trudilibrarian's review
3.0
I realized I still had this anthology sitting on my currently reading shelf when I've been done with it since September. I didn't read the whole thing; the hardcore battle/military themes of the stories started to wear on me after awhile. While not completely my cup of tea, it is a pretty impressive collection of short stories from some of the genre's finest authors. This is why I'm not putting it on my 'abandoned' shelf, which implies it was too awful to finish. That's not the case at all.
I picked this up because there was one story I wanted to read in particular: 'The Survivor' by Walter F. Moudy - a very early example of the 'deadly games' scenario we've seen explode in popularity since The Hunger Games craze. I doubt Moudy's is the first published example of the 'fight to the death for public consumption' story, but it's getting pretty damn close I bet (if you know of something published even earlier, please let me know).
Moudy's 1965 story describes a televised battle between US and Russian (of course!) players during the 2050 Olympic War Games. Participants are in a pitched battle in an enclosed natural landscape arena where every bloody death is caught on camera and televised around the world until all of one side is killed. The losing side must pay restitution to the winners. This is a good story, made all the better when you think about its prescience of reality television that would come along some three decades later. No doubt Moudy was tapping into the rise of television coverage of the war in Vietnam. Already by 1963-64, images of the conflict were being regularly broadcast into American living rooms, coverage that would grow exponentially over the next few years.
The other memorable short story in this collection is 'Hero' by Joe W. Haldeman, an early version of his sci-fi, award-winning masterpiece [b:The Forever War|21611|The Forever War (The Forever War, #1)|Joe Haldeman|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1167322714s/21611.jpg|423]. If I'm grateful for picking up this collection at all, it's because it brought Haldeman and his book of interstellar war to my attention. I'm looking forward to it.
One piece of advice: if you do pick up this collection and have not read [b:Ender's Game|375802|Ender's Game (Ender's Saga, #1)|Orson Scott Card|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1316636769s/375802.jpg|2422333] (what are you waiting for?), avoid Orson Scott Card's short story of the same name because it contains serious spoilers for the full-length novel. Don't do it I tell you! Read the book instead.
That's all folks.
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