Beyond Singularity

by Jack Dann (Editor), Gardner Dozois (Editor), Brian W. Aldiss (Contributor)

Featuring stellar contributions from some of today's most masterful practitioners of speculative fiction, Beyond Singularity presents fourteen visions of a tomorrow where rapid technological and genetic breakthroughs have rendered humanity obsolete.

Contents:
Brian W. Aldiss: "Old Hundredth" (1960)
Charles Stross: "Rogue Farm (2003)
Gregory Benford: "Naturals" (2003)
Timons Esaias: "Osmund Considers" (2002)
Robert Reed: "Coelacanths" (2002)
Michael Swanwick: "The Dog Said Bow-Wow" (2001)
James Patrick Kelly: "Barry Westphall Crashes the Singularity" (2002)
Cory Doctorow & Charles Stross: "Flowers from Alice" (2003)
Mary Rosenblum: "Tracker" (2004)
Eric Brown: "Steps Along the Way" (1999)
Walter Jon Williams: "The Millennium Party" (2002)
Christopher Rowe: "The Voluntary State" (2004)

Genres: Science Fiction, Short Stories, Anthologies, Collections

288 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published November 29, 2005

Reviews

[Brianna · Rating 3 out of 5]

I feel like you really can't ever go wrong with a science fiction short story collection, especially one edited by Dozois. This one has the distinction of gathering only stories that take place in the far, almost unrecognizable, future. Not my particular line of interest but this collection held my interest nonetheless.

[H · Rating 4 out of 5]

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

[Steve Stuart · Rating 4 out of 5]

The title of this anthology is misleading. Most of the stories are not actually set on the other side of a technological singularity (at which point change becomes incomprehensibly rapid). Instead, they're merely in the far, far future (at which point changes have accumulated to the point that the future is incomprehensible). The technological progress curve has certainly continued to climb, with most stories treating cloning, genetic modifications, or immortality as so commonplace that they're taken for granted, but (with the exception of Charles Stross's and Cory Doctorow's "Flowers From Alice") there's no evidence that this rate of change has outpaced our ability to keep up. Just the opposite, in fact: most stories show a depressingly static future; the general fear seems to be that having all of our problems solved by technology will leave mankind complacent and apathetic. This plateauing of progress is exactly the opposite of what is usually implied by a technological singularity.

The stories were generally quite good, however, despite the false advertising on the cover and in the preface. They were drawn from stories originally published between 1999 and 2004 (with the exception of one story by Brian Aldiss from 1960), and several merited award nominations or publication in annual best-of compilations. About half of them were a little too self-consciously (or artistically) weird for my taste, but all of them were well written. My second-favorite was Greg Egan's "Border Guards", a very human tale of what loss feels like when death is obsolete (with an absolutely terrific description of a game of soccer following quantum, rather than classical, physics, which just serves as icing on the cake). It was surpassed only by "Flowers From Alice" by Stross and Doctorow, which is exactly what you'd expect from that collaboration: a fast-paced, sex-filled romp that keeps your mind reeling all the way up to the clever ending.

[Annie · Rating 3 out of 5]

These stories showed glimpses of strange, sometimes very strange, futures. A couple of stories were a little too hard to follow for me, but others were really good, and all were very imaginative and inventive. So, what does it really mean to be human? Would I want to be a genetically modified or mechanically modified creature capable of fascinating things or tailored to fit into some narrow slot to serve a single purpose? Lots of questions to ask. Can't say I would like any of those futures that were portrayed, but it was an interesting look.