The Event Horizon

1. Editorial: Good `Old' Books

First, an apology for all who has been expecting an issue of EH for the past few months now. Lack of time to do it (plus a minor ``writer's block'') were the main causes for the delay.

Anyway, lets not cry over spilled nanomachines, shall we, and lets get on with this month's issue.

Last month's SFAS session was a unique one on the topic of 'Best SF/Fantasy story'. As many members moaned, it was near impossible to go through piles of books to come up with just one story that we thought was the best. But we tried, sacrificing lots of brain cells in the process, and here was the list that members at the meeting came up with:

Jorge Codina - The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (1966) by Robert A. Heinlein
Terence Chua - Replay (1987) by Ken Grimwood
Keith Lim - Cat's Cradle (1963) by Kurt Vonnegut
Nigel Tan - The Matter of Seggri (1994) by Ursula Le Guin
Freda Wang - Flowers for Algernon (1966) by Daniel Keyes
Soh Kam Yung - The Bicentennial Man (1976) by Isaac Asimov

All fascinating choices, mostly accompanied by groans from others over the choices of stories (``why didn't I choose that one?'') as well as over some stories that we didn't choose (I remember ``Sandkings'' causing a big ``ahhhh!'' from members). Terence's choice was probably the most unusual one as it was a book that is not well known while my choice was probably the most predictable (``yeah, we all know you're an Asimov fanatic'').

Expect to see full blown reviews of the above stories in the months to come (hint, hint: I'm looking for contributions). Until then, you'll have to read about some observations I can make from the choices.

All but one story chosen was first published before 1990 (the dates were found via the Internet Speculative Fiction Database. Next, the stories chosen were mostly short in length (less than 200 pages long). Granted, the sample size is small, but I think I can conclude that SFAS members find the best stories to be those written before 1990 and are short in length.

What does this say for the SF/Fantasy market today? Probably not very good news, judging from the length or number of trilogies that populate the shelves nowadays. I also tend to find myself giving books that claim to be `Book X in the great new series by YYY' a miss.

What do the choices say about today's authors? Well, this is a murkier issue. One reason why we choose older writers may be because we're more comfortable with them in our youths when we first read the stories in the glow of freshness. So, we don't give newer writers more weight in our choices because they hadn't had time to settle into our minds as 'very good writers' yet.

Who knows, perhaps if we hold a meeting on the theme ten years from now, it will be books published in the 1990s who will be chosen and I can recycle this editorial with just date changes!

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