From Booklist
Gr. 7-12. A fine lineup of authors, including Orson Scott Card, Philip K. Dick, Steven Gould, Connie Willis, and Jane Yolen, distinguishes this collection of short stories that first appeared in science fiction magazines. The most recent story, Greg van Eekhout's "Will You Be an Astronaut?" features a Mexican astronaut named Antonio in a future when all astronauts come from Central and South America and a place called the "North American Diaspora." Other stories conjure up a world in which children can divorce their parents, a four-dimensional boy who exists in a three-dimensional world, and an explanation for baseball's development on Mars. There is something for everyone--adventure, comedy, horror, satire, suspense, and whimsy. Especially noteworthy is Terry Bisson's "They're Made Out of Meat," about aliens who visit Earth and are astonished by how much "sentient meat" have managed to accomplish. Science fiction fans will enjoy this solid collection of some of the best the genre has to offer. Ed Sullivan
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Book Description
A new generation of science fiction fans is at hand. A new generation that is curious, smart, audacious, and experimental. It is for them that Patrick Nielsen Hayden-winner of the World Fantasy Award for Best Anthology - has selected these stories from the thousands published by contemporary SF writers over the past two decades.
Here are writers such as Philip K. Dick, Orson Scott Card, Jane Yolen, Greg Bear, Kim Stanley Robinson, Steven Gould, Connie Willis, Spider Robinson, and many more. Here is a careening adventure along the outside of a tower looming miles above the ground, and a tale of desperate survival on the deadly surface of the Moon. Here is a world in which children divorce their parents, and the story of a four-dimensional boy in a three-dimensional world. Here are future young people rebuilding after terrible disasters, and here is a story of the future development of baseball-on Mars.
Nightmarish or whimsical, irreverent or swashbuckling, each of these stories is an adventure in imagination. Journey from the here and now into New Skies.
Inside Flap Copy
A new generation of science fiction fans is at hand. A new generation that is curious, smart, audacious, and experimental. It is for them that Patrick Nielsen Hayden-winner of the World Fantasy Award for Best Anthology - has selected these stories from the thousands published by contemporary SF writers over the past two decades.
Here are writers such as Philip K. Dick, Orson Scott Card, Jane Yolen, Greg Bear, Kim Stanley Robinson, Steven Gould, Connie Willis, Spider Robinson, and many more. Here is a careening adventure along the outside of a tower looming miles above the ground, and a tale of desperate survival on the deadly surface of the Moon. Here is a world in which children divorce their parents, and the story of a four-dimensional boy in a three-dimensional world. Here are future young people rebuilding after terrible disasters, and here is a story of the future development of baseball-on Mars.
Nightmarish or whimsical, irreverent or swashbuckling, each of these stories is an adventure in imagination. Journey from the here and now into New Skies.
About the Author
Patrick Nielsen Hayden is Senior Editor, Manager of Science Fiction, at Tor Books. He has worked in the science fiction field as an editor, reviewer, publisher, and in other capacities, since the mid-1970s. The Washington Post has called him "one of the most literate and historically aware editors in science fiction."
His original anthology series Starlight has won the World Fantasy Award, while individual stories from it have won the Hugo, Nebula, and other awards. His other anthologies include the YA reprint collections New Skies and New Magics and Up. A frequent speaker at science fiction conventions and writing workshops, he also plays guitar with a variety of ensembles and maintains a popular weblog about politics and culture. He lives with his wife and collaborator, Teresa Nielsen Hayden, in Brooklyn, New York.
New Skies FROM THE PUBLISHER
A new generation of science fiction fans is at hand. A new generation that is curious, smart, audacious, and experimental. It is for them that Patrick Nielsen Hayden-winner of the World Fantasy Award for Best Anthology - has selected these stories from the thousands published by contemporary SF writers over the past two decades.
Here are writers such as Philip K. Dick, Orson Scott Card, Jane Yolen, Greg Bear, Kim Stanley Robinson, Steven Gould, Connie Willis, Spider Robinson, and many more. Here is a careening adventure along the outside of a tower looming miles above the ground, and a tale of desperate survival on the deadly surface of the Moon. Here is a world in which children divorce their parents, and the story of a four-dimensional boy in a three-dimensional world. Here are future young people rebuilding after terrible disasters, and here is a story of the future development of baseball-on Mars.
Nightmarish or whimsical, irreverent or swashbuckling, each of these stories is an adventure in imagination. Journey from the here and now into New Skies.
FROM THE CRITICS
Publishers Weekly
New Skies: An Anthology of Today's Science Fiction, edited by Patrick Nielsen Hayden, gathers 17 stories starring aliens and dimensions beyond the 3-D world. In "They're Made Out of Meat" by Terry Bisson, a pair of aliens are stunned to discover an intelligent species made not of machinery or gasses, but of flesh. A boy and his dog exchange bodies with a pair of tentacled aliens in "Brian and the Aliens" by Will Shetterly. And in the award-winning "Tangents" by Greg Bear, a scientist and a kid make contact with the fourth dimension. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
Children's Literature - Julia Beiker
This anthology brings together the best of the best in science fiction. Such authors as Connie Willis, Steven Gould, Robert Charles Wilson, and Jane Yolen create characters and plots that stimulate the imagination and take their readers to whole other dimensions. The reader travels to worlds that seem real and others that could only be created with ink. Beware of Mad Molly, the hermit in "Peaches for Mad Molly" who by simply helping a young man takes him on an adventure of a lifetime. What happens when no gravity and baseball collide in "Authur Sternbach Brings the Curveball to Mars"? A wild game happens when players from all over the galaxy try to outwit space and time in everyone's favorite past time. A simple deck of cards in "Cards of Grief" makes the reader wonder who controls their fate. The freshness and strength of the characters add suspense and determination that wills the reader to keep reading. Not one story feels like the next. Surprises will be behind every corner and leave the reader ready to brave the next one. The editor, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, pulls together a collection of stories that will entertain anyone. Of course, there will be some stories that will be more pleasing or easier to understand for some readers then others. If science fiction is a favorite, this book is a must read. 2003, Tor Books, Ages 12 up.
VOYA - Michael Levy
Nielsen Hayden is generally considered to be one of the two or three best science fiction editors working, and his new reprint anthology is the finest collection of SF short stories published specifically for young adult readers in recent memory. It includes such award-winning stories as Nancy Kress's Out of All Them Bright Stars, a quiet tale of human-alien first contact in a greasy-spoon restaurant, and Geoffrey A. Landis's A Walk in the Sun, which is about an astronaut trying to survive after her lander has crashed on the moon. David Langford's Different Kinds of Darkness concerns the lengths to which it might be necessary to go to protect children from terrorism, and Greg Bear's Tangents features a boy genius who accidentally triggers the entrance into our world of a creature from another dimension. Maureen McHugh's beautifully written tale, The Lincoln Train, depicts an alternate Civil War. Other highlights include Terry Bisson's caustic They're Made Out of Meat, in which two inorganic beings find themselves disgusted by the possibility of organic intelligence; Stephen Gould's Peaches for Mad Molly, a truly bizarre story set among people who live on the outside walls of a miles-high skyscraper; and Kim Stanley Robinson's Arthur Sternbach Brings the Curveball to Mars, which is about exactly what the title says. Also included in this stellar collection are stories by Spider Robinson, Connie Willis, Jane Yolen, Philip K. Dick, Orson Scott Card, and others. This anthology is a must-purchase for all YA collections. VOYA Codes: 5Q 4P J S (Hard to imagine it being any better written; Broad general YA appeal; Junior High, defined as grades 7 to 9; Senior High, defined as grades 10 to 12).2003, Tor, 288p., Ages 12 to 18.
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