Scan barcode
Reviews
I Remember the Future: The Award-Nominated Stories of Michael A. Burstein by Michael A. Burstein
detailsandtales's review
4.0
I bought this book because there was a Kindle deal on it, and because I know the author. I'm glad I did. I enjoyed most if not all of these stories, and I especially liked how Burstein returns to the same worlds again and again. I also appreciated the presence of Jewish characters at various religious levels, since I tend to not forget just how rare that is until I actually encounter them.
davecreek's review
5.0
Michael A. Burstein tells us in the introduction to I REMEMBER THE FUTURE that Isaac Asimov influenced him more than any other writer. That influence is clear in this collection of his award-nominated stories -- his prose is straightforward and clear, and he's a natural storyteller.
What Burstein does consistently that Asimov did only intermittently is have a deep emotional content to his stories.
Perhaps the best-known story here is "Kaddish for the Last Survivor," a story from the November 2000 ANALOG that was nominated for both the Hugo and Nebula awards. The granddaughter of the last survivor of the Holocaust is distraught that her grandfather is on his deathbed. The grandfather, in turn, fears the "big lie" that the Holocaust was a hoax will become more credible when the last living witness is gone.
The stakes for these characters are intensely personal, but could also have great consequences for society as a whole. Burstein not only brings the story to a satisfying conclusion, he also provides notes telling us how the story developed and how its ending might have been quite different.
I love reading collections or anthologies as ebooks because I can bookmark individual stories as possible re-reads without marking up a physical book. I marked ten of the fifteen stories in I REMEMBER THE FUTURE for possible re-reads, a high percentage for me.
Burstein deals in classic SF tropes (starships, aliens, time travel, but uses them with a sure hand and shows us there's still plenty of narrative power and sense of wonder left in them. One of the best collections I've read in years.
What Burstein does consistently that Asimov did only intermittently is have a deep emotional content to his stories.
Perhaps the best-known story here is "Kaddish for the Last Survivor," a story from the November 2000 ANALOG that was nominated for both the Hugo and Nebula awards. The granddaughter of the last survivor of the Holocaust is distraught that her grandfather is on his deathbed. The grandfather, in turn, fears the "big lie" that the Holocaust was a hoax will become more credible when the last living witness is gone.
The stakes for these characters are intensely personal, but could also have great consequences for society as a whole. Burstein not only brings the story to a satisfying conclusion, he also provides notes telling us how the story developed and how its ending might have been quite different.
I love reading collections or anthologies as ebooks because I can bookmark individual stories as possible re-reads without marking up a physical book. I marked ten of the fifteen stories in I REMEMBER THE FUTURE for possible re-reads, a high percentage for me.
Burstein deals in classic SF tropes (starships, aliens, time travel, but uses them with a sure hand and shows us there's still plenty of narrative power and sense of wonder left in them. One of the best collections I've read in years.
More...