Masterpieces: The Best Science Fiction of the Twentieth Century

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More About This Book

Overview

An overview of the best science fiction short stories of the 20th century as selected and evaluated by critically-acclaimed author Orson Scott Card.

Featuring stories from the genre's greatest authors:

Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Robert A. Heinlein, Ursula K. Le Guin, Ray Bradbury, Frederik Pohl, Harlan Ellison, George Alec Effinger, Brian W. Aldiss, William Gibson & Michael Swanwick, Theodore Sturgeon, Larry Niven, Robert Silverberg, Harry Turtledove, James Blish, George R. R. Martin, James Patrick Kelly, Karen Joy Fowler, Lloyd Biggle, Jr., Terry Bisson, Poul Anderson, John Kessel, R.A. Lafferty, C.J. Cherryh, Lisa Goldstein, and Edmond Hamilton

Editorial Reviews

VOYA
The giants of the genre contribute to this highly accessible collection of twenty-seven science fiction short stories. The text is arranged into three chronological sections labeled The Golden Age, which spans the beginning of the century to the mid-sixties; The New Wave, which covers the decade from the mid-sixties to mid-seventies; and The Media Generation, which takes readers from the mid-seventies to the present. Editor and writer Card, winner of several Hugo and Nebula awards, bases his selections in this auspicious-sounding volume on one simple subjective criteria: He chooses stories that he loved when he first read them and that, when reread, he still loved and admired. Replete with representative tales from the legendary Asimov, Heinlein, Bradbury, Clark, Gibson, Le Guin, Pohl, Niven, Ellison, and Silverberg, this collection attempts to introduce readers not to the authors' greatest hits but to some of their best but lesser-known works, and it is successful in almost every case. Because the book contains Card's own favorites and not the best stories based on critical acclaim, the book's subtitle is a bit presumptuous and could inspire debate among devotees. Although not the best science fiction of the century, the book definitely is a collection of works by the century's best science fiction writers. It is a pleasure to read each selection's introduction that expertly encapsulates the author's career and places the story in its proper historical context. This book is a recommended purchase for all public and school libraries. VOYA CODES: 4Q 2P M J S A/YA (Better than most, marred only by occasional lapses; For the YA with a special interest in the subject; Middle School, definedas grades 6 to 8; Junior High, defined as grades 7 to 9; Senior High, defined as grades 10 to 12; Adult and Young Adult). 2001, Ace, 422p,
— Stefani Koorey
Kirkus Reviews
Card (Shadow of the Hegemon, 2000, etc.), science fiction's popular neo-pastoral writer, picks his 27 favorites of the century-most of which are undisputed classics, even if Poul Anderson's "Call Me Joe," Brian Aldiss's "Who Can Replace Man?" and Arthur C. Clarke's "Nine Billion Names of God" have been included in so many best-of and college textbook collections that they are almost canonical. Others are good, but not necessarily representative of their authors' finest work. Card reaches back to the 1930s with Edmund Hamilton's silly alien-encounter story, "Devolution," ignoring the author's more significant space-opera stories. He includes a charmingly sentimental Isaac Asimov robot tale, "Robot Dreams," instead of the immortal "Nightfall." Robert Heinlein's gimmicky time-travel paradox "All You Zombies" gets in instead of his tear-jerking "The Green Hills of Earth." Ursula K. Le Guin's "Those Who Walk Away From Omelas" pales beside the blinding eccentricity of R.A. Lafferty in "Eurema's Dam," though Card leaves out anything by other paradigm-shifting iconoclasts like Avram Davidson, Samuel Delany, Roger Zelazny, and Gene Wolfe. He nods at major trends: Harlan Ellison's rebel-without-a-clue experimentalism (" ‘Repent Harlequin!' said the Ticktockman"), cyberpunk ("Dogfight," from William Gibson and Michael Swanwick), neo-pastoralism (Terry Bisson's sly "Bears Discover Fire"), and alternate-history (Harry Turtledove's "The Road Not Taken"), ending with George Alec Effinger's comforting, mystical twist on the search for intelligent life ("One"). In his introduction, Card explains that, rather than mulling over what best represents the authors, what stories were most influential in thefield, or what might be the criteria of a masterpiece, he merely picked stories he liked when he first read them and liked again when he thought about collecting them. Duh?

Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9780441011339
  • Publisher: Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated
  • Publication date: 3/2/2004
  • Edition description: Reprint
  • Pages: 432
  • Sales rank: 356,133
  • Product dimensions: 5.84 (w) x 8.98 (h) x 0.83 (d)

Meet the Author

Orson Scott Card
Orson Scott Card

Orson Scott Card is a winner of multiple Hugo and Nebula awards for short fiction and novels. His novel, Ender’s Game, is considered one of the classics of the genre and is currently being developed for film. Along with subsequent novels in the Ender’s series (Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, Children of the Mind, and Ender’s Shadow), Card is also the author of the contemporary novels Lost Boys, Treasure Box, Homebody; The Homecoming Saga, including The Memory of Earth, The Call of Earth, The Ships of Earth, Earthfall, and Earthborn; an alternate history novel, Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus; and the American fantasy series The Tales of Alvin Maker: Seventh Son, Red Prophet, Prentice Alvin, Alvin Journeyman, and Heartfire.

A respected playwright, Card has seen a dozen of his plays produced in regional theater. He has also taught writing courses at several universities and workshops, including, most recently, a novel-writing course at Pepperdine.

Card currently lives in Greensboro, North Carolina, with his wife and five children.

Biography

Any discussion of Orson Scott Card's work must necessarily begin with religion. A devout Mormon, Card believes in imparting moral lessons through his fiction, a stance that sometimes creates controversy on both sides of the fence. Some Mormons have objected to the violence in his books as being antithetical to the Mormon message, while his conservative political activism has gotten him into hot water with liberal readers.

Whether you agree with his personal views or not, Card's fiction can be enjoyed on many different levels. And with the amount of work he's produced, there is something to fit the tastes of readers of all ages and stripes. Averaging two novels a year since 1979, Card has also managed to find the time to write hundreds of audio plays and short stories, several stage plays, a television series concept, and a screenplay of his classic novel Ender's Game. In addition to his science fiction and fantasy novels, he has also written contemporary fiction, religious, and nonfiction works.

Card's novel that has arguably had the biggest impact is 1985's Hugo and Nebula award-winner Ender's Game. Ender's Game introduced readers to Andrew "Ender" Wiggin, a young genius faced with the task of saving the Earth. Ender's Game is that rare work of fiction that strikes a chord with adults and young adult readers alike. The sequel, Speaker for the Dead, also won the Hugo and Nebula awards, making Card the only author in history to win both prestigious science-fiction awards two years in a row.

In 2000, Card returned to Ender's world with a "parallel" novel called Ender's Shadow. Ender's Shadow retells the events of Ender's Game from the perspective of Julian "Bean" Delphinki, Ender's second-in-command. As Sam to Ender's Frodo, Bean is doomed to be remembered as an also-ran next to the legendary protagonist of the earlier novel. In many ways, Bean is a more complex and intriguing character than the preternaturally brilliant Ender, and his alternate take on the events of Ender's Game provide an intriguing counterpoint to fans of the original series.

In addition to moral issues, a strong sense of family pervades Card's work. Card is a devoted family man and father to five (!) children. In the age of dysfunctional family literature, Card bristles at the suggestion that a positive home life is uninteresting. "How do you keep ‘good parents' from being boring?" he once said. "Well, in truth, the real problem is, how do you keep bad parents from being boring? I've seen the same bad parents in so many books and movies that I'm tired of them."

Critical appreciation for Card's work often points to the intriguing plotlines and deft characterizations that are on display in Card's most accomplished novels. Card developed the ability to write believable characters and page-turning plots as a college theater student. To this day, when he writes, Card always thinks of the audience first. "It's the best training in the world for a writer, to have a live audience," he says. "I'm constantly shaping the story so the audience will know why they should care about what's going on."

Card brought Bean back in 2005 for the fourth and final novel in the Shadow series: Shadow of the Giant. The novel presented some difficulty for the writer. Characters who were relatively unimportant when the series began had moved to the forefront, and as a result, Card knew that the ending he had originally envisioned would not be enough to satisfy the series' fans.

Although the Ender and Shadow series deal with politics, Card likes to keep his personal political opinions out of his fiction. He tries to present the governments of futuristic Earth as realistically as possible without drawing direct analogies to our current political climate. This distance that Card maintains between the real world and his fictional worlds helps give his novels a lasting and universal appeal.

    1. Hometown:
      Greensboro, North Carolina
    1. Date of Birth:
      August 24, 1951
    2. Place of Birth:
      Richland, Washington
    1. Education:
      B.A. in theater, Brigham Young University, 1975; M.A. in English, University of Utah, 1981
    2. Website:
      http://www.hatrack.com

Table of Contents

Introduction 1
Call Me Joe 7
"All You Zombies -" 36
Tunesmith 47
A Saucer of Loneliness 80
Robot Dreams 91
Devolution 97
The Nine Billion Names of God 110
A Work of Art 116
Dark They Were, and Golden-Eyed 130
"Repent, Harlequin!" Said the Ticktockman 145
Eurema's Dam 156
Passengers 166
The Tunnel under the World 177
Who Can Replace a Man? 203
The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas 212
Inconstant Moon 218
Sandkings 243
The Road Not Taken 276
Dogfight 297
Face Value 316
Pots 327
Snow 351
Rat 364
Bears Discover Fire 375
A Clean Escape 384
Tourists 396
One 408

Customer Reviews

Average Rating 3.5
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Sort by: Showing all of 3 Customer Reviews

  • Posted December 1, 2010

    Where is the Table of Contents?

    When I am looking to purchase an anthology, I ALWAYS look at the Table fo Contents. This information should be presented on the "Product Details Page" along with everything else. This is getting only 1 star as I do not know what's inside the cover!

    1 out of 3 people found this review helpful.

    Was this review helpful? Yes  NoThank you for your feedback.   Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.

  • Posted December 9, 2008

    more from this reviewer

    Excellent anthology

    This latest ¿best ... of the century¿ actually consists of twenty-six tales from the second half of the twentieth century and one story from the 1940s. Either that means science fiction matured considerably after World War II, the editor is too young to appreciate the early years, or the anthology should be labeled differently. In either case, the contributions are all aces and represent the wide gamut of the genre divided into three classifications: ¿The Golden Age, ¿The New Wave¿, and ¿The Media Generation¿. Though I enjoyed the other two periods, my favorite stories are from ¿The New Wave¿ because I cut my molars on several of these including having read some while working on a masters thesis involving science fiction. Regardless of nostalgia or other reasons for personal taste, each entry is powerful and shows how enlightening the genre can be when written by masters like those who rendered entries to MASTERPIECES: THE BEST SCIENCE FICTION OF THE CENTURY.

    Harriet Klausner

    1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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  • Posted June 28, 2011

    Table of contents is in the sample...

    The previous reviewer obviously didn't download the sample because the ToC is right in there. This is a great compilation of science fiction by many great authors and is definitely worth reading. The anthology included Heinlen and Asimov works I hadn't read before which is what drew me to it, and I discovered many great authors I'd never heard of before so this book opened up many new worlds for me.

    Was this review helpful? Yes  NoThank you for your feedback.   Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.
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