She Treads Softly: Reach for Infinity

Tuesday, May 27, 2014

Reach for Infinity

Reach for Infinity edited by Jonathan Strahan

Solaris: 5/27/2014
Trade Paperback. 352 pages
ISBN-13: 9781781082034

An original collection of new short science fiction from the biggest and most exciting names in the genre. The latest in the Infinities collections edited and comissioned by multiple award-winning anthologist Jonathan Strahan.

What happens when humanity reaches out into the vastness of space? The brightest names in SF contribute new orginal fiction to this amazing anothology from master editor Jonathan Strahan. Including new work by Alastair Reynolds,Greg Egan,Ian McDonald, Ken Macleod, Pat Cadigan, Karl Schroeder, Hannu Rajaniemi, Karen Lord, Adam Roberts, Kathleen Ann Goonan, Aliette de Bodard Peter Watts, and others!

My Thoughts:

Reach for Infinity is the highly recommended third anthology of hard science fiction short stories in the Infinity series edited by Jonathan Strahan. The first two are Engineering Infinity and Edge of Infinity.

In the 14 short stories Strahan includes, he writes: "Many of the stories take place on Earth in the next hundred years, looking at points in time where people, or a person, look to make a critical difference and push forward towards something greater. Some of them take snapshots from places – deep within the future colonies of Mars or perched in the chromosphere of the sun – where humanity as a whole is pushing its boundaries and stretching its limits in order to achieve more. All of them are about, one way or another, reaching for infinity from within and without."

This collection presents a good variety of stories by accomplished authors from the hard science fiction genre. While all of the stories included are beyond a doubt well-written and great examples of the short stories you will find in hard sci-fi today, as in any anthology, some resonated more closely to my own preferences than others. All in all, this was a good collection and I enjoyed it immensely. To be honest, it was refreshing to tackle a shorter collection like this versus the usual huge and unwieldy "best of" collections that Strahan (and others) also edit.

Contents:
Introduction by Jonathan Strahan
Break My Fall by Greg Egan
The Dust Queen by Aliette de Bodard
The Fifth Dragon by Ian McDonald
Kheldyu by Karl Schroeder
Report Concerning the Presence of Seahorses on Mars by Pat Cadigan
Hiraeth: A Tragedy in Four Acts by Karen Lord
Amicae Aeternum by Ellen Klages
Trademark Bugs: A Legal History by Adam Roberts
Attitude by Linda Nagata
Invisible Planets by Hannu Rajaniemi
Wilder Still, the Stars by Kathleen Ann Goonan
‘The Entire Immense Superstructure’: An Installation by Ken MacLeod
In Babelsberg by Alastair Reynolds
Hotshot by Peter Watts

Disclosure: My Kindle edition was courtesy of Solaris via Netgalley for review purposes.

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John Updike's six rules for reviewing:

1. Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.

2. Give him enough direct quotation--at least one extended passage--of the book's prose so the review's reader can form his own impression, can get his own taste.

3. Confirm your description of the book with quotation from the book, if only phrase-long, rather than proceeding by fuzzy precis.

4. Go easy on plot summary, and do not give away the ending.

5. If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author's oeuvre or elsewhere. Try to understand the failure. Sure it's his and not yours?

To these concrete five might be added a vaguer sixth, having to do with maintaining a chemical purity in the reaction between product and appraiser.....Review the book, not the reputation.... Better to praise and share than blame and ban. The communion between reviewer and his public is based upon the presumption of certain possible joys in reading, and all our discriminations should curve toward that end.