Calico Reaction (calico_reaction) wrote in bookish,
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Schoen, Lawrence M.: Prime Codex

Prime Codex: The Hungry Edge of Speculative Fiction (2007)
Edited by: Lawrence M. Schoen & Michael Livingston
Genre: Short Stories/Science Fiction & Fantasy
Pages: 205

In terms of a premise, this anthology has only an organizing principle: every story was written by an author who's a member of the Codex Writer's Group. Each of these stories has been previously published elsewhere and has been gathered together in this anthology as, well, I suppose a means of both promoting the group and showing off some of its members. Not a bad idea, and it's one I'm happy to support.

My Rating

Give It Away: out of 15 stories, I enjoyed 9 of them, but of those nine, only about 4 really stuck with me. The anthology has a variety of speculative fiction, a decent mix of science fictional stories and fantasy stories and some are in between. For some reason, I was hoping more of the stories would really stand out to me, and while there's no reason I should've thought this, I was also hoping these stories would be original for this specific anthology. Maybe they'll do that for their next one, should they decide to do another, which I think they should. Using an anthology to promote a writing group is a great idea for so many reasons, and like Codex intends, it brings us stories from authors we might not have heard from otherwise. I think my own personal reticence in making this "worth the cash" comes more from the fact I'm growing more and more disillusioned with the short story as a form. I want to really sink my teeth into something, and it's a rare short story that lets me do that. However, if you're unlike me and love gobbling of short stories in the speculative fiction genre, this book's for you!

The full review, which includes commentary for each story in the anthology, may be found in my LJ. As always, comments and discussion are most welcome.

REVIEW: PRIME CODEX



List of All Contributors

James Maxey
Cat Rambo
Ken Scholes
Geoffrey Girard
Elaine Isaak
Jim C. Hines
Mary Robinette Kowal
Eric James Stone
E. Catherine Tobler
Matthew S. Rotundo
Tobias Buckell
Tom Pendergrass
Mike Shultz
Ruth Nestvold
David W. Goldman



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