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spacedout_reader's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
emotional
lighthearted
reflective
sad
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
4.0
The star rating is because there are several real gems in here; I wouldn't tell anyone to feel the need to read straight through all the stories though. It's a nice opportunity to pick and choose what will interest you.
Of course, I neglected to follow my own advice.
- The Blue Afternoon That Lasted Forever: I've read this a few times and cried every time. 5 stars, if anyone out there is reading this, please read that story, trust me.
- A Slow Unfurling of Truth: About needing to be able to verify someone's identity when they can get a new and different body. I like the idea of the premise but the execution didn't captivate me.
- Thunderwell: While the writing could have been a little better, I really liked the story of sacrificing one's career, reputation, and lifestyle to do the right thing.
- The Circle: An enjoyable fable about how a computer works, by the author of the Three-Body Problem series.
- Old Timer's Game: It was okay. I'm not that into baseball.
- The Snows of Yesteryear: Interesting look at climate change, and the potential effects of our attempts to bend the changes to our own goals. A thought provoking look at various interests and incentives surrounding the process of adjusting to a changing environment.
- Skin Deep: Medical tattoos. Horrifying and tense in a great way; personal and corporate themes; a good story about catastrophic escalation of simple mistakes.
- Lady with Fox: wasn't for me.
- Habilis: applies the concept of handedness to the universe. I liked the idea but was underwhelmed.
- The Play's the Thing: About if AI actually got good at writing. I don't think that's likely but I enjoyed the premise and the writing, I wish it had been longer and taken the concept further.
- Every Hill Ends With Sky: wasn't for me.
-She Just Looks That Way: loved the twist, and enjoyed the setting and characters.
- Siren of Titan: Very good, emotional,very sad but I appreciated the themes a lot.
- Year of Inauspicious Stars: Romeo and Juliet in space, and that's about all I have to say about it really.
- Ambiguous Nature: wasn't for me.
- The Mandelbrot Bet: I haven't read much classic pulp sci-fi short stories, but this reminded me of what I know of those.
- Recollection: a great one to end on, restored my faith in humanity. A very sweet story of hope and grace, even in the midst of disappointment.
A final note: I read this on audiobook and I would probably recommend the print version, just because there isn't always enough of a pause or transition between the end of one story and the beginning of the editor's remarks for the next story.
Of course, I neglected to follow my own advice.
- The Blue Afternoon That Lasted Forever: I've read this a few times and cried every time. 5 stars, if anyone out there is reading this, please read that story, trust me.
- A Slow Unfurling of Truth: About needing to be able to verify someone's identity when they can get a new and different body. I like the idea of the premise but the execution didn't captivate me.
- Thunderwell: While the writing could have been a little better, I really liked the story of sacrificing one's career, reputation, and lifestyle to do the right thing.
- The Circle: An enjoyable fable about how a computer works, by the author of the Three-Body Problem series.
- Old Timer's Game: It was okay. I'm not that into baseball.
- The Snows of Yesteryear: Interesting look at climate change, and the potential effects of our attempts to bend the changes to our own goals. A thought provoking look at various interests and incentives surrounding the process of adjusting to a changing environment.
- Skin Deep: Medical tattoos. Horrifying and tense in a great way; personal and corporate themes; a good story about catastrophic escalation of simple mistakes.
- Lady with Fox: wasn't for me.
- Habilis: applies the concept of handedness to the universe. I liked the idea but was underwhelmed.
- The Play's the Thing: About if AI actually got good at writing. I don't think that's likely but I enjoyed the premise and the writing, I wish it had been longer and taken the concept further.
- Every Hill Ends With Sky: wasn't for me.
-She Just Looks That Way: loved the twist, and enjoyed the setting and characters.
- Siren of Titan: Very good, emotional,
- Year of Inauspicious Stars: Romeo and Juliet in space, and that's about all I have to say about it really.
- Ambiguous Nature: wasn't for me.
- The Mandelbrot Bet: I haven't read much classic pulp sci-fi short stories, but this reminded me of what I know of those.
- Recollection: a great one to end on, restored my faith in humanity. A very sweet story of hope and grace, even in the midst of disappointment.
A final note: I read this on audiobook and I would probably recommend the print version, just because there isn't always enough of a pause or transition between the end of one story and the beginning of the editor's remarks for the next story.
ylshelflove's review against another edition
4.0
Intended audience: General population though preferably those with intro-level knowledge of science.
Anthologies are always hard to rate in that an 'average' rating leaves out the stories one truly enjoyed as well as the stories one might now have liked so much.
There's a wide variety of styles, settings, and science in his collection, enough so that there ought to be a least one that pleases any reader. And, like good sci-do, the stories are bound together by a desire to explore the intersection of technology, logic, and reason with the human condition.
Anthologies are always hard to rate in that an 'average' rating leaves out the stories one truly enjoyed as well as the stories one might now have liked so much.
There's a wide variety of styles, settings, and science in his collection, enough so that there ought to be a least one that pleases any reader. And, like good sci-do, the stories are bound together by a desire to explore the intersection of technology, logic, and reason with the human condition.
krep___'s review against another edition
4.0
CONTENTS
• Preface by Eric Choi
• The Blue Afternoon That Lasted Forever • short story by Daniel H. Wilson
• A Slow Unfurling of Truth • [Universe of Xuya] • novelette by Aliette de Bodard
• Thunderwell • novelette by Doug Beason
• The Circle • novelette by Cixin Liu
• Old Timer's Game • short story by Ben Bova
• The Snows of Yesteryear • novelette by Jean-Louis Trudel
• Skin Deep • novelette by Gabrielle Harbowy and Leah Petersen
• Lady with Fox • novelette by Gregory Benford
• Habilis • novelette by Howard V. Hendrix
• The Play's the Thing • (2013) • short story by Jack McDevitt
• Every Hill Ends with Sky • short story by Robert Reed
• She Just Looks That Way • novelette by Eric Choi
• Siren of Titan • novelette by David DeGraff
• The Yoke of Inauspicious Stars • novelette by Kate Story
• Ambiguous Nature • novelette by Carl Frederick
• The Mandelbrot Bet • short story by Dirk Strasser
• Recollection • short story by Nancy Fulda
• Preface by Eric Choi
• The Blue Afternoon That Lasted Forever • short story by Daniel H. Wilson
• A Slow Unfurling of Truth • [Universe of Xuya] • novelette by Aliette de Bodard
• Thunderwell • novelette by Doug Beason
• The Circle • novelette by Cixin Liu
• Old Timer's Game • short story by Ben Bova
• The Snows of Yesteryear • novelette by Jean-Louis Trudel
• Skin Deep • novelette by Gabrielle Harbowy and Leah Petersen
• Lady with Fox • novelette by Gregory Benford
• Habilis • novelette by Howard V. Hendrix
• The Play's the Thing • (2013) • short story by Jack McDevitt
• Every Hill Ends with Sky • short story by Robert Reed
• She Just Looks That Way • novelette by Eric Choi
• Siren of Titan • novelette by David DeGraff
• The Yoke of Inauspicious Stars • novelette by Kate Story
• Ambiguous Nature • novelette by Carl Frederick
• The Mandelbrot Bet • short story by Dirk Strasser
• Recollection • short story by Nancy Fulda
storyonlystory's review against another edition
2.0
I got this audiobook without paying attention to who narrated it. Uncharacteristic of me yes, but there are several narrators involved and I knew I would like some and dislike others. It's all personal preference. But when the first voice I heard was Stefan Rudnicki's I lit up. He has narrated hundreds of science fiction books and is producer of Lightspeed Magazine podcast. I really love his narrating style. In this book he reads the introduction to each story and one or two of the stories themselves. His wasn't the only familiar voice I heard. I think a few others have done work on science fiction podcasts.
Alright, as for the stories themselves, the first story packs a real punch in the emotional department. I loved it and felt the book was off to a promising start. It wasn't alone but if I had to give stars to individual stories most of them would get two stars ("it was ok").
I listen to several short story podcasts, all of them scifi/fantasy or horror. If we're sticking to the idea of giving each story stars I would say a little over half of the stories from any of those podcasts get three or more stars. This collection did just a little worse than that. I did end up skipping a few stories because I found them totally uninteresting.
This is a collection of hard scifi. It was put together with real science in mind and that was what really attracted me to it so I was surprised to find a few there that seemed incredibly well ... soft. One in particular had telepathy as a major part of the plot. I kept wondering if they thought of Greg Egan when putting this together because he really blows me away in the hard scifi genre but maybe it's because he doesn't like having and internet presence. Or maybe nobody cares about Greg Egan (but you should if you don't).
I really wish I could rate each author separately because I wouldn't give two stars to every story but I have to give this book a measly two star rating because that's really all it gave.
Alright, as for the stories themselves, the first story packs a real punch in the emotional department. I loved it and felt the book was off to a promising start. It wasn't alone but if I had to give stars to individual stories most of them would get two stars ("it was ok").
I listen to several short story podcasts, all of them scifi/fantasy or horror. If we're sticking to the idea of giving each story stars I would say a little over half of the stories from any of those podcasts get three or more stars. This collection did just a little worse than that. I did end up skipping a few stories because I found them totally uninteresting.
This is a collection of hard scifi. It was put together with real science in mind and that was what really attracted me to it so I was surprised to find a few there that seemed incredibly well ... soft. One in particular had telepathy as a major part of the plot. I kept wondering if they thought of Greg Egan when putting this together because he really blows me away in the hard scifi genre but maybe it's because he doesn't like having and internet presence. Or maybe nobody cares about Greg Egan (but you should if you don't).
I really wish I could rate each author separately because I wouldn't give two stars to every story but I have to give this book a measly two star rating because that's really all it gave.
the_maggieg's review against another edition
4.0
Very strong short story collection. I am a big fan of hard sci-fi, and this collection really explores the breadth of what that genre is capable of. The first story in particular was an absolute gut punch and had me ugly crying while I was supposed to be making dinner.
metaphorosis's review against another edition
3.0
reviews.metaphorosis.com
3 stars
A collection of stories focused on new hard science fiction.
I like to believe that I used to be a scientist, and I do retain a faint memory of that period, along with some leftover jargon. When I started to read science fiction, hard SF was a key part of it, and no doubt bolstered my feeling that this was serious stuff, not just escapism. Along, probably, with everyone else, I've noted a decline in hard SF over the last decades. I don't write any myself. It sometimes seems like Stephen Baxter and Ben Bova are the only one waving the flag. So it was nice to see Bova and Eric Choi put together an anthology aimed at addressing the deficit.
The anthology starts strong, with a series of well written, credible stories that show off the strengths of hard SF. Unfortunately, just over halfway through, the quality dips, and we run into hard SF's traditional weakness - stories with credible science, but characters so cool and distant that it's hard to care about them, which makes reading the story more academic exercise than pleasurable. I can go to New Scientist to read articles; I want something different from a story. Perhaps attempting to display its breadth, the anthology also displays newer, more modern weakness stolen from other genres: the apparent belief that an opaque (almost incomprehensible) story peppered with technology is innovative, when in fact it's just bad writing (even from a known author).
Some of the stories give a certain wanna-be hard SF feel - for example mixing imperial and metric units. Clearly that does happen (recall a certain Mars orbiter), but I'd hope that in the future we're not mixing the units in a single sentence (or using imperial at all, actually). Similarly, there's occasionally a laziness in calculation or extrapolation. When I read hard SF, I expect the background calculations to work. In this book, they usually do, but not always. It's one thing to imagine implanted cells that create and deliver drugs, but jumping from that to built-in radio transmitters is a big leap.
It may be that not all readers find fault with this, but I found some of the stories to be too overtly opinionated with regard to current politics. It's one thing to extrapolate global warming policies; it's another to complain about funding for Osama bin Laden missions. SF is not just about escapism, but there is an element of getting away from mundane tribulations.
All that said, the stories in the anthology were largely good, with one or two very good, and a few not so good. Some of the best were:
The Blue Afternoon that Lasted Forever by Daniel H. Wilson. An astrophysicist comforts his daughter when he spots an imminent disaster. A counterpoint to the flat-character flaw noted above, this one is all about people, and a strong opener for the collection.
The Circle by Liu Cixin (translated by the ubiquitous Ken Liu). An imperial advisor proposes a way to investigate life's secrets. The writing in the story is in the "good, but not great" category, but it's good enough to support a very interesting concept - using people for calculations. This is an idea that's been covered by others (e.g., Sean McMullen's Eyes of the Calculor), but not quite in this way. I've got Liu's Three Body Problem (which this is an excerpt from) on my list as well, and I'm curious to see whether he can make it work as well at novel length.
She Just Looks That Way by Eric Choi. A young man with a crush looks to surgery to relieve his obsession. This is another of the stories carried more by an interesting idea than by the writing. It could have been shorter and simpler, but after some treacherous ground in the middle, Choi pulls it out in the end.
SIREN of Titan by David DeGraff. A goal-driven robotic rover begins to act up. Despite the title, there's only a faint, conceptual link to the Kurt Vonnegut book. This story is in some ways the antithesis of the Liu and Choi stories; that is, the idea is relatively thin, but the story is so well written that it just doesn't matter. Possibly the best story in the book.
Overall, a good collection, but not really one that is likely to turn the tide for hard SF. I would have hoped for a stronger collection that more consistently avoided the sub-genre's traditional flaws.
NB: Received free copy from Net Galley.
missuskisses's review against another edition
4.0
Review: http://bennitheblog.com/bookbiters/carbide-tipped-pens-edited-by-ben-bova-and-eric-choi/
Carbide Tipped Pens: Seventeen Tales of Hard Science Fiction is named after the hard science fiction writing group that editors Ben Bova and Eric Choi belonged to in the late 1990’s. The subtitle speaks for itself.
For me, the best hard science fiction uses its technical aspects to enhance tales of human interest. The editors of Carbide Tipped Pens seem to agree, as the bookend stories are among the strongest. The first story, “The Blue Afternoon that Lasted Forever” by Daniel H. Wilson of Robopocalypse fame, is about fatherly love. The physicist father, who likely suffers from Asperger syndrome, is unable to muster enough emotion to convince his wife to stay. Nor is he particularly sensitive to the feelings of other people’s kids (keep in mind that all quotes are from an ARC and are subject to change):
But he expresses his love for his daughter by providing stability and protection, even during a potentially apocalyptic event.
The final story, Nancy Fulda’s “Recollection,” examines spousal affection when the husband has been cured of Alzheimer’s, but the memories already robbed by the disease cannot be recovered. As the husband observes:
These two stories are tearjerkers, if you are so inclined. (I was.)
The editors’ own tales are also excellent. Ben Bova’s “Old Timer’s Game” explores the problems professional athletics will have to deal with once the medical field advances even farther.
In Eric Choi’s “She Just Looks That Way,” scientists begin to treat those with body dysmorphic disorder by modifying neural pathways. The protagonist, however, wants to use the same technology to modify his own standards of beauty, so that he will no longer find his uninterested beloved attractive.
Since the future will of course include non-Western cultures, it’s refreshing to see that Carbide Tipped Pens also presents non-Western perspectives. Aliette de Bodard’s “A Slow Unfurling of Truth” deals with universal issues—how we authenticate identity when we are no longer tied to only one body—but the story is set in her alternate universe of Xuya, where China discovered the Americas first. (Note, however, that based on the character names, this particular story appears to be part of alternate Vietnamese history.)
Speaking of Chinese and alternate histories, Cixin Liu’s “The Circle” contemplates what history may have been had King Zheng of Qin (also known in our version of history as Qing Shi Huang) been distracted by ordering his army to carrying out computing functions, hoping to find the answer to immortality. At first, I was a little disappointed that “The Circle” was primarily an adaptation of an excerpt of the amazing The Three-Body Problem, but the context and outcome are distinct enough to still be entertaining. That such two disparate tales can be told out of a similar concept illustrates how flexible premises can be.
While most of the authors have impressive technical and/or scientific résumés, a few authors have more humanities-related accomplishments. Two authors, Jack McDevitt and Kate Story, integrate Shakespeare into their stories, with varying success. McDevitt’s “The Play’s the Thing” is a charming tale of a scientist’s recreation of Shakespeare’s knowledge and personality (or whoever wrote the plays attributed to Shakespeare) in computer pod form. When the pod demonstrates itself as artificial intelligence that far exceeds its creator’s intentions, we get a second coming of William Shakespeare. Kate Story’s “The Yoke of Inauspicious Stars,” on the other hand, was a somewhat limp retelling of Romeo and Juliet set on Europa, a frozen moon of Jupiter. While it was interesting to see how Story adapted the play into a science fiction soap opera, the science fiction setting added little to the story.
The weaker tales here tend to be those that neglect the story for science or technology. Jean-Louis Trudel’s “The Snows of Yesteryear” is a bit too pedantic and preachy for my tastes. If we are to examine human motivations for ignoring or discounting science in favor of greed or politics, Doug Beason’s “Thunderwell” is more successful. In “Thunderwell,” where a NASA administrator has to balance her latest crew’s safety against her country’s worldwide political standing, the stakes feel more urgent and personal.
While the science fiction premises may be interesting, primarily adapting those premises into dialogue—such as in Howard Hendrix’s “Habilis”—does not an interesting story make. That’s not to say highly technical dialogue cannot be interesting; Carl Frederick’s “Ambiguous Nature” also pokes fun at the nature of scientific articles and Dirk Strasser’s “The Mandelbrot Bet” also exudes some deadpan humor as a time traveling scientist’s success comes at the expense of a missed connection.
For me at least, the joy of reading anthologies comes from discovering new authors, more so than loving every single story. (I’ve yet to read a collection where I’ve loved every single story.) By that measure, and by its thought-provoking nature, Carbide Tipped Pens is a good, solid collection of hard science fiction.
I received a review copy courtesy of Tor Books.
Review: http://bennitheblog.com/bookbiters/carbide-tipped-pens-edited-by-ben-bova-and-eric-choi/
Carbide Tipped Pens: Seventeen Tales of Hard Science Fiction is named after the hard science fiction writing group that editors Ben Bova and Eric Choi belonged to in the late 1990’s. The subtitle speaks for itself.
For me, the best hard science fiction uses its technical aspects to enhance tales of human interest. The editors of Carbide Tipped Pens seem to agree, as the bookend stories are among the strongest. The first story, “The Blue Afternoon that Lasted Forever” by Daniel H. Wilson of Robopocalypse fame, is about fatherly love. The physicist father, who likely suffers from Asperger syndrome, is unable to muster enough emotion to convince his wife to stay. Nor is he particularly sensitive to the feelings of other people’s kids (keep in mind that all quotes are from an ARC and are subject to change):
Perez’s son is five years old and at the department picnic the boy could not tell me how many miles it is to the troposphere. And he says he wants to be an astronaut. Good luck, kid.
But he expresses his love for his daughter by providing stability and protection, even during a potentially apocalyptic event.
The final story, Nancy Fulda’s “Recollection,” examines spousal affection when the husband has been cured of Alzheimer’s, but the memories already robbed by the disease cannot be recovered. As the husband observes:
You must have loved her, once. Yes, you almost certainly loved her, and the endless prattle now spilling off her lips must be weighted with decades’ worth of meaning—shared jokes, shared secrets, shared opinions . . . Each fleeting phrase a lifeline to a hoarded wealth of common history. It should mean something to you, but it doesn’t.
These two stories are tearjerkers, if you are so inclined. (I was.)
The editors’ own tales are also excellent. Ben Bova’s “Old Timer’s Game” explores the problems professional athletics will have to deal with once the medical field advances even farther.
In Eric Choi’s “She Just Looks That Way,” scientists begin to treat those with body dysmorphic disorder by modifying neural pathways. The protagonist, however, wants to use the same technology to modify his own standards of beauty, so that he will no longer find his uninterested beloved attractive.
Since the future will of course include non-Western cultures, it’s refreshing to see that Carbide Tipped Pens also presents non-Western perspectives. Aliette de Bodard’s “A Slow Unfurling of Truth” deals with universal issues—how we authenticate identity when we are no longer tied to only one body—but the story is set in her alternate universe of Xuya, where China discovered the Americas first. (Note, however, that based on the character names, this particular story appears to be part of alternate Vietnamese history.)
Speaking of Chinese and alternate histories, Cixin Liu’s “The Circle” contemplates what history may have been had King Zheng of Qin (also known in our version of history as Qing Shi Huang) been distracted by ordering his army to carrying out computing functions, hoping to find the answer to immortality. At first, I was a little disappointed that “The Circle” was primarily an adaptation of an excerpt of the amazing The Three-Body Problem, but the context and outcome are distinct enough to still be entertaining. That such two disparate tales can be told out of a similar concept illustrates how flexible premises can be.
While most of the authors have impressive technical and/or scientific résumés, a few authors have more humanities-related accomplishments. Two authors, Jack McDevitt and Kate Story, integrate Shakespeare into their stories, with varying success. McDevitt’s “The Play’s the Thing” is a charming tale of a scientist’s recreation of Shakespeare’s knowledge and personality (or whoever wrote the plays attributed to Shakespeare) in computer pod form. When the pod demonstrates itself as artificial intelligence that far exceeds its creator’s intentions, we get a second coming of William Shakespeare. Kate Story’s “The Yoke of Inauspicious Stars,” on the other hand, was a somewhat limp retelling of Romeo and Juliet set on Europa, a frozen moon of Jupiter. While it was interesting to see how Story adapted the play into a science fiction soap opera, the science fiction setting added little to the story.
The weaker tales here tend to be those that neglect the story for science or technology. Jean-Louis Trudel’s “The Snows of Yesteryear” is a bit too pedantic and preachy for my tastes. If we are to examine human motivations for ignoring or discounting science in favor of greed or politics, Doug Beason’s “Thunderwell” is more successful. In “Thunderwell,” where a NASA administrator has to balance her latest crew’s safety against her country’s worldwide political standing, the stakes feel more urgent and personal.
While the science fiction premises may be interesting, primarily adapting those premises into dialogue—such as in Howard Hendrix’s “Habilis”—does not an interesting story make. That’s not to say highly technical dialogue cannot be interesting; Carl Frederick’s “Ambiguous Nature” also pokes fun at the nature of scientific articles and Dirk Strasser’s “The Mandelbrot Bet” also exudes some deadpan humor as a time traveling scientist’s success comes at the expense of a missed connection.
For me at least, the joy of reading anthologies comes from discovering new authors, more so than loving every single story. (I’ve yet to read a collection where I’ve loved every single story.) By that measure, and by its thought-provoking nature, Carbide Tipped Pens is a good, solid collection of hard science fiction.
I received a review copy courtesy of Tor Books.
Review: http://bennitheblog.com/bookbiters/carbide-tipped-pens-edited-by-ben-bova-and-eric-choi/
helentbower's review against another edition
1.0
I think I need to resign myself to the fact that I simply don't enjoy short story collections. That point aside, the writing in this book was pretty horrible in my opinion. The short story authors had great ideas that were captivating and mind-blowing at the same time. I just had a hard time looking past the subpar writing style that every author seemed to share.
henryarmitage's review against another edition
3.0
The theme of this collection is 'hard SF' meaning the science is supposedly front and center. I thought that these stories either fell short of that or went beyond it, depending on your point of view, as most had a fairly strong human or emotional dimension. I enjoyed it.
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