Reviews for The outer limits

The average rating for The outer limits based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2008-03-29 00:00:00 John Kovarik Back in 2002 or 2003, when I was interested in developing a college course in science fiction, I borrowed this book by interlibrary loan to examine it as a possible textbook, knowing that Norton had a reputation for producing quality anthologies. This one was a distinct disappointment, however. Le Guin, who apparently dominated the editing process though she did have assistance from a couple of academics, confined her selection to American and Canadian works written after 1960 (the period of the genre's "maturity," according to her), which excluded a sizeable body of worthwhile material from consideration. While the subtitle suggests that this was by the publisher's design, as I recall the copy I read did NOT yet have the subtitle, indicating that it was originally intended to be one of Norton's usual broad-based anthologies, and that the limited actual scope was probably Le Guin's own decision, based on what part of the SF field she deemed worth covering (and her introduction also suggested that interpretation). Her tastes also ran heavily to "New Wave" and "experimental" works that I don't care for and wouldn't have selected. Out of 67 selections, I've determined by going over the contents note in World Catalog that I remember reading 20 of them (two of them I'd actually read before) in full, and I didn't like even all of those, though I did like --or at least appreciate; some aren't meant to be the kind of thing you "like"-- most of them. A number of others I started and quit, or skimmed and wasn't impressed with; some I didn't examine at all (and some didn't stay in my memory). For some time, I've had the book sitting on my "being-read-intermittently" shelf, intending to go back and read it so I could review it here. But I've recently concluded that going to the trouble of getting it by interlibrary loan, and going through the time and torture of reading the amount of verbiage here that I wouldn't enjoy, simply isn't worth it! So, it's going to the "started-not-finished" shelf. BUT, there are some absolute masterpieces of the SF genre here, that deserve to be known and read by serious readers anywhere; so I thought it might be appropriate to share this review of what I did read from this collection. One of the most outstanding was the late Octavia Butler's "Speech Sounds," a unique post-apocalyptic scenario: here, civilization has been destroyed by a virus that causes damage to the part of the brain that processes speech and writing, eliminating all verbal communication. Some readers might fixate on the more sensationalistic aspects of the story, which has some violence (the heroine packs a pistol, and knows how to use it) and unmarried sex --though in fairness to the characters, one might ask how people who can't communicate verbally could exchange married vows-- but the more significant aspect of the story is its positive message and thought-provoking content. In "Lucky Strike," Kim Stanley Robinson delivers a powerful alternate-world vision of the Hiroshima bombing mission in World War II, which ought to be required reading for every American who mouths shibboleths about how the mass slaughter was "necessary" so as to "save American lives." Canadian Jewish writer Phyllis Gottlieb's "Tauf Aleph" is another masterpiece, a wonderful testimony to enduring faith that can be appreciated by Christians as well as by Jews. Also, Poul Anderson's "Kyrie" is a haunting story with deliberate religious overtones --Kyrie is New Testament Greek for "Lord," and the convent setting at the end isn't accidental. (Personally, I'm not convinced that the supposed "hard" science of black holes here is valid --but it doesn't have to be for me to enjoy the story, since I'm more into "soft" SF anyway. :-) ) I'm not generally a fan of Suzette Haden Elgin, but "For the Sake of Grace," set on an an Islamic-like world, is a wonderful story that expresses her strong feminist message without the male-bashing she exhibits elsewhere. Though they're very dark tales, Howard Waldrop's "The World, as We Know 't," Avram Davidson's grim vision of xenophobia and mindless traditionalism, "The House the Blakeneys Built," and Mike Resnick's "Kirinyaga," (ultimately the title story of an interrelated story collection exploring the same social experiment) are extremely well-written, hard-hitting, evocative stories. (I'm not too sure of the scientific basis underlying Waldrop's story either, however.) Other favorites here include "Balanced Ecology" by James H. Schmitz (a writer I've got to read more of sometime!); Simak's "Over the River and Through the Woods," which well illustrates the "pastoral" quality of much of his writing; Andrew Weiner's "Distant Signals;" Nancy Kress' "Out of All Them Bright Stars;" and R. A. Lafferty's wryly humorous "Nine Hundred Grandmothers." Sturgeon's "Tandy's Story" is a good enough piece of fiction, but not as substantial as his "Thunder and Roses," which would have made a better selection --but which was written back in the benighted pre-1960 period that Le Guin dismissed. Orson Scott Card is represented by a story from his The Folk of the Fringe collection, "America," and Zenna Henderson by one of her non-People stories, "As Simple as That" (which isn't a bad story in itself, but there's a reason why the People stories are more popular). Greg Bear's "Schrodinger's Plague," IMO, mainly serves to demonstrate why Schrodinger's theory is absurd --though that's almost certainly not why Bear wrote it. :-) Silverberg's "Good News from the Vatican" is well-written, but fails to understand the crucial distinction between artificial intelligence and human response to God which a Catholic writer (or any Christian writer, probably) would make, and which Anthony Boucher, for instance, does make in "The Quest for St. Aquin." Two stories I didn't get into here were Damon Knight's "Handler" and one of Joanna Russ' Whileaway stories (though here at least she refrains from referring to males as "apes with human faces" and "ten-foot toads," as she does in "When It Changed"). In summation, if anyone reads this book, these comments might at least provide a sort of preliminary map for exploration. As a shorter, but much better, general collection of work in the genre, though, I'd recommend The Oxford Book of Science Fiction Stories.

Review # 2 was written on 2020-08-27 00:00:00 Dennis Lachase 850 pages, 67 stories and a lengthy introduction - I don't feel like I read this so much as I engaged in combat with it and finally won. There are some wonderful stories here, but also a surprising large number of stories that I don't much like. The majority of the stories are good, I think. However, for a book that is described on the dust jacket as "The very best...North American Science Fiction, 1960-1990," this falls far short. Goodreads reviewer Jeff, far more ambitious than I, has reviewed and rated each individual story. I found referring to this helpful, and other readers might as well. Some of the stories in the book do not seem to me to be science fiction. Perhaps reading them again might change my mind. They are: "The Winter Flies" - Fritz Leiber "Night-Rise" - Katherine MacLean "Schwarzchild Radius" - Connie Willis (I am uncertain about whether this is science fiction or not) "Half-Life" - Paul Preuss "Aunt Parnetta's Electric Blisters" - Diane Glancy Ms. Le Guin's "Introduction" is somewhat overlong. I wish that her comments about individual stories were used as introductions or afterwords to the stories themselves rather than just heaped together. Also, she makes some odd choices about proper names. On page 25 alone, she refers to three science fiction authors by versions of their names that I do not believe the authors themselves customarily used: "S. R. Delany" for Samuel R. Delany; "Robert Shaw" for Bob Shaw; and "Algirdas Jonas Budrys" for Algis Budrys. I was amused by the repeated quoting from Karl Kroeber, whom Le Guin did not identify as her brother. The stories that I particularly like are: "Alpha Ralpha Boulevard" - Cordwainer Smith* "Tandy's Story" - Theodore Sturgeon "The House the Blakeneys Built" - Avram Davidson "Over the River and Through the Woods" - Clifford D. Simak "Comes Now the Power" - Roger Zelazny "The Winter Flies" - Fritz Leiber "High Weir" - Samuel R. Delaney* "Kyrie" - Poul Anderson "For the Sake of Grace" - Suzette Haden Elgin "Gather Blue Roses" - Pamela Sargent "The Women Men Don't See" - James Tiptree, Jr.* "The Mountains of Sunset, the Mountains of Dawn" - Vonda N. McIntyre "Tauf Aleph" - Phyllis Gotlieb "...the World, as we Know 't" - Howard Waldrop "Speech Sounds" - Octavia Butler "The Lucky Strike" - Kim Stanley Robinson* "Interlocking Pieces" - Molly Gloss "The Lake Was Full of Artificial Things" - Karen Joy Fowler "We See Things Differently" - Bruce Sterling "And the Angels Sing" - Kate Wilhelm The starred stories are the ones that I especially like. I have had a problem deciding about what to rate this book. The best parts are superb; the worst are quite poor. I have never previously noted that I would like to assign a book a rating with a number of stars that included half a star. I would assign this three and a half stars, but since that is not possible, I am giving three stars.