Dinosaurs!, edited by Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois (1990)

Cover blurb

They are the supreme lords of a wild and forgotten world. Stalking the ancient forests, crushing trees underfoot, and shaking the very earth itself, the mighty “thunder lizards” ruled our planet for thousands of years — then plunged into extinction.

The age of giant reptiles is long gone. But in mankind’s darkest dreams – beyond the boundaries of time and space – they live forever…

DINOSAURS!

My thoughts

No point beating around the bush: Dinosaurs! is the best collection of dinosaur-themed short stories ever put together.

That may sound like faint praise given the very small number of dinosaur fiction anthologies in existence, but Dann and Dozois did a fantastic job combing through decades of science fiction literature to find some real gems. And while not every story is a classic, they are all fun to read.

Standouts include L. Sprague de Camp's dinosaur hunting tale “A Gun for Dinosaur”; “Poor Little Warrior” by Brian Aldiss; “The Last Thunder Horse West of the Mississippi” by Sharon Farber; and “Time's Arrow” by Arthur C. Clarke. I was a bit surprised Ray Bradbury's “A Sound of Thunder” wasn't in the collection, but maybe the editors felt de Camp's tale was too close in theme.

The only downside is many of the stories in Dinosaurs! were republished in other dinosaur anthologies, so readers of paleofiction may have encountered them before. But if a majority of the fiction is new to you, I highly suggest picking up this book.

Stories

• "A Gun For Dinosaur" by L. Sprague de Camp

• "Poor Little Warrior" by Brian W. Aldiss

• "Green Brother" by Howard Waldrop

• "Hunting Season" by Harry Turtledove

• "Getting Away" by Steven Utley

• "The Runners" by Bob Buckley

• "The Last Thunder Horse West of the Mississippi" by Sharon N. Farber

• "Strata" by Edward Bryant

• "Time's Arrow" by Arthur C. Clarke

• "A Change in the Weather" by Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois

• "The Night-Blooming Saurian" by James Tiptree

• "Dinosaur" by Steve Rasnic Tem

• "Dinosaurs" by Geoffrey A. Landis

• "Dinosaur on a Bicycle" by Tim Sullivan

Trivia

• Baen Books recently re-released Dinosaurs! and its excellent sequel, Dinosaurs II, as ebooks. Both can be purchased from the publisher's website.

• Both books were part of a series of science fiction and fantasy anthologies edited by Dann and Dozois and published regularly over 25 years, starting in the early 1980s. Each anthology explored a different animal or theme, so you had volumes collecting stories about cats, dragons, mermaids, time travel, etc. All the anthologies are now available through Baen's website.

Reviews

• None

Dinosaurs, edited by Martin H. Greenberg (1996)

Hardback cover blurb

Though gone from the world for sixty-five million years, dinosaurs live on with mythic power in the human imagination. Here, editor and award-winning anthologist Martin H. Greenberg assembles fourteen classic stories featuring these at once fearsome and awe-inspiring creatures, whose enigmatic and sudden disappearance may account for part of our enduring fascination. Arthur C. Clarke, Ray Bradbury and Isaac Asimov are among the many notables who breathe life back into the dinosaurs in this imaginative collection.

My thoughts

Sure, I realize this anthology was slapped together simply to make some money on the dinosaur craze that had gripped the public between the first two Jurassic Park films, but come on… A picture of someone’s eye for the cover image? I mean, couldn’t have publisher just used some stock art of a reptilian eye instead? Or better yet, how about actually paying an artist to design a cover image? Artists need to eat, after all. (So do writers and bloggers, for that matter.)

That said, this anthology proves true the old saying about not judging a book by its cover, because it is a very good collection of dinosaur-related fiction. The only downside is the book can be hard to find these days.

The two best stories are two classics of paleo-literature. “The Fog Horn” by Ray Bradbury is the story of a lighthouse fog horn that calls a very lonely reptile from the ocean depths. “A Gun for Dinosaur” by L. Sprague de Camp is the first Reginald Rivers story, with the author’s time-traveling safari guide explaining to a client why he will only take men of a certain size dinosaur hunting.

Other highlights of the anthology include “Time’s Arrow” by Arthur C. Clarke, a time-travel story with a twisted ending; “Shadow of a Change” by Michelle M. Sagara, which concerns a shy woman who undergoes a strange transformation; “Wildcat” by Poul Anderson, about an oil-drilling operation in the Jurassic Period; and “The Last Thunder Horse West of the Mississippi” by S.N. Dyer, a story where the famous rivalry between Edward Drinker Cope and O. C. Marsh reaches critical mass when the two discover a living sauropod.

The remaining stories are all strong and nicely fill out the volume. Some of the tales are decades old, so the science isn’t exactly up-to-date, but that doesn’t diminish their entertainment value.

Stories

• “The Fog Horn” by Ray Bradbury
• “Day of the Hunters” by Issac Asimov
• “Dino Trend” by Patricia Cadigan
• “Time’s Arrow” by Arthur C. Clark
• “Chameleon” by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
• “Shadow of a Change” by Michelle M. Sagara
• “Strata” by Edward Bryant
• “Green Brother” by Howard Waldrop
• “Wildcat” by Poul Anderson
• “Just Like Old Times” by Robert J. Sawyer
• “The Last Thunder Horse West of the Mississippi” by S.N. Dyer
• “Hatching Season” by Harry Turtledove
• “A Gun for Dinosaur” by L. Sprague de Camp
• “Our Lady of the Sauropods” by Robert Silverberg

Reviews

• None

The Ultimate Dinosaur, edited by Byron Preiss and Robert Silverberg (1992)

Hardback cover blurb

It is twilight in the forest. Densely packed cycads and fir trees block out the waning sun, casting deep shadows on the forest floor.

A tiny mammal is busily overturning ground litter, looking for an insect meal. Its large eyes are alert for any movement. Suddenly, there is a rustle of leaves. A blurred shadow follows. The creature panics, and makes a run for its subterranean liar. But before it can enter, powerful claws pin it to the ground. The chase is over.

The winner is a hundred-foot dinosaur: a swift, agile night-hunter, resembling a large flightless bird. The time is 80 million years ago, and the age of dinosaurs is in full flower.

The Ultimate Dinosaur is a unique collaboration that vividly recreates this prehistoric world in both scientific essays and short fiction, combing the talents of leading paleontologists, visionary writers, and dinosaur illustrators.

The essays examine discoveries that are transforming the field of paleontology right now: Dinosaur fossils on the continent of Antarctica; pack hunting and cooperation among ferocious predators; evidence of seasonal migrations of herds of dinosaurs traveling thousands of miles to ancestral nesting grounds. These are just a few of the exciting new theories described in these pages.

In the short stories that follow each essay, highly imaginative fiction breathes life into scientific theory. In one story we ride along on a wild and woolly time-travel safari to go trophy-hunting for dinosaurs. In another, we visit a future wildlife park filed with living dinosaurs created from genetic material discovered on expedition. Contributors include award-winning writers Ray Bradbury, Harry Harrison, Gregory Benford and co-editor Robert Silverberg.

Among the experts contributing to this project are scientists from around the world: Dr. Phillip Currie, head of dinosaur research for the Tyrrell Museum of Paleontology in Alberta, Canada; Dr. Sankar Chatterjee, professor of geosciences at Texas Tech University; and Dr. Ralph Molnar, paleontologist at the Queensland Musuem, Australia. The science editor for The Ultimate Dinosaur is Dr. Peter Dodson of the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Veterinary Medicine.

The illustrations for the science essays help visualize the incredible new theories of dinosaur life and behavior. They are executed by much-lauded artists such as Doug Henderson, whose work has appeared in nation touring exhibits of prehistoric life, and William G. Stout, whose paintings have been exhibited in the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History.

Accompanying the fiction are paintings from such acclaimed artists as Wayne D. Barlowe, illustrator of Expedition, and William Parsons of the Buffalo Museum of Science.

Through science, fiction, and art, The Ultimate Dinosaur presents the age of dinosaurs in an exciting new way.

My thoughts

The Ultimate Dinosaur attempts to be the dinosaur book to end all dinosaur books, and it almost succeeds. Some of the heavyweights of dinosaur paleontology and illustration contributed to the book, and it shows in the lush production values. Unfortunately, the editors didn’t do as good a job in picking the fiction, which is a mixed bag of stories.

Among the highlights are Michael Bishop’s “Herding with the Hadrosaurs”, about two boys growing up with a herd of Corythosaurs in the wilds of Cretaceous North America; L. Sprague de Camp’s “Crocamander Quest”, a sexist-but-still-funny Reginald Rivers story; Robert Silverberg’s “Hunters in the Forest”, about a guy who tries to prove his manhood by hunting dinosaurs; Poul Anderson’s “Unnatural Enemy”, the tale of a plesiosaur in the prehistoric seas; and Harry Harrison’s “Dawn of the Endless Night”, a story involving the Yilane, the intelligent reptiles from the author’s West of Eden series.

The rest of the stories are only so-so, with a couple real turkeys. Dave Wolverton’s “Siren Song at Midnight” really doesn’t involve dinosaurs at all, while Barry Malzberg’s “Major League Triceratops” comes across as surprisingly contemptuous against the book’s target audience. The editors also chose a lesser-known Ray Bradbury story instead of “The Fog Horn” or “A Sound of Thunder”, the two dinosaur stories he is best known for. Perhaps they felt the two had been overused, but the story they picked -- “Besides a Dinosaur, Whatta Ya Wanna Be When You Grow Up?” -- is subpar for Bradbury.

Luckily, the very informative non-fiction essays more than make up for uneven fiction. There also is plenty of eye-candy in the form of gorgeous illustrations peppered throughout the book. The Ultimate Dinosaur is worth a look.

Stories/Essays

• “Kingdom of the Titans” by Robert Silverberg
• “Dinosaurs for Adults” by Peter Dodson
• “The Dawn of the Age of Dinosaurs” by Sankar Chatterjee
• “Crocamander Quest” by L. Sprague de Camp
• “The First Dinosaurs” by Catherine Forster
• “The Feynman Solution” by Charles Sheffield
• “The Dinosaur Radiations” by Teresa Maryanska
• “Siren Song at Midnight” by Dave Wolverton
• “The Jurassic Period: A Time of Great Change” by David Gillette
• “Rhea’s Time” by Paul Preuss
• “The Age of Giants” by Anthony Fiorillo
• “Shakers of the Earth” by Gregory Benford
• “Dinosaur Predators” by Halszka Osmolska
• “Hunters in the Forest” by Robert Silverberg
• “The Cretaceous Dinosaurs” by Don Lessem
• “In the Late Cretaceous” by Connie Willis
• “Major League Triceratops” by Barry Malzberg
• “Migrating Dinosaurs” by Phillip J. Currie
• “Herding with the Hadrosaurs” by Michael Bishop
• “The Behavior of Predatory Dinosaurs” by Ralph Molnar
• “Besides a Dinosaur, Whatta Ya Wanna Be When You Grow Up?" By Ray Bradbury
• “Monsters of the Sea and Air” by Kenneth Carpenter
• “Unnatural Enemy” by Poul Anderson
• “Becoming a Modern World” by William Gallagher
• “Dawn of the Endless Night” by Harry Harrison
• “Myths, Theories, and Facts of Dinosaur Extinction” by David J. Archibald
• “The Bone Wars: Cope vs. Marsh” by Ronald Rainger
• “The Green Buffalo” by Harry Turtledove

Reviews

• None
  

Dinosaurs II, edited by Jack Dann & Gardner Dozois (1995)

Paperback cover blurb

Mysterious and mighty, they were as untamed as the primeval forest, feared by lesser creatures for their brutal power. Small and lithe or large and lumbering, they ruled a wild world – and millions of years later, they continue to rule our imaginations…

DINOSAURS II

My thoughts

Dinosaurs II is one of the best short-story collections about dinosaurs that you can find – if you can find it. It features 11 stories that were originally published in science fiction magazines. As a result, the story quality is much better than later anthologies where most works were commissioned for the books and the editors lazily crammed in any submissions they got, regardless if they were readable or not.

The book kicks off with a Reginald Rivers tale by L. Sprague de Camp titled “The Big Splash,” which has the safari guide leading an expedition back in time to witness the asteroid (or comet) impact that wiped out the dinosaurs. Other stories concern a serial killer whose mind is transferred to a T. rex; a security guard who must guard a certain purple dinosaur that turns out to be the real thing; a trio of “raptors” that are resurrected in the present day; and a redheaded virgin who studies dinosaurs in the nude, much to the delight of the guy assigned to protect her.

There also are a couple tales by Isaac Asimov and Clifford D. Simak about the real reason dinosaurs went extinct.

The stories are pretty strong, and in each case you could tell the author was having fun with the subject. Only the final story, “Trembling Earth” by Alan Steele, came off as a little forced, partly because of the odd story structure Steele used to tell it. Another story, “Dinosaur Plies” by R.V. Branham, isn’t a story at all but rather… well, I’m not sure, but it’s only five pages long. Anyway, Dinosaurs II is definitely a book worth picking up. I’m sure there are a few copies collecting dust in a used bookstore somewhere.

Stories

• Preface
• “The Big Splash” by L. Sprague de Camp
• “Just Like Old Times” by Robert J. Sawyer
• “The Virgin and the Dinosaur” by R. Garcia y Robertson
• “The Odd Old Bird” by Avram Davidson
• “Bernie” by Ian McDowell
• “Small Deer” by Clifford D. Simak
• “Dinosaur Plies” by R.V. Branham
• “Day of the Hunters” by Isaac Asimov
• “Herding with the Hadrosaurs” by Michael Bishop
• “Ontogeny Recapitulates Phylogeny” by R. Garcia y Robertson
• “Trembling Earth” by Alan Steele

Trivia

• Before you ask, yes, this is a sequel to Dinosaurs!, an anthology published in 1990. I don’t have it.

Rivers of Time by L. Sprague de Camp (1993)

Paperback cover blurb

HAVE GUN, WILL TIME TRAVEL

Time travel came along just in time to save Reginald Rivers’ livelihood: guiding safaris hunting big game. There is no longer any big game surviving outside of preserves, but in the world millions of years past, from the Paleocene to the Pleistocene, bigger game than any in the modern world was available in abundance. Anyone who could pay Rivers’ considerable fee could hunt the dinosaur of his or her choice. And, high as it is, Rivers sometimes thinks his fee too low considering the headaches he gets from his clients.

Among his motley crew of time voyagers are fundamentalists determined to prove that evolution is a fraud, a stowaway animal rights fanatic who doesn’t care that the animals that Rivers shoots have been extinct for millions of years, a pair of scientists keen to watch the asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs, and a woman intent on bedding every member of the safari, including her ex-husband. Tyrannosaurus rex is a mere inconvenience compared to this assortment of Homo sapiens…

My thoughts

This anthology starts off with a classic of the genre, “A Gun for Dinosaur,” which may be second only to Ray Bradbury’s “A Sound of Thunder” when it comes to short stories featuring dinosaurs. The story is about a safari to the distant past that goes terribly wrong, as explained by Rivers to a client who demands why the guide insists that only men of a certain size be allowed to hunt dinosaurs. It is actually quite funny, and it sets the tone for the rest of the stories, which are narrated by Rivers.

The above blurb explains what kind encounters Rivers has on his travels. More often than not, the stories serve as vehicles for De Camp to make none-to-subtle political statements, although given the light-hearted nature of the tales, it never comes across as heavy handed. None of the stories are quite as good as “A Gun for Dinosaur,” but they’re all entertaining and the book is worth owning.

Rivers of Time isn’t just set in the Mesozoic Era. Rivers travels across much of Earth’s history in his adventures, meeting mastodons and other non-dinosaurs along the way. The stories are well researched. Only a “Gun for Dinosaur,” first published in 1956, feels a little dated.

Stories

• "Faunas" (poem)
• "A Gun for Dinosaur"
• "The Cayuse"
• "Crocamander Quest"
• "Miocene Romance"
• "The Synthetic Barbarian"
• "The Satanic Illusion"
• "The Big Splash"
• "The Mislaid Mastodon"
• "The Honeymoon Dragon"
• Afterword by author
  

Trivia

• “A Gun for Dinosaur” was adapted for an audio play broadcast on the science fiction radio series, X Minus One. You can listen to it here for free.

• An unproduced movie screenplay based on the book was written by Roy Thomas.

• Rivers of Time is one of the few books here to have its own entry on Wikipedia, which reports that a tenth Reginald Rivers story was written by author Chris Bunch.

Reviews

• Monika Hubner

A Different Flesh by Harry Turtledove (1989)

Paperback cover blurb

NEITHER MAN NOR BEAST

What if when Columbus came to the New World he found, not Indians, but primitive apelike men who were soon dubbed “sims”?

These immediate ancestors of modern man were less effective hunters, allowing prehistoric creatures such as mammoths and saber-toothed tigers to survive. Unable to learn human speech or conceptualize at a human level, sims could, however, be trained to do reliable work… as slaves.

Harry Turtledove probes this intriguing concept, exploring such historical and social issues as the Darwinian hypothesis, the Dred Scott decision and AIDS. Once again the author of the acclaimed Agent of Byzantium asks “what if” – and makes it a reality.

My thoughts

A Different Flesh is an anthology consisting of seven short stories chronicling the colonization of the New World, from the first English settlement of Jamestown to roughly the modern day. According to Turtledove, colonization of the West would be much more rapid, since man’s ancestors – called “sims” (not the little computer game people) – offer none of the resistance the Indians did. The politics are familiar but slightly different, the USA being replaced by the "Federated Commonwealths of America." Missing are the Indian names given to familiar landmarks and cities, such as the Mississippi river, which is now called the New Nile.

Also surviving are North America’s Ice Age megafauna, which play a major role in two stories: “Around the Salt Lick,” concerning the exploration of the virgin Appalachian mountains; and “The Iron Elephant,” about a race between a steam train and a domesticated mammoth.

Mostly Turtledove uses the sims to explore history’s moral dilemmas in a new light. Evolution is theorized long before Darwin. Slavery is abandoned because the less intelligent sims nicely fill the role of Africans. Sims also turn out to be great test subjects for treatments for HIV, although they’re far more human than apes or chimpanzees.

Turtledove is a skillful writer and every story is a good read. The sims are well-realized. They walk a fine line between human and animal, and Turtledove is careful not to push them in either direction, or to take sides on an issue in a story (although he lets readers know in his introduction his sympathies lie with the exploited sims).

Sadly, A Different Flesh is out-of-print and hard to find despite Turtledove’s current popularity. Cross your fingers and hope it will be reissued.

Stories

• Introduction by Isaac Asimov
• Preface by author
• "Vilest Beast"
• "And So to Bed"
• "Around the Salt Lick"
• "The Iron Elephant"
• "Though the Heavens Fall"
• "Trapping Run"
• "Freedom"
  

Trivia

• The author's web site can be found at http://www.sfsite.com/~silverag/turtledove.html

Reviews

• Steven Silver (with cover from 1994 reissue)