A nice collection overall. Unfortunately, many of the stories feel lacking, even amongst the better ones you might find yourself at a loss at the end of the reading, not sure if it succeeded in delivering its point across or not, while a couple others just feel plain gimmicky. Nonetheless, the couple of gems sprinkled in here will more than compensate for the few duds and the mediocrity of the rest.

Despite the awful title, this collection is full of great short stories. One of the goals of the collection is to question our conventional understandings of science fiction as a "genre," challenging the traditional division between literature, mainstream fiction, and science fiction, and many of the stories do an exemplary job of demonstrating the power and artistry of well-written science fiction. The introductory essay is also one of the best I have read about the status of science fiction as...

This is a collection interesting short fiction. The co-editors created it to illustrate how SF might have been seen had the genre been "absorbed" into the mainstream - at least for literary critics, reviewers, and devotees. To that end, most of these tales are different from the "classic" space opera, hard science, and even the SF-fantasy crossover stories that are so common.Personally, I liked the individual tales and the snippets of interviews with authors (cut up and scattered throughout the

I was reminded recently of the short story The Nine Billion Names of God by Carter Scholz and wanted to read it again. I found it in this collection and decided I may as well read the rest. Most of the rest aren't very good, but I would almost recommend the book just on the strength of that one story; it's really great. There rest aren't worth going out of your way for, but most of them have at least enough of something to hold your interest.Angeloume didn't do much for me, and I'm not really su...

I'll be honest, I mostly picked up this anthology to lay my hands on Le Guin's "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" in the wake of her death, as I'd never read it and was roundly admonished for that fact. And boy, Le Guin did not disappoint ... and happily, neither did the collection as a whole! With selections from Atwood and Willis and a number of other authors I love—as well as many I'd avoided, or hadn't heard of—this anthology quickly proved its value to me. If I were still teaching college...

Lots of interesting stories, some of them a little too dry/dense. Definitely liked the Saunders one written like a lab report. This collection makes a good case for taking science fiction "more seriously" (or viewing it as less of "pulp"/"niche" genre and more of a "literary pursuit) which is one of the editors goals, so, "kudos to you!", editors!

A collection of short stories with a unique twist - in 1974, science-fiction as a niche, as a group of people, had a chance to break out of its tropes and merge with the wider literary world. Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow was nominated for a Hugo! But instead, Rendezvous with Rama won. The chance was gone. But what if?This here collection unites SF-writers forays into 'regular' literature and 'regular' writers forays into literature, a world where SF isn't a weirdo genre with its own conventions a...

Kelly, and John Kessel, pull together a collection of stories by both writers associated with SF--Kelly and Kessel for instance--with other writers more associated with the mainstream--T. C. Boyle or Margaret Atwood. The ordering is more or less chronological and I would consider the selection very good. I think the hard and fast division between the literary ghetto and the mainstream has been breaking down for some time anyway. Writers like Michael Chabon or Joy Williams, widely respected, use

I don't think that this compilation of stories lives up to the editors' ambition of laying out the "secret history of science fiction." Or maybe I didn't understand the critical point of view they were arguing against.In any case, it's a pretty good collection that plays with the gray area between science fiction and Respectable Literature. I especially liked the Molly Gloss and Gene Wolfe stories.

Originally posted on Short Story Review:After reading John Kessel and Jim Kelly’s The Slipstream Anthology, I was sold on their taste in stories, so when I found The Secret History of Science Fiction, I picked it up with the expectation that their taste in science fiction would also mesh well with mine. I was mostly right. There are nineteen stories included in this collection as well as an introduction by the editors in which they discuss the “genrefication” of science fiction and its status as...

Not the best anthology I've ever read....some interesting selections, but on the whole my reaction was mostly "Meh"

I got this book for my birthday in May, 2013 but I set it aside initially because I had expected it to be an non-fiction historical account of the literary development of science fiction. Instead, it's a collection of short stories that bridge the gap between science fiction and literary fiction. Which, actually, is a really cool collection. So pretty soon I picked it up and gave it a read.Now, I'm an avid defender of genre fiction as a general rule. Part of this reflects weakness of character o...

This was a collection of stories that set out to examine the boundaries between "literature" and "genre". What makes a story science fiction? Why does that label automatically devalue the story in some circles? The authors chosen for the anthology are mostly not generally associated with scifi, so it may be an eye-opener for a lot of serious lit folks. Overall, the collection is very solid and highly recommended.

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2696038.htmlThis is an anthology of stories and writers which supposedly straddle the boundary between mainstream fiction and sf. I confess that I didn't really see the point of the question ("What if sf didn't exist as a genre, but was being written anyway?") but I did enjoy most of the stories. One or two I already knew ("The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas", "Salvador") but the one I particularly enjoyed, contra my own expectations (also contra other reviewers who...

"The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas," by Ursula K. Le Guin, 5 pg. (1973): 9.25- Much more impressive than my faded memory would have had me believe, that being that it's a riff off the Shirley Jackson “Lottery”, with the obvious variations in the victim's treatment. Instead, Le Guin—fittingly for the time and progressive literary movements of which she was a part—crafts a much more self-conscious, broadly implicatory, and (paradoxically) playful vision, in which it actually helps to know the twi...

This is one wonderful anthology. If you are into science fiction: read it. If you are not into sf but into literary fiction: read it.It stands exactly on the edge there, show-casting all the things that New Wave and its heirs have introduced into sf and let slip from sf into mainstream, navigating the sea gate between genre and literary, where the most interesting things grow, though often either overlooked (because people who read literary will not read anything with an sf label and keep insist...

Great collection of Science Fiction stories that confound, extend, and ultimately bring to question ideas about Sci-Fi as a genre that is necessarily separate from mainstream literature. All are good-- my favorites are "The Ones who Walk Away from Omelas" by Ursula K. Le Guin, "The Nine Billion Names of God" by Carter Scholz, and "The Hardened Criminals" by Jonathan Lethem.

Stories that crossover from science fiction to mainstream, these writing defy trends and cross genres. LeGuin, Wilhelm, Willis, Atwood, and Greg Wolfe are represented.In The Descent of Man, T.C. Boyle writes of a weird researcher at a Primate Center who goes ape for a resident, bringing him lice in her navel. Then the ape goes wild and the relationship ends badly.In the poem Homelanding, Margaret Atwood describes and alien who does not believe in the "take me to your leader" cliche:No, take me t...

I had forgotten about the Short Story.I studied English as a 3rd language at school. My teachers loved short stories and poetry because they fitted into the sparse hours allotted to them more easily than novels. Therefore the blame is entirely on me: nearly all the fiction I have ever read since school consists of book-length stories. One notable exception that should have woken me up but didn't, is the marvellous bundle Vizio di forma by Primo Levi.The Secret History of Science Fiction is an an...

I'm probably the ideal reader for this kind of anthology, since a lot of my favorite fiction is stylistically interesting, intelligent, and a little weird (more is always better). While it's not quite perfect (exclusions of certain influential writers for inclusions of the editors?), and the introductory essay brings up some contentious issues (which it clearlymeans to do), overall quality was high. All the stories were new to me, though I imagine they are familiar to those who read anthologies