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The Promise of Space and Other Stories
Hugo and Nebula Award-winner James Patrick Kelly may offer the “Promise of Space,” but he delivers so much more. The sixteen stories included in this collection demonstrate the versatility of the author as a visionary and science fiction as a genre. Exploring Directed Intelligence, space opera, and shared sensory perception, he paints vivid pictures of startling futures and fantastic landscapes. And while Kelly pushes the boundaries of technology, his focus remains always on character, giving these speculative tales of loyalty and betrayal, love and desire, the human touch . . .
270 pages, Kindle Edition
Published July 8, 2018
6 people are currently reading
49 people want to read
About the author
James Patrick Kelly
436 books142 followersJames Patrick Kelly (please, call him Jim) has had an eclectic writing career. He has written novels, short stories, essays, reviews, poetry, plays and planetarium shows. His short novel Burn won the Science Fiction Writers of America's Nebula Award in 2007. He has won the World Science Fiction Society’s Hugo Award twice: in 1996, for his novelette “Think Like A Dinosaur” and in 2000, for his novelette, “Ten to the Sixteenth to One.” His fiction has been translated into eighteen languages. He produces two podcasts: James Patrick Kelly's StoryPod on Audible and the Free Reads Podcast (Yes, it’s free). His most recent publishing venture is the ezine James Patrick Kelly’s Strangeways. His website is www.jimkelly.net.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
June 24, 2019
Jim Kelly has been writing short stories for a long time now, and he’s very good at it. These are his best stories of the past decade. It’s a solid collection, and I recommend it. 3.5 stars, rounded up.
Sheila Williams, in her graceful introduction, says that she has been editing his stories for 30+ years. She’s bought a bunch of Jim’s stories for Asimov’s, which is the highest praise a professional editor can give. I’ve been reading his stories for at least that long, and he’s written some amazing stories along the way. Astounding! Fantastic!
Thanks, Jim Kelly, for many hours of good reading over the years. Some of it right here. And I guess that’s the highest praise a reader can give to a writer.
• The Promise of Space (2013) • short story. An astronaut married a much-younger midlist SF writer. As of story-now, things haven’t gone well. 2.5 stars. Online at http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/kelly...
• The Chimp of the Popes (2014) • novelette. 6 billion humans have uploaded to the cognisphere. A few stayed behind, and are looked after by uplifted chimps.
3.5 stars, solid and intriguing story (and backstory). The title is a nod to a 1982 Silverberg story, “The Pope of the Chimps."
• Crazy Me • (2011) • short story. An eye doctor, his half-crazy alter ego, and their hot new girl-friend. Slice of life in the near future. 3.5 stars, even if I never quite figured out what was going on. Online at https://www.tor.com/2011/05/11/crazy-me/
• Yukui! (2017) • short fiction. Yukui is a Dependent Intelligence who was looking for romance, but was manumitted instead, and starts to discover its new life. I liked it a lot. 4 stars. Online at http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/kelly...
• Don't Stop (2007) • short story. Lisa Schoonover is a runner whose life is complicated by her ability to see dead people. It makes her life hard. A better story than it sounds: 3+ stars
• Surprise Party • (2008) • short story. Mercedes Nunez, a retired reality-porn star, meets her former co-star John Dark at her 51st birthday party. Hijinks ensue. A sweet and touching story, and good SF too. 3.5+ stars.
•Oneness: A Triptych • (2015) • short story. A human couple celebrate their anniversary, A man and an alien woman make love. A religious woman and an alien seek religious ecstasy. Didn’t quite work for me, 2.5 stars.
•Happy Ending 2.0 • (2011) • short story. Romantic fantasy about a couple trying to reclaim a love gone cold. 2.5 stars
•Declaration • (2012) • novelette. Two high-school kids, sister and brother, contemplate a near future where a lot of people spend most or all of their time stashed in Soft Time (total immersion VR). It’s a murky story, and not a pretty picture, but well thought out and very nicely done. A cautionary tale, 3.8 stars.
•The Biggest • (2012) • short story. “Stiltman”, an oddball Superhero, and his adventures in New York in 1931. A bittersweet period piece, 3 stars.
• Miss Nobody Never Was (2013) • short story. A bartender reminesces about his broken marriage. He tries to help his alcoholic ex, which goes about as well as you’d expect. The fantastic elelment is a succubus in the form of his ex as a young woman, and she gives him a night to remember. Here it is : http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fic...
• Someday • (2014) • short story. Daya has chosen 3 fathers for her first baby. She makes a ceremonial meal that would “give an erection to a corpse. Anthropology in space! It’s not obvious what’s going on in this far-future story, and re-reading it didn’t help. But it’s very cool. 4+ stars, might be my favorite here.
• The Rose Witch • (2014) • novelette. http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/kelly... This one appears to be a retelling of a Hungarian folk tale, of a witch, enchanted bones, and a quest. 2.5 stars.
• One Sister, Two Sisters, Three • (2016) • novelette. • Two sisters sell cookies at a mysterious alien ruin, now a tourist attraction. They belong to an offbeat religion that forbids the use of modern medicine, but when their mother gets sick with an incurable disease — well, you remember the old saw about a Christian Scientist with apendicitis? There’s a romance too, and way more than I can say in a paragraph. Go read it! 3.5+ stars
Online at http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/kelly...
• Soulcatcher • (2013) • short story. A strange tale of a shopkeeper who’s trying to rescue her sister, and the alien Ambassador who enslaved her. Strong stuff, 3 stars. Online at http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/kelly...
• The Last Judgment • (2012) • novella. A major work, and the sequel to his great “Men Are Trouble” (2004). PI Fay Hardaway has a new case, in the nightmare world after the alien devils had disappeared all the men, and almost wrecked the human race. They meant well, by their lights, and seem to be figuring out that they made a mistake. 6 billion or so deaths later…. 5 stars. Stands alone, but richer if you read the first story too.
I asked the author for a review copy of this collection.
Sheila Williams, in her graceful introduction, says that she has been editing his stories for 30+ years. She’s bought a bunch of Jim’s stories for Asimov’s, which is the highest praise a professional editor can give. I’ve been reading his stories for at least that long, and he’s written some amazing stories along the way. Astounding! Fantastic!
Thanks, Jim Kelly, for many hours of good reading over the years. Some of it right here. And I guess that’s the highest praise a reader can give to a writer.
• The Promise of Space (2013) • short story. An astronaut married a much-younger midlist SF writer. As of story-now, things haven’t gone well. 2.5 stars. Online at http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/kelly...
• The Chimp of the Popes (2014) • novelette. 6 billion humans have uploaded to the cognisphere. A few stayed behind, and are looked after by uplifted chimps.
3.5 stars, solid and intriguing story (and backstory). The title is a nod to a 1982 Silverberg story, “The Pope of the Chimps."
• Crazy Me • (2011) • short story. An eye doctor, his half-crazy alter ego, and their hot new girl-friend. Slice of life in the near future. 3.5 stars, even if I never quite figured out what was going on. Online at https://www.tor.com/2011/05/11/crazy-me/
• Yukui! (2017) • short fiction. Yukui is a Dependent Intelligence who was looking for romance, but was manumitted instead, and starts to discover its new life. I liked it a lot. 4 stars. Online at http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/kelly...
• Don't Stop (2007) • short story. Lisa Schoonover is a runner whose life is complicated by her ability to see dead people. It makes her life hard. A better story than it sounds: 3+ stars
• Surprise Party • (2008) • short story. Mercedes Nunez, a retired reality-porn star, meets her former co-star John Dark at her 51st birthday party. Hijinks ensue. A sweet and touching story, and good SF too. 3.5+ stars.
•Oneness: A Triptych • (2015) • short story. A human couple celebrate their anniversary, A man and an alien woman make love. A religious woman and an alien seek religious ecstasy. Didn’t quite work for me, 2.5 stars.
•Happy Ending 2.0 • (2011) • short story. Romantic fantasy about a couple trying to reclaim a love gone cold. 2.5 stars
•Declaration • (2012) • novelette. Two high-school kids, sister and brother, contemplate a near future where a lot of people spend most or all of their time stashed in Soft Time (total immersion VR). It’s a murky story, and not a pretty picture, but well thought out and very nicely done. A cautionary tale, 3.8 stars.
•The Biggest • (2012) • short story. “Stiltman”, an oddball Superhero, and his adventures in New York in 1931. A bittersweet period piece, 3 stars.
• Miss Nobody Never Was (2013) • short story. A bartender reminesces about his broken marriage. He tries to help his alcoholic ex, which goes about as well as you’d expect. The fantastic elelment is a succubus in the form of his ex as a young woman, and she gives him a night to remember. Here it is : http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fic...
• Someday • (2014) • short story. Daya has chosen 3 fathers for her first baby. She makes a ceremonial meal that would “give an erection to a corpse. Anthropology in space! It’s not obvious what’s going on in this far-future story, and re-reading it didn’t help. But it’s very cool. 4+ stars, might be my favorite here.
• The Rose Witch • (2014) • novelette. http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/kelly... This one appears to be a retelling of a Hungarian folk tale, of a witch, enchanted bones, and a quest. 2.5 stars.
• One Sister, Two Sisters, Three • (2016) • novelette. • Two sisters sell cookies at a mysterious alien ruin, now a tourist attraction. They belong to an offbeat religion that forbids the use of modern medicine, but when their mother gets sick with an incurable disease — well, you remember the old saw about a Christian Scientist with apendicitis? There’s a romance too, and way more than I can say in a paragraph. Go read it! 3.5+ stars
Online at http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/kelly...
• Soulcatcher • (2013) • short story. A strange tale of a shopkeeper who’s trying to rescue her sister, and the alien Ambassador who enslaved her. Strong stuff, 3 stars. Online at http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/kelly...
• The Last Judgment • (2012) • novella. A major work, and the sequel to his great “Men Are Trouble” (2004). PI Fay Hardaway has a new case, in the nightmare world after the alien devils had disappeared all the men, and almost wrecked the human race. They meant well, by their lights, and seem to be figuring out that they made a mistake. 6 billion or so deaths later…. 5 stars. Stands alone, but richer if you read the first story too.
I asked the author for a review copy of this collection.
January 8, 2019
7,5 I find this a hard SF collection to review. Mainly because I was intellectually able to recognize these tales as good, well constructed by the hand of genre veteran (I had read a couple as part of previous volumes of 'Mammoths book of best new SF' which goes to show they belong to the best of the best), with gentle, insightful characterisation, a bit of experimentation and things to say about our digital future and dealing with the past (or with the generation that has moved along). But this kind of low scale SF, about little incidents (mostly) turning on characters is not my favorite brand of the SF-genre and the cover featuring an astronaut and an explosion suggested a more plot based, grand scale of hard SF (like Baxter or Reynolds). So I didn't get what I expected in this collection. And at some points it got hard to go through, as the stories lacked a bit of what I find exciting in SF.
September 27, 2018
This is a thoroughly enjoyable story collection. There was one story previously unpublished, though fans of James Patrick Kelly may recognize stories previously published in Clarkesworld, F&SF, Asimov's, etc. It's difficult to pick one favorite, but for me it was "The Chimp of the Popes."
December 9, 2018
I have to admit that I dove into this collection having never previously read anything from Jim Kelly. However, after his noble defense of the short story posted in a Big Idea segment on John Scalzi's blog, I thought "Yes! I do need more short stories in my life". I've read a lot of short stories from the previous Golden Age he mentions in his posting, but not much from later generations. This was a fine place to start to correct that.
Peter Tillman has already done us the service of summarizing each of the stories in this collection, so I won't provide a pale imitation of his work.
As with any collection, some of the entries connected with me more than the others. I rated this as five stars, though, simply because I thought the collection as a whole was very strong, varied in topic and style, and contained no stories I actively disliked. A number of the stories were excellent, in particular Chimp of the Popes, Yukui!, Miss Nobody Never Was, Someday, One Sister..., and (especially) The Last Judgement.
The evidence in this collection backs up the assertions he made in his defense of short stories, so I will certainly be looking to add more of them to my reading queue.
Peter Tillman has already done us the service of summarizing each of the stories in this collection, so I won't provide a pale imitation of his work.
As with any collection, some of the entries connected with me more than the others. I rated this as five stars, though, simply because I thought the collection as a whole was very strong, varied in topic and style, and contained no stories I actively disliked. A number of the stories were excellent, in particular Chimp of the Popes, Yukui!, Miss Nobody Never Was, Someday, One Sister..., and (especially) The Last Judgement.
The evidence in this collection backs up the assertions he made in his defense of short stories, so I will certainly be looking to add more of them to my reading queue.
February 1, 2021
This lovely collection of short fiction covers a wide range of topics including AI, sexbots, witches, and ghost stories. Every story is masterfully written bringing Jim’s talent to the table. If you’ve not heard of him, I highly suggest you take care of that right away. He’s truly a master of the art form. His stories range from sad and heartbreaking like the cover story, “The Promise of Space”, during which a wife tries to resurrect her husband using AI to humorous and fascinating like the final novella in the book “The Last Judgement.” In this story a detective in a world without men, tracks down an art thief while attempting to understand how humanity’s alien rulers fit into it all. This last story I found to be my favorite in the entire book.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews