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The Very Best of Fantasy & Science Fiction: Sixtieth Anniversary Anthology by Gordon Van Gelder
standback's review
5.0
This is a fantastic anthology, with a huge variety of absolute classics and gems, from a sixty-year span of publication. Powerful, powerful pieces -- and ones that give you great tastes of a whole lot of different authors, from Alfred Bester to Ted Chiang.
Some of the standout stories are:
* The classic "Flowers For Algernon";
* Peter Beagle's heartbreaking adventure "Two Hearts,"
* Ted Chiang's "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate," which does Arabian Nights style tales of magical time travel;
* "Solitude," one of Ursula LeGuin's quintessential tales of contact with alien cultures,
and more and more and more.
Anthologies, by their nature, tend to be a grab bag -- some stories are great, others not so much. This is a rare exception. There's immense variety, but almost every story is a treasure, large or small.
It's a showcase of the fantastic, top-notch work that the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction has done over the decades. It's full of genre classics -- and ones that stand the test of time, which is no mean feat. I can't tell you how many times I've been in conversations with friends going, "Oh, there's this fantastic story you should really read! Here, I've got it in this book here..."
Highly, highly recommended.
Some of the standout stories are:
* The classic "Flowers For Algernon";
* Peter Beagle's heartbreaking adventure "Two Hearts,"
* Ted Chiang's "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate," which does Arabian Nights style tales of magical time travel;
* "Solitude," one of Ursula LeGuin's quintessential tales of contact with alien cultures,
and more and more and more.
Anthologies, by their nature, tend to be a grab bag -- some stories are great, others not so much. This is a rare exception. There's immense variety, but almost every story is a treasure, large or small.
It's a showcase of the fantastic, top-notch work that the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction has done over the decades. It's full of genre classics -- and ones that stand the test of time, which is no mean feat. I can't tell you how many times I've been in conversations with friends going, "Oh, there's this fantastic story you should really read! Here, I've got it in this book here..."
Highly, highly recommended.
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