Reviews

How to Save the World by Dean Wesley Smith, Annie Reed, David Gerrold, Stephanie Writt, Travis Heermann, Laura Resnick, Ron Collins, John Helfers, Angela Penrose, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Lisa Silverthorne, William H. Keith Jr.

crowyhead's review against another edition

2.0

I really wish I'd liked this better than I did, but it turns out that this collection just did not hit the right buttons for me. When I found out the theme of this issue was "how to save the world," I was pretty excited, imagining the world defended from a plethora of threats, both outside and in. In turns out, however, that the editor placed pretty huge strictures on what could and couldn't be written about, and the end result is that almost all the stories deal with humans trying to save the earth from ourselves. And as a result of this, the stories struck me repeatedly as over-earnest and much too same-y. And the stories I did really like, like "Heaven Backwards," actually pretty much violated the editorial strictures.

So, I don't know. I'm still really happy I subscribed to this series, and I don't expect all the volumes to be to my taste, but I hope that I like the next one a little better.