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erichart's review against another edition
3.0
A mixed bag. You would think the stories by professional writers would be much better than those by scientists, but that's not always the case. Often fun, sometimes obvious, but probably not many with any staying power.
pearseanderson's review
lighthearted
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? N/A
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
2.5
A nice idea (thank you Nature for publishing flash ficton all these years) but not necessarily a series of flash spec-fic I enjoyed. I found these stories peculiar and engaging at their best, but there was too many pieces I didn't love and wanted to skip. I got a few dozen pages from the end and realized my heart wasn't in it. A nice length of a book for a bedtime read.
sjstuart's review
4.0
The journal Nature certainly didn't invent the form of the short-short science fiction story, but they have done a lot to shape it recently, publishing one such story a week for most of the past decade. This book is a collection of 100 of these stories, each just 2-3 pages long.
The very abbreviated length of these stories obviously imposes some limitations. There's no time for character development, and little room for plot. So most of these stories are simple vignettes, fleshing out the cultural or social consequences that result from some extrapolated vision of the future. Without enough room for deep emotions, most of the stories are of the cute, funny, or gee-whiz variety, with a decent percentage of twist endings; few of them attempt poignancy or are emotionally moving. But, thankfully, there are very few of the blatantly gimmicky stories that short-shorts seem to be prone to elsewhere.
The publishing outlet -- the premier science journal Nature -- has had just as strong an influence on the stories as has the length restriction. There are many stories here from practicing scientists, and among the professional sci-fi authors the ex-scientist and hard SF camps are heavily represented. The stories themselves are largely exercises in futurism, predicting and extrapolating nano-, info- and biotechnologies. Quite a few of the stories are written in jargon-dense, faux-scientific style, masquerading as (or winkingly poking fun at) the science papers published on the preceding pages. And the depiction of science in action is both more common and more faithful than usual in fiction, having been written in many cases by those working in the trenches.
Reading 100 of these stories back-to-back makes it obvious that the short-short form has a moderating effect on the quality of the stories. You probably won't find any stories here that make your all-time favorites list, as it's impossible to become fully immersed in a world or moved to tears in only 900 words. At the same time, however, you won't find yourself suffering through long stories that just don't work. I found only 2 or 3 of the stories to be so confusing, impenetrable or poorly executed that I got nothing out of them. I certainly can't say that about the rest of the articles in Nature!
The very abbreviated length of these stories obviously imposes some limitations. There's no time for character development, and little room for plot. So most of these stories are simple vignettes, fleshing out the cultural or social consequences that result from some extrapolated vision of the future. Without enough room for deep emotions, most of the stories are of the cute, funny, or gee-whiz variety, with a decent percentage of twist endings; few of them attempt poignancy or are emotionally moving. But, thankfully, there are very few of the blatantly gimmicky stories that short-shorts seem to be prone to elsewhere.
The publishing outlet -- the premier science journal Nature -- has had just as strong an influence on the stories as has the length restriction. There are many stories here from practicing scientists, and among the professional sci-fi authors the ex-scientist and hard SF camps are heavily represented. The stories themselves are largely exercises in futurism, predicting and extrapolating nano-, info- and biotechnologies. Quite a few of the stories are written in jargon-dense, faux-scientific style, masquerading as (or winkingly poking fun at) the science papers published on the preceding pages. And the depiction of science in action is both more common and more faithful than usual in fiction, having been written in many cases by those working in the trenches.
Reading 100 of these stories back-to-back makes it obvious that the short-short form has a moderating effect on the quality of the stories. You probably won't find any stories here that make your all-time favorites list, as it's impossible to become fully immersed in a world or moved to tears in only 900 words. At the same time, however, you won't find yourself suffering through long stories that just don't work. I found only 2 or 3 of the stories to be so confusing, impenetrable or poorly executed that I got nothing out of them. I certainly can't say that about the rest of the articles in Nature!
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