Original stories from six of today’s best science fiction writers about the near future of technologies such as drones, wearable computing, implants, 3-D printing, and more.
CONTENT "Someone to Watch over Me" by Nancy Kress "A Heart of Power and Oil" by Brenda Cooper "Incoming" by Geoffrey A. Landis "Greeted Princess" by Cheryl Rydbom "Water over the Dam" by Mary Robinette Kawal "Shadow Flock" by Greg Egan
Disappointing, not really SF. Only the first story, Someone to Watch Over Me by Nancy Kress was interesting. Most of the stories were about roughly current technology, relationships, adolescents, or adults behaving like adolescents. I skipped most of the book. I was surprised at the absence of Cory Doctorow - he likes writing about such subjects.
Fun magazine sized collection focusing on credible near futures that managed to get stories by Kress, Egan and Kowal - all of which are writers who have written some of the finest SF in recent years and each are writers who I will always read their stories if I have the collection/ magazine to hand and they are are writers I actively seek out so to get all three in a 6 story collection was reason enough to pick this up for only 99p and the Egan story was loved by Dozois and will appear in his Best of the year later in 2015.
The Egan is at least twice the length of any of the other stories and as this is at the end it did give the whole thing a bit of an unbalanced feel. The other 5 stories are all very short but I enjoyed every one of them.
The Egan is a great fun heist story and worth picking up the collection for. The Kress is well written as always but feels minor compared to some of her other work - still I was glad I read it.
Each tale in this collection examines a technology we already have today taken just that one step further. Featuring authors already well known for their treatment of the near future, this collection offers an interesting taste of what is to come.
An enjoyable and interesting look at potential future technologies from a number of the leading speculative fiction writers of today. While not particularly outstanding this s is a collection worth reading. My personal favourites were the stories by Nancy Kress and Mary Robinette Kowal.