Sci-fi and Heroic Fantasy discussion

This is our discussion topic for the 2013 Science Fiction anthology....

Twelve Tomorrows anthology from Technology Review
edited by Stephen Cass

Twelve Tomorrows

CONTENTS
Q&A with Neal Stephenson
"Insistence of Vision" by David Brin
"The Mighty Mi Tok of Beijing" by Brian W. Aldiss
"In Sight" by Sheryl Rydbom
"Transitional Forms" by Paul McAuley
"Pathways" by Nancy Kress
"Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun" by Allen M. Steele
"The Revolution Will Not Be Refrigerated" by Ian McDonald
"The Cyborg and the Cemetery" by Nancy Fulda
"Bootstrap" by Kathleen Ann Goonan
"Zero for Conduct" by Greg Egan
"Pwnage" by Justina Robson
"Firebrand" by Peter Watts
Art Gallery of Richard Powers

Note that most of these stories are quite short. The entire collection is under 200 pages (or 2700 Kindle locations, whatever they are. It's an unexpectly large download though, because of the Powers art gallery.)

Also note that although Goodreads lists Stephenson as its first contributor, he's a Q&A guest, not an included author.

Just downloaded this book on my Kindle. Can't wait to get started.

Two months ago, I had an eye surgery and wasn't able to enjoy reading. Now it turned good enough to get back to business :)

I brought up Twelve Tomorrows because Gardner Dozois marked it as a top anthology of 2013. It is an annual anthology, with the first The Best New Science Fiction and this year's Twelve Tomorrows 2014. Each one has got an illustrious list of contributing authors.

Can't say much about the Q&A with Neal Stephenson - I liked the very good introduction to his work showing up the connections of his books. The questions - even the audience's questions were quite intelligent and Stephenson's discussions were very good.
But I'm not here for the Q&A but because of stooooriiiiiies!

★★★★ for David Brin's "Insistence of Vision"
A very good anthology start! The theme of augmented reality where people can blur to have imperceptible identities feels like Vinge's Fast Times at Fairmont High but it's far extended. Brin investigates how criminals can stay within the society instead of being imprisoned by being impeded with special glasses that blur everyone else. It is more a story about ethics than about technology. Some twists and turns make this a very fast and enjoyable read on the background of a believable but not too far-stretched or inventive background.

★★ for Brian W. Aldiss' "The Mighty Mi Tok of Beijing"

SF Grandmaster Aldiss plays the motivation to optimize humanities' anatomy in a very fleshy, splattery way including porn and diarrhea. The tone is playful and fitting to it's oriental background. Probably nothing for the weaker, easily disgusted reader.

★★1/2 for Sheryl Rydbom's "In Sight"

Blatant high tech copy of Robin Hood including the reporters Robyn and Mari and Jack Prince aka Prince John as their counterpart. They hack into personal chips and steal identity using lots of gadgets and tricks to rob the rich and distribute to charities. And produce their own stories as a side-effect.
Could turn into a nice story but it is over too fast for my taste.

★★★ Stephenson Q&A
Andreas wrote: "Can't say much about the Q&A with Neal Stephenson - I liked the very good introduction to his work showing up the connections of his books...."

I agree with you about the quick introduction/overview of Stephenson by Jason Pontin. The most interesting subject was optimism versus pessimism, a sort of anti-dystopian leaning by Stephenson.

I also liked that Stephenson readily admitted, "The whole prediction thing is kind of a rigged game. In science fiction, there’s a shotgun effect, where you’re just predicting all kind of things, and then a few of them come true—or can somehow be interpreted as having come true—and then you can take the credit. People tend not to notice all the stuff you got wrong."

I thought the audience questions were more about Stephenson's writing process rather than the futuristic content of the works.

Andreas wrote: "★★★★ for David Brin's "Insistence of Vision"
A very good anthology start! ..."

Yup, agree with that, Brin's story is excellent. The idea of the collection is to have SF authors imagine some future technology and its application/affect. Brin has picked on augmented reality ("Google glasses").

I kind of like these augmented reality stories. This one deals with how people might create and use avatars, or how the legal process might for certain avatars on people. How does it change society is everyone knows all about you as soon as they see you?

And as a story, it had a cute reversal at the end.

★★★ for Paul McAuley's "Transitional Forms"

British botanist McAuley stays in his genre:
Plants with biotechnically modified genes - so called a-lifes - gather minerals at mining sites. The problem is that they evolve and spread and the zone is shut down by government to prevent gene-pirates messing things up further. A patrolling ranger encounters an attractive scientist. Things go as they must, she dupes him. There is some beauty in the world-building, like some kind of graffiti pirates enhancing the a-lifes with bioluminescence.

But I know that McAuley can put more awesomeness into 10 pages, e.g. in his The Man.

The story makes you think alone with it's title - transitional forms are life forms that exhibit traits both in its ancestors and descendants. One might wonder where those a-lifes transit to, where the dangers are and how corrupt governments only superficially prevent uncontrolled spreading.

★★★★1/2 for Nancy Kress' novelette "Pathways"

This is the longest and best story so far.
Kress' strength is to put believable characters into flawed settings. In this case, the protagonist suffers of Fatal Familial Insomnia. Medical researchers under a libertarian government experiment with her by directly manipulating her brain using some fancy technology.

I constantly feared some mixture of Flowers for Algernon (curing brain deficits) and Beggars in Spain (sleepless culture) but it developed quite differently:
We follow the young female through her Mississippi setting, family drawbacks and fight to do the right thing.
It brings up questions about the impact and ethics of medical research.
Half a point off because of some large info-dumps.

The story is rightfully included in The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirty-First Annual Collection.

★★ for Allen M. Steele's "Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun"

The author seems to be a Pink Floyd fan - it is a title from 1968, but the story doesn't resemble the orientalistic style of the song at all.

A genius student leaving his MIT life behind entering a sect believing in aliens. They hijack a space-ship, changing direction from Jupiter towards the Sun. It ends as it was told in the first sentence.

Solid writing but pointless story.

★½★ for Brian W. Aldiss' "The Mighty Mi Tok of Beijing

Andreas wrote: "SF Grandmaster Aldiss plays the motivation to optimize humanities' anatomy in a very fleshy, splattery way including porn and diarrhea...."

I concur on this one, rating it even slightly lower. The scientific premise this wants to explore is the intentional redesign of human anatomy, both through surgery and genetics.

The problem starts with the gross, scatological opening, which does nothing to actually advance the story. In addition to the bioengineering, he wants to present a future free of taboo with regard to either sex or defecation. Sadly, I didn't find much in here worth reading.

(Reminds me of a cuter story I read in this month's Analog, "Malnutrition", which presents an alien race that goes the opposite way on taboos, viewing eating and defecating as simply opposite ends of the same obscene process (and are appalled to have the humans throw a banquet in their honor.)

Brin's "Insistence of Vision" -- this is one of the pieces that made me think most (people wouldn't really do that! would people really do that?) In addition to the ideas about criminal justice, I liked the bit at the beginning with its assumptions about how augmented reality would impact art/aesthetics. I wondered about the narrator's name, which seemed unusual (Sigismund) -- is there an in-joke I'm missing?

Aldiss' "Mighty Mi Tok" -- count me among the easily disgusted, I guess

Rydbom "In Sight" -- interesting to play w/wireless banking security issues, but storywise not enough characters or stakes

McAuley's "Transitional Forms" -- for me, one of the most fun because of its use of the Western genre; story/character took the fore here, but I liked how local and global economics were both considered

Kress' "Pathways" -- a strong story, and one I immediately recommended (to my sister, a genetic counselor & infrequent sff reader) a bit of a downside for me was that it so closely models current medical research practices that stripping away relatively few elements (like Kress' imagined powerfully libertarian White House) would leave a story that could be happening present-day

Hillary wrote: "stripping away relatively few elements..."
That is exactly the context for this anthology: Very near future situations. Some authors take it very tight, some a bit more relaxed. It is nearly the same with The Revolution Will Not Be Refrigerated which mixes Arab Spring with the Internet of Things - both happened already and only the combination of the two is new.

I found this whole collection pretty slight. I enjoyed "Insistence of Vision", "Zero For Conduct" (plus I loved the pun in the title) and "The Revolution Will Not Be Refrigerated" but I didn't think a great deal of much of the rest.

★★★ for "The Revolution Will Not Be Refrigerated" by Ian McDonald
Ian McDonald is a British SF author who constantly wins awards since the end of the 80s.

The story's title is a nice reference to a popular 60s Black Power song. The song criticises materialistic behaviour and the role of television and a plea to African Americans to pull away from passive consuming and actively overcome separation.

McDonald's story combines the idea of overcoming passive behaviour with 2010's Arab Spring and The Internet of Things.
The Arab Spring was possible by using social media - Twitter, Facebook etc. for organising the revolution.
This story shows regimes' reactions - they identify main protagonists and micro-control the internet in their respective countries.
But revolutionary forces seek their way around those limitations by installing a new, uncontrolled network connecting refridgerators, toasters etc.

I don't think that the author really got the concept of the Internet of things - connected gaming consoles, refridgerators and toasters is not that advanced; in fact, those are concepts from the 90s. It is only the combination of those themes, innovation driven by need, that makes the story interesting.

★★★★ for "The Cyborg and the Cemetery" by Nancy Fulda
I never heard of the author but the name instantly catched my attention - because I live in a town with the same name :)

An elder, rich, and disabled man bids farewell, reflecting on his life, prepares for the future.

It is one of those rare examples where the SF doesn't turn out to be dystopic - instead of showing dehumanization, his intelligent leg prosthesis gives back humanity.
The author introduces the A.I. prosthesis with a different concept than classical A.I. - it is only intelligent due to the context of being embedded into the wearer's endocrine system which is as important as pure logic induction.

When do we start becoming cyborgs - are glasses already the beginning? Is it really bad?
Is dead a binary process?
When will cybernetical personalities get human rights?

I found the author's article which starts answering some of those questions.

I really liked the story's flow, the interactions of the man with his limb and his granddaughter. Don't expect action or much world-building, though.
I'll definitely watch this author!

★★ for Rydbom "In Sight"

Hillary wrote: "Rydbom "In Sight" -- interesting to play w/wireless banking security issues, but storywise not enough characters or stakes..."

That's a good, succinct summary. The whole idea of hacking and cloning credit cards and smart phones has really been done in print (e.g., Little Brother) and TV & movies. The two characters here are tissue thin (little more than names), and the story almost nonexistent (the steals a credit card number.)

★★1/2 for "Bootstrap" by Kathleen Ann Goonan

A PTSD impaired veteran lives as a rag artist. One day he picks up a mysterious nano-tech shirt which super-heroes him. In the author's words it is kind of bootstrapping humanity. I don't know if that word makes any sense to non-computer nerds, though.

I thought of Chackie Chan's comedy-action movie "The Tuxedo", although this one doesn't enhance the protagonist physically but mentally.

The story is a bit chaotic, maybe resembling the protagonist's mental state. For example, it briefly mentions synesthesia but doesn't dive into it, similar to a short attention-span.
And I think the outcome is a bit weak considering and potential the story had with it's good start.

Re: David Brin's "Insistence of Vision"

Hillary wrote: "this is one of the pieces that made me think most (people wouldn't really do that! would people really do that?) ..."

Not sure exactly what "that" part of the story is.

1. Brin has a future society where apparently everybody is at least entitled to wear augmented reality glasses which can pull up a lot of information on just about anyone walking by (or anything they walk by.)

Would people do that? I think that's inevitable. There will probably be some privacy settings, at least at first, restricting information to "friends" and recordings; eventually the "if you have nothing to hide, what are you afraid of?" argument will overwhelm the privacy advocates. "Secrets are Lies. Privacy is Theft"


2. (view spoiler)[Brin has a criminal justice system that punishes people by removing their natural vision, replacing it with glasses-provided vision that can be edited to restrict who a person can see and where they can go.

An interesting alternative to house arrest, and in many ways superior, if you get over the involuntary blindness thing. So far, we've rejected punishment involving physical alteration of criminals (e.g., mandatory castration of rapists — although the death penalty is used in many places), mostly because physicians object that they can "do no harm". The ending, after our narrator has served his full sentence, implies he now can see everything a free citizen can; but it's not clear whether the "second chance, second sight" involves actual physical restoration of natural vision, or whether it's just an unedited feed from his glasses. (hide spoiler)]

Will people do that? I doubt it.


3. (view spoiler)[Brin has a woman push a man in front of a car because he flirted with her without revealing his criminal punishment status.

I think discussing your rap sheet is probably a second- or third-date topic, but then this isn't entirely a past, but a present ongoing punishment. (Being behind bars is a pretty obvious pickup line killer, though how visible is an ankle bracelet?) (hide spoiler)]

Will people do that? A few.

It's difficult to discuss spoilered remarks. Just saying ;)

Andreas wrote: "It's difficult to discuss spoilered remarks. Just saying ;)"

I suggest just putting the title of the story being commented on outside the spoiler and spoiling everything else :)

★★★ for "Zero for Conduct" by Greg Egan

Greg Egan won a couple of awards and he shows some good story-telling here.

Room-temperature superconductors would be a real hit for the inventor and Western economy in general. But when the inventor is an Afghani girl Latifa being schooled in Iran, it is a different thing. The author builds a believable genius character in a difficult setting that she has to master somehow.
The story discusses the importance of informal education.

This is one of the longer stories - and where I would have wished for more elaboration with some of the shorter stories, this one could have been shortened without loosing too much.

★★★ for "Pwnage" by Justina Robson

UK's secret service uncovers dissidents by posting Twitter baits in a setting where people permanently connect their senses directly to the Cloud. They witness a legal, insane fast Robin Hood campaign.
Linking with other persons, deep immersion, wikis for criminal organisations - the setting is quite interesting.

If only the prose would be better accessible, less confusing.

★★★ for "Firebrand" by Peter Watts

People drive cars in spite of large numbers of deadly accidents. That is how people are.
In this dark humorous story, the protagonist covers government's small problems with people exploding due to being exposed to a new way of bio-oil production. It is called "spontanous combustion" or "sponcom", which affects society in interesting ways: To demonstrate safety, people started smoking again being contraindicators to sponcom.

The story is quite different to the others in the anthology, rounding it up nicely. I only had some problems with lots of U.S. local abbreviations that I don't know about.

★★★ for Paul McAuley's "Transitional Forms"

If I was handed this without an author attached, I might think of Nancy Kress: a story of biotechnology with an emphasis on people. (I'm clearly not as familiar with McAuley as Andreas.) I liked it quite a bit.

The futuristic premise is bioengineering for industrial purposes gets out of hand in some locations and areas have to be closed off. The organisms then begin to mutate, those very mutations becoming of commercial interest to biotech companies.

The only criticism is that the biotech doesn't really seem to affect the characters, it's just a background for them. And McAuley doesn't really seem as interested as he could be in looking at the social/legal implications of the bio engineering as he is in using the title as a metaphor for his characters.

Hillary wrote: "McAuley's 'Transitional Forms' -- for me, one of the most fun because of its use of the Western genre;..."

I always like a story that turns my native environment into an even bigger wasteland. :)

For a Britisher the author has a pretty good feel for the rural southwest environment.

Re: "Insistence of Vision" -- G33z3r's #2 is the element that had me wondering whether society would conceivably buy in; I assumed that Sigismund's (view spoiler)[ restored sight was unedited feed from his glasses (hide spoiler)]

★★★★★ for Nancy Kress' novelette "Pathways"

Andreas wrote: "This is the longest and best story so far. Kress' strength is to put believable characters into flawed settings..."

It's not surprising that Kress has the longest story in this anthology. In Kress's collection Beaker's Dozen (which we discussed last year), she remarks that some authors naturally "write long" and some naturally "write short", and she naturally "writes medium", with the novella being her preferred story length.

The extra space gives Kress time to create a really wonderful character in Ludmilla, slightly flawed and conflicted, and incredibly likable, as well as Dr. Hai Chung as the Marcus Welby of neuroscience. Kress is always awesome with her characters.

The future science Kress imagines involves using photoluminescent algae blooms in lieu of electrodes for experiments on the human brain. And she wants to use that and Ludmilla's hereditary genetic illness to discuss the ethics of human experimentation.

I wish I'd read this story a year ago when this anthology was released. I think I would've included "Pathways" on my Hugo nomination form.


Hillary wrote: "it so closely models current medical research practices that stripping away relatively few elements (like Kress' imagined powerfully libertarian White House) would leave a story that could be happening present-day ..."

Agreed, it doesn't jump very far ahead, and doesn't really use the few futuristic elements it has as key to the story. (Just drop the algae for good old-fashioned electrodes and write pretty much the same story.)

Kress, much like her hero Ludmilla, manages to infuse her pathos with a dose of optimism.

★½★ Allen M. Steele's "Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun"

Andreas wrote: "Solid writing but pointless story. ..."

I didn't even think the writing was all that solid, unless you mean most of the sentences have subjects and verbs and only get confused about modifiers once or twice. The work is almost a parody of bad science fiction. And I surely didn't understand why Terry's final message was addressed to Matt, who he hasn't had much contact with since high school.

The plot is tissue thin, essentially an outline told by a 3rd party, like a pitch for a SyFy B movie. Terry, the brilliant MIT student who falls into a religious cult, has zero personality or motivation. Matt, the high school friend who tells the story, is even less well developed (if that's possible.)

The futuristic science is equally thin. Steele throws out a few buzzwords about mining Jupiter for heavy hydrogen and laser sails, at about the same level of depth I just did. Like one might get if one decided to try to make up a story based on some Pink Floyd album.

It's a contrived story, and as Andreas says, pointless.

★★★ "The Revolution Will Not Be Refrigerated" by Ian McDonald

I think Andreas pretty much covered this story. It's an interesting story outline (doesn't have much in the way of characters to latch onto) it doesn't really seem to break a lot of new ground beyond latching onto the Arab Spring (and the jury is still out on its ultimate efficacy, but it ain't looking like an unqualified success.)

Andreas wrote: "I don't think that the author really got the concept of the Internet of things - connected gaming consoles, refrigerators and toasters is not that advanced; in fact, those are concepts from the 90s...."

Yes, the whole mesh network thing reminded me of the Xnet from Doctorow's Little Brother. The tie-in to some parts extracted from a "smart" refrigerator tries to make the story seem more modern than it is, but it really hasn't done anything with the Internet of things concept. (There is a cute advertisement running on US television these days for Nest Smart thermostats (watch on YouTube) and I was kind of expecting the story to go in that direction. This is also why my PS3, TV & DVR aren't connected to the Internet and I put tape over my WebCam.)

Although the title takes off from the popular 60's expression "The Revolution will not be Televised" (the song actually derives from the catch phrase), McDonald has actually written a story with the opposite intent. The Revolution will not be on the Internet. Real change still happens in the streets.


(A lot of stories in this collection using 60's concepts. I think I may have discovered the generation that's in charge at Technology Review these days. :)

Steele's "Heart of the Sun" -- I agree, this one was a big "meh" for me; I could have been intrigued by a couple of kernels (the beamship concept; an empiricist undergoing a religious conversion), but they just didn't seem developed. I keep forgetting the characters' names.

McDonald's "The Revolution will not be Refrigerated" -- pretty much in agreement w/Andreas' & G33z3r's comments; I liked the details of the slightly-more-advanced-than-currently-on-the-market fridge(at least I haven't seen any kid & diet control fridges on the market yet), and I liked how the people element beyond the tech was considered (view spoiler)[you can join my revolution but you can't date my daughter (hide spoiler)], but I felt disconnected by the dearth of specific character names (the Zabayeen, Hack-boy). I was also a little disappointed by the probably realistic ending (view spoiler)[a significant tactical victory but no real political change (hide spoiler)].

Egan's "Zero for Conduct" -- sounds like I liked this one more than Andreas, because I thought it wanted to be longer rather than shorter. I liked that we had a fairly developed main character and got to spend time looking at her development process & business planning & execution, but I thought given the amount of time we spent on the initial trial in the school setting, where the stakes of getting caught were pretty high, the putting it all together in the real world side of things came together a bit too easily. Egan described a few kinks in Latifa's plan (like having to move the factory), but they seemed solved pretty easily compared to the sneaking-out-of-study-hall problem when in reality the stakes & the difficulty level were even higher in Part 2. I also thought it would have been nice if the secondary characters (esp. the extended family) could be a bit more fleshed out, and in a longer form, I'd like to see how some of the anticipated societal changes actually shook out. Overall, though, I found the story enjoyable & satisfying.

Goonan's "Bootstrap" -- I was bothered by how much the nanoshirt seemed like a magic cure. (view spoiler)[To state just one of my many issues: If nanotech is so expensive & exclusive, how did herb-growing artist Ariel get ahold of a nanoshirt? (hide spoiler)] I did like the main character, a vet with head trauma, an area that's getting attention in sports as well as the military

Robson's "Pwnage" -- the stream-of-consciousness language made this one feel very gimmicky to me; the morality of sting operations is an interesting subject, however.

Fulda's "Cyborg and the Cemetery" -- I liked this one more than I expected to based on the title; I enjoyed the TJ's character (as well as Barry's) and their relationship. I wondered: (view spoiler)[ If part of the key to AI development is the connection to a human endocrine system, how will it work when TJ is offloaded to servers? If the endocrine input is essential, must all "synthetic identities" in this world be or begin as human symbiotes? And, while TJ seems like a great guy, how likely is it that all or most synthetics will be so invested in their humans or in positive outcomes for humanity? The optimistic tone was pleasantly reader-friendly, but I couldn't help wondering what would happen if TJ or Barry encountered a villainous AI. (hide spoiler)]

Watts' "Firebrand" -- the dark humour worked for me. I liked that the protagonist did her dirty work on the government's behalf, but although I thought it likely/possible (view spoiler)[ that society would be willing to risk sponcon even after the cover-up was exposed (hide spoiler)], I found it a little difficult to believe (view spoiler)[ that the main character & her colleague would find new jobs so easily! (hide spoiler)] The story makes an interesting counterpoint to "Transitional Forms," where the bioengineering also went wild but mostly in a contained area and apparently without directly altering animal life.

★★★★ Nancy Fulda "The Cyborg and the Cemetery"

I find myself in agreement with Andreas and Hillary in that I liked this quite a bit. It's more a thought piece than an action piece, and one of the characters is an AI that operates a mechanical prosthesis leg. It is strangely refreshing to encounter in AI not bent on world conquest.

I think Barry views his leg's AI (named TJ) as something in between a son and a clone, and a form of immortality, a more intimate relationship than children. (And perhaps why Barry's relationship with his daughter Miriam was strained? He was too invested in TJ. Or, am I reading too much into it?)

Also, I couldn't help thinking of the old joke, "I met a man with one leg named TJ." "What was the name of his other leg?" (Really, that's funny if you have just read this story. :)


Hillary wrote: "while TJ seems like a great guy, how likely is it that all or most synthetics will be so invested in their humans or in positive outcomes for humanity?..."

I'm not sure if TJ is meant to represent an independent AI, or something akin to an upload of Barry into synthetics.

That is a key question and one this story (and in fact no story I can really think of) tries to address about AI's. Without our hormones, how "human" is an AI? No pleasure, pain, hunger, fear, sex drive,.... Why would a synthetic intelligence share human concerns? How much does removal of the endocrine system change TJ? A lot, I would imagine.


Andreas wrote: "I never heard of the author but the name instantly caught my attention - because I live in a town with the same name :) .... I'll definitely watch this author! "

Fulda also wrote Movement, nominated for both a Hugo and Nebula Award for best short story in 2012. It's told from the 1st-person PoV of a young autistic as her parents discuss "fixing her". You can read or listen to it for free at Escape Pod. I highly recommend it in either format. (Unfortunately for Fulda it was on the ballot the same year as Ken Liu's The Paper Menagerie.)

You live in a town named Nancy? :)

★★ "Bootstrap" by Kathleen Ann Goonan

I didn't really care for this and I don't really know exactly why. I guess I just never connected with the main character.

The 1st-person narration starts out a bit scrambled and disjointed, mirroring the mental state of the protagonist. And it straightens out as his condition improves, an improvement mostly derived by removing the fog of medications he's been using and the blockage on his memories. Fortunately, the story is short, so the disjointed writing doesn't go on long enough to become annoying (I've never get through 50 pages of it, much less a whole book.)


Hillary wrote: "I was bothered by how much the nanoshirt seemed like a magic cure...."

I felt that way, too. In that sense, it doesn't really seem to fit into this collection of future technological imaginings: a secret nanotech shirt that grafts itself onto the brain and rewires it. If it existed, why wasn't it more widely used? And if such technology had been created, wouldn't it be used not just for curing mental illnesses but also for mind control and indoctrination?

So in that sense, this story is more fantasy, like The Tuxedo, or the angel Ariel bestowing a magical cure. Or something like that.

★★★½★ "Zero for Conduct" by Greg Egan
An enjoyable read, a classic YA/juvenile in a new wrapper. Teenage child prodigy geek genius invents something really clever, tries to hang onto it in the face of obstacles/bad guys. It's very much in the structure of the Tom Swift pulp stories, with the twist that Egan's protagonist is Latifa, an Afghani girl studying in Iran. Latifa derives a formula for a room-temperature superconductor using the high school laboratory and computer time she wins folding proteins in her spare time. Trying to earn enough money from this invention on the sly so she can secure the patent gets her involved with smugglers and solving the intermittent electric power in Kandahar.


Andreas wanted it shorter, Hillary wanted it longer.... We are in Goldilocks and the Three Bears. :)

Latifa's personality could've been fleshed out a little more beyond determined and resourceful young science geek.

There are a couple of side plot elements that don't really go anyplace: A bully in school who mostly hates Latifa because she's from out of town and smarter than everyone else. A shoplifting incident in the clothing store Latifa runs as cover for her smuggling operations doesn't seem to serve any purpose to the primary story or characters.

How does Dozois' praise ("certainly have to qualify as one of the year's best SF anthologies, certainly the most consistent in overall quality") hold up with your reading experience?

Most consistent in overall quality? How diverse must the other anthologies' quality have been?
Did you find any better anthology of year 2012?

★★"Pwnage" by Justina Robson

The internet is distracting. #DidNotGrok Style triumphs over storyline. #Author213374G33Z3R

Also, Pwn it is soooo 2000.

Andreas wrote: "How does Dozois' praise.... Most consistent in overall quality?..."

"Consistent" as one of those adjectives you use when you have to say something and don't want to be insulting. "Alex Smith is a very consistent performer."

Except for the magic shirt story ("Bootstrap"), all these stories are consistently near-future visions.

In terms of quality, Technology Review is printed on nice, sturdy, glossy paper stock (unlike those pulp magazines! :)

Andreas wrote: "Did you find any better anthology of year 2012? ..."

This anthology is actually 2013, in that all the works appearing in it are published here for the first time; as opposed to a "best of" retrospective from the previous year. That's one reason anthology awards are so difficult (and so unusual — neither Hugo nor Nebula have such a category.) Some anthologies are first-time publication only, and others are reprints (either from the previous year or all-time.)

I noticed none of the stories included here made it onto any of the major (English language) SF awards (Hugo, Nebula, BSFA, Aurora, Aurealis.) Possibly because Technology Review isn't as widely read by SF fen.

My vote for best anthology of 2013-original stories would be Some of the Best From Tor.com, 2013, strictly in terms of number of terrific stories included. ("Wakulla Springs", "Burning Girls", "The Water That Falls on You from Nowhere", "Lawful Interception", "The Hanging Game", "The Ink Readers of Doi Saket", "The Best We Can", "A Rumor of Angels", "The Too-Clever Fox" .) That's not including the subsequent "best of 2013" or "best of 2012" anthologies (none of which I've actually looked at.)

I know it's difficult selecting a good anthology. Tor.com is a mixed anthology, containing also fantasy, right? It's been on my kindle for a while but I never realized that it is a must-read.
Thanks for idiom lessons, Geezer - looking at the complete sentence Dozois wrote, I had the impression that it was meant in a very positive way.

Andreas wrote: "Thanks for idiom lessons, Geezer - looking at the complete sentence Dozois wrote, I had the impression that it was meant in a very positive way. ..."

I'm sure he did... I was just being snarky. (He did say it was one of the year's best, which is hard to read any other way.)


Andreas wrote: "Tor.com is a mixed anthology, containing also fantasy, right?"

Yup - and most of my favorites are fantasy. ("Lawful Interception" & "The Best We Can" were the SF. There are other stories I didn't list, tho. e.g. "Equoid" won the Hugo for best novella; but Horror isn't to my taste.)

A number of Hugo & Nebula Award nominees & winners. We had a group discussion of "Equoid" and a discussion of Burning Girls.

★★★★ "Firebrand" by Peter Watts
The dark humor, as Hillary said, really worked for me. I laughed my way through the entire story. Peter Watts is an author I'm still making up my mind about, but this is by far the most purely enjoyable story I've read from him, satirical, smart, trenchant. (Reminds me of Paddy Chayefsky's "Network" or more recently Buckley's "Thank You for Smoking".)

Our protagonist is charged with corporate cover-up of deaths caused by various corporate unacknowledged side effects and accidents. Very much how the population has come to terms with smoking and car accidents as an inevitable deadly side effect of modern convenience, Watts speculates on our toleration for biohazard.

To answer the question of "one of the best" and "consistent quality" a little more straightforwardly, I found 5 of the 12 worth seeking out to read:

★★★★★ "Pathways" by Nancy Kress
★★★★½★ "Firebrand" by Peter Watts
★★★★ "The Cyborg and the Cemetery" by Nancy Fulda
★★★★ "Insistence of Vision" by David Brin
★★★½★ "Zero for Conduct" by Greg Egan

I found all of those both highly readable, enjoyable stories in their own right and also thoughtful looks at some possible future technology and how it impacts people. (The Egan being more of a simply enjoyable read, where the technology taking a backseat.)

Comparing it as a magazine issue to the usual pulp magazines I read each month, I usually consider finding 2 really good stories in, e.g., Asimov's, Analog, or Fantasy & Science Fiction, a really good issue. (On the other hand, on a cost-benefit basis, none of those cost $10 per issue. (I really don't understand the economics of how Fantasy & Science Fiction publishers 10 stories in 200 pages bimonthly for only a buck an e-issue, but it's incredible value in SF/F.)

Anyway, on the scale of a typical anthology I enjoyed this more than most.

G33z3r, I think you've def. pulled out the best of the bunch, although I'd add Transitional Forms to my list (I may just be a sucker for a Westerns). I'd put McDonald's contribution at the top of the "bottom six."

One of the problems I have when it comes to thinking of the "best" anthologies of any recent year is that I read so few of them all the way through and those I do it tends to be after dipping into them over a period of several years.

I tend to be more drawn to single author collections, free online stories, magazines and best of the year collections although it is only really with single author collections I consistently finish. With that it makes it very hard to say what I feel is the best collection in a recent year unless it contains a small number of stories that I read and loved.

Dozois is focussed on (partly because of the years best but also by his taste) in SF rather than the more fantastical of stories and in this Twelve tomorrows really scores because in it you have 12 proper SF tales told by some of the most highly regarded writers in the field. Although there is a vast amount of short fiction published there is surprisingly little of it that is proper SF. I think this is basically because SF with original ideas and some vaguely interesting science is much harder to write than other types of speculative fiction.

I didnt pick up this collection although I have some of the stories that have been republished in best ofs and I will try to get round to reading those ones partly to join in the discussions but largely because they sound really good.

What drew me away from picking up this anthology was that despite the high profile names it was looking to be "visions of positive futures" - now I am a bit of a depressing chap, I am naturally drawn to less than optimistic futures but also I kind of feel that anyone with any sense could look at this current world and struggle to see a future that was not destinctly disutopic. I am bored of the dull, bland distopian futures that have predominated SF and YA literature recently (Hunger games, The Road etc) so I like something that goes against that but enforced optimisim is not something I am drawn to. In retrospect this seems a bit foolish as great stories are great stories. Just like I was not drawn to the anthology Glitter and Mayhem (thought to be one of the best anthologies in recent years) because the theme seemed silly I probably need to look beyond my prejudices and first impressions as I am potentially missing out on some great reading.

The second volume of twelve tomorrows was also favored by Dozois with two stories due for publication for next years edition of his "best of".

Ben, I see where it could be a problem to read those "visions of positive futures" if those stories where happy-go-lucky visions with rainbows and unicorns.
In the continuum from those kind of stories to 1984 variants, they tend to be more on the positive side. But even on the positive side they have themes which make you think - at least a couple of them, e.g. Brin's and Kress' stories.

Substituting my initial question for the best anthology of 2013: What was YOUR best anthology/collection read in that year?

Ben wrote: "What drew me away from picking up this anthology was that despite the high profile names it was looking to be "visions of positive futures..."

Yeah, what Andreas said. This isn't a rainbows and unicorns collection by any means.

Kress writes (Pathways) about a poor rural woman with an hereditary & ultimately fatal illness, one of those very rare ones that don't get a lot of attention from for-profit pharmaceuticals. Kress doesn't cure her protagonist or offer a happily ever after, but she does offer some hope in that Ludmilla isn't just going to lie down and die out of ignorance.

And the Watts story (Firebrand) is about acceptable collateral death rates caused by introducing new technology that provides a lot of benefits (as long as you're not one of the people it kills.)

Watts was reprinted in The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2014 and Kress in Dozois's The Year's Best Science Fiction #31 (2013).

It does sound like it would be right up my street so I will at least check out the Kress, Watts and Egan that I have from best of the year anthologies if not actually pick up a copy.

As for my best of 2013 - I just havent read enough, I really like the sound of We see a different frontier, enough to be a crowdfunder in their latest collection but not bought a copy yet, Other Half of the sky also looks interesting. Like G33z3r I liked much of what I read in the Best of Tor.com 2013 though I am not sure how to classify this (is this an anthology, a magazine best of, a magazine...?) but in any case it is a lovely ebook with excellent fiction although even then I have still to read some of the stories in it including the Jeffrey Ford that I am really excited about getting to.

Also looking forward to getting stuck into the Strahan collections in the Infinity and Fearsome series just Fearsome Journeys out last year).

I think last year was a great year for single author collections. I absolutely loved Nathan Ballingrud's North American Lake Monsters, am loving Caitlin Kiernan's The Ape's Wife and Adam Roberts' Adam Robots and there were other interesting ones such a Laird Barron, Yoon Ha Lee, a Valente and and a McDermott that I fancy checking out.