Jonathan Strahan
Author of The New Space Opera
About the Author
Jonathan Strahan was born in 1964 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. He is an editor and publisher of science fiction. His family moved to Perth, Western Australia in 1968, and he graduated from the University of Western Australia with a Bachelor of Arts in 1986. In 1990 he co-founded Eidolon: The show more Journal of Australian Science Fiction and Fantasy, and worked on it as co-editor and co-publisher until 1999. He was also co-publisher of Eidolon Books which published Robin Pen's The Secret Life of Rubber-Suit Monsters, Howard Waldrop's Going Home Again, Storm Constantine's The Thorn Boy, and Terry Dowling's Blackwater Days. In 2015 he was nominated in the editor and anthology categories for the Locus Awards with the title Reach for Infinity. In 2018, he won the 2017 Aurealis Awards for the best Australian anthology for his book, Infinity Wars. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Image credit: Photo by Cat Sparx.
Series
Works by Jonathan Strahan
The Locus Awards: Thirty Years of the Best in Science Fiction and Fantasy (2004) — Editor — 272 copies
The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year Volume Eight (2014) — Editor; Introduction — 104 copies
The Year's Best Science Fiction Vol. 1: The Saga Anthology of Science Fiction 2020 (2020) — Editor — 89 copies
The Year's Best Science Fiction Vol. 2: The Saga Anthology of Science Fiction 2021 (2021) — Editor — 43 copies
Communications Breakdown: SF Stories about the Future of Connection (Twelve Tomorrows) (2023) — Editor — 14 copies
Subterranean Magazine Winter 2014 — Editor — 6 copies
Nejlepší science fiction a fantasy 2011 — Editor — 4 copies
Nejlepší science fiction a fantasy: 2010 — Editor — 2 copies
Associated Works
Locus Nr.492 2002.01 — Contributor — 1 copy
Questions Asked in the Belly of the World — Editor — 1 copy
Red Mother [novelette] — Editor — 1 copy
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Legal name
- Strahan, Jonathan
- Birthdate
- 1964
- Gender
- male
- Nationality
- Australia
- Birthplace
- Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK
- Places of residence
- Perth, Western Australia, Australia
- Education
- University of Western Australia
- Occupations
- editor
publisher - Organizations
- Eidolon
Locus - Awards and honors
- Locus Award Finalist (Editor, 2017)
Hugo Nominee (Best editor - short form, 2022) - Agent
- Howard Morhaim
Members
Reviews
Lists
Awards
You May Also Like
Associated Authors
Statistics
- Works
- 73
- Also by
- 9
- Members
- 7,400
- Popularity
- #3,302
- Rating
- 3.6
- Reviews
- 235
- ISBNs
- 209
- Languages
- 5
- Favorited
- 1
Anyway. This is a moderately chunky paperback at about 440 pages, although for that length there might be fewer stories than you'd expect, as many of them are fairly long, with I think at least a couple at or approaching novella length. As is common for this sort of thing, the editors are not particularly precious or pedantic about genre distinctions, with a number of stories here that could be perhaps more properly categorized as horror or fantasy than science fiction. (I find the inclusion of Neil Gaiman's Sherlock Holmes/Lovecraft mashup, "A Study in Emerald," particularly amusing on this front, as I think you could argue that it ticks off almost every genre except science fiction. Not that that's a complaint! I'd read that one before, but it'd been a while and I'd honestly forgotten just how clever it was, so it was nice to encounter it again.)
As usual, of course, notions of what constitutes the "best" of anything can vary enormously, and for me the contents here ranged from very good indeed to stuff that just left me cold. (Unfortunately, one of the latter, Vernor Vinge's "The Cookie Monster," which had a decent idea but an execution I found dull and unconvincing, was by far the longest one in the collection.)
It is, by the way, always kind of interesting to look for themes in these sorts of anthologies, and this one absolutely does have one, as the vast majority of these stories deal with the idea of exploitation in some way, from Paolo Bacigalupi's impressively disturbing story of young girls whose bodies are altered in horrific ways to amuse the rich to Susan Mosser's very pointed piece of social commentary about corporations who force people into indentured servitude for not being able to afford air. All of which, rather depressingly, makes the volume feel not at all dated and still very, very relevant.
It's probably also worth noting that some of the stories here have typos or weird formatting issues that make me wonder if they were poorly scanned in or possibly printed directly from emails. Then again, maybe that's about what one should expect from a book whose back cover blurb touts its main selling point as being "affordable"?… (more)