Reviewed: Masterpieces: The Best Science Fiction of the Twentieth Century

Masterpieces: The Best Science Fiction of the Twentieth Century is an anthology of science fiction short stories compiled by Orson Scott Card, one of the giants of the genre. He's the man who wrote Ender's Game and its many many sequels.

The anthology collects 27 short stories spanning much of the twentieth century, from 1936 to 1995. The best of the stories are very good indeed. "The Road Not Taken" is an intriguing what-if by Harry Turtledove. "'Repent, Harlequin!' Said the Ticktockman" has an appealing rebelliousness and Harlan Ellison's awesome prose. "Dogfight" by Gibson and Swanwick is gritty and fierce. And "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" by Le Guin poses a really hard moral question.

But, but, but. There are too many stories that are just sort of ok-ish -- 16 out of 27 by my count. If you're stepping up to the plate with "Masterpiece" stenciled on your bat, you should be whiffing less often than that.

The most puzzling inclusion is "'All You Zombies--" by Robert Heinlein. It makes perfect sense to include something by the grand old man of the genre. But why pick this odd little time-travel story when there's such a wealth of great alternatives? Card could have chosen "The Logic of Empire", "The Roads Must Roll", "The Man Who Sold the Moon", or one of at least a dozen other first-class stories instead.

Overall then, this is a solid collection, with some very good stories by big names in the genre. If only there were more of them.

3/4

Where to find the best science fiction short stories

I recently went looking for some collections of really top classic science fiction stories. Here's what I found.

If you're looking for a single volume, you probably can't do better than Masterpieces: The Best Science Fiction of the 20th Century. The collection covers a broad span of time, includes really big names, and the anthologist is Orson Scott Card, a highly respected author in the genre.

Beyond that, the ways part. The SFWA, the professional association of SF writers, got together in the early seventies and assembled The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, a collection of science fiction masterworks in three volumes, the first covering short stories and the other two covering novellas.

For more recent work, you might try The Best of the Best: 20 Years of The Year's Best Science Fiction by Gardener Dozois. Dozois was for a long time the editor of Asimov's, the top forum of the field for short fiction, as well as the editor of The Year's Best Science Fiction, an annual anthology of short stories. He has collected some of his top choices of more recent material in two volumes, one for short stories and the other for novellas.

And for even more recent material, there is Twenty-First Century Science Fiction, published in 2013.