The Mammoth book of fantasy all-time greats Book

This anthology really deserves 3.5 stars but i don't want to round up in this case.

it's a huge collection, which i really liked, and some of the authors i'd never heard of before really surprised me and i loved their work. also to my surprise i've actually read quite a few of the stories before, unbeknownst to me, since they weren't by the authors names who i recognized straight off.

i don't think the editors did a good job at all. that's my problem. you have such a huge repertoire to choose from, even back when the book was published, and these are the stories you choose from authors such as pkd and ellison and tanith lee to throw in here? REALLY? le guin i can understand, as the more i read her work the less i like anything she writes. but i also feel like many of the stories didn't even belong, as they were neither sci-fi or fantasy but bizarre instead. and even when this book was published i can think of other authors of the genres who won the same awards who would have made far better replacements for some of those published.

i felt it odd that the editors felt like reaching so far back into the repertoires of these authors and their works, avoiding at all costs anything remotely modern even if it fit the criteria better and was better written. just because it's old doesn't mean it's good. ground-breaking perhaps, but not necessarily better.

but i did like so many of the stories, so i can't knock the whole book. i have a new host of authors to look to for other reading material, which is why i even bother with short story collections anyway.