Future War

by Jack Dann (Editor), Gardner Dozois (Editor), Paul McAuley (Contributor)

Contents
ix • Preface (Future War) • essay by uncredited
1 • Second Variety • (1953) • novelette by Philip K. Dick
49 • Salvador • (1984) • shortstory by Lucius Shepard
69 • Floating Dogs • (1991) • novelette by Ian McDonald
95 • The Private War of Private Jacob • (1974) • shortstory by Joe Haldeman
102 • Spirey and the Queen • (1996) • novelette by Alastair Reynolds
135 • A Dry, Quiet War • (1996) • novelette by Tony Daniel
159 • Rorvik's War • (1995) • novelette by Geoffrey A. Landis
189 • Second Skin • (1997) • shortstory by Paul J. McAuley
215 • The War Memorial • [Near Space] • (1995) • shortstory by Allen Steele
221 • A Special Kind of Morning • (1971) • novelette by Gardner Dozois

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Anthologies, War

261 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

Reviews

[Jokoloyo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Most SF short story anthology I bought because there was sale or maybe I glanced at the content list and interested with 2-3 of the stories. But I bought this SF short story anthology because I really want to buy it.

The most popular story is undoubtedly "Second Variety", the first story on the anthology. Good timing for the anthology using this novelette on publication at year 1999, nowadays we can get "Second Variety" for free in the internet.

My personal favorite is "A Dry, Quiet War" by Tony Daniel. I read it first from a library book, and the story stuck in my memory years after I read it. The idea of making military class into super-power individuals could be expanded into a full length novel, but the author could make it compactly into a novelette. (I read a few of other reviews, and found this short story is praised by them too. It is indeed a good story).

[Charles · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is the second military SF anthology that I've read edited by Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois. The other I also reviewed here, called Space Soldiers. This one suffered from many of the same issues I had with Space Soldiers, but was generally weaker than Space Soldiers. The stories were 1) rather uniformly longer than need be, 2) often did not produce a huge payoff, and 3) tended not to have much actual fighting action. The writing was certainly good and professional but for the most part the stories just didn't strongly engage me. It was more of an intellectual exercise in reading the tales than a passionate involvement.

"Second Variety" by Philip K. Dick was interesting because it was basically the basis for the movie Screamers. "Floating Dogs" by Ian McDonald was told from an interesting point of view. "A Dry, Quiet War" by Tony Daniel was my favorite tale. Even though it didn't have much action, it had interesting settings and characters. I also enjoyed "Rorvik's War" by Geoffrey Landis. Others might disagree, of course. But this was my take.

[Roger · Rating 3 out of 5]

As a collection of short stories, some were average, some were less than average, but some were very good. Tony Daniel's "A Dry Quiet War" was riveting. Paul McAuley's "Second Skin" and Allen Stelle's "A War Memorial" were almost as good.
All in all, an easy read with some disappointments.

[Michael Burnam-Fink · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an exceptional collection of military science-fiction, well balanced between action, philosophical meditations on the costs of going to war and coming home, and speculations about developments in weapons and strategy. Philip K Dick's "Second Variety" leads off the collection, in my opinion one of the best and creepiest stories about robotic warfare ever written, but the rest of the book doesn't slack off much. I particularly enjoyed Tony Daniel's "A Dry Quiet War", but all of the stories in this collection are worth your attention.

[Poppy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Err...too many technoblabs for me :(

[Dave · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting collection of warfare in the future. Includes the great Philip K. Dick story, "Second Variety," probably the best entry in the book.

[Joseph Hirsch · Rating 3 out of 5]

In 2012 Steve Pinker published a book, The Angels of Our Better Nature, whose premise was that violence was declining. Ten years and some change on, and it doesn’t look like that’s the case. We could be on the brink of what the old game theorists used to call MAD—Mutually Assured Destruction.
So as sad as it is to contemplate, it’s starting to look like war is a permanent part of the human condition. It’s just that the toys and tools change over time. Let’s hope that Einstein was right, though, that the war after this one will be fought with sticks and stones.
Future War, curated by Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois, collects ten or so speculative tales of war, from several of the genre’s better-known practitioners. At least one of them, the great Joe Haldeman, actually served in combat. The rest probably only served as slush pile readers at various mags, but, if you’ve ever read unsolicited manuscripts, a tour in the ‘Nam might seem comparatively painless.
The best of the tales seem to come from the better-known writers. The aforementioned Haldeman turns in a good one with The Private War of Private Jacobs. The whole things turns on one of those darkly ironic reveals that was the meat of Rod Sterling, but its familiarity didn’t bother me. I guess I’ve got a weakness for the classics, or a lot of residual love for Haldeman on account of what he bequeathed the world in The Forever War.
Philip Dick’s Second Variety is also fairly straightforward and relies on grim irony to deliver its body blow. Once again, though, I’m not complaining. These two stories were sort of the science fiction equivalent of comfort food, or hearing someone strum the three chord blues. You know mostly how it’s going to go, but the fills and little grace notes give the old songs new life.
The weaker entries are those from the younger writers. Many suffer from what I call “cyberpunk syndrome,” which I define as a fear of exposition and explanation so great that you conflate confusing the reader with worldbuilding. You’re thrown into the stories in media res and everyone uses an impenetrably thick slang and your narrator is usually high and thus beyond unreliable. It’s supposed to integrate you seamlessly into a plausible, usually-dystopian future. If anything, though, it makes it easy to tune out and skim-read, to get so disoriented you need a Dramamine, or whatever the mohawked kids in Cybertown call it these days.
Still, “success is buried in the garden of failure,” and you can’t fault a writer for experimenting, especially in science fiction, which itself is a kind of meta-experiment. That said, you can definitely blame the editor(s) for their poor curation, sequencing, and selection. But if you really want to hold the editor’s feet to the fire, you need to do it for including his own story in the collection. Especially when it’s as interminable as the one that caps this anthology.
Forget that it’s no good, or that it’s much longer and self-indulgent than all the other ones put together. There’s a whiff of the genuinely unethical about an editor selecting their own work for inclusion, and giving it such prominence, even if it were good.
It’s not like the editor in question didn’t have a surfeit of stories in the subgenre to choose from. Couldn’t Dick or Haldeman have been represented by two tales rather than one, and Gardner Dozois stayed the hell out of it? Nothing against him, as I have enjoyed some of his work before. But this time he spreads himself too thin with the multitasking. His hubris wasn’t quite promethean, but it did really spoil the already-tepid showing. If this were a stage play, the rafters would have literally collapsed, the sandbags hit the stage, some time late in the third act.

[Narzack · Rating 2 out of 5]

Meh. Kind of a mess. Nothing to recommend it, not even the Alastair Reynolds story. Philip K. Dick's Second Variety was solid, though.

[H · Rating 4 out of 5]

More great short stories, you can tell I like shorts....
Most of them were good.