drewsof's review
4.0
A stirring, if idiosyncratic, collection -- beautifully designed as ever by the team at Hingston & Olsen.
Rebecca Romney's introduction makes clear that while this collection is about science fiction, not all of these stories easily fit into that categorization. These are stories that, in one way or another, made an accurate prediction about 2020... be it as simple as "women in science!" or as stirringly sudden as "everybody wears masks outside" -- but while several of them lean hard into the most speculative of areas, others are more complicated in that regard. What's more, they're all at least 20+ years old (the oldest, circa 1836, being closer to 200 years old) and while that's part of the fun, there's also something off-putting about the ways in which so many other aspects of these stories are *wrong* about our present.
Still, the right/wrong dichotomy is the wrong way to engage with this box. I read these stories over more than a month and taking time between them was important in allowing me to appreciate the wildly different tones and voices present here. I was particularly fond of the latter additions (James Blish's "We All Die Naked" is a story I need to read the rest of, immediately; and the inclusion of an excerpt about Make America Great Again from "Parable of the Talents" is as chilling as ever) but I also appreciated the historical scope. Including Mark Twain and Mary Griffith (who I'd never heard of before, but who was writing sci-fi in 1836! wild!) makes for a larger sense of American interactions with these issues -- and also, you need a moment to let those older stories sink in and settle, their tones being so very different from anything being published in the last sixty-seventy years.
Anyway, I could go on forever but instead I'll just say: this is another beautiful collection from H&O that may only appeal to a narrow swath of readers but if it *does* appeal to you, why, get on it!
Rebecca Romney's introduction makes clear that while this collection is about science fiction, not all of these stories easily fit into that categorization. These are stories that, in one way or another, made an accurate prediction about 2020... be it as simple as "women in science!" or as stirringly sudden as "everybody wears masks outside" -- but while several of them lean hard into the most speculative of areas, others are more complicated in that regard. What's more, they're all at least 20+ years old (the oldest, circa 1836, being closer to 200 years old) and while that's part of the fun, there's also something off-putting about the ways in which so many other aspects of these stories are *wrong* about our present.
Still, the right/wrong dichotomy is the wrong way to engage with this box. I read these stories over more than a month and taking time between them was important in allowing me to appreciate the wildly different tones and voices present here. I was particularly fond of the latter additions (James Blish's "We All Die Naked" is a story I need to read the rest of, immediately; and the inclusion of an excerpt about Make America Great Again from "Parable of the Talents" is as chilling as ever) but I also appreciated the historical scope. Including Mark Twain and Mary Griffith (who I'd never heard of before, but who was writing sci-fi in 1836! wild!) makes for a larger sense of American interactions with these issues -- and also, you need a moment to let those older stories sink in and settle, their tones being so very different from anything being published in the last sixty-seventy years.
Anyway, I could go on forever but instead I'll just say: this is another beautiful collection from H&O that may only appeal to a narrow swath of readers but if it *does* appeal to you, why, get on it!
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