As ever, an informative and interesting introduction by Nicholas Royle. He's unearthed a few new sources of stories. I'm curious to know if he reads Stand, Forge, and the TSS publications. The biggest hit this year is "The Lonely Crowd" with 4 stories.
Commenting on an anthology that's unthemed isn't easy. It's tempting to point out pieces whose selection is puzzling, so I'll do that first. "Paymon's Trio" seems an old-fashioned spooky story. It may be good of its type, but is it really one of the best 20 stories of the year? "The Homing Instinct" doesn't stand out, and the ending's, well, risky at best. "Cwth" is a workmanlike treatment of a standard plot. "Sister" doesn't get anywhere. In "Waiting for the runners" an abandoned wife meets Julie, her successor, who was also abandoned by Danny. She's lost her looks. Their two sons are school-friends. Julie's little daughter has Danny's hair, and looks a little like Annie. Annie, the daughter of the narrator and Danny, died at 11, which seemed to have sparked Danny's departure. Maybe the daughter's resemblance to Annie sparked Danny's second departure. The meeting does the narrator good. Anyway, it seemed a fairly standard piece. "Swatch" isn't standard plot-wise, but it doesn't have enough. I can't see Lisa Tuttle's story ever being in the US equivalent of this anthology. One problem with it is that the 2-page story-within-a-story is repetitive. That's quite a high proportion of stories to have doubts about.
Another bunch of stories are saved by the final page or two, which justifies the rest. Until then the stories seemed well written but nothing more. I'm still unsure if they need to be quite as long as they are, and in at least one case I predicted the ending. As a whole I liked them though. An example is "A Thunderstorm in Santa Monica". And there were a few stories that began well but didn't continue quite as well - e.g. "How to be an alcoholic".
My favourite piece is maybe M. John Harrison's, or "We are methodists" (a woman gets into conversation over the course of 4 days with a plumber - ex commando). I was also impressed by "Life Grabs" (a father tries to piece together on video his missing son's life), "And three things bumped" (a man meets a taxi driver at intervals of years. Each time the driver recounts his life story. The stories don't match) and "The War" (Wars personified).
The editor doesn't seem to like consciously literary pieces. He likes rounded characters, but not complex domestic "Iowa workshop" dramas where nothing much happens. And for this anthology he's picked stories where a main character's often been affected by a death (of a child, quite often). He can only chose amongst what there is (and what doesn't cost too much to reprint). I didn't like this BBSS anthology as much as the others I've read - several good stories but no Wow stories - no stories that make me want to buy the book they come from.
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