Another in my series of forgotten or seldom read books

Worldmakers: SF Adventures in Terraforming edited by Gardner Dozois, 2001 St. Martin’s Griffin trade paperback

I’ve long admired the editing of Gardner Dozois, and I have many of his anthologies, read and unread. Many are thick books that take time to read through, but with quality contents it’s worthwhile.

Such is the case with this one, published in 2001 but still contemporary with a subject of terraforming. Once man moves to the stars, or rather the planets around some of them, there will need to be adjustments, and these 20 stories give a wide variety of how those changes might work.

The first story, one of my favorites, is “The Big Rain”, which I first read when it was the cover story of the October 1954 issue of Astounding Science Fiction.

The stories in Worldmakers vary in length from a dozen pages to novella length. With Dozois at the helm, you’d expect a good anthology, and with Worldmakers you get one; very few misses and many highly enjoyable stories. Plus this is an interesting theme for a collection: remaking a world to make it suitable for humans. This is a good one.

Contents:
ix • Preface (Worldmakers: SF Adventures in Terraforming) • essay by Gardner Dozois
1 • The Big Rain • [Psychotechnic League] • (1954) • novella by Poul Anderson
50 • When the People Fell • [The Instrumentality of Mankind] • (1959) • shortstory by Cordwainer Smith
60 • Before Eden • (1961) • shortstory by Arthur C. Clarke
69 • Hunter, Come Home • (1963) • novelette by Richard McKenna
99 • The Keys to December • (1966) • novelette by Roger Zelazny
118 • Retrograde Summer • [Eight Worlds] • (1975) • novelette by John Varley
134 • Shall We Take a Little Walk? • (1981) • novelette by Gregory Benford
150 • The Catharine Wheel • (1984) • novelette by Ian McDonald (aka The Catharine Wheel (Our Lady of Tharsis))
166 • Sunken Gardens • [Shaper/Mechanist] • (1984) • shortstory by Bruce Sterling
179 • Out of Copyright • (1989) • shortstory by Charles Sheffield
193 • A Place with Shade • [The Remarkables] • (1995) • novelette by Robert Reed
221 • Dawn Venus • (1995) • novelette by G. David Nordley
245 • For White Hill • (1995) • novella by Joe Haldeman
277 • The Road to Reality • (1996) • novelette by Phillip C. Jennings
311 • Ecopoiesis • (1997) • novella by Geoffrey A. Landis
342 • People Came from Earth • (1999) • shortstory by Stephen Baxter
352 • Fossils • (1999) • novelette by William H. Keith, Jr.
379 • A Martian Romance • (1999) • novelette by Kim Stanley Robinson
394 • Dream of Venus • (2000) • novelette by Pamela Sargent
417 • At Tide’s Turning • (2001) • novelette by Laura J. Mixon