Wednesday, December 26, 2007

Destinies

Destinies: Volume 1, Number 1 (November/December 1978), edited by James Baen (Ace Books, 1979 ISBN 0-441-14281-8, cover by Stephen Fabian).

After he left Galaxy and took over the editor's position at Ace, Jim Baen started experimenting with a cross between book and magazine publishing. Destinies was one of those efforts (and the efforts continued at Tor Books when he was there with New Destinies, and then at Baen Books with Jim Baen's Universe). Initially published quarterly, Destinies was a mix of fiction and non-fiction, illustrated copiously by the artists that were contributing to Ace's line of handsome trade paperbacks.

It's interesting to see some of the folks here. Everybody "knows" what Jim Baen publishes, right? Mil SF! Then how do you explain Roger Zelazny? And then there's that Spider Robinson fella, with two entries (one of which was a very infamous book review).

A good mix. I'm glad I snatched up the series when I had a chance to pick it up second-hand.

Made up of: Stand Pat, Ruby Stone (Roger Zelazny); Old Woman by the Road (Gregory Benford); New Beginnings (Jerry Pournelle); Transition Team (Charles Sheffield); Antimony (Spider Robinson); Spider vs. the Hax of Sol III (Spider Robinson); Very Proper Charlies (Dean Ing); Party Line (Clifford D. Simak); Assimilating Our Culture, That's What They're Doing (Larry Niven); Science Fiction and Science, Part One: Reality, Fiction and Points Between (Poul Anderson).

Counts as four entries in the 2007 Short Story Project.

Part of the 2008 Year in Shorts.

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