Hugo 2000 Nominee Anthology
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REVIEW BY WILLIAM D. GAGLIANI
What better way to sample the futuristic e-book format than a collection of 11 Hugo-nominated stories? The Science Fiction Achievement Awards—called Hugos for science fiction pioneer and legendary editor Hugo Gernsback—are one of science fiction's most prestigious awards. The short fiction nominees are always hard to track down, but this collection rounds up the best of 1999. In these superbly varied stories, some of today's best SF writers offer their takes on any number of hot-button issues. The best science fiction always acts as a mirror held up to show us our own foibles—no matter what strange aliens and planets the narratives may involve. Travel to Nick DiChario's future "Sarajevo," a place plagued by the ghosts of its bloody history. Follow Alex Drier, the alien headed boy, as he fulfills a dream in Adam-Troy Castro and Jerry Oltion's moving "The Astronaut from Wyoming." Closure and cloning provide bizarre bookends in Terry Bisson's harsh "macs." Jan Lars Jensen's superb alternate history, "The Secret History of the Ornithopter," follows the bird-winged machine's rise in pre-WWII Japan through the eyes of the Englishman who both dreamt and dreaded it. Another WWII tale is Ian R. MacLeod's horror-tinged "The Chop Girl," in which the aerodrome's bad-luck girl meets and beds the RAF's luckiest pilot. Mike Resnick is represented twice, with the Hemingwayesque "Hunting the Snark" and "Hothouse Flowers," a thoughtful treatise on expanding life expectancies. The Hugo winners were announced in September and two from this collection went home with the prize. Michael Swanwick's award-winning "Scherzo With Tyrannosaur" tackles the paradoxes of time travel with an entertaining, old-fashioned—almost Golden Age—approach. The other Hugo winner, Connie Willis's "The Winds of Marble Arch," compares a modern-day London remnant of its Blitz days with the realities of decay in everyday life—an exquisitely written (but overly long) anchor to this incisive collection. The Hugo winners are certainly worthy of their award, but it's safe to say that there are no losers in this crowd of outstanding speculations. Whether grouped together in a collection, or read and digested separately, these stories will leave you thinking about our history and our destiny long after the last glowing word of this collection has faded from your screen. Bill Gagliani is the author of Shadowplays, an e-book collection of dark fiction from Ebooksonthe.net.
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