Mother Nature, sensing my need to feed my classic science fiction jones, provided me with perfect reading weather this weekend: ice and snow. After returning from the early morning showing of Shutter Island we shut ourselves in for the weekend as the weather turned quite nasty. I chose to embrace the situation by reading Robert A. Heinlein’s classic, Farmer in the Sky on Saturday, followed up by a Sunday reading of the Cordwainer Smith short story collection, You Will Never Be the Same.

Listen carefully…can you hear that? That, my dear friends, is the sound of a deep sigh of satisfaction birthed from a weekend immersed in great stories. Let me tell you about them…

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Cyberabad Days ~Ian McDonald

–published 2009
–Pyr Books
–268 pages
–“The Djinn’s Wife”, winner of 2007 Hugo Award for Best Novelette
–4.25/5 stars

Cyberabad Days is a return to the world of Ian McDonald’s BSFA-winning novel River of Gods. Like an exotic dish, this collection of seven stories (6 previously published, 1 new), is flavored with spices from the old world and the new. I savored hints of Isaac Asimov and Philip K. Dick amidst what I might have initially thought was an incongruous mixture: a Britain born son of Irish and Scottish parents writing stories set in a future India, steeped in that nation’s rich cultural heritage.

Cyberabad Days was a new and exciting literary experience, blending familiar science fiction ideas of future tech and artificial intelligence with a language and heritage that is far removed from my everyday experience.

Ian McDonald brings the history of the Indian people, albeit a “history” viewed from a time three plus decades in the future, in a way that sparks an interest in this diverse and storied nation.

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Asimov’s Science Fiction March 2010

–published by Dell Magazine
–112 pages
–4.25/5 stars

When I saw that the cover of the latest Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine was by the contemporary artist with classical talent, Donato Giancola, it became a must buy. I was also excited by the opportunity to read a story by Kristine Kathyrn Rusch, whose latest book, Diving Into the Wreck, has been getting positive buzz on the net. While I certainly hoped that a cover-to-cover read through this magazine would deliver more thrills than chills, I did not expect it to be quite the intensely pleasurable experience it turned out to be.

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The Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction: Seventh Series ~Anthony Boucher, ed.

–published 1958 (Book Club Edition)
–Doubleday and Company
–264 pages
–4/5 stars

A book lover’s treasured possessions come in all shapes and sizes and their reasons for being cherished can be as enigmatic as the myriad of readers on the planet or as simple as a three word explanation. In the case of this recently purchased treasure it is the simple explanation: book cover art. I fell in love with this wonderful representation of 1950’s science fiction art the moment I pulled it off the top shelf of a small used bookstore in my home town on a shopping trip during Christmas vacation. I was bound to pick it up, it was only a couple of dollars, even before I opened to the table of contents to see a nearly balanced representation of authors that I have read, authors I have heard of but not read, and authors whose names were foreign to me. Imagine my great pleasure to find that this collection was every bit as fun to read as its cover art promised it to be.

I had determined to spend the last weekend of January reading short stories and though it was not my intention to read this book from start to finish, once I started I just could not put it down. Per usual I will attempt to give a very brief overview/rating of each story without spoiling the experience for you. After all, if I like a story then I want you to read it too!

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