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mondak's review against another edition
4.0
This book is an interesting concept. The blurb does a good job of explaining it, so I won't go into detail, but basically Neal Stevenson sets out a challenge in a speech he gave. The seed came from a path we fell into with our dependence on rockets to go to space. That speech was pretty awesome in and of itself but is a little long.
Instead, this is a five minute video where he talks about how he came up with this which is very interesting.
This is a link to the ongoing project which spans a larger vision than just this anthology of short stories.
This is a bit of a challenge of sorts to the authors asked to contribute. Basically, give us stories of vision. Show us how the future can be bright or how our current path can be altered to produce something good instead of the dystopian science fiction we have been doing. Don't just give us a FTL / Wormhole to a new galaxy. Base it in what might be possible with the right drive, determination and imagination. Jules Verne puts a man on the moon. 100 years later, we do it. Verne used a big gun to shoot the capsule up. They had guns and cannon in 1840. Is it so unbelievable? Then it was. Let's do fiction that inspires, challenges and builds and isn't just some cautionary tale to how things will go bad with global warming, GMOs or whatever.
Overall, I think the anthology does a good job of it. I won't review them all, but I'll hit some favorites. There wasn't a single dog in there though which I think says something. All 17 stories were imaginative and well written.
Athophaera Incognita - Neal Stephenson
What would the world be like if it was our world with one single difference: there was a twenty kilometer tower in Arizona? Start now. Use nothing like carbon-nanotubes - just steel and sweat. I loved the characters with their vision and their flaws. I tend to appreciate talent over experience when hiring and the man responsible for building the tower did too so I was off to a great start with characters I could relate to. Building a tower like this would take a person of vision and will who not everyone in the world might love too see it through. That vision is far beyond his own nose, but he would also need others around him to help bring it to fruition.
This is an imaginative story that is a world builder for anyone to attach their own story to. Stephenson just build the tower for us. We get to build our own world from it.
Girl in Wave: Wave in Girl - Kathleen Ann Goonan
I took a seed away here that maybe wasn't the main point or maybe was. Essentially, how can you be capable of wronging someone or hurting someone if you truly understand them? Not agree. Just understand them to the point where you could feel their pain and understand the events in their life that were the building blocks that make them who they are? Dan Simmons does this in 4000 pages with Hyperion. Kathleen Ann Goonan hits some of that in 20 pages.
The Man Who Sold the Moon - Cory Doctorow
Full disclosure - I'm a fan of Doctorow. Probably my second favorite story. Typical Doctorow themes and environment - 3d printing, maker culture, burning man - but still so very well done. I loved it. Won't spoil it but clearly a lot of thought and effort went into this wonderful contribution. Great, compelling characters who you feel like you know and have elsewhere already in your life. We want them to win, but it isn't always easy.
Degrees of Freedom - Karl Schroeder
This is one that I think could be hundreds of pages to expand the ideas and their values. In some ways it was the most unbelievable to me and yet it was likely the one that had the least "future tech" of any of the stories! Essentially, are there other alternative ways to organize politically, have conversations, make progress and still come to agreements? It is fascinating, but I think I will have to read it again to really understand the three main vehicles of communication they used. BTW - each story has a link to discussions and resources at Arizona State University on the underlying tech. This one might be a good one to research. My lack of faith in humanity precludes me from believing it could be possible though.
Periapsis - James Cambias
I loved the characters in this one so it makes the list, but the tech bits are only moderately innovative compared to things I have seen before. Still a well written story.
The Man Who Sold the Stars - Gregory Benford
My favorite of the bunch. I don't think I have heard of Gregory Benford before, but I'll have to go buy some of his books. He nails it with this story. The tech itself, is all very possible - harvest some comets and asteroids. How does he do it? What kind of man would see this sort of thing through? What effect might it have on society? How might people react? Awesome. So much context and so very visual in such a compact story. Great work.
Tall Tower - Bruce Sterling
To me this one is just one answer to the lead story from Stephenson. I am guessing thousands of years in the future - the tower from Stephenson is still standing and the world has changed. And yet, Tall Tower is a story about a man and his horse. Just great stuff. This one and the Girl in a Wave touch a bit on Stephenson's theory of "Amistics" that he coins for Seveneves without giving name to it. What technology should we adopt for our society or our personal walk through life?
There was a somewhat minor scene in this one that I'll carry with me about a bit of "performance art" if you will. The artist talks about taking a polariod of a woman you could love, but never will and sealing it in an envelope before it ever develops. Beautiful concept. Very well done.
Overall this is lots of fun and maybe gives me a couple new authors to go check out in the process.
Instead, this is a five minute video where he talks about how he came up with this which is very interesting.
This is a link to the ongoing project which spans a larger vision than just this anthology of short stories.
This is a bit of a challenge of sorts to the authors asked to contribute. Basically, give us stories of vision. Show us how the future can be bright or how our current path can be altered to produce something good instead of the dystopian science fiction we have been doing. Don't just give us a FTL / Wormhole to a new galaxy. Base it in what might be possible with the right drive, determination and imagination. Jules Verne puts a man on the moon. 100 years later, we do it. Verne used a big gun to shoot the capsule up. They had guns and cannon in 1840. Is it so unbelievable? Then it was. Let's do fiction that inspires, challenges and builds and isn't just some cautionary tale to how things will go bad with global warming, GMOs or whatever.
Overall, I think the anthology does a good job of it. I won't review them all, but I'll hit some favorites. There wasn't a single dog in there though which I think says something. All 17 stories were imaginative and well written.
Athophaera Incognita - Neal Stephenson
What would the world be like if it was our world with one single difference: there was a twenty kilometer tower in Arizona? Start now. Use nothing like carbon-nanotubes - just steel and sweat. I loved the characters with their vision and their flaws. I tend to appreciate talent over experience when hiring and the man responsible for building the tower did too so I was off to a great start with characters I could relate to. Building a tower like this would take a person of vision and will who not everyone in the world might love too see it through. That vision is far beyond his own nose, but he would also need others around him to help bring it to fruition.
This is an imaginative story that is a world builder for anyone to attach their own story to. Stephenson just build the tower for us. We get to build our own world from it.
Girl in Wave: Wave in Girl - Kathleen Ann Goonan
I took a seed away here that maybe wasn't the main point or maybe was. Essentially, how can you be capable of wronging someone or hurting someone if you truly understand them? Not agree. Just understand them to the point where you could feel their pain and understand the events in their life that were the building blocks that make them who they are? Dan Simmons does this in 4000 pages with Hyperion. Kathleen Ann Goonan hits some of that in 20 pages.
The Man Who Sold the Moon - Cory Doctorow
Full disclosure - I'm a fan of Doctorow. Probably my second favorite story. Typical Doctorow themes and environment - 3d printing, maker culture, burning man - but still so very well done. I loved it. Won't spoil it but clearly a lot of thought and effort went into this wonderful contribution. Great, compelling characters who you feel like you know and have elsewhere already in your life. We want them to win, but it isn't always easy.
Degrees of Freedom - Karl Schroeder
This is one that I think could be hundreds of pages to expand the ideas and their values. In some ways it was the most unbelievable to me and yet it was likely the one that had the least "future tech" of any of the stories! Essentially, are there other alternative ways to organize politically, have conversations, make progress and still come to agreements? It is fascinating, but I think I will have to read it again to really understand the three main vehicles of communication they used. BTW - each story has a link to discussions and resources at Arizona State University on the underlying tech. This one might be a good one to research. My lack of faith in humanity precludes me from believing it could be possible though.
Periapsis - James Cambias
I loved the characters in this one so it makes the list, but the tech bits are only moderately innovative compared to things I have seen before. Still a well written story.
The Man Who Sold the Stars - Gregory Benford
My favorite of the bunch. I don't think I have heard of Gregory Benford before, but I'll have to go buy some of his books. He nails it with this story. The tech itself, is all very possible - harvest some comets and asteroids. How does he do it? What kind of man would see this sort of thing through? What effect might it have on society? How might people react? Awesome. So much context and so very visual in such a compact story. Great work.
Tall Tower - Bruce Sterling
To me this one is just one answer to the lead story from Stephenson. I am guessing thousands of years in the future - the tower from Stephenson is still standing and the world has changed. And yet, Tall Tower is a story about a man and his horse. Just great stuff. This one and the Girl in a Wave touch a bit on Stephenson's theory of "Amistics" that he coins for Seveneves without giving name to it. What technology should we adopt for our society or our personal walk through life?
There was a somewhat minor scene in this one that I'll carry with me about a bit of "performance art" if you will. The artist talks about taking a polariod of a woman you could love, but never will and sealing it in an envelope before it ever develops. Beautiful concept. Very well done.
Overall this is lots of fun and maybe gives me a couple new authors to go check out in the process.
davidscrimshaw's review against another edition
3.0
If you are a science fiction fan, you have no choice but to read this book because it is full of authors that are on any must-read list.
The thing is that these are mostly stories about how science and technology can improve various problems we have today. This is probably why many of the stories are either not exciting or don't have characters that I cared about.
However, it's worth plowing through because the second last story has a talking rat. He's more comic relief than a main character, but still...
The thing is that these are mostly stories about how science and technology can improve various problems we have today. This is probably why many of the stories are either not exciting or don't have characters that I cared about.
However, it's worth plowing through because the second last story has a talking rat. He's more comic relief than a main character, but still...
jameseckman's review against another edition
3.0
This is an attempt to bring back old school bang-zowie wonder science fiction of the big idea variety. Luckily it mostly fails except for one or two preachy stories with cardboard characters and a bad 60's feel. ASU sponsored this book, hence a really crappy preface and ASU student fan art (nostalgic! SF mostly had bad art thru the 60's). They did hire real editors and writers so it's a decent shorts collection, but not a knockout.
The preface by Lawrence M. Krauss is so obnoxious I have to vent a bit. First off, he's apparently confused about the difference between science and technology, there is not a single word about engineers or engineering who usually are the developers and sometimes inventors of real world stuff. Two examples that he gives as being invented by scientists, CAT scans, had an engineer who shared the Nobel Prize, oops, and the Ultrasound was invented by an Obstetrician and engineer. Since he only gave three examples, that's pretty bad research. Then he says is unimpressed by science fiction since it doesn't precede science (true) but then gives technological examples like the web, patently false. Anybody who wants to read some great predictions of what social changes and issues the web, PCs, smartphones and self-driving cars have caused can read some of [a:Mack Reynolds|127541|Mack Reynolds|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1312699782p2/127541.jpg]'s stories from the 60's and 70's that now read like alternate histories. Only one example from many. I guess since his university probably funded this collection, the editors have to put up with it.
The preface by Lawrence M. Krauss is so obnoxious I have to vent a bit. First off, he's apparently confused about the difference between science and technology, there is not a single word about engineers or engineering who usually are the developers and sometimes inventors of real world stuff. Two examples that he gives as being invented by scientists, CAT scans, had an engineer who shared the Nobel Prize, oops, and the Ultrasound was invented by an Obstetrician and engineer. Since he only gave three examples, that's pretty bad research. Then he says is unimpressed by science fiction since it doesn't precede science (true) but then gives technological examples like the web, patently false. Anybody who wants to read some great predictions of what social changes and issues the web, PCs, smartphones and self-driving cars have caused can read some of [a:Mack Reynolds|127541|Mack Reynolds|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1312699782p2/127541.jpg]'s stories from the 60's and 70's that now read like alternate histories. Only one example from many. I guess since his university probably funded this collection, the editors have to put up with it.
faethered's review against another edition
2.0
Three stars is an average; some stories were self-important and tiresome ("Atmosphæra Incognita", "A Hotel in Antarctica," “The Man Who Sold the Stars”, "The Man Who Sold the Moon") but some had ideas I'll be thinking about for a long time ("Girl in Wave: Wave in Girl", "Entanglement", "Degrees of Freedom" and especially "Covenant.")
ladygeeke's review against another edition
3.0
A mixed bag of short stories. Some were very techy and incomprehensible. My favourites were Hello Hello by Seanan McGuire and Another Word for World by Ann Leckie.
lordofthemoon's review against another edition
3.0
This anthology has an interesting gestation. It came about after Neal Stephenson published an essay called Innovation Starvation and was on a panel with Arizona State University president Michael Crow. Crow challenged Stephenson on his essay and so Project Hieroglyph was born, to create a space where writers and scientists could mingle and share ideas, ideally hopeful ideas for a better future. The first output from this project is this anthology of stories.
Mostly the stories are plausible in a near-ish future, and they tend to have some sort of optimistic thread or conclusion to them, harking back to the Golden Age SF days where the future was a great thing that we wanted to happen, rather than the dystopic dread that so much of modern SF is.
Stephenson's own contribution, Atmosphæra Incognita kicks the collection off starts as it means to go on, with an entrepreneur deciding to build a tower twenty kilometres high, the challenges and rewards of such a structure. Of all the stories, I think only Lee Konstantinou didn't get the memo about being optimistic. His Johnny Appledrone vs the FAA has a sort of grimness to it that was missing from the other stories, although I can see a sort of hope in its conclusion.
Highlights included David Brin's Transition Generation about how technology that is innate and obvious to one generation is difficult and alien to the previous; and Bruce Sterling's Tall Tower about a guy and his horse who climb the Tall Tower on the way to the Ascended uploaded humans in the stars. This feels very much like a fable and it's a lovely story that washes over you. Lots of fun.
A decent collection all in all, and each story had URLs at the end linking to discussions and further reading at Project Hieroglyph. I must confess that I didn't follow many of these, but it's good that they're there. (It would have been nice if the links had been shorter though).
Mostly the stories are plausible in a near-ish future, and they tend to have some sort of optimistic thread or conclusion to them, harking back to the Golden Age SF days where the future was a great thing that we wanted to happen, rather than the dystopic dread that so much of modern SF is.
Stephenson's own contribution, Atmosphæra Incognita kicks the collection off starts as it means to go on, with an entrepreneur deciding to build a tower twenty kilometres high, the challenges and rewards of such a structure. Of all the stories, I think only Lee Konstantinou didn't get the memo about being optimistic. His Johnny Appledrone vs the FAA has a sort of grimness to it that was missing from the other stories, although I can see a sort of hope in its conclusion.
Highlights included David Brin's Transition Generation about how technology that is innate and obvious to one generation is difficult and alien to the previous; and Bruce Sterling's Tall Tower about a guy and his horse who climb the Tall Tower on the way to the Ascended uploaded humans in the stars. This feels very much like a fable and it's a lovely story that washes over you. Lots of fun.
A decent collection all in all, and each story had URLs at the end linking to discussions and further reading at Project Hieroglyph. I must confess that I didn't follow many of these, but it's good that they're there. (It would have been nice if the links had been shorter though).
hisham's review against another edition
4.0
This is a free collection of short stories inspired by and commissioned by Microsoft. Some big names here, and did I mention it's FREE!
Hello, Hello by Seanan McGuire was charming.
The Machine Starts by Greg Bear made my head hurt (In a good way).
Skin In The Game by Elizabeth Bear has a surprising ending, especially considering Microsoft sponsored this book! (No spoilers!)
Machine Learning by Nancy Kress is quite an emotional tale.
Riding With The Duke by Jack McDevitt was ok.
A Cop's Eye by Blue Delliquanti & Michele Rosenthal was a sweet story that examines what might happen with the intersection of AI with the recent Hololens technology that Microsoft is developing. Also, It's a COMIC which was cool!
Looking For Gordo by Robert J. Sawyer is another tale looking at the possibilities inherent with Translation software, this time combined with AI/Database constructs, a first contact (by proxy) courtroom story that is very good!
The Tell by David Brin was ok, but It didn't draw me in and I found it a bit of a slog to get through.
Another Word For World by Anne Leckie takes us to a different planet, surprisingly this is the only story in the book to take us off world! The story was ok, you could definitely tell it's an Anne Leckie story by the distinctive writing style.
Overall Future Visions is quite the collection, naturally I liked some stories more than others, but there wasn't anything in here I would describe as bad. The book is free, so you don't really have any excuse for not picking it up and deciding for yourself!
Hello, Hello by Seanan McGuire was charming.
The Machine Starts by Greg Bear made my head hurt (In a good way).
Skin In The Game by Elizabeth Bear has a surprising ending, especially considering Microsoft sponsored this book! (No spoilers!)
Machine Learning by Nancy Kress is quite an emotional tale.
Riding With The Duke by Jack McDevitt was ok.
A Cop's Eye by Blue Delliquanti & Michele Rosenthal was a sweet story that examines what might happen with the intersection of AI with the recent Hololens technology that Microsoft is developing. Also, It's a COMIC which was cool!
Looking For Gordo by Robert J. Sawyer is another tale looking at the possibilities inherent with Translation software, this time combined with AI/Database constructs, a first contact (by proxy) courtroom story that is very good!
The Tell by David Brin was ok, but It didn't draw me in and I found it a bit of a slog to get through.
Another Word For World by Anne Leckie takes us to a different planet, surprisingly this is the only story in the book to take us off world! The story was ok, you could definitely tell it's an Anne Leckie story by the distinctive writing style.
Overall Future Visions is quite the collection, naturally I liked some stories more than others, but there wasn't anything in here I would describe as bad. The book is free, so you don't really have any excuse for not picking it up and deciding for yourself!
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