It Came From Schenectady - Barry B. Longyear

Spoiler Level: Low

I first discovered Barry B. Longyear when my future wife Joy sent me a book called Baker's Dozen: 13 Short Science Fiction Novels Presented by Isaac Asimov back around 1986.  I'll confess I turned straight to Longyear's story "Enemy Mine" because I'd seen a movie poster for it at the mall.  The story (and quite a few others in the book) blew me away, much more so than the movie did when I finally saw it.  From there I've jumped on any book of his I've found, which sadly hasn't been that many considering how long his bibliography is.

It Came from Schenectady is a collection of Longyear's short stories, and I have to say, I think the short form might by his strong suit.  Not that the books of his I read weren't good (and very memorable), but these stories are all winners, right from his introduction "Forepiece" (explaining the title of the book, which had me laughing out loud) straight through to the end.  Topics include time travel, the true nature of dreams, space art counterfeiting, interplanetary terrorism, living alien rocks, space dinosaurs returning to Earth (as shown on the cover) and others I can't even begin to describe.  Each story is preceded by a brief introduction which explains where the idea came to him from.

A lot of times anthologies are a real mixed bag, but this is the most solid one I've ever read. Some of them were disturbing, but they were meant to be, and they're all thought provoking. If you're looking for a good short story collection, this one is worth hunting down.

Gateways - edited by Martin H. Greenberg

I love short story anthologies, because (1) they don't take too long to get moving, (B) they give you a wide variety, and (iii) I can quit reading within a day if a "must read now" book comes along, and then come back to it without having to try to remember what was going on.

I always loved the concept of stumbling across a special gateway to somewhere else. When I was a kid (back in the pre-CNN late 70's and early 80's, before every child abduction was broadcast on the news) I would often just wander around the neighborhood for hours, investigating forests and quarries and wherever the train tracks led me. Sometimes I was alone, but a lot of the time I was with my friend Frank. And there was always a feeling of adventure, as if the next forest might just reveal a sparkling window among the trees that could take us anywhere.

This anthology brings back that feeling, not just because that's actually what it's about, but because (being an anthology) each story uses a different kind of gateway and tells a different kind of story. Some are science fiction, some are fantasy, some are horror. The gateways can be anything, from magic windows to space portals to even role-playing games. They can go anywhere, from the obvious far-away worlds to different times to dark netherworlds. So going into each new story gave me that same tingle of excitement and discovery.

The risk with anthologies is there is inevitably something you won't like, but each of these stories were intriguing enough that I got something good out of all of them. Quite a few of them, like "Double Trouble" by John Zakour and "Worlds Enough ...and Time" by Kristine Kathryn Rusch, I'd love to see more of. I really don't care for horror stories, but the ones here never got gory, so the gateway concept (and often the characters themselves) was enough to keep me interested.

All in all, a very fun book!