Synergy SF: New Science Fiction

In the mid 1980s to early 1990s, acclaimed author and editor George Zebrowski created Synergy, an all-new collection of the best modern science fiction stories, which spanned four volumes and published some of the most innovative, thought-provoking, speculative fiction ever. Synergy SF: New Science Fiction marks the return of this acclaimed original anthology with a new selection of stories, including: Jan Lars Jensen’s "Bodily Surrender," in which a man may interface with a machine, but what does he see when he looks back on his humanity; Charles L. Harness’s "Polly," where intelligent life arises and grows where it will — just as humanity did. But when the intelligence itself is invented by a team of scientists, it faces new and unusual threats to its survival — such as copyright infringement; and Janeen Webb’s "The Red City," where a spoiled trophy wife from the future stumbles through a hole in time to ancient India, and soon learns that even daily existence is a matter of life and death. Two additional short stories, poetry, interviews with Ray Bradbury and Cele Goldsmith, and William Tenn on the radio broadcast of H. G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds round out this fantastic collection.

Synergy normally refers to a merging of disparate forces to create something unexpected and surprising, whether for good or ill. In the latest volume of an anthology series that editor Zebrowski resurrects from the 1980s, synergy operates mostly benignly in stories and essays that blend strikingly original ideas and equally innovative narrative voices to provoke thought and show off the genre's cutting edge. As in the previous four editions, quality counts for more than variety, and name authors are eschewed in favor of such relative unknowns as Janeen Webb, whose "Red City" follows the fate of a spoiled socialite who tumbles back in time to ancient India, and Eleanor Aranson, who contributes a tale ostensibly written by an alien and annotated by a human. Two stories by Australian rising star Damien Broderick, two essays on the genre's state-of-the-art, and two interviews, the better of which features the renowned Ray Bradbury, round out a volume that sf connoisseurs won't want to miss. Carl Hays
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