war. The Swarm is very well described and there is more than enough here for a novel.

  4. The Blind Minotaur • (1985) • short story by Michael Swanwick

    Average. In a world that feels both futuristic and mythological, blind and immortal Minotaur is led by a young girl to a place of rest. He thinks about his life and his current situation. Well written but felt a bit empty.

  5. The Blabber • [Zones of Thought] • (1988) • novella by Vernor Vinge

    Good. On the planet Middle America, a young man finds himself in peril when aliens want to take from him his pet Blabber, a semi-sentient alien from deep space.

  6. The Return of the Kangaroo Rex • [Mirabile] • (1989) • novelette by Janet Kagan

    Good. On the planet Mirabile, a colony planet, animals contain within them the genes to give birth to different species. In between, they become weird crosses of both animals. A grumpy biologist has to hunt down the carnivorous Kangaroo Rex before local farmers kill it to protect their flocks.

  7. Prayers on the Wind • (1991) • novella by Walter Jon Williams

    Good. Humanity is an empire assembled around a baroque fusion of many world religions filtered through a planet that is a library and processing system. Two threats are overlapping. A warlike peripheral race is looking for any military advantages and the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama is a sadistic hedonist.

  8. The Missionary's Child • (1992) • novelette by Maureen F. McHugh

    Average. On an earth affected by the arrival of The Cousins, a poor man takes a security job for a sleazy merchant who is selling maps.

  9. Poles Apart • [Trimus] • (1992) • novella by G. David Nordley

    Good. Three species live on a planet together in a harmonious experiment: human, aquatic ‘frogmen,’ and a species that flies. When a number of the frogmen show up murdered in the ‘primitive zone,’ a frogman and human woman go and investigate. Good action and an interesting world.

  10. Guest of Honor • (1991) • novelette by Robert Reed

    Good. A woman, built of the conglomeration of a large numbers of the world’s elite, tells the stories of her travel adventures around the universe. Adventures too dangerous for the elite.

  11. Flowering Mandrake • (1994) • novelette by George Turner

    Good. Interesting first contact story between humans and a sentient plant species. The Red-Bloods and Green-Bloods are involved in interstellar war. One Green-Blood (sentient plant) accident ends up getting kicked out of the war and drifts for thousands of years before being noticed by the people of earth.

  12. Cilia-of-Gold • [Xeelee] • (1994) • novelette by Stephen Baxter

    Great. Alternating storyline taking place on Mercury. One is an intelligent being “Cilia-of-Gold”, who has a rich life, but is infected with a parasite that is pushing her to burrow upwards to the cold ice where she will certainly die. The second storyline is that of humans on Mercury looking for resources to use and discovering that the planet already has life on it.

  13. Gone to Glory • (1995) • novelette by R. Garcia y Robertson

    Good. Robertson writes fun adventure-sci-fi with some swagger and a bit of cool world building. Our ‘hero’ has to leave a hedonistic pleasure environment to find missing people on an African-coded terraformed planet with Neanderthals, SuperChimps, and the beginning of tribal warlords.

  14. A Dry, Quiet War • (1996) • novelette by Tony Daniel

    Great. A dark, sadistic, and Western-inflected tale of a future time warrior back home after the war is over. He is barely recognizable anymore, but rekindles a relationship with his old lover who runs an inn. Glims, thuggish infantry types, arrive a cause lots of trouble, but the soldier can do anything or it will make all his violence and suffering in the future worthless.

  15. All Tomorrow's Parties • [The Book of Confluence] • (1997) • short story by Paul J. McAuley

    Great. An immortal woman and her multitude of clones decadently party over recreated 20th century Earth in this New Baroque Space Opera. For the original woman, very little satisfies for long as she sees various versions of an ex-lover (portrayed to imply Ernest Hemingway.). But underneath the wild creativity, war is being waged against her. A war that she doesn’t even know is happening.

  16. Escape Route • [Confederation Universe Stories] • (1997) • novella by Peter F. Hamilton

    Good. A fun, cinematic adventure about the crew of a spaceship that takes a job trolling for gold, but instead discover an abandoned spaceship with a mystery at its center. Fun, fast-paced, and very readable once it gets going.

  17. The Eye of God • (1998) • novelette by Mary Rosenblum

    Average. The Rethe give humans access to only a few boring planets through their gates. When the Rethe hire a retired empath and rock climber to rescue a human who has been injured in a climbing accident on a forbidden planet, the truth is more dangerous, weirder, and a most complicated than is expected. Quite the cluttered story. One that is too short for what Rosenblum wants to jam together here.

The Best Science Fiction Short Stories I Read in 2022 ... and where you can read them.

The Best Science Fiction Short Stories I Read in 2022 ... and where you can read them.
Beyond the Stars: Infinite Expanse. edited by Richard Leslie. 2020

Beyond the Stars: Infinite Expanse. edited by Richard Leslie. 2020