Worlds Best SF

Here are a couple of reviews by me for a change. One is for the 2008 Worlds Best SF and the other for Adam Nimoy's book about growing up as the son of Spock and how his life has turned out. Both are on sale now.

MY INCREDIBLY WONDERFUL, MISERABLE LIFE, An Anti-Memoir, Adam Nimoy, Pocket Books, $15, 296 pages, ISBN: 1439125465, reviewed by Barry Hunter.

I’m sure a lot of folks have wondered what it would be like to grow up with a popular iconic movie star as one of your parents, but after reading this you may want to change your mind. This volume tells of the struggles, the disappointments and the ultimate out come of his life.

The story is sometimes sad, sometimes funny and painfully truthful. Adam has been a lawyer, director, a substitute teacher and now teaches directing at a film school. He has two children and an ex-wife.

Some of his vignettes tell of his drug addiction, his re-entering the dating scene, and the successes and mistakes he made while growing with his famous father.

This is called an anti-memoir for a good reason, but it is a very interesting look at the good times and the bad times and the times of just getting by.

YEAR’S BEST SF 14, edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer, EOS Books, $7.99, 500 pages, ISBN: 9780061721748, reviewed by Barry Hunter.

Here are the editor’s choices for the best stories of 2008. This is a varied collection with some of the oddest stories collected in one volume. I admit that I was unfamiliar with the stories, but not with the talented assortment of writers. “Arkfall” by Carolyn Ives Gilman opens the collection with unlikely explorers discovering more about their world. Kathleen Ann Goonan tells of a man’s penance as a “Memory Dog”. You know things are going to be strange in “Boojum” by Elizabeth Bear and Sarah Monette when we first read about the spaceship named Lavinia Whatley. The last story is probably my favorite. “Spiders” by Sue Burke is a father showing his son the creatures of a new planet with an interesting ending.