Fiction Factory
May 22, 2008No, I’m not going to dig out my vinyl copy of Throw the Warped Wheel Out!
I got hold of a book called The Fiction Factory which is a collection of collaborative stories by Jack Dann with authors such as Gardner Dozois, Michael Swanwick & Bary Malzberg. I’m a big fan of Swanwick, like Dann a lot for his early novels, and also own 2 or 3 collections of short stories by Dozois…
They were all written a while ago but some of them are crackers! Annoyingly, though, I already own Slow Dancing Through Time, which is a similar title featuring stories co-written by Gardner Dozois. Also great stuff!
The trouble is, about half the Dann book consists of stories co-written with Dozois, and thus already in his book! Bah!
Anyway, everyone involved (excepting Jack Haldeman, who’s died in the interim) wrote fascinating introductions, etc. for all the stories and the remaining stories I hadn’t read before were very good, if not for the squeamish in some cases (Zebrowski). Thought the tone of the ending of Cities (Dann & Swanwick) let it down a little, and Barry Malzberg (indeed, all of them to some degree) was still writing stories that were New Wave at heart…
Excellent collection; just wish I didn’t already have so much of it!
And I’ve never heard of any of those writers you talk about.
I hate it too when I’m buying a book with shortstories while expecting new stuff and only finding old one.
But still the cover of that book is beautiful!
The Fiction Factory cover isn’t so nice…
Gardner Dozois is probably the pre-eminent sf editor of the last 30 years – he was the top sf magazine editor for years and is noted now for editing the annual ‘Year’s Best SF’ doorstop, now in it’s 25th year!
Perversely, of course, I prefer his own stories!
The others are all well-respected authors who have had varying degrees of commercial success; Michael Swanwick is maybe the best known of them…
You’d like some of the stories, I’m sure.