Anthologia

There’s a huge book store conglomeration chain just a few miles down the road from my house. The only real reason I go there is that it has a used book section – rarity of rarities! Despite being a relatively shallow and not too productive source of cool finds, I’m there often because of its location. My real treasure troves are a local shop devoted solely to used books that’s a half-hour hike down the toll highways and a pair of smaller used book shops in an adjacent state near where my folks live.

Anyway, I’m at the conglomerate once a week or so and on occasion I do find a treat in their used book section. Not lately, though. Lately, though, I’ve been noticing a trend that’s starting to grow on me. I’m finding a lot of SF short story anthologies. They’re usually titled Orbit-number-something or Universe-number-something or the generic Years Best SF [short stories]. I’m thinking of delving into these for a number of reasons.

First of all, I read them as a kid. I distinctly remember both the Orbit and Universe series in my local library way back when. For the life of me, though, I can’t recall which ones aside from the fact they were probably mid- to late-70s volumes. So if I decide to pick up these books (they’re usually about five bucks a pop), not only will I be exposing myself to some well-written and famous SF stories, there might even be an element of surprised familiarity.

Second, I do need to expose myself to some quality short stories. I’ve sent out a handful of my own originals, all to rejection. Primarily I’ve been reading either good or nostalgic SF novels over the past decade or so, at a rate of about two a month. I’m somewhat lacking in feeding my mind with good SF short stories, though, having really only read maybe two dozen since I started blogging three years back.

Third, I have quite the backlog of SF short story anthologies on the shelf, staring balefully at the back of my head as I write this. There’s some high-quality Stanislaw Lem, Arthur C. Clarke, a trio of Bradburys. There’s an anthology called Alpha 6 edited by Robert Silverberg (there must be Alphas 1 through 5 out there, no?). And I have two by Harlan Ellison – Shatterday and the infamous Dangerous Visions, both demanding a digestion. Plus about a half-dozen lesser known short story collections by lesser known SF authors.

I have a serious reservation about SF short stories. Quintessentially, I read SF to enter a different world, a world that’s (hopefully) intriguing, riveting, fascinating, dangerous, different, and (maybe) better than the world I currently occupy. On all different levels – emotional, intellectual, guttural, sometimes even spiritual. The problem is that this is seldom actualized. Perhaps 5 - 10 percent of the time. The rest is still reading for escape, but it’s shallow reading, soon forgotten after the cover is closed for the final time.

Now, when one is working one’s way through a 400-page novel, a lot of time is wasted when one realizes that the current work falls into that 90 - 95 percent “dud” category. Time wasted, but time wasted in this way is preferable to time wasted in a myriad of other ways. I probably derive the same quality of pleasure that someone else may watching their 1,874th regular-season major league baseball game. So with reading an SF novel the danger lies in being stuck in a dud for the long haul.

The exact converse is true with a short story. What if the short story one is reading falls splendidly in that rarest of rare 1 percent? A few hundred words into the story one finds oneself in that intriguing, riveting, fascinating, dangerously different better world. Then, after five or six pages – the story ends! Ahh! One feels robbed. As for myself, I would rather risk a purgatory week or two in a mediocre novel to find that rare gem than find a rare gem and only live in that world for a half-hour or so.

Make sense?

However, I’m sensing continental drift in my reading navigation. I think I’ll hit some of those anthologies, and maybe pick up a few Orbits and Universes on my next trip to the book store. After Easter, I suppose, in about five or six weeks.

Don’t worry; I’ll keep you all posted, since now I’ve done gone put you all on the edge of your seats.