Zima Blue and Other Stories

Zima Blue and Other Stories (2006, ISBN 1-59780-058-9) is the first collection of short works by Alastair Reynolds. It was published in September 2006, by Night Shade Books. It includes ten stories, most of them long out of print. None of the stories in it are set in Reynolds's well-known Revelation Space universe, although Galactic North, a collection of most of Reynolds's Revelation Space short stories was released soon after.

The contents are:

  • Introduction by Paul J. McAuley
  • "Angels of Ashes" (Originally published in Asimov's SF, July 1999; unavailable since then)
  • "Beyond the Aquila Rift" (Originally published in Constellations, edited by Peter Crowther, 2005)
  • "Enola" (Originally published in Interzone 54, December 1991; unavailable since then in English)
  • "Hideaway" (Originally published in Interzone 157, July 2000; unavailable since then)
  • "Merlin's Gun" (Originally published in Asimov's SF, May 2000; unavailable since then)
  • "The Real Story" (Originally published in Mars Probes, edited by Peter Crowther, 2002)
  • "Spirey and the Queen" (Originally published in Interzone 108, June 1996)
  • "Understanding Space and Time" (Originally published in a limited edition of 400 copies for the Novacon 35 Sci Fi convention)
  • "Zima Blue" (Originally published in Postscripts magazine, issue 4, edited by Peter Crowther)

There was also one brand new story included, "Signal to Noise", which Reynolds had recently finished and for which Reynolds was shortlisted for the 2006 British Science Fiction Association award for short fiction.

For each story in the collection, Reynolds provides a personal afterword in which he discusses the story's genesis, influences, and such, which might be of interest to the reader.

There is a limited edition (2006, ISBN 1-59780-059-7) with an extra story, "Digital to Analogue", and with Reynolds's signature. "Digital to Analogue" was originally published in the 1992 anthology In Dreams.

A new version of the collection was published in April 2009 and contained all the stories listed above as well as Minla's Flowers (currently available in The New Space Opera), Cardiff Afterlife (a sequel of sorts to Signal to Noise) and Everlasting (first published in Interzone, Summer 2005).

Famous quotes containing the words blue and/or stories:

    “But now Miss America, World’s champion woman, you take your promenading self down into the cobalt blue waters of the Caribbean and see what happens. You meet a lot of darkish men who make vociferous love to you, but otherwise pay you no mid.”
    —Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960)

    “Long before I wrote stories, I listened for stories. Listening for them is something more acute than listening to them. I suppose it’s an early form of participation in what goes on. Listening children know stories are there. When their elders sit and begin, children are just waiting and hoping for one to come out, like a mouse from its hole.”
    —Eudora Welty (b. 1909)