Sable Aradia
10/8/2015
This anthology was a mixed bag of stories by some of today's top sci-fi talent. Some of it was great, some not so great, and some I thought was pretentious artsy garbage more interested in impressing critics than telling stories. Of course YMMV. Here's a short breakdown.
Liked:
Events Preceding the Helvetican Renaissance by John Kessel - neat take on human religion and spirituality in a space opera setting
The Lost Princess Man by John Barnes - This had great potential. The premise is a new take on an old trope in a flipped fairy tale kind of way. And the plotting against each other was fun. But it never went anywhere and ended oddly.
Shell Game by Neal Asher - great aliens, neat protagonists, and the McGuffin was cool
To Raise a Mutiny Betwixt Yourselves by Jay Lake - an unusually good artsy story with complex characters (in a no clear good guy, Game of Thrones style) in a complex universe
Inevitable by Sean Williams - neat look at the dilemma of relativity problems and the real nature of inevitability
Fearless Space Pirates of the Outer Rings by Bill Willingham - a new take on a couple of old tropes that I enjoyed
The Tenth Muse by Tad Williams - a new take on the hostile First Contact trope
The Tale of the Wicked by John Scalzi - a fun look at the dilemma of AIs
The Far End of History by John C. Wright - a very human way to tell a tale as vast as the Universe in a way that is part mythology, part cyberpunk, and part space opera on a truly grand scale
Disliked:
The Island by Peter Watts - I realize it's en vogue to be nihilistic in sci-fi these days, but the protagonist was terribly unsympathetic and so I'm not sure I really cared what happened to her.
Hated:
Utriusque Cosmi by Robert Charles Wilson - Really, I'm not sure I grasped the point of this. I suppose the author thought he was saying something profound about the nature of life and the universe, but I thought it was bad cyberpunk masquerading as pseudo-spiritual space opera. The title is a reference to an obscure work of philosophy that only proves that the writer thinks he's the smartest person in the room. I think this is writing for hipsters and putting it at the beginning of the book just about put me off the whole thing.
To Go Boldly by Cory Doctorow - As far as I can tell, the whole point of this story was to prove how much better and more sophisticated modern sci-fi writing is compared to the classic Star Trek style space opera. It didn't work. All it did was prove to me that the author is willing to contemptuously spit upon the works of those who paved the way for him. In other words, he writes like a hipster.
Punctuality by Garth Nix - I had not yet read anything by Garth Nix either so I was looking forward to it, since he has such a reputation as a rising star in modern sci-fi. I hope this story was no indication of the kind of writing we can expect from him. It had no plot, no goal, no direction, and the characters were completely flat and uninteresting, barely more than memes. And it was boring. That's several minutes of my life I'll never get back.
Join the Navy and See the Worlds by Bruce Sterling - This one had great potential and went nowhere. I was left scratching my head at the end of it, asking "what the hell just happened?" and "what, exactly, was your point here?"
From the Heart by John Meaney - Again, the setup was great - a world and characters of vast complexities and depths. Then it just fizzled. I don't understand the point of the ending at all, and as a matter of fact, it seems to turn a whole bunch of the coolest parts of the story into red herrings. Did the author realize he was running close to his word count limit and decide to end the story in a hurry so that he could shoehorn it into the slot, or what?
Loved:
Defect by Kristine Kathryn Rusch - space opera meets spy thriller with a twist ending. Good work that reminded me of Lois McMaster Bujold.
Chameleons by Elizabeth Moon - a wonderful sci-fi thriller in a very complex and interesting world. I would like to read more about this world. Strangely I've never before read anything by Moon (despite the fact that she's been around for a long time) and I would like to read more of her work.
Cracklegrackle by Justina Robson - what a cool sci-fi explanation for mysticism, that also manages to be a sci-fi whodunnit while it waxes rhetoric about the nature of life, identity and humanity.
Catastrophe Baker and a Canticle for Leibowitz by Mike Resnick - not only does this witty story give a nod to a sci-fi classic in the title, but it also invokes about a dozen classic sci-fi tropes and turns them gently on their heads with masterfully woven language. Highly recommended!
So there's a fair number more of the stories I liked than anything else, but because there are several stories I loathed also, I can't give this book any higher than three starts. But it's worth a read anyway.