"Gardner Dozois - Modern CLassics of Science Fiction" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dozois Gardner)

The Pure Product John Kessel

The Winter Market William Gibson

Chance Connie Willis

The Edge of the World Michael Swanwick

Dori Bangs Bruce Sterling

Afterword

****
 Preface
Let me talk to you for a moment about a few things that this anthology
is not.

It is not an evolutionary overview of science fiction, for many of the
stories that have had the greatest evolutionary impact on the field, and that
would have to be included and analyzed in such an overview, were also
stories that I personally didnтАЩt much like, and they are not here.

It is not really a historical survey of the various periods of science
fiction history, either, since such a survey, to function well, would have to
include a balanced selection of represen-tative stories from the various
aesthetic factions that are always in contention in any period of genre
history, and would have to look beyond first-rate authors to the second-rank
authors, from whose work you can often get a more accurate idea of the
essential nature of the different kinds of work that are being doneтАж but
those stories are not here, either. (No story here was selected because it is
a good example of this trend or that, or of one type of writing or another,
although a few of them, by happenstance, may actually turn out to be good
examples of whatever it isтАФthat is not why they are here, though.)

It isnтАЩt a Politically Correct book, either, since to be Politically Correct,
more care would have had to be taken in selecting the proportionately
proper number of writers from each of SFтАЩs political cliques and pressure
groupsтАФare there enough hard-science writers? enough leftists? enough
British writers? enough women?тАФand no such demographic care was
exercised. Nor is it made up of comfortably expedient choices that could
be expected to score me a lot of personal brownie pointsтАФseveral of my
best friends and closest colleagues have no work here, for instance, which
will no doubt hurt their feelings, and there are a number of important and
influential genre figures I could usefully have flattered by putting them in
these pages and who will probably not be flattered by finding that they have
been omitted. Nor was the book designed with an eye to insuring me a
margin of safety with reviewers, since there are a number of icons, from
Heinlein to Dick to Ballard, that I will no doubt be pilloried for leaving out.
(Indeed, even as I write this, the critics are gleefully rubbing their hands
together in anticipation, getting ready to come forward and tell me what I