The Best of World SF, Volume 2
Ed. by Lavie Tidhar
You’d be forgiven for thinking that expanding the boundaries of science fiction away from a predominantly “white, male and American” point of view is all about going woke, for good or ill. But an alertness to prejudice and calls for social justice are not primarily what editor Lavie Tidhar is about in this second of his Best of World SF volumes.
In opening the genre up to new voices from around the world we get a rich blend of stories that mix traditional SF concerns within different cultural matrixes. To take just one example, there’s a fruitful intersection of contemporary political issues and the threat of machine takeover in the rebellion of human slaves against an elite made up of robot/cyborg overlords in China.
We’re also left with the feeling that in ranging further abroad SF has come closer to home in stories dealing with domestic and personally intimate concerns like medical science, food, and family. Global SF is a paradoxically local phenomenon, making the world’s future feel more universal in a human sense.
Alex on SF 
Which cultual matrixes are involved? Asking for a freind….
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I don’t recall Scotland being visited, but I read this a while ago now.
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So short stories from around the world? Are they any good?
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Hit and miss. I thought they were more interesting most of the time than really great stories. But the different perspectives do register.
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Most best of collections seem to attract editors who have such a different view of SFF than me that it’s very rarely enjoyable to read.
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But the other side of this is that when you do find an editor you like you tend to stick with him/her.
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Glynn Barrass is one of those for me…
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