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

should have used instead, or why I shouldnтАЩt have used the stories I did
use.)

No, from the moment Deborah Beale put forth the suggestion that I
should edit a retrospective anthology of the best stories of the last thirty
years or so, it was clear to me that there was only one criterion that I could
use, if the book was to have any sort of validity at allтАФthe stories would
have to be the ones that had had the most impact on me as a reader.

Not always the ones theyтАЩre supposed to be, often not the famous
ones, or the respectable ones, sometimes not even the ones IтАЩd have liked
them to beтАж but, rather, the ones that had moved me and shaken me, the
ones that got under my skin, the ones that seized me and forced me to be
impressed with them, often against my better judgment, the ones that I
could not forget, even when sometimes they were stories that I would
rather not have ever read at all. The stories that got to me, that changed the
way I thought, or what I believed, or how I felt, or the way that I felt it. The
stories that had penetrated through all the insulating shells of abstract
aesthetic appreciation and intellectual admiration, and had hit me, hit me in
the center of my soul.

InstinctтАФyes, weтАЩre talking about stories selected by instinct, by one
readerтАЩs emotional reaction to them, rather than stories selected to express
some critical theory, or to grind a particular political ax, or because they
help buttress some polemic or aesthetic argument about the nature of the
field. Already, I can see the lips curling in scornтАж and yet, I do believe that,
in the end, that is all we ever really have to work with.

Even today, at a time when I read hundreds of stories a month for
Isaac AsimovтАЩs Science Fiction Magazine and for my YearтАЩs Best
Science Fiction anthologyтАж even today, I can be reading through the
submission pile, and be thinking, yes, this is pretty good, nicely handled,
and we can use a hard-science story to balance off the softer stuff in the
April issueтАж and then IтАЩll pick up another manuscript and start to read, and
all at once IтАЩll forget that IтАЩm reading it. IтАЩll forget that IтАЩm supposed to be
evaluating it, IтАЩll forget about the April issue, or what IтАЩm going to have for
lunch, IтАЩll forget where I am, or that time is passingтАж IтАЩll submerge in the
story and forget everything until I come out of the story with a start and a
shudder a half-hour or an hour later, and sit there with the manuscript on my
lap, staring off into distance and feeling gooseflesh shiver up my spine.

And I think that if there ever comes a time when IтАЩm too worn-out or
jaded or cynical to feel that way any longer, if there comes a time when
there are no stories, however rare, that can swallow me up and make me
shiver with dread or awe or wonder at the end, then that will be the time for
me to lay down my blue pencil, and get out of the editing business.
 So then, right from the start I resolved to only use stories in this
anthology that had been important to me, however eccentric those choices
might seem to other peopleтАж and not to worry about whether those stories
were generally considered to have had any historical or critical importance