Futureshocks - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0451460650 ISBN 13: 9780451460653

Publisher: Roc Trade, 2006

Synopsis

Sixteen renowned masters of speculative fiction share their individual visions of the future of humankind, in an anthology containing all-original short stories by Keven J. Anderson, Alan Dean Foster, Sean McMullen, Louise Marley, Mike Resnick, Harry Turtledove, Robert Charles Wilson, and others. Original.

About this title

About the Author

Lou Anders is an editor, author, and journalist. He is the editorial director of Prometheus Books' science fiction imprint Pyr, as well as the anthologies Outside the Box, Live Without A Net, and Projections: Science Fiction in Literature & Film. He is the author of The Making of Star Trek: First Contact, and has published over 500 articles in such magazines as The Believer, Dreamwatch, Star Trek Monthly, Star Wars Monthly, Babylon 5 Magazine, Sci Fi Universe, Doctor Who Magazine, and Manga Max.

Reviews

A few of the 16 contributions to Anders's all-original anthology about the dark side of tomorrow simply present a Big Scary Idea with little storytelling; others offer the kind of thoughtful, full-bodied admonitions that SF can do so well. Sean McMullen's "The Engines of Arcadia," for example, reconsiders the devolutionary theory of H.G. Wells's The Time Machine: what if humans weren't doomed to degenerate but instead could choose to survive happily for all time? Another side of humanity comes into play in Adam Roberts's "Man You Gotta Go," the story of a chirpy, helpful AI that gives us all the chance to explore the universe—if we're willing to give up our physical bodies. The nature of a "human" soul is tested in Robert Charles Wilson's "The Cartesian Theater," in which artificial constructions die in agony for the audience's amusement. These writers stress human potential for bad choices. Evidently, we are the scariest aspect of the future. Read in short stretches, this volume offers a worthwhile assortment of jolting warnings. Anders (Live Without a Net) is the editorial director of Pyr, Prometheus Books' SF imprint.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

With the title of his social critique, Future Shock (1970), Alvin Toffler coined a term to describe the angst created by sudden, disorienting technological advancement. Although technology's social disruption has been a theme in sf since the genre's inception, editor Anders wisely limits the selections in this collection of new stories to extrapolating inventive scenarios from today's more disquieting trends. In the brilliant opening story, Paul DiFilippo envisions what havoc might be wrought should a common drug eliminate the need for sleep. Alan Dean Foster explores the seamier side of biochips in a fanciful tale about knowledge junkies--that is, people who can't stop uploading entire encyclopedias to their cerebral cortices. The time viewer in Mike Resnick and Harry Turtledove's collaboration is an intriguing device that allows glimpses of any past event, but probing history's archives a little too far can be deadly. There are 16 entertaining and thought-provoking stories in all here, and they are just unsettling enough that readers may want to spread out reading them over several sittings. Carl Hays
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Roc Trade
• Publication date: 2006
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0451460650
• ISBN 13: 9780451460653
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320
• Editor: Anders Lou