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A review by missuskisses
Carbide Tipped Pens: Seventeen Tales of Hard Science Fiction by Ben Bova
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/