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Empire of Dreams and Miracles
I'm a regular reader of the sci-fi magazines, and I have to say, the stories in this collection are so much better than 95% of what gets published in those magazines. Maybe it's because the big-circulation magazines are so desperate for readership that they prefer to publish only stories from well-known authors, and many of them seem to use the short-story format only as a place to dump ideas that just don't quite make it into novels. The unknown authors in this anthology, on the other hand, seem to come up with fresh ideas and take pains to craft good short stories around them. This is probably what OSC is referring to when he writes in the foreword to the collection that in order "to find deep novelty, readers of science fiction must find new writers as well as new tales from old friends."
Okay, enough of that. What are the stories like? There's a lot here that Slashdot readers would find provocative and interesting. My favorite in the collection is "Twenty-Two Buttons" (my first reaction when I saw this title was: On a mouse or keyboard? Alas, that's not the sort of buttons we are talking about). The story takes place in a future where pollution, crime, and lawlessness have turned the Outside into a myth, and people spend all of their time inside their houses. They manage to go to work and school, find friends and lovers, and have contact with people outside the family only through the Net (ok, ok, so some of us already are living that way, but still), which is heavily censored and monitored by the government -- in fact, the story implies that the dangerousness of the Outside is exaggerated in order to justify the government's control over the Net (draw your own paranoid analogies with the present). This has some fascinating consequences. For example, children make play dates over the Net and rely on VR projections to learn to socialize. Families meet each other through a kind of Net dating service for whole families, and though two families may be from opposite ends of the continent, they manage to sit down "together" to have dinner, the VR screen going down the middle of the table. (I actually kind of wish that were true. Why should I be stuck with the people who happen to have moved in next to me?) Since physically moving yourself and your possessions from one place to another is so expensive, once you are married you are pretty much truly stuck. The main character in the story had an affair over the Net because he connected with the woman he could only touch through the mediation of technology so much better than his wife, but when the affair was discovered he was too afraid of the Outside to join the other woman. In the end the other woman did in fact leave the protected life on the Net and go Outside, and she tantalizingly sent him the buttons from her blouse, inviting him to "come out and play." (The actual story is so much better than my crappy summary, sorry.) This is the story in the collection with the most un-sci-fi-ish prose style, but it actually works really well.
"Carthaginian Rose" is based on an idea from Ray Kurzweil's Age of Spiritual Machines. Basically, the idea is that we'll soon (as in within 30 years) be able to scan people's brains into computers powerful enough to simulate neural activities -- and instant immortality! The scanning technology initially will be kind of crude, and so we might need to do it destructively on some people to try it out (Kurzweil speculated that a person facing imminent death may volunteer to be the first test subject). The story takes this idea and speculates on what kind of person that first volunteer would be and how someone might be driven to happily, willingly, and even work hard at being destructively scanned.
The title story, "Empire of Dreams and Miracles," is probably the craziest story of the bunch. It involves a future so far off that people literally kill for sport (the victims are then brought back to life). The entertainment industry is centered around competition among the killer-artists to bring the most pleasure and novelty to each kill, and the psychology of a culture with no real death but a lot of colorful imitations of it is described with a great deal of detail and imagination. The images are eye-popping and they come at you one after another, giving you almost no time to absorb each one (so you end up feeling a little like the sensation-saturated inhabitants of this future). The fascination with violence, death, and the sexual energies in both can be seen as a satire of our own world or just really good mood setting.
"Who Lived in a Shoe" is about alien house hunting. For any slashdot readers who have looked for a dwelling the story will resonate. It's a funny, light piece that is less sci-fi than fantasy. Some of the houses that the main characters visit on their search may well appeal to the crowd here. This story shows the wide range and styles in this collection.
There are eight other stories in the collection, ranging from Twilight Zone-like horror to cosmology-as-religion. There are space stations and artificial intelligences, social commentary as well as pure fantasy. All of the stories are well-written short stories, not aborted attempts at novels or sketches that go nowhere. OSC wrote an introduction to each story and it's interesting to get his take on each.
To be sure, sometimes the writing in these stories is not as polished as one could wish, but you see that kind of roughness even in the mass-circulation magazines. After all, we are talking about sci-fi here, not the Atlantic Monthly. All in all, given the diverse range of ideas, characters, and styles in this collection and the fact that these are all fresh, new talents in the field, this is my second favorite short fiction anthology for the year (it was my first favorite anthology until Ted Chiang's Stories of Your Life -- you just can't argue with all those Nebulas).
You can purchase Empire of Dreams and Miracles from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Certainly the stories described sound interesting. Although the themes for several sound more like amplifications than new ideas. I'm sure most of us can see links to "The Matrix" and "The Truman Show" in "Twenty-two Buttons".
As for the prime magazine comment, I think it's hard to break into the field because there is such a flood of junk that the editors do tend to give preference to those authors they have some reason to think can write a decent story.
I ran a semi-professional magazine (Radius) for a while, and while the funding was difficult, what really drove me out of the business was having to read through the slush pile. I'd get about 200 stories a month, and often would find only one or two that I could get all the way through. I can only imagine the headaches that the editors of "Asimov's" or "Analog" must get.
FWIW...
So getting some movie and TV people involved in a SF anthology qualifies as a "pedigree"? Can somebody explain the logic there? Why not get a horse trainer involved, or a skilled carpenter? They're equally relevant.
At least Card's for real. He hasn't written a line worth reading in years, but that doesn't mean his critical faculties have necessarily withered.
But listen here, listen: When people on Slashdot mistake TV drivel for SF, people who can read and write roll their eyes just like everybody else on Slashdot does when some jackass on CNN refers to a virus as a "computer bug".
Besides, even if Star Trek/Star Wars people were somehow names worth giving a damn about, so what? Their presence tells us nothing about the text. When you hire somebody to do cover art, you write a conctact and you send him a check when you see the deliverables. These guys do art for a living. If your money's green, they'll work for anybody.
The only people relevant to the quality of the thing are the people who wrote the stories and the editor who chose them. The rest is just marketing bullshit. Which Slashdot prides takes pride in ignoring. Ha ha ha.
Adrew Greeley (a Catholic priest) has writen some science fiction. One that I've read is: Final Planet .
I suspect that your not so much interested in religious science fiction writers as much as science fiction writers religious in the same way you are
Yet Another Web Site
I don't like it when SF is used as a platform for pro-life/creationist crap.
Fair enough. I, in turn, don't like it when it's used as a platform for atheist or pantheist crap, which tends to occur far more often.
Anyone else getting sick of O.S.C. milking the Enders series?
Well not everyone has your views of what's absurd. These stories are fiction and what one writer could see as the future another my not see that at all. Time change, the future could end up in a number of infinite possibilites. That is the fun of sci-fi. There are plenty of visions I disagree with as well, but they can very well be good stories. Open up a little.
BTW, not trying to nitpick, I make spelling and grammar mistakes all the time but where you said "...patently absurd." Did you mean "blatantly" absurd or so absurd that it could be patented?
Understanding is a three-edged sword. -- Kosh Naranek
If someone is really trying to get me to consider a peculiar religious or ethical viewpoint, I can't think of a better approach than to write some decent sci-fi about it. For example, I despise the views of the anti-abortion crowd, but liked Philip K Dick's 'The Pre-Persons'. A well-written piece of sci-fi will win my sympathy better than any number of humourless leaflets or aeroplanes flown into buildings.
Well then, maybe you should find another genre to read (if you haven't already).
There is a reason the genre is name *Science* Fiction. SciFi authors tend to use current technological - the science part - barriers or trends and think them along a few hundred or thousand of years, to generate a semi-believable scenario, hence the greater ratio of atheist "crap" as you put it.
That's no to say that SciFi authors don't, can't or shouldn't take moral/ethic stances, but these certainly do not need to spring from creationism. There is no scientific basis for creationism, so don't expect most SciFi books to promote this view.
Mkay?