The Good New Stuff: Adventure in SF in the Grand Tradition

This is the second of two companion anthologies that chronicle the history of the SF adventure story. With this book, editor Gardner Dozois is attempting to disprove the old adage that "they don't write 'em like that anymore." Which, of course, they do, as writers like Peter F. Hamilton, Michael Swanwick, George Turner, and John Varley amply demonstrate in these pages. The selections here date from 1977 to 1998, although Dozois has limited himself by omitting subgenres such as cyberpunk, military SF, and even hard SF. While this makes the The Good New Stuff somewhat dubious as a historical overview of the adventure SF field, it allows Dozois to uncover some real gems that might otherwise have gone overlooked, including a couple of stories first published in the Brit-lit SF magazine Interzone. It's safe to say that in the hands of authors like Robert Reed, Walter Jon Williams, and Stephen Baxter, the grand tradition of SF is alive and well. --Craig E. Engler