![]() In spite of his name, he had enough caucasoid genes to let him raise a fair crop. "The day you start telling me how to wear my hair, you old harridan, is the day I get out of the Service."ī'kila laughed out loud, a bad sign things that amused her generally meant trouble for other people, She was a plump black woman with straight, graying hair, the head of what was euphemistically known as the Loki Salvage Service. #Harry turtledove the road not taken pdf how to Loki's few friends called the Service a band of scavengers. Everyone else started with names like pirates, thieves, spies, and went downhill from there. Having wasted enough time on pointless chatter, B'kila waved Clang to a chair by the big holo tank that took up most of one wall. He sat with the same feeling he had whenever he was in her office-that of being in the center of a spiderweb. #Harry turtledove the road not taken pdf how toīeing on the same side helped only a little.Sunday Night Yams at Minnie and Earl's / Adam-Troy Castro. ![]() The First Contact with the Gorgonids / Ursula K.Guerrilla Mural of a Siren's Song / Ernest Hogan.The 43 Antarean Dynasties / Mike Resnick.Recycling Strategies for the Inner City / Pat Murphy.The Aliens Who Knew, I Mean, Everything / George Alec Effinger.How to Talk to Girls at Parties / Neil Gaiman.Introduction: Beginnings / Marty Halpern.» Add other authors (1 possible) Author name When this one hits the shelves, don't wait to grab a copy for yourself. I enjoyed every minute of reading this book, and considering my usual dislike for short story anthologies, I like to think that says a great deal about not just the writers or the editor, but the book as a whole, being more than the sum of its parts. I find that more than a little fascinating.Īs I said previously, this is a book that no science fiction fan can afford to be without. There's suddenly contrast, something to compare ourselves to, which brings out our innate traits in ways that are more difficult in other settings or stories. ![]() Whether it's displaying our own human arrogance about the universe and all within it, or displaying our sheer curiosity about what lies beyond us, all stories I've found that involve humans and some unknown sentient life form end up showcasing humanity in ways that a human-only cast of characters just couldn't. The fun thing that I find about alien encounter stories is that they end up saying more about humanity than about any alien culture we can dream of. Sometimes amusing, sometimes thought-provoking, sometimes deeply disturbing, always entertaining. ![]() The variety here is rich and highly demonstrative of the varying degrees of creativity that can come when a dozen brilliant literary minds look at the same basic concept in a dozen different ways. Sometimes, such as in Stephen King's tale, the aliens are not so much seperate entities as things that possess and twist humans into something new again. The aliens themselves range from anything that we can recognise in a humanoid shape, which is sometimes disturbing enough, to completely unlike anything we've seen, where the aliens are more blobby insectoids with a hive mind. The stories contained within the book's pages don't keep to one tone or theme beyond "there are aliens, and we know about it." There are stories about people accidentally running across extraterrestrials while on vacation, scientists meeting them for the first time, or cases far into the future where we've been collaborating with aliens for decades. There's all kinds of talent evident in this collection, and I'll say right off the bat that this is a book that no sci-fi fan should really be without. Neil Gaiman, Ursula K LeGuin, Stephen King, and yet more. I'm not normally much for short story collections, but something about this book just spoke to me, so I couldn't resist taking the chance to read it, especially after seeing such a stellar (if you'll encuse the pun) list of contributing authors.
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