The Sci Fi Guy

Traveling is one of my favorite pasttimes, but almost as much as the destination matters to me, the journey oftentimes provides me the unique time to actually open a novel and relax. Over the last couple years, I’ve realized that perhaps my favorite form of science fiction is actually the short-fiction style. Maybe it’s me being a greedy reader, but I enjoy the fact I can sit down and bounce from universe to universe, storyline to storyline, character to character, without necessarily having to spend hours to get the jist of what the author is trying to say. And more often than not, I catch myself appreciating how the author formulated his or her story in a way to make it compact yet enjoyable.

I wanted to share some impressions from the book that I recently picked up titled, Solaris Book of New Science Fiction, Volume 2. This is a completely original anthology of work, featuring a range of topics and writing styles.

The first story is iCity by Paul Di Filippo, an intriguing tale of high-speed, web-enabled urban planning. The most notable part about what Mr. Di Filippo did in this story is that he jumped right in to the story, then backed out with the background process of how a city can actually be upgraded and downgraded on a whim, and also managed to tell a pretty interesting character story as well.

The third story is The Line of Dichotomy by Chris Robertson, which features a war-torn planet on the brink of peace and terraforming. Perhaps I read this too quickly after watching the movie rendition of Screamers (a Philip K. Dick story), but the setup of the setting seemed damned similar. However, that doesn’t make it an interesting read, and the climax at the ending is enough to make you wonder whether or not we’ll ever be wise enough to give up violence for coexistance with each other.

Not to berate any of the other stories in this fine collection, but my favorite so far (and I admit I haven’t finished the book yet), is Sunworld by Eric Brown. This is definitely an author that’s been influenced by Arthur C. Clarke. It begins as one story and then slowly becomes another – with a climax that’s well worth the journey to get there.

I’d also note that Shining Armor by Dominic Green is another worthwhile story, but only if you grew up enjoying Robotech and other mech-related science fiction like I did. Essentially the story revolves around the notion that you should never underestimate someone – not everyone that appears strong is as strong as they appear.

Odds are I’ll finish the last few stories this weekend, and hopefully find some more good gems in this collection. I’ve already been so impressed by this 2nd edition that I went ahead and ordered the 1st volume from Amazon. Once that arrives, I’ll be sure to share those with you too.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 15th, 2008 at 3:28 pm and is filed under Science Fiction Books. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.