Future on Ice (Future on Fire, 2) - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0312872968 ISBN 13: 9780312872960

Publisher: Tor Books, 2000

Synopsis

A widely varied, immensely enjoyable, and historically important anthology, Future on Ice is a showcase for the hottest stories by the coolest SF writers of the 1980s. Complete with a preface, introduction, and story notes by Card himself, here are early stories from eighteen incredibly talented authors who have since shattered the face of science fiction.

About this title

Review:

The much-delayed follow-up to Future on Fire, another anthology of the best short SF from the 1980s, Future on Ice delivers a tight, choice collection from some of the genre's top names--Isaac Asimov, Octavia Butler, Greg Bear, George R.R. Martin, Nancy Kress, and others. SF anthologies live or die by the quality of their ideas, and Future on Ice doesn't disappoint: editor Orson Scott Card (a genre powerhouse himself) has put together an eclectic and thought-provoking set of 18 stories, from Butler's disturbing but imaginative vision of a burned-out future without language to Martin's Twilight Zone-esque retrospective on the life of an arrogant author, in which paintings of his characters come to life to haunt him. Other standouts include a classic dreaming android story from Asimov and Bear's galaxy-in-a-grain-of-sand tale, in which a person inadvertently becomes the living host to an entire universe. Card ably bookends the set with a story of his own and a compelling introductory essay on the Force and how sci-fi is really religious literature. (Other authors in the anthology include John Kessel, Gregory Benford, Andrew Weiner, David Zindell, C.J. Cherryh, Lewis Shiner, John Crowley, John Varley, S.C. Sykes, Karen Joy Fowler, and Walter Jon Williams.) --Paul Hughes

About the Author:

Orson Scott Card is the author of the novels Ender's Game, Ender's Shadow, and Speaker for the Dead. Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead both won Hugo and Nebula Awards, making Card the only author to win these two top prizes in consecutive years. There are seven other novels to date in The Ender Universe series. Card has also written fantasy: The Tales of Alvin Maker is a series of fantasy novels set in frontier America; The Lost Gate, is a contemporary magical fantasy. Card has written many other stand-alone sf and fantasy novels, as well as movie tie-ins and games, and publishes an internet-based science fiction and fantasy magazine, Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show. Card was born in Washington and grew up in California, Arizona, and Utah. He served a mission for the LDS Church in Brazil in the early 1970s. Besides his writing, Card directs plays and teaches writing and literature at Southern Virginia University. He lives in Greensboro, North Carolina, with his wife, Kristine Allen Card, and youngest daughter, Zina Margaret.

About this edition

• Publisher: Tor Books
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0312872968
• ISBN 13: 9780312872960
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 432
• Editor: Card Orson Scott