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Classic Science Fiction Stories - Adam Roberts (Ed.) ***(*)

There are many interpretations of the word 'classic' - in the context of science fiction many would assume this referred to the 'golden age' of the 40s and 50s, but Adam Roberts (who knows his stuff) has plumped for what might otherwise be regarded as proto-SF - science fiction-like stories that predate the concept. The earliest here is Micromégas by Voltaire from 1752 and the latest Stanley Weinbaum's 1934 A Martian Odyssey.

Before we go any further, I ought to mention the physical book itself - when it arrived I felt a bit like someone who buys dolls' house furniture thinking it's the real thing. It looks like a big grown up book in its picture, but in reality it's tiny, less than 16cm in height. Admittedly not doll friendly, but uncomfortably small to hold (though it does fit in most pockets).

I really want to give it both three stars and five stars, so the final outcome is something in between. As someone with an interest in the history of science fiction, it's fascinating to be able to read something like Micromégas, which I have heard of many times but never actually seen. But as a reader of science fiction, practically everything pre-twentieth century in the book is somewhere on the scale between tedious and downright sleep-inducing. I have really enjoyed many of the short stories of H. G. Wells in the past, but the one that opens the book, The Star from 1897, is surely one of his least readable.

Standouts on still being passable stories for the reader include A Martian Odyssey, which portrays impressively alien aliens, while other indigestible yet fascinating contributions include Mary Shelley's The Mortal Immortal from 1833. I enjoyed Poe's 1844 story A Tale of the Ragged Mountains (though it felt more like fantasy than SF to me). Two more I'd pick out are Florence McLandburgh's 1876 The Automaton Ear and H. P. Lovecraft's 1927 The Colour out of Space. Both would have worked a lot better at half the length, but each had interesting ideas, despite stretching the science of the day to its limit. McLandburgh, with the idea that all sounds ever produced could be picked up (rather like an audio version of James Blish's Beep where all instantaneous transmissions throughout time are available in a single burst), seemed unaware of the dispersal of sound energy (and the impossibility of tuning in to a single historical sound).

In Lovecraft's better-known story, the idea of seeing a colour beyond human experience seemed to imply a misunderstanding of what colour is. Of course there can be colours we can't see - so in a sense there are novel colours... but the whole point is we can't see them. It was great to read this story, though, as I'd heard so much about Lovecraft without ever reading any of his work because I'd always mentally classified it as horror rather than SF. My only disappointment was it took 31 pages before we reached his trademark adjective, eldritch.

The inclusion of these stories made me think a little about the borderline between fantasy and science fiction. A story can still be science fiction if it gets the science a bit wrong, but if the scientific content doesn't make any sense at all it becomes fantasy. It's easy to see this distinction in superhero films. For example, while the origin story of Spider-Man is pure fantasy, there is quite a lot of bad science that could still be considered SF in his actions (for example, stopping a train with his web and body). But Superman is pure fantasy, with not a hint of scientific basis. McLandburgh probably slips in with the bad science proviso, but for me, although the Lovecraft story implies aliens, its detail tips it into fantasy.

Whether or not you will enjoy this book depends how important SF history is to you. If you are happy to endure stories with the pace of a snail because they are foundational to the development of the genre, you will definitely want a copy. If you expect the enjoyment you would get from a science fiction short story collection dating from the 1950s or later, you may well be disappointed.

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