The SFWA European Hall of Fame: Sixteen Contemporary Masterpieces of…

"Separations," by Jean-Claude Dunyach (2005): 9
- Strange tale with a common sci-fi trope, the parallel worlds idea, used to good effect here. Did I notice anything French about this story, or anything that would signal its difference from the other largely Anglo-American authors? I could say yes, the fixation on and enlarged narrative significance of a type of hand-wringing over lovers and affairs, but that's just finding what I went looking for. Otherwise, the twists, such as they were, were pulled off well, and with just enough hand-wavy sci-fi ambiguity to thread the needle between incomprehension and intriguing mystery.

"A Birch Tree, A White Fox," by Elena Arsenieva (1988): 8
- Interesting to see what is basically a straight across-the-board "Golden Age" SF story out of the Soviet Union. "Golden Age" in that its concerns are no larger than a full parameter exploration of the man story conceit of the tale, which, itself, is simply a premise transported to a SF world and fleshed out with the requisite/skillful prose and narrative, i.e. trapped on a planet where you can't speak, what do you do?

Nice survey: short stories from French, Russian, Italian, Czech, Finnish, Polish, Spanish, Greek, Romanian, German, Portuguese, Dutch, and Danish. The names of some authors (Johnna Sinisalo) and translators (Michael Kandel) are already well-known. I read this in bits and pieces broken up over more than a year. Sinisalo's, Huberth's, and Cotrina's stories stick with me the most. Sinislo's is a truly frightening story of the sexualization of young girls that terrifies by being so plausible; Huberth's has a delightful transition in language that parallels the characters' development; and Cotrina's has a neat premise of there being other books within the negative space/white space of books. I was surprised by the number of stories ending with the narrator's death, which used to be something that editors used to tell writers to avoid. The introductions are valuable for more exploring. ( )

Introduction: Extrapolations of Things Past, A Barbarously Brief Account of European Science Fiction from Micromegas to Microchips James Morrow
Separations Jean-Claude Dunyach$
A Birch Tree, A White Fox Elena Arsenieva
Sepultura Valerio Evangelisti
The Fourth Day to Eternity Ondrej Neff
Baby Doll Johanna Sinisalo
Yoo Retoont, Sneogg. Ay Noo." Marek S. Huberath
The Day We Went Through the Transition Ricard De La Casa & Pedro Jorge Romero
Athos Emfovos in the Temple of Sound Panagiotis Koustas
Some Earthlings' Adventures on Outrerria Lucian Merisca
Destiny, Inc. Sergei Lukyanenko
Wonders of the Universe Andreas Eschbach
A Night on the Edge of the Empire Joao Barreiros
Transfusion Joelle Wintrebert
Verstummte Musik W. J. Maryson
Between the Lines Jose Antonio Cotrina
A Blue and Cloudless Sky Bernhard Ribbeck ( )

Wow. We in the US are really missing out because we are so stuck in the English Language.

No doubt, this collection’s strength comes from the fact that it is allowed to pick the very best (spanning over 20 years). Any collection spanning such a timeframe should be strong. But, even with that leg up, there are definite knock your socks off stories contained herein. And it seems obvious that the European culture has brought a different, and exciting, slant to the story-telling.

But for a very few exceptions, I ended each story having to take a breath and absorb what I read. These stories were different, these were exciting, these made me want to read more. These showed that we in the States need to open our doors to more of what the foreign world has to offer.

Read this collection of stories and expand what you think you know about science fiction – particularly science fiction written outside the English language. ( )

There are no "masterpieces" here but there are a few excellent stories (I wholeheartedly recommend the selections by Johanna Sinisalo, Lucian Merişca, Sergei Lukayenko and Andreas Eschenbach) along with much that seems tired and lackluster. A number of the stories actually seem much closer in feel and form to standard European literary fantasy than science fiction-not a bad thing in itself but perhaps misleading for a reader looking for science-based tales. (José Antonio Cotrina's 'Between the Lines, a Borgesian tale, is a clear example of this: a pleasant and entertaining story but in no way science fiction).

Both the opening and closing entries (by Jean-Claude Dunyach and Bernhard Ribbeck, respectively) are rather weak (the time travel issues in the Ribbeck story are no more sophisticated than you'd find in your average 'Star Trek: The Next Generation' episode) and the introduction and introductory paragraphs before each story are just plain awful.

While I bought this in hardcover when it was first released, excited at the thought that European science fiction might finally be given its due in the English-speaking world, I don't think I'd do the same now that I've read the book. I support the idea but the execution here is fairly poor. ( )