Otherness

by David Brin

From multiple award-winning author David Brin comes this extraordinary collection of tales and essays of the near and distant future, as humans and aliens encounter the secrets of the cosmos--and of their own existence.  In "Dr. Pak's Preschool" a woman discovers that her baby has been called upon to work while still in the womb.  In "NatuLife" a married couple finds their relationship threatened by the wonders of sex by simulation.  In "Sshhh . . . " the arrival of benevolent aliens on Earth leads to frenzy, madness . . . and unimaginable joy.  In "Bubbles" a sentient starcraft reaches the limits of the universe--and dares to go beyond.  These are but a few of the challenging speculations in Otherness, from the pen of an author whose urgent and compelling imaginative fiction challenges us to wonder at the shape and the nature of the universe--as well as at its future.


• The Giving Plague • (1988)
• Myth Number 21 • (1990)
• Story Notes (Transitions) • (1994)
• Dr. Pak's Preschool • (1989)
• Detritus Affected • (1993)
• The Dogma of Otherness • [Editorial (Analog)] • (1986)
• Sshhh ... • (1988)
• Story Notes (Contact) • (1994)
• Those Eyes • (1994)
• What to Say to a UFO • (1994)
• Bonding to Genji • (1992)
• The Warm Space • (1985)
• Whose Millennium? • (1994)
• NatuLife ® • (1994)
• Piecework • (1990)
• Science versus Magic • (1990)
• Bubbles • (1987)
• Story Notes (Cosmos) • (1994)
• Ambiguity • (1989)
• What Continues ... And What Fails ... • (1991)
• The Commonwealth of Wonder • (1990)

Genres: Science Fiction, Short Stories, Fiction, Anthologies, Fantasy, Science Fiction Fantasy, Collections

358 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1994

About the author

David Brin is a scientist, speaker, and world-known author. His novels have been New York Times Bestsellers, winning multiple Hugo, Nebula and other awards. At least a dozen have been translated into more than twenty languages.

Existence, his latest novel, offers an unusual scenario for first contact. His ecological thriller, Earth, foreshadowed global warming, cyberwarfare and near-future trends such as the World Wide Web. A movie, directed by Kevin Costner, was loosely based on his post-apocalyptic novel, The Postman. Startide Rising won the Hugo and Nebula Awards for best novel. The Uplift War also won the Hugo Award.

His non-fiction book -- The Transparent Society: Will Technology Force Us to Choose Between Freedom and Privacy? -- deals with secrecy in the modern world. It won the Freedom of Speech Prize from the American Library Association.

Brin serves on advisory committees dealing with subjects as diverse as national defense and homeland security, astronomy and space exploration, SETI, nanotechnology, and philanthropy.

David appears frequently on TV, including "The Universe" and on the History Channel's "Life After People."

Full and updated at:

http://www.davidbrin.com/biography.htm

Reviews

[Trish · Rating 4 out of 5]

For now, this review is for the short story Detritus Affected only (though I will read the rest eventually).

We follow an archaeologist as he is asked to help with a dig. Bones are being found, there is a media circus. You know, the usual stuff. Until it slowly but surely dawns on you that there is a twist to all this. Muahahahahahaha!

I really liked the writing style. So much so that I decided to read the rest of the collection soon-ish. And then I have the famous story The Postman on my TBR and only now realized that it‘s by the same author. *lol*

[Brent · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting mix of short stories and essays all aligned to the central theme of Otherness.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really 3.5 stars. This collection contains a mix of short stories, medium to long stories, and essays/lectures. Brin's writing is always interesting and intelligent; however, it seemed that the longer the story was, the less enjoyable and more convoluted it became.

[Peter Tillman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Short stories + essays. A/A+. Has the classic story of educating an AI by bringing it up as your child, which has.... drawbacks. Brin at his best, reread sometime.

[The_Mad_Swede · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have been digesting this pleasant miscellany by science fiction writer David Brin at a slow pace, and have found the experience (my first encounter with Brin) highly enjoyable.

Otherness is a miscellany in that it mixes short stories (13), along with story notes (3 texts), and essays (5) in a fine collection of interesting ideas. It is divided into five parts: Transitions, Contact, Continuity, Cosmos, and Otherness, all representing basic ideas around which the texts in each part circles.

For me six of the short stories stand out a bit extra, although the entire lot is enjoyable enough to be sure.

First out is the "The Giving Plague", first published in 1988, and here found in the section Transitions. Here Brin digs into the idea virus evolution, and how influence on the host can effectively guarantee spread. The choice of narrator here is also good, as it brings the strong ideas into an individual and personal narrative.

The Transitions section also contains my next favourite, "Dr. Pak's Preschool", which deals with the idea of foetal development, and how foetuses can be affected in utero. Brin here gives us a Japanese mother to be as a narrator. She and her husband want to control the conception, initially to ensure a male child, but the procedure goes further to ensure intelligence, and maybe, just maybe, allow the child to be useful before birth. Frightening and fascinating.

The story "Sshhh ..." opens the section Contact. Here we learn that the aliens have arrived and that Earth has become part of a larger community, but also that there is a hidden trait, something which we must never talk about, must always hide, because it would ruin everything.

My final three favourites are the three stories from the section Cosmos: "Bubbles", the story about Serena, a Grand Voyageur, travelling between in deep space and getting lost outside of the galaxies in the universe; "Ambiguity", in which a scientist experiments with quantum mechanics and micro singularities; and "What Continues ... and What Fails ...", in which the idea of evolution comes back into play, nicely setting up a comparison between human birth and genetic heritage, and those of the black holes and the universe itself.

Among the non-fiction, the essays "The Dogma of Otherness" (in Transitions) and "The Commonwealth of Wonder" (in Otherness) are worth extra mention. Both tie in to Brin's concept of the dogma of otherness and otherness itself, and explores how these things may have affected human development and our understanding of the world.

All in all, Brin's miscellany is well worth reading, and an interesting exploration of ideas through fiction and non-fiction alike.

[Rachel · Rating 2 out of 5]

The central theme of "otherness" in this collection is interesting, but the stories themselves seem half-baked. 'Detritus Affected' and 'The Warm Space' are the most developed, but the rest are all a little convoluted for my tastes.

[Shawn · Rating 2 out of 5]

I normally enjoy David Brin. His ideas are pretty good. I do enjoy him when he speaks. But this book..well....It just bored me. Short scifi stories need to be able to grab you fast, get you into the characters then maybe give the reader a bit of a twist or leave you awestruck at the end. Hopefully leaving you in deep contemplation. Not one story in this book did any of that for me. They all ended with out my even caring about what just happened. The only thing I found entertaining were the lectures given by Brin in between some of the shorts. Just pass on this one. Nothing to see here....sadly

[John Chrisman · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book really wasn't my thing. I had a hard time telling what the point of most of the stories was or even if they had a point at all. The stories would hint at some sort of secret but never reveal what the secret was.

There was one particular story about virtual reality that I thought was good.

[Shel · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really liked some of the stories, some didn't grab me at all. The story notes where Brin wrote about his inspiration/process were interesting, but I found his essays boring and mostly just skimmed them.

[Dustin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nice collection, this. Some good stories, a few great stories, and a couple of thought-provoking essays that I wasn't expecting.

[Mitch · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.0 Stars
I really liked this one. Very much a throwback to the "golden" age of sci-fi: Focus on big ideas executed against a large canvass. The collection is peppered with some articles and speeches by David Brin that are maybe a little dated (and maybe a tad bit too optimistic for someone reading 20 years after the fact) but gives the reader a ton of interesting ideas and theories to munch on.

Overall, this collection raised my view of David Brin a good deal, seeing that he has a lot more to offer the sci-fi genre than the fun but pulpy stuff I've read by him by showcasing some really cool ideas wrapped in excellent writing.

[John Loyd · Rating 4 out of 5]

Otherness (1994) - collection of short stories by David Brin

I have so many magazines, Analog, Asimov, F&SF, etc. filled with short stories that I try not to pick up anthologies. I bypassed this one at the used book store several times, but I went online and bought a few used books. Oh, well.

The stories in this collection are quite good, so it wasn't a waste. Some first contact stories, a UFO story. The theme of overpopulation is brought up more than once. Different characters in every story, most of them likable. The title of the book is otherness, so that is kind of his theme, whether it's first contact, machine intelligence, virtual reality, or some other twist that takes you away from the straight human thinking.

[Stewart Tame · Rating 3 out of 5]

Decent anthology. As I've found with Brin's novels, these stories and essays are kind of hit-or-miss. Some of them--particularly the final essay--I like very much. But the rest of the book, while there's nothing I actually hate, just doesn't do much for me. I wish I had a clue what it is that puts me off some of his work because then I could share it and be all insightful and critic-y. I'll probably read more David Brin in the future, but I'm definitely not in a hurry to do so.

[Hoby · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty good for most of it.. the open commentary stories lacked eloquence and his obsession with tying childbirth to just about everything was a little much - but overall it was some okay delving into human situational twists and physics theories.

[Mel · Rating 3 out of 5]

The notes by the author in large chunks between the short stories was a bit of a turnoff. For some I could see this as being really, very interesting as he has a discourse about what had him write the stories you are about to read, but it takes up at least 1/3 of the book.

[Maribeth · Rating 3 out of 5]

I usually prefer short stories, but these were too technical and lacking character development. I really found them sterile and inaccessible.

[Denlillebogblog · Rating 1 out of 5]

1½ star.

[Rob Markley · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent set of Brin short stories and essays. Always something thoughtful and worthwhile to say

[Damien · Rating 3 out of 5]

A mixed bag. Several stories were too long.

[Peg Tittle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well worth the read, if only for these bits from "Detritus Affected" -

“Physicians swear a Hippocratic Oath whose central vow is ‘do no harm’. I wonder–how many other professions might do well to set that goal above all others?”

Excellent question.

“Look, see this broken plastic wheel? Part of a cheap toy, circa 1970. Giveaway prize in some fast food outlet’s promotional kiddie meal. Seventy grams of carboniferous petroleum cooked under limestone sediments for two hundred million years, only to be sucked up, refined, press-moulded, passed across a counter, squealed over, and then tossed in next week’s trash.”

[Andrew Brooks · Rating 5 out of 5]

A more complete review will unfortunately have to wait, for now:
A nicely organized collection of fiction written in the 1990s, interspersed with a few essays on the stories and the overall theme of Otherness.
The fiction pieces are all outstanding. Though there appears to be a major plot flaw in one story, "What Continues ... And What Fails ...", it isn't obvious, and I didn't notice any flaws in the rest.
The essays are also interesting, but I think the essays perhaps have dated with the overall changes our society has taken since 1994

[Andreas Happe · Rating 5 out of 5]

a short collection of stories written in the 80s and 90s. It's weird how many of the ideas are still up to date. And it can easily be noted that Brin has a PhD in Astrophysics (esp. when talking about black holes and quantum physics).

The last chapter "The Commonwealth of Wonder" has blown me away. Part meme, part Popper, all secular humanism. That part remined me a bit of "The Big Picture" by Sean Carroll.

[STU · Rating 3 out of 5]

Probably not quite in the right frame of mind to appreciate this book.
I tend to go short stories because I don't need to concentrate or invest as much as when I read an epic series, but this one required more thought and consideration than I felt like giving.
On which note, I did like Brin's Uplift series.

From this, I most liked The Giving Plague and Ambiguity.
Also the final essay on Otherness

[Steven · Rating 3 out of 5]

Maybe I've just read more recent works that are retreads of these ideas, but very few of these stories surprised me or made be contemplate things I hadn't thought of before. The writing was good, but I usually read sci-fi to be provoked, and this didn't do much of that.

[Charlie Pasta · Rating 1 out of 5]

Usually all short story collections automatically get 3 stars from me after completion because they almost always contain some stories I liked and others I didnt enjoy as much. I did not enjoy a single one of the stories or essays within this book.

[Lilly · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked the little story notes in-between and most of the stories, excited to read more from Brin.

[Chris Halverson · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good read with a wide variety of stories. I did notice there was a theme of pregnancy throughout, I wonder what that was about.

[Jeff · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was ok

But I m a little full of DAvid Brian now that I m finished. No desire to buy the next David Brian anything

[Daniel Johnson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Science fiction and philosophy together? I was in. I wanted to rate this 4.5, but a few stories dragged on or just had sexual content I was not interested in.

[Brock Birkner · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm impressed with each story for finding a genuine "what if...?" question that isn't immidiately as baseline as "well that would be bad!"

Incredibly smart, thoughtful, and empathetic.