Anthology of Speculative Fiction, Volume 1 PDF
Preview Anthology of Speculative Fiction, Volume 1
ANTHOLOGY OF SPECULATIVE FICTION, VOLUME ONE Incorporating The Golden Age of Science Fiction anthologies and “Free Speculative Fiction Online” (featuring Asimov's Science Fiction magazine, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Analog Science Fiction and Fact, Interzone, Clarkesworld Magazine and winners of the Hugo and Nebula awards). The Golden Age of Science Fiction: An Anthology This Halcyon Classics ebook collection contains science fiction short stories by more than forty authors. Many of the stories in this collection were published during the heyday of popular science fiction magazines from the 1930s to the 1950s. Included within this work are stories by Poul Anderson, Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, Phillip K. Dick, Randall Garrett, Paul Ernst, Kurt Vonnegut, Jack Williamson, Phillip Jose Farmer, Lester Del Rey, Leigh Brackett, Fredric Brown, Murray Leinster, Ben Bova, and many others. Halcyon Classics Series THE GOLDEN AGE OF SCIENCE FICTION Free Speculative Fiction Online http://www.freesfonline.de/index.html All stories are available for free. This site does not link to pirated SF! Sites violating the non-elapsed copyright of the respective stories by making them accessible without the author's and/or publisher's explicit agreement are not included. The ISFDB is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution license. This means that you are free: to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work, (Good luck on performing bibliographic data. The costumes should be interesting.) to make derivative works, to make commercial use of the work, so long as attribution is made to the ISFDB, under the following conditions: For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of this work. Any of these conditions can be waived if you get permission from the copyright holder. The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/ This is a professional magazine that began publishing in 1949 which makes it the second oldest continually publishing science fiction magazines in the country. They have one up on the oldest however, popularity. The publication is tremendously popular. It is the most widely read science fiction magazine in the country. It is consistently outstanding and publishing outstanding authors like (from their site) “Stephen King's Dark Tower, Daniel Keyes's Flowers for Algernon, and Walter M. Miller's A Canticle for Leibowitz.” This magazine is the cream of the alien crop.” Fantasy & Science Fiction magazines represents all of what's best in science fiction today. Analog Science Fiction and Fact http://www.analogsf.co.m/0906/issue_06.shtml This is a professional magazine that began publishing started publishing 1930 and is as they say “often considered the magazine where science fiction grew up.” They do it very well and have published many outstanding science fiction authors including “Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, Poul Anderson, Spider Robinson, Lois McMaster Bujold, and Michael F. Flynn.” The publication is the oldest science fiction magazine in the country, and they are consistently nominated for award after award. This publication has done an unequivocal job over the last 80 years of keeping great science fiction writing alive in print. Asimov's Science Fiction http://www.asimovs.com/ This is a professional magazine that began publishing began publishing in 1977 and is simply a high quality science fiction magazine that showcases some of the best in science fiction today. They publish great authors and the publication is one of the best science fiction magazines ever published, hands down. Interzone http://ttapress.com/interzone/ Began publishing in 1982. They are the longest running science fiction magazine in the UK. They have published many greats including: “Brian Aldiss, Sarah Ash, Michael Moorcock, Bruce Sterling, William Gibson, M. John Harrison, Stephen Baxter, Iain M Banks, J.G. Ballard, Kim Newman, Alastair Reynolds, Harlan Ellison, Greg Egan,” and many more. They are an outstanding magazine that has fought the odds to keep science fiction alive. Clarkesworld Magazine http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/ Clarkesworld is the newest magazines on our list established in 2006, but the magazine came on in a blaze of glory. They have won many many awards in the science fiction world, and they publish a yearly chapbook of all the stories that have appeared in their magazine. Clarkesworld is where we hope science fiction magazines are going. It is professionally done, full of outstanding science fiction writing, and devoted to creating a presence on the web and in the real world. Every science fiction writer trying to publish their stories should give serious consideration to this magazine. *** The literature of change It's often said that Science Fiction is the literature of change. When a culture is undergoing a lot of changes due to scientific advances and technological developments, and expects to undergo more, it's hardly surprising if stories about these changes become popular as a way of expressing people's feelings (optimistic or otherwise) about change. Note that the changes may be in our ability to control the world, or just in our understanding of it. For example, some "post-holocaust" stories, such as Wyndham's The Chrysalids (also known as Rebirth), portray cultures that understand and control less of the world than we do; the scientific element consists of our understanding of their world, and of how it arose out of our world. Other stories offer future technologies that we can hope for based on present-day science, but haven't developed yet, such as fusion- powered spaceships. Yet others go beyond this to dazzle us with future science that differs from what is now believed, but they retain some recognisable elements of the world we live in, so we can at least believe that the world depicted in the story might some day come to be. This leads up to my loose definition of ScF as fiction set in a world that differs from our everyday world in a way that importantly involves science or technology. Some people add that ScF should make you think about possible future worlds and alternatives thereto, but I'm quite glad to have some fiction that's purely entertainment. If history is any guide, there will always be plenty of ScF that asks questions (and usually supplies ready-made answers) about changes in the world and the futures to which they may lead. About a year after inscribing the above onto my hard disk, I was reading an introduction by Isaac Asimov to a novel by a younger author and found this: A science fiction story must be set against a society significantly different from our own -- usually, but not necessarily, because of some change in the level of science and technology -- or it is not a science fiction story. He was contrasting ScF with detective stories, where criminals are caught and order is restored: ... the science fiction story destroys our own comfortable society. The science fiction story does not deal with the restoration of order, but with change and, ideally, with continuing change ... we leave our society and never return to it. The literature of science Another widely-held view is that ScF is fiction that describes the impact of science or technology on people. To the extent that its readers are "science buffs" (never mind whether they know any science!), this may well be the chief reason they enjoy reading it. Its heroes are often those who understand the science or technology, which can add an element of wish-fulfillment. It can also contribute to the ghastly stereotype of the ScF reader as someone with no accomplishment or merit other other than science, and no interest in the impact of art on people, or for that matter of people on people. *** One of the things that makes science fiction so popular is that it means many things to many people. Some people will insist that they are not even reading science fiction when they read a Star Wars novel or a novel dealing with alternate history. That is what makes Sci-Fi so wonderful! It’s easy to love and difficult to define. What other genre has so many sub-genres? You have hard Sci-fi, often times written by people who actually were scientists. There’s Cyber Punk, adventurous Space Opera, Military Sci-Fi, Alternate History, Steam Punk, and even Space Westerns. Something for almost everybody! In truth, speculative fiction dates back hundreds of years but modern Sci-Fi began to develop as we know it in the 19th century with writers like H.G. Wells and Jules Verne. But it was in 1926 that Sci-fi really began to take off with the creation of the pulp magazine, Amazing Stories, the first publication devoted to science fiction. The magazine survived for nearly 80 years and helped to launch the careers of greats such as Roger Zelanzy, E.E. “Doc” Smith, Jack Williamson, and countless others. ***
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