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Mindblowing SF stories
Aug. 6th, 2009 06:36 pmSo I was thinking a little bit about "mindblowing" stories because of seeing Matthew Cheney's list here. I don't really care that much about the controversy; as far as I can tell "Mammoth" does not necessarily mean "comprehensive" (I own the Mammoth Book of Fantasy, which is not at all comprehensive), or even really anything at all. As far as I can tell from the table of contents, none of which are stories I actually found mindblowing, I suspect it's just that Mammoth Book of Mindblowing SF sounded better than Book of Friends of Editor That Would Be Willing to Give Him Cheap Reprint Rights, which is what it actually looks like to me (and would explain the skewing against authors, women and POC and otherwise, that I actually think have written mindblowing SF stories).
In addition to the Butler, Chiang, Kress, LeGuin, Moore, Tiptree, and Willis stories that Matthew Cheney names, I thought offhand of the following (note that almost all my good SF anthologies are in NC, so I'm sure I'm forgetting some good ones). Note that these are all stories I found mindblowing at some point in my life (possibly not this one).
Mountains of Mourning (Bujold)
The Dead Lady of Clown Town (Cordwainer Smith)
Pots (C.J. Cherryh)
Salvage (Orson Scott Card)
I'm sure some story by Alfred Best should go here
Piecework (David Brin)
(I adore Zenna Henderson and Tanith Lee, but I wouldn't call anything I've read by them mindblowing SF. Same with Cheney's Delany, Fowler, Goldstein, Murphy, Russ, and Wilhem -- I've read them, and liked many of them, but maybe didn't get to them at quite the right point in my life, or something.)
(Restricting to hard SF would, I think, mostly restrict my list to the Bujold and Brin, and Tiptree.) He was explicitly trying to make a list of non-white-males, and I wasn't, but notably I got two on my short list anyway, not counting that I would definitely have put Tiptree and Willis on my list if he hadn't (I am ashamed to say that I probably would have forgotten Butler, even though I think several of her stories are pretty darn amazing).
Anyhow. My real question is the following: more mindblowing SF short stories I Must Read?
In addition to the Butler, Chiang, Kress, LeGuin, Moore, Tiptree, and Willis stories that Matthew Cheney names, I thought offhand of the following (note that almost all my good SF anthologies are in NC, so I'm sure I'm forgetting some good ones). Note that these are all stories I found mindblowing at some point in my life (possibly not this one).
Mountains of Mourning (Bujold)
The Dead Lady of Clown Town (Cordwainer Smith)
Pots (C.J. Cherryh)
Salvage (Orson Scott Card)
I'm sure some story by Alfred Best should go here
Piecework (David Brin)
(I adore Zenna Henderson and Tanith Lee, but I wouldn't call anything I've read by them mindblowing SF. Same with Cheney's Delany, Fowler, Goldstein, Murphy, Russ, and Wilhem -- I've read them, and liked many of them, but maybe didn't get to them at quite the right point in my life, or something.)
(Restricting to hard SF would, I think, mostly restrict my list to the Bujold and Brin, and Tiptree.) He was explicitly trying to make a list of non-white-males, and I wasn't, but notably I got two on my short list anyway, not counting that I would definitely have put Tiptree and Willis on my list if he hadn't (I am ashamed to say that I probably would have forgotten Butler, even though I think several of her stories are pretty darn amazing).
Anyhow. My real question is the following: more mindblowing SF short stories I Must Read?
