Yashima reviewed Visions of the Future by Greg Bear
Review of 'Visions of the Future' on 'Goodreads'
5 stars
A good anthology on the future of men. I tend to buy anthologies and then read one or two stories and ... put them down. I ended up reading more stories in this anthology than I have ever read in any other. So it must be good, right? And the answer is: yes. So here are a few mini reviews of some of the stories, so you can get an impression of what is in there:
The Shoulders of Giants. By Robert J Sawyer. Story about humanity once again sending frozen people to the stars. Sounds like same-old at first but then gets a fun twist. (4)
Gift of a Useless Man. By Alan Dean Foster. A man hurtles through space and crashes on a small, empty-seeming planet. He's about to die and I was about to give up on this story when the actual story begins. …
A good anthology on the future of men. I tend to buy anthologies and then read one or two stories and ... put them down. I ended up reading more stories in this anthology than I have ever read in any other. So it must be good, right? And the answer is: yes. So here are a few mini reviews of some of the stories, so you can get an impression of what is in there:
The Shoulders of Giants. By Robert J Sawyer. Story about humanity once again sending frozen people to the stars. Sounds like same-old at first but then gets a fun twist. (4)
Gift of a Useless Man. By Alan Dean Foster. A man hurtles through space and crashes on a small, empty-seeming planet. He's about to die and I was about to give up on this story when the actual story begins. A fun re-telling of a classic this time with telepathic space-bugs. (4)
Light and Shadow. By Catherine Asaro. Story about a grieving, suicidal pilot and an AI who get to test a new plane with a fascinating concept for an FTL drive. I did not stay to study the mathematical explanations of Riemann surfaces that came with the story but rest assured they are there. (5)
Lungfish. By David Brin. This is actually my first ever encounter with Brin. Though I've heard a lot about his Uplift universe. This story is about humanity finally meeting von Neumann probes, about the reasons we so far haven't and of course the Fermi Paradox. It is beautiful and still has me thinking. Because the story ends just before the meeting and leaves much to the imagination about how it will go and what the Purpose of the waiting AI is (5)
Water. By Ramez Naam. This one is reminiscent in style and world of his Nexus novels. But here he explores what happens when the ad-supported fremium business models enter our heads by way of implants. It's all about a bottle of water and it's digital label. I found this an incredibly fascinating look at what advertising is and does to us, and how invasive it can be come in an ever more digital world. (5)
More than the sum of his parts. By Joe Haldeman. In this a man suffers a terrible accident and is "rebuilt" by the doctors with more than a few cybernetic parts. The story describes his progress of at first slow acceptance and then exhilaration as he is seduced by his new capabilities. (5)