Tales from the Forbidden Planet - Roz Kaveney (ed)

 This was a chance aquisition.   I was in London, in my favourite second-hand bookshop (Skoob, in the Brunswick Centre) and I didn't want to leave without a purchase.   That, I felt, would be letting the side down.   So I saw this, thought what the hell?   Wandered up to the counter where, of course, one of the books I had wanted for some time was on display ... but that's another story.

It was only when I was on the train, leafing through, that I realised this was a collection from the sci fi era currently interesting me - the Interzone Eighties, 1987 in fact, featuring several writers I have beens looking into recently.   Moorcock, of course (an End of Time story), Kilworth, Keith Roberts, and Lisa Tuttle, all of whom featured in the Other Rdens and New Worlds anthologies reviewed here in the last few weeks.   Aldiss is here, too, with a really enjoyable one called 'Tourney', and Iain M Banks (excellent).   I liked John Brunner('A Case of Painter's Ear'), Josephine Saxton's 'The Interferences' and Gwyneth Jones's 'The Snow Apples'.   I did not like in any way the story by Harry Harrison, but that's the point of anthologies, isn't it?

One of the things that attracted me in the shop was the fact the stories all had an illustration by a British illustrator of the period.   I thought this would be a bonus for me and my own illustrations.   As it happens, the only one I enjoyed was Dave Gibbons for the Banks story 'Descendant'.   I liked the cover illustration, too, the work of Brian Bolland.

Turns out the common denominator for the collection is that all these authors had done sessions at the Forbidden Planet bookshops.   As good a connection as any.

Other Edens - Christopher Evans and Robert Holdstock (eds)

 Other Edens is a sci fi collection from 1987 and very much from the Interzone period of British imaginative fiction.   Some of the most noted writers are respresented - Moorcock, Harrison and Aldiss - but not with their best work.   Those who stand out here are those who were then breaking through: Garry Kilworth, who I only knew from Interzone; Lisa Tuttle, who I had heard of but never read; and a couple of others completely new to me, such as Graham Charnock and Keith Roberts.

Roberts' story Piper's Wait was probably my overall favourite, a temenos story stretching very effectively over the ages.  Tuttle's The Wound was a close second, a very exciting take on mutable sexuality.   Kilworth's Triptych was by far the most radical and complex, a fragmented three-parter positively bursting at the seams with ideas.   I am increasingly interested in Kilworth.  He seems to have been extraordinarily prolific with over eighty novels spanning many genres, so it shouldn't be too hard to track one down.