How to Save the World - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 031285577X ISBN 13: 9780312855772

Publisher: Tor Books, 1995

Synopsis

There's no question mark in this book's title. The stories gathered under it won't politely request permission to play with your head. They're not asking you, they're telling you! In the gutsy tradition of the best science fiction speculation, they'll confront your assumptions and force you to discard the thoughtless certainties of everyday life. In thirteen stimulating tales, some of SF's brightest thinkers entertainingly challenge you to stretch your mind around the answers that might shape your future.

About this title

About the Author

Charles Sheffield is a mathematician and theoretical physicist by training. His doctoral work was on Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity. Currently Dr. Sheffield works as chief scientist for the Earth Satellite Corporation, a Washington, D.C. based firm that specializes in the analysis of data gathered from space.

The author of thirty previous science fiction novels, including Cold as Ice and The Ganymede Club from Tor, Sheffield lives in Silver Spring, Maryland, with his wife, author Nancy Kress.

From Publishers Weekly

Sometimes light in tone but always serious in subject, these 13 SF stories present modest proposals for ending racism, reducing hostility, restoring the environment, benefiting from space travel and otherwise improving the world?or, at least, preserving it. Overwhelmingly, the stories are not simple wish-fulfillment, although "Higher Education," by Jerry Pournelle and editor Sheffield (Cold As Ice ), risks that. Many of the tales show well-laid plans going astray, as in Brenda Clough's "The Product of the Extremes" and Geoffrey Landis's "The Meeting of the Secret World Masters," two of the best entries here. Others highlight the temptation of solutions that may be worse than the problem, as in Mary Turzillo's "The Guatemala Cure," in which an abused woman seeks vengeance against all men. When plans succeed, sometimes it is by trickery?as in James P. Hogan's "Zap Thy Neighbor" or Arlan Andrews's "Souls on Ice"?but technology can prove beneficial as well, as shown in Nick Pollotta's "Raw Terra" and Doug Beason's "Defense Conversion." While outstanding prose surfaces only in the Kathe Koja and Barry Malzberg collaboration ("Buyer's Remorse"), this collection, while perhaps not up to saving the world, should at least save its readers from a few perhaps otherwise empty hours.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Tor Books
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 031285577X
• ISBN 13: 9780312855772
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Editor: Sheffield Charles