[[nid:5336]]Probably. Those men and women imagined entire worlds where the seemingly impossible happened. Of course, science fiction was never really about the predicting the future so much as it was extrapolating and speculating on possible futures. Through all the great branches and permutations of the genre, stories, the good ones, anyway, were always a reflection of their times, and this is true now more than ever. Though science fiction isn’t as ubiquitous as mysteries or even cookbooks, the genre has earned the respect of readers and critics, and this anthology goes a long way toward showing us why.
Award-winning editors David G. Hartwell and Patrick Nielsen Hayden have gathered an impressive collection of 34 tales from this new century which is no longer so new, and created an anthology which will serve as a guide to the genre for years to come. Highlights include John Scalzi's "The Tale of the The Wicked" and M. Rickert's phenomenal "Bread and Bombs".
This year's Summer Challenge theme is "a universe of stories", and that's exactly what you get with this book. It's a little slice of the future, and it's here today.
21st Century Science Fiction
Science fiction writers of the past dreamed of futures, dark and bright, in which humans traveled to the stars, colonized other worlds, and encountered aliens both friendly and deadly. In all their imaginings, did they ever see their genre--ghettoized for so long as just that, genre fiction, said with a sneer--gaining prominence, even prevalence in the culture?