There. “The Greatest Science Fiction Stories of the 20th Century” is done — four tapes, twelve stories, about six hours.

This was a “reprint” anthology — is it still “reprint” when it’s audio tapes? Anyway, it included Wil Wheaton reading “Why I Left Harry’s All-Night Hamburgers.” The weird thing, though — and I have not yet figured out how this is possible — is that when it was first sold, in “More of the Best of Science Fiction and Fantasy,” it ran 33:17. Here, it’s 28:16. Both were equally speed-corrected on my end, and the intro on the original (which isn’t on the reprint) is only a few seconds, not anything close to five minutes. I don’t understand. Could they have edited it? I didn’t notice any cuts.

None of the other stories are on both anthologies.

I would not have picked these as the best of the century. There are some classics, but best of the century? I don’t think so. And there are some… well, I consider “Huddling Place” seriously overrated. “Fermi and Frost” feels surprisingly dated.

“The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” is barely a story; it’s mostly a lecture, a thought experiment, something to argue about. “The Nine Billion Names of God” works a lot better when read than when heard; I was a bit surprised by that.

“That Only A Mother” seems as if it could be shortened without losing anything. For that matter, “Twilight” seems overlong — but I thought that when I read it, too.

“Allamagoosa” still works really well, though. “Bears Discover Fire” is maybe even better in this form. And “Jeffty Is Five” gains from the fact that it’s Harlan reading it, and he really puts his heart into it.

On the other hand, the inconsistencies in “Jeffty Is Five” are just as annoying as ever. I mean, from internal evidence, Jeffty and Donnie were five together somewhere between 1943 and 1948 — I make 1945 by far the most likely year — and the story ends seventeen years later, which would be 1960-1965, but Ellison says phrases like “uptight” were in common use on mass media, which was not yet true in 1965. He also refers to Jeffty reading a comic book that had been out of print for “three decades.” And if you think I’ve missed something that would indicate it was really more than seventeen years and later than 1965, there’s a major plot point that the price of color TVs has just taken a huge drop, and I remember that — it happened in ’64 or ’65, when the original patents ran out. We won’t even start on the question of whether Jeffty could read yet, which varies.

Still a great story, of course.

Anyway, it’s a pretty impressive set of stories, despite my quibbles. No serious problems converting them to MP3, really — I did screw up a thing or two, but they were easily recovered/fixed.

So that’s four more cassettes done. Only one left — my father’s memorial service. Which unfortunately appears to be damaged, which is why I didn’t do it already. I have an idea or two I want to try to see if I can recover it.

I’ve already started clearing the tape deck, though, getting ready to swap it out and put in the reel-to-reel.