440 pp. April 22, 2025, Galaxy Press. SF anthology.
SF anthologies can be fun, particularly when they showcase new work. This one fits the bill quite nicely, with fifteen stories in total, twelve from new writers. There are also essays on craft from Tim Powers, Robert J Sawyer, Sean Williams and Tom Wood. Illustrators, so essential to our experience of SF, are given a platform too (and provide loads of atmosphere in this anthology). As far as I can tell, there was no particular effort to find a diversity balance for this particular collection (at least in terms of writers), and perhaps you can tell from the themes in it: Time and time travel, artificial people, AGI and police robots, parallel universes, karma, a very vividly imagined alien world, fatherhood, and just one story of rebellion in a class-based society. These stories below were the most memorable for me.
Tough Old Man is L. Ron Hubbard’s wonderfully written Western-style story about a rookie who gets schooled by an experienced senior. It’s pretty old fashioned though, in tone and in the ending. In Ian Keith’s Blackbird Stone a man in normal time is sought out by a woman from eternity, because they’re fated to meet and fall in love (paradox anyone?). It’s quirky and weird and mind-boggling and such a pleasure to read. Karma Birds by Lauren McGuire is yet another terror birds story (after Daphne du Maurier, who showed us just how scary birds are if you stopped to think about it for even a second). Andrew Jackson’s Code L1 is a marvellous and immersive story with a lush and frightening alien planet and an ascended enemy that the humans don’t identify properly until it’s too late.
Ascii by Randyn C. J. Bartholomew uses grim humour to think about what a world with AI (not LLM) overlords would be like, and how alien their decision trees would seem to us. I found The Stench of Freedom by Joel C. Scoberg moving: a father with a son who would properly be in the underclass that the father is the ruling class’s tool in creating finds that things are very different when seen from the other side of the divide. My Name Was Tom by Tim Powers is another excellent story featuring an eerie ship and people who’ve forgotten who they are; I think this one benefits from re-reading. Seth Atwater Jr’s A World of Repetitions is a thoughtful Groundhog Day-style story.
There’s lots more, but I want to highlight my favourite essay, by Robert J. Sawyer: It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Theme) (catchy, right?). He delves into what makes a story important—what “gets people talking,” making excellent points and providing eminently persuasive examples to support his argument. I’d say this is a must-read for any (aspiring) writer, and even recommend reading this first if you buy the collection.
The first paragraph of Jody Lynn Nye’s introduction explains what holds this anthology together:
“Most speculative-fiction collections have an overall theme that the contributors adhere to, such as cats, time travel, spaceships, artificial intelligence, and so on. The stories in the Writers of the Future anthologies are different. They don’t follow a single style, trope, or subject since the stories come from writers in all walks of life around the globe. What do they have in common? Two things: they are excellent examples of science fiction, fantasy, or light horror. Second, the writer had not read anything like it anywhere else and believed it needed to exist.”
Writers of the Future accepts submissions four times a year, as does Illustrators of the Year, both choosing winners every quarter. The rewards for winners sound fun! But more importantly, it’s cool that these contests exist to introduce new creators to SF markets (and to develop them too).
It took me a while to get through this collection because it was worth lingering over. You won’t find everything to your taste—I didn’t, and didn’t find that a bad thing as one hardly ever does with anthologies. This is a really high quality collection though, and I recommend it!
Many thanks to Galaxy Press and NetGalley for DRC access.
Links:
- Writers of the Future Volume 41 | Galaxy Press
- For people of the South (of Africa): check out the anthologies here.
Affiliate link: Support independent bookshops and my writing by ordering it from Bookshop here. (Paperback here)
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