traveling hopefully

Damien Broderick (damien@ariel.ucs.unimelb.edu.au)
Mon, 29 Sep 1997 16:54:56 +0000


I've been commissioned to compile a selection of published science fiction
short stories on the theme of `travel'. Anyone got any favorites they'd
care to suggest? One problem is that I can't really choose too many pieces
over 7500 or 10,000 words in length, which tends to knock out some of the
obvious choices - good stories by Kim Stanley Robinson and Lucius Shepard,
say.

Some examples of the kind of thing I'm looking at (and bear in mind that I
haven't yet even approached the authors with my proposal!) are:

Robert Silverbeg's alternative-universe classic `Trips'
Gary Kilworth's `Let's Go to Golgotha!'
Brian Aldiss's `The Difficulties in Climbing Nix Olympica' (and yes, both
he and I and the characters know it's realy Olympus Mons)
Phil Farmer's `Sail On! Sail On!'
Ursula Le Guin's `Sur'
Arthur Clarke's `Wall of Darkness'

Any ideas? I'm especially eager to list some stories by women sf writers.
(Suggestions can be good ole classics or hot-off-the-presses newies, but
I'd appreciate a mention of where the pieces can be found.) Obviously
nearly all space-travel and time-travel fiction falls into the net in a
general way, but for most that's just an enabling device, a way of getting
to the interesting problems or novelties or scientific and moral issues. I
want to concentrate on the joys and horrors of the travel process itself, of

Traveling
Light-
years

(If this particular conversation is deemed out of place for the extropian
list, my apologies. People could get back to me off-list if that's
preferable.)

Damien Broderick