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3.52 AVERAGE
3.52 AVERAGE
brainstrain91's review against another edition
3.0
This short story collection was often fun and thought-provoking, but the quality was wildly inconsistent. Has an unmistakable amateur feeling. To be frank, a majority of the stories felt like they needed another revision... or ten.
And almost all of the forewords are shockingly terrible. Written-at-four-in-the-morning-before-a-deadline kind of terrible.
"The Blue Afternoon that Lasted Forever" - Very short, intriguing, heartbreaking. Liked it a lot. 4/5
"A Slow Unfurling of Truth" - Far, far too much going on for a short story. Too many characters, too many names, too much backstory. It's an absolute mess. The premise would be far better suited to a novella. 2/5
"Thunderwell" - A bit silly, but compelling. Liked seeing the consequences of a runaway (and very plausible) anti-nuclear sentiment. Well suited to the format. 3/5
"The Circle" - A fun revisionist history where the ancient Chinese invent a human computer. It skirts much too closely to nationalist propaganda for my taste, but it's very clever. 3/5
"Old Timer's Game" - Bizarre and slight, tying in baseball to human augmentation, oblivious to the wider world. Weakest of the collection so far. 2/5
"The Snows of Yesteryear" - Unique look at scientists dealing with future climate change. Good characters, too - even makes time for some delightful corporate villainy. But the pacing is way off. And the science (and character motivation) goes completely off the rails at the end. Hollywood-level nonsense. Not what I look for in hard sci-fi. 3/5
"Skin Deep" - Really interesting look at near-future med tech, but ends abruptly and with no satisfaction. The villain's "plan" strains credulity to the limit. And no brownie points for LGBT representation when they're emotionally unstable monsters. 3/5
"Lady with Fox" - Fascinating ideas, world feels real and lived-in. But the prose was weak (especially in the dream sequence, terribly limp description), and I was not impressed by the science-y succubus. Very nearly a literal succubus. Come on! You've got to be better than that, Benford. 2/5
"Habilis" - Immediately intriguing. And grapples with big ideas about chirality and human development. But the prose is rough and the dialogue rougher. The expositionary baggage (and all the made-up words) just get in the way of the interesting stuff. The seed of a much larger story is buried in here - I'm not sure why the writer chose this format for it. 4/5
"The Play's the Thing" - An AI of Shakespeare writes plays! And... that's it. Totally wasted potential. 2/5
"Every Hill Ends with Sky" - Extremely well done. Wonderfully well-considered exploration of what an alien intelligence might look like. Plausible apocalypse scenario. Magic and optimism at the end of the world. One of my favorites of the collection. 5/5
"She Just Looks that Way" - Stupid guy does stupid thing with interesting consequences. This one was sneaky. Jumped around too much at the start, but ended well. 4/5
"SIREN of Titan" - Lovely depiction of the experience of a new-born AI, but ultimately depressing and toothless. 3/5
"The Yoke of Inauspicious Stars" - How do you live up to a title like that? Well, the worst foreword of the collection doesn't help. The science in this one was stellar, and I found the future it presented plausible. Lots of interesting ideas underpinning a narrative that felt very derivative. It's an intentional homage to Romeo and Juliet, but it was too on the nose. Too... literal, I guess. It felt cheap, and the Shakespearean dialogue was corny as hell. But even still, I was a bit enchanted. One of my favorites in the collection, despite the flaws. 4/5
"Ambiguous Nature" - SETI finds what it's looking for. Short and silly. I wouldn't credit this one with the "hard sci-fi" label. Techno-babble at its babbliest. Are these people really supposed to be scientists? Impossible to take seriously. 3/5
"The Mandelbrodt Bet" - A disabled layman solves time travel... kind of. Intriguing, well-paced, and with a high concept ending that works shockingly well. But a story so heavy on physics has no business making mistakes that even I can catch. 4/5
"Recollection" - Among the strongest in the collection. Short, focused, honest and effective. Alzheimer's and memory loss are a heavy subject that could weigh down a story, but Fulda strikes the perfect balance. There's not much sci-fi here, but the story is only stronger for it. 5/5
And almost all of the forewords are shockingly terrible. Written-at-four-in-the-morning-before-a-deadline kind of terrible.
"The Blue Afternoon that Lasted Forever" - Very short, intriguing, heartbreaking. Liked it a lot. 4/5
"A Slow Unfurling of Truth" - Far, far too much going on for a short story. Too many characters, too many names, too much backstory. It's an absolute mess. The premise would be far better suited to a novella. 2/5
"Thunderwell" - A bit silly, but compelling. Liked seeing the consequences of a runaway (and very plausible) anti-nuclear sentiment. Well suited to the format. 3/5
"The Circle" - A fun revisionist history where the ancient Chinese invent a human computer. It skirts much too closely to nationalist propaganda for my taste, but it's very clever. 3/5
"Old Timer's Game" - Bizarre and slight, tying in baseball to human augmentation, oblivious to the wider world. Weakest of the collection so far. 2/5
"The Snows of Yesteryear" - Unique look at scientists dealing with future climate change. Good characters, too - even makes time for some delightful corporate villainy. But the pacing is way off. And the science (and character motivation) goes completely off the rails at the end. Hollywood-level nonsense. Not what I look for in hard sci-fi. 3/5
"Skin Deep" - Really interesting look at near-future med tech, but ends abruptly and with no satisfaction. The villain's "plan" strains credulity to the limit. And no brownie points for LGBT representation when they're emotionally unstable monsters. 3/5
"Lady with Fox" - Fascinating ideas, world feels real and lived-in. But the prose was weak (especially in the dream sequence, terribly limp description), and I was not impressed by the science-y succubus. Very nearly a literal succubus. Come on! You've got to be better than that, Benford. 2/5
"Habilis" - Immediately intriguing. And grapples with big ideas about chirality and human development. But the prose is rough and the dialogue rougher. The expositionary baggage (and all the made-up words) just get in the way of the interesting stuff. The seed of a much larger story is buried in here - I'm not sure why the writer chose this format for it. 4/5
"The Play's the Thing" - An AI of Shakespeare writes plays! And... that's it. Totally wasted potential. 2/5
"Every Hill Ends with Sky" - Extremely well done. Wonderfully well-considered exploration of what an alien intelligence might look like. Plausible apocalypse scenario. Magic and optimism at the end of the world. One of my favorites of the collection. 5/5
"She Just Looks that Way" - Stupid guy does stupid thing with interesting consequences. This one was sneaky. Jumped around too much at the start, but ended well. 4/5
"SIREN of Titan" - Lovely depiction of the experience of a new-born AI, but ultimately depressing and toothless. 3/5
"The Yoke of Inauspicious Stars" - How do you live up to a title like that? Well, the worst foreword of the collection doesn't help. The science in this one was stellar, and I found the future it presented plausible. Lots of interesting ideas underpinning a narrative that felt very derivative. It's an intentional homage to Romeo and Juliet, but it was too on the nose. Too... literal, I guess. It felt cheap, and the Shakespearean dialogue was corny as hell. But even still, I was a bit enchanted. One of my favorites in the collection, despite the flaws. 4/5
"Ambiguous Nature" - SETI finds what it's looking for. Short and silly. I wouldn't credit this one with the "hard sci-fi" label. Techno-babble at its babbliest. Are these people really supposed to be scientists? Impossible to take seriously. 3/5
"The Mandelbrodt Bet" - A disabled layman solves time travel... kind of. Intriguing, well-paced, and with a high concept ending that works shockingly well. But a story so heavy on physics has no business making mistakes that even I can catch. 4/5
"Recollection" - Among the strongest in the collection. Short, focused, honest and effective. Alzheimer's and memory loss are a heavy subject that could weigh down a story, but Fulda strikes the perfect balance. There's not much sci-fi here, but the story is only stronger for it. 5/5
mikimeiko's review against another edition
4.0
I wasn't sure if I was really in the right headspace for a short story collection (and it did take me a while to get through it) but it was a very interesting collection, with many good short stories in it. I look forward to reading more from some of the authors!
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/
nakedsteve's review against another edition
4.0
Full disclosure: I received an Advanced Reader Copy of this book (thus the review prior to publication) for free from tor.com. (Seriously: if you're not taking part in their sweepstakes, you really should. Odds of winning are actually quite high.)
What we have here is an anthology of new Science Fiction, with the "Hard" classifier thrown on there for good measure. This is supposed to mean that there's some scientific or possible futuristic element that's crucial to the story.
As is typical whenever I read an anthology, I wish I'd review the stories independently. Yet again, that didn't happen, so this review is less good than it should be...
At any rate: The stories here are reasonably high quality, and enjoyable to read, but few of them really stuck in my memory. (Though the first and last stories were quite good.) Tragedy is a minor sub-theme as well, which is probably possible only in shorter works these days. (Can't make an 11-book series out of a tragedy...)
4 of 5 stars.
What we have here is an anthology of new Science Fiction, with the "Hard" classifier thrown on there for good measure. This is supposed to mean that there's some scientific or possible futuristic element that's crucial to the story.
As is typical whenever I read an anthology, I wish I'd review the stories independently. Yet again, that didn't happen, so this review is less good than it should be...
At any rate: The stories here are reasonably high quality, and enjoyable to read, but few of them really stuck in my memory. (Though the first and last stories were quite good.) Tragedy is a minor sub-theme as well, which is probably possible only in shorter works these days. (Can't make an 11-book series out of a tragedy...)
4 of 5 stars.
daveversace's review against another edition
4.0
A strong issue of Aurealis. I particularly liked the disturbing social implications of the setting revealed in S G Larner's 'Searching for Cidalisa' and Annika Howells' 'Obsidian River' built up the creep factor nicely. The reviews were a pleasant surprise too - I think I'd like to read all the books covered this month.
katebrarian's review against another edition
4.0
Overall, I really liked this collection of stories. Even the stories I didn't love really started to grow on me after I finished and thought about them a bit. The authors tend to skew white American, but it's still pretty representative of the non-white non-male sci-fi writer. And, something that surprised me, how many queer characters there were considering that being queer was not a plot point in any of the stories! Good job, hard sci-fi.
It started and ended on really strong notes. The first story, The Blue Afternoon That Lasted Forever by [a:Daniel H. Wilson|33773|Daniel H. Wilson|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1298332667p2/33773.jpg], made me so sad. It's really good. And the same author as [b:Robopocalypse|9634967|Robopocalypse (Robopocalypse, #1)|Daniel H. Wilson|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1327885891s/9634967.jpg|14247828] which has been on my radar forever so I should probably just read it already.
The final story, Recollection by [a:Nancy Fulda|4037363|Nancy Fulda|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1297962807p2/4037363.jpg], is also pretty sad. It's about the downsides of being one of the first to be cured of Alzheimers. It ends hopeful though. These two stories are among the most human in the collection and both hit me right in the feels.
A Slow Unfurling of Truth by [a:Aliette de Bodard|2918731|Aliette de Bodard|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1261567215p2/2918731.jpg] reminded me of Alastair Reynolds in that the reader is flung into a completely different world and made to understand it just through reading more. In a good way.
The Circle by [a:Liu Cixin|5780686|Liu Cixin|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1339387737p2/5780686.jpg] was awesome, though a lot of reviewers have said that it's taken almost directly from his book The Three Body Problem, which I haven't read, so I still liked the story.
I liked the concepts explored in Every Hill Ends with Sky by [a:Robert Reed|57814|Robert Reed|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/m_50x66-3fbaf32fc1fc48e6ffaf3f63a026f0ff.png].
There weren't any stories I really hated. Lady With Fox ([a:Gregory Benford|22645|Gregory Benford|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1224059011p2/22645.jpg]) was too weird for me. Habilis ([a:Howard Hendrix|6673101|Howard Hendrix|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-ccc56e79bcc2db9e6cdcd450a4940d46.png]) had an ok concept but the structure of the story was confusing. It kept jumping back and forth in time from one conversation between two people to a different conversation between the same two people, and the paragraph breaks didn't necessarily indicate that we had shifted from one to the other.
Short stories are the best, and these were good. And I like the cover!
It started and ended on really strong notes. The first story, The Blue Afternoon That Lasted Forever by [a:Daniel H. Wilson|33773|Daniel H. Wilson|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1298332667p2/33773.jpg], made me so sad. It's really good. And the same author as [b:Robopocalypse|9634967|Robopocalypse (Robopocalypse, #1)|Daniel H. Wilson|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1327885891s/9634967.jpg|14247828] which has been on my radar forever so I should probably just read it already.
The final story, Recollection by [a:Nancy Fulda|4037363|Nancy Fulda|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1297962807p2/4037363.jpg], is also pretty sad. It's about the downsides of being one of the first to be cured of Alzheimers. It ends hopeful though. These two stories are among the most human in the collection and both hit me right in the feels.
A Slow Unfurling of Truth by [a:Aliette de Bodard|2918731|Aliette de Bodard|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1261567215p2/2918731.jpg] reminded me of Alastair Reynolds in that the reader is flung into a completely different world and made to understand it just through reading more. In a good way.
The Circle by [a:Liu Cixin|5780686|Liu Cixin|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1339387737p2/5780686.jpg] was awesome, though a lot of reviewers have said that it's taken almost directly from his book The Three Body Problem, which I haven't read, so I still liked the story.
I liked the concepts explored in Every Hill Ends with Sky by [a:Robert Reed|57814|Robert Reed|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/m_50x66-3fbaf32fc1fc48e6ffaf3f63a026f0ff.png].
There weren't any stories I really hated. Lady With Fox ([a:Gregory Benford|22645|Gregory Benford|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1224059011p2/22645.jpg]) was too weird for me. Habilis ([a:Howard Hendrix|6673101|Howard Hendrix|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-ccc56e79bcc2db9e6cdcd450a4940d46.png]) had an ok concept but the structure of the story was confusing. It kept jumping back and forth in time from one conversation between two people to a different conversation between the same two people, and the paragraph breaks didn't necessarily indicate that we had shifted from one to the other.
Short stories are the best, and these were good. And I like the cover!
gottabekb's review against another edition
5.0
This is a solid collection of 17 hard sci fi short stories. My favourite was "Siren of Titan" but all of the stories have stuck with me in some way.