Ratings2
Average rating3.5
Here are 25 stories of science fiction that push the envelope, by the biggest names in an emerging new crop of high-tech futuristic SF - including Charles Stross, Robert Reed, Alastair Reynolds, Peter Hamilton and Neal Asher. High-tech SF has made a significant comeback in the last decade, as bestselling authors successfully blend the super-science of 'hard science fiction' with real characters in an understandable scenario. It is perhaps a reflection of how technologically controlled our world is that readers increasingly look for science fiction that considers the fates of mankind as a result of increasing scientific domination. This anthology brings together the most extreme examples of the new high-tech, far-future science fiction, pushing the limits way beyond normal boundaries. The stories include: "A Perpetual War Fought Within a Cosmic String", "A Weapon That Could Destroy the Universe", "A Machine That Detects Alternate Worlds and Creates a Choice of Christs", "An Immortal Dead Man Sent To The End of the Universe", "Murder in Virtual Reality", "A Spaceship So Large That There is An Entire Planetary System Within It", and "An Analytical Engine At The End of Time", and "Encountering the Untouchable."
Reviews with the most likes.
First of all, it's ordinary scifi, not extreme. Good scifi, not bad (except some stories) but... nothing extreme here.
Second, out of 19 stories, I found only 5 to be 5/5s, with just 2 really memorable: Alastair Reynold's “Merlin Gun” (good story with amazing ending of galactic implications that caught me into a loop of “What should be done?”) and Harlan Ellison's “The Region Between” (a great mix of different blends of scifi and an extremely original form). I also found stories I just couldn't finish (Doctorow, Cadigan, McDonald), not that good (Baxter, Gillet, Kelly) or really bad (Oltion's “Stuffing”), with plenty of middle-range (average) others.
The average is 3,5/5, but as a whole I felt the anthology is a 3/5. Not that bad, not that good.