Scan barcode
A review by moreteamorecats
Fountain of Age by Nancy Kress
4.0
Though the stories here are uniformly quality work, I was especially taken with "By Fools Like Me". Most post-apocalypses portray doomsayer cults; few actually show any understanding of the dynamics of apocalyptic belief, let alone how that belief might shift in the event of a true catastrophe. Kress not only nails that, but does it using the Bible. I'd stand this story with Canticle for Leibowitz in the Getting Religion Right In SF category. That's as high praise as I can give.
Nothing else is quite that good, but it's all thought-provoking and well-crafted. Kress is terrific at the humanist-hard-SF game of playing out all the possible implications of a single biological innovation. Though the worlds are often ugly, I never found them too bleak or too gross—such a relief after quite a bit of New Weird influence in my recent SF reading. The male narrators' and POV characters' voices seemed to me slightly less plausible than the female ones, but that too is refreshing in its way.
My first experience with Kress. Now I look forward to others down the road!
Nothing else is quite that good, but it's all thought-provoking and well-crafted. Kress is terrific at the humanist-hard-SF game of playing out all the possible implications of a single biological innovation. Though the worlds are often ugly, I never found them too bleak or too gross—such a relief after quite a bit of New Weird influence in my recent SF reading. The male narrators' and POV characters' voices seemed to me slightly less plausible than the female ones, but that too is refreshing in its way.
My first experience with Kress. Now I look forward to others down the road!