Okay, so this book has been on my shelf for a while and I’ve
just gotten around to reading it. I
picked it up at a fantasy book store.
You know, the kind of store that sells fantasy novels, board games and
Dungeons and Dragons modules.
The book is Once Upon
a Galaxy. It’s a science fiction
anthology edited by Wil McCarthy with a whole host of contributors, published
in 2002.
Now, if you’ve been around Fairy Tale Fandom for a while,
you know I have a soft spot for sci-fi fairy tale retellings. So, how does Once Upon a Galaxy stack up?
It’s kind of a mixed bag, really.
There are some stories in here that I really like. “Ailoura” by Paul Di Filippo is a really
solid sci-fi take on “Puss in Boots”. “Nanite,
Star Bright” by Tanya Huff is a neat twist on “The Shoemaker and the Elves”. One of my favorites is “The Control Device”,
which is basically “Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp” if Aladdin was an Imperial
pilot from Star Wars (or something similar) hiding out from the new
regime. Others weren’t so great. “The Nightingale” and “The Emperor’s Revenge”
were Andersen-derived stories that just seemed to drag on and on. Another story, “He Died that Day, In Thirty
Years” didn’t really seem to even have anything to do with fairy tales. I certainly couldn’t pick out any parallels
or motifs. Don’t get me wrong, some of
them had some good ideas. “The Goldilocks
Problem” outlined how conditions on a planet need to be “just right” in order
to support life. However, it was more of
an interesting science lesson than an interesting story. “Sleeping Beauty” by Bruce Holland Rogers deals
with the question of how much everything would change while someone was under a
sleeping curse, just set on a much more cosmic scale.
To tell the truth though, I’m kind of okay with this. I’d rather see interesting new ideas that don’t
quite pan out than old, tired ideas that don’t pan out. In a perfect world, we’d have good ideas that
work out swimmingly. But I’d rather not
ask for the moon if I can help it.
However, maybe the stories being a mixed bag is just
something you have to expect with multiple author anthologies. Outside of literature, you don’t see
anthologies much anymore. Not in movies
or television or comic books. Maybe
varying quality is one of the reasons why.
I’m not going to tell you to stay away from this book. However, I’m not going to tell you to seek it
out either. I told you what I thought
and my opinions are purely my own (though I’ve gotten rather good at expressing
them). If you do read it, maybe you’ll
see something in them that I didn’t.
i am yet to read this book on fairy tale though i do not beleive in fantasies im sure most order essay online would disagree with me il make some time though and read the book.
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