Synopsis
Janis Ian has inspired fans for years with her lyrical and evocative music. Now, this popular music legend has invited her favorite science fiction and fantasy writers to interpret her songs using their own unique voices. The result is the most unusual and exciting collaboration in the worlds of both science fiction-fantasy and music.
Reviews
This dazzling, highly original anthology, ignited by the meeting of songwriter Ian and a host of SF writers affected by her music at the 2001 Worldcon, showcases 30 mostly superior stories, each based on one of her songs. Some contributors take Ian at her word that science fiction is "the jazz of prose," responding to many of society's sharpest wounds with bittersweet improvisatory descants, like Terry Bisson in "Come Dance with Me," David Gerrold in "Riding Janis" and Orson Scott Card in "Inventing Lovers on the Phone," tales that probe the angst of adolescence. Spider Robinson, in "You Don't Know My Heart," like Gerrold in "Riding Janis," deals with the societal rejection gays and lesbians often face; "Immortality," by Robert J. Sawyer, and "Society's Stepchild," by Susan R. Matthews, respond to Ian's poignant "Society's Child," a plea for genuine racial tolerance; Stephen Baxter's "All in a Blaze" and Nancy Kress's brilliant "EJ-ES" confront the pain of aging; and several alternative-world tales, especially Harry Turtledove's powerful "Joe Steele" and Howard Waldrop's "Calling Your Name," explore the entrapment of the individual by sociopolitical forces engendered by materialism. The entire anthology seems to vibrate with the death throes of one world passing away, while far stranger ones struggle to be born. Their commonality, Ian tells us in her introduction, is that "They have heart. They have life. They have truth." No artist-nor any reader-could ask for more.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
The undercurrent here is mutual admiration. Coeditor Ian, the socially conscious singer-songwriter whose greatest hit was the 1960s interracial dating anthem "Society's Child," is a longtime sf fan who, at Anne McCaffrey's urging, started attending the annual World Science Fiction Conference and met several of her literary heroes, many of whom liked her work as much as she did theirs. So coeditor Resnick proposed asking them to create stories inspired by Ian's songs. Some pretty big names responded, maybe not with their best-ever stories, but hardly with junk. Kage Baker's historical chiller, "Nightmare Mountain," would sit as honorably in Gathering the Bones (reviewed in this issue). David Gerrold's sketch of impending puberty in space, "Riding Janis," is also the premier hard-sf entry. Diane Duane's creepy essay in art criticism, "Hopper Painting," proves the most stylish contribution, but Howard Waldrop's golden oldies nightmare, "Calling Your Name," and Harry Turtledove's worst-case scenario for the American 1930s, "Joe Steele," are stylish, too, though very differently. Stars are supposed to entertain; here they live up to expectations. Ray Olson
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