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A review by mburnamfink
Hieroglyph: Stories and Visions for a Better Future by Ed Finn
5.0
Back in 2011, a chance encounter between Michael Crow and Neal Stephenson lead to a discussion about who was to blame for the sorry state of our collective imaginations: the best minds of our generation who spend their time design spam filters and social media apps, or science fiction writers who churn out endless dystopias and apocalypses. From this chance encounter was born the Center for Science and Imagination and Project Hieroglyph, with the goal of bringing scientist fiction writers in contact with actual scientists with a mandate to imagine a world where problems could be solved, as an inspiration to solving them. Now, three years later this is the book, and trust a guy who has read 117 science fiction books since 2010, it is GOOD.
The stories in this collection cover topics including space exploration, entrepreneurship, drones, civil liberties, education, climate change, and more, book-ended by Stephenson's Tall Tower, a 20 km steel structure that could cut space launch costs in half-for starters. Stephenson opens with a classically Heinleinian engineering epic of how the Tower is built--think "The Roads Must Roll" or "Blowups Happen". Bruce Sterling closes with the same tower 200 years in the future, inhabited by the decadent and wicked religious dreamers of an Earth that is being abandoned by the Ascended Masters, and the quixotic quest of a cowboy to ride his old horse to the very top. My two very favorite stories were "By the time we get to Arizona" by Madeline Ashby, who provides a The Prisoner inspired take on reforming American's Kafkaesque immigration system with a six week panopticon trial period in a model border town, and "Degrees of Freedom" Karl Schroeder, who uses augmented reality to provide a fascinating and inspiration lens on democracy, legitimacy, and collective decision making. Not everyone manages to hit as solidly, but there's no filler here, and very few reused ideas.
I've rarely seen such a creative, energetic, and yet solidly themed collection. The tent-poles are pieces from masters of the genre, names that you should recognize like Neal Stephenson, Bruce Sterling, Elizabeth Bear, Gregory Benford, David Brin and Cory Doctorow. All these major talents bring their A game, and fans of any of them should check out the collection. This might just be some of the best science fiction you'll read in a long time: Retro without being old-fashioned, optimistic without being panglossian.
Disclosure notice: While I am a grad student at ASU and have been following Hieroglyph's progress eagerly since it's inception, I have no financial or institutional connection to it. I just think it's super cool.
((Addendum: And Lawrence Krauss is a blowhard. Skip the introduction))
The stories in this collection cover topics including space exploration, entrepreneurship, drones, civil liberties, education, climate change, and more, book-ended by Stephenson's Tall Tower, a 20 km steel structure that could cut space launch costs in half-for starters. Stephenson opens with a classically Heinleinian engineering epic of how the Tower is built--think "The Roads Must Roll" or "Blowups Happen". Bruce Sterling closes with the same tower 200 years in the future, inhabited by the decadent and wicked religious dreamers of an Earth that is being abandoned by the Ascended Masters, and the quixotic quest of a cowboy to ride his old horse to the very top. My two very favorite stories were "By the time we get to Arizona" by Madeline Ashby, who provides a The Prisoner inspired take on reforming American's Kafkaesque immigration system with a six week panopticon trial period in a model border town, and "Degrees of Freedom" Karl Schroeder, who uses augmented reality to provide a fascinating and inspiration lens on democracy, legitimacy, and collective decision making. Not everyone manages to hit as solidly, but there's no filler here, and very few reused ideas.
I've rarely seen such a creative, energetic, and yet solidly themed collection. The tent-poles are pieces from masters of the genre, names that you should recognize like Neal Stephenson, Bruce Sterling, Elizabeth Bear, Gregory Benford, David Brin and Cory Doctorow. All these major talents bring their A game, and fans of any of them should check out the collection. This might just be some of the best science fiction you'll read in a long time: Retro without being old-fashioned, optimistic without being panglossian.
Disclosure notice: While I am a grad student at ASU and have been following Hieroglyph's progress eagerly since it's inception, I have no financial or institutional connection to it. I just think it's super cool.
((Addendum: And Lawrence Krauss is a blowhard. Skip the introduction))