John Joseph Adams

Complex God (Scott Sigler) - This is typical Sigler, he presents a well thought-out story and tries (successfully) to make it fit inside of a science-realistic framework. Predictable, but more than worth it!

Cycles (Charles Yu) - Almost a love story... but in reverse. It was a good filler, but written well enough that I'd read something longer by him.

Lullaby (Anna North) - This one was really good. It read like a horror story and reminded me of early Stephen King. Great story elements!

Eighty Miles an Hour All The Way to Paradise (Genevieve Valentine) - This was a great edge-of-your-seat read. Very walking dead-ish. Character driven with internal monologue.

Executable (Hugh Howey) - I love Hugh Howey's writing, it is always engaging and compelling and this is no exception. Very Lord of the Flies like... if a short story can be that. Always pregnant with possibilities.

The Onmibot Incident (Ernest Cline) - I have to admit that this is my least favorite (so far) of the collection. Not because I didn't like it, because I did really enjoy it. I think Cline is a colorful writer who can weave a story that keeps you guessing and never bores you. This is a touching story that has the nostalgia Cline readers have come to expect and the levity that continues to impress me (clever, not kitsch). However I feel it is a little out of place with the rest of the stories in this book.

Epoch (Corey Doctorow) - Corey is almost incapable of writing anything less than great! He has a lyrical quality and his writing has a cadence of its own. This story, like most of his, explores the human condition and how it relates to the technology all around us. Does art imitate life? Does life imitate art? or does art imitate life imitation art?

Human Intelligence (Jeff Abbott) - This was pretty good, I really liked it. The internal struggle between individual survival and survival of the species. I love this type of dystopian trope.

The Golden Hour (Julianna Baggott) - I thought this was a little confusing and unrealistic... maybe trying too hard or something. There are a lot of literary references which were fun but the story lacked believability or maybe the robots were just too human? I didn't hate it, I just didn't love it.

Sleepover (Alastair Reynolds) - I really liked this one. It had a bit of a "Pacific Rim" quality to it coupled with Silo by Hugh Howey (Read this series NOW). Very visual writing and there was a lot of information in a very short story but it never felt rushed or overwhelming.

Seasoning (Alan Dean Foster) - This one was very interesting... a paranoia inducing story bringing in elements of nonobots and anti-GMO and conspiracy theory. Very classic Sci-Fi

Nanonauts! In Battle with Tiny Death-Subs! (Ian McDonald) - Just a day in the life of a microscopic biological drone pilot. Very character driven and good development but at times went too far into the weeds.

Of Dying Heroes and Deathless Deeds (Robin Wasserman) - This one was just ok. I think it was a lot longer than it needed to be. Basically a human "shrink" for battle weary robots. It just seemed unrealistic to me so maybe I just couldn't get into it enough to enjoy the writing?

The Robot and the Baby (John McCarthy) - This one was pretty thought provoking. Reliance on technology until our technology starts to have more humanity than we do. We desire the easy life and become angry when we are burdened with things like childcare and eventually technology begins to develop those emotional ties that we no longer do.

We Are All Misfit Toys in the Aftermath of the Velveteen War (Seanan McGuire) - This was strange... not bad at all, but I did have a little trouble immersing myself in it. Basically we are at war with robots because they kidnapped our children but try to keep them from growing up because we tried keeping children away from the robots.So now all adults are in PTSD counseling.

Spider the Artist (Nnedi Okorafor) - I really liked this one a lot! It was very well written and thought provoking. Man vs machine and where we differ... but are also alike.

Small Things (Daniel H. Wilson) - Daniel Wilson continues to impress me, he is so detailed without being boring, and comes up with such original ideas and new ways to think about old stories. His characters and unique and real and make decisions with consequences. This is more a story of technology and unintended consequences than it is of a robot uprising... But it was a very enjoyable, albeit disturbing, story.
… (mer)

I think I started this with more than a little suspicion as hesitation. I feel like I've generally approached science-fiction and fantasy from two directions; becoming wedded to particular authors with particular styles and devouring most of their oeuvre. But after being gifted this over the holidays I decided to try something different, and I'm certainly grateful.

I think I'd mostly thought of the science-fiction and fantasy I'd read as escapist and only incidentally interesting literarily or with relevance to the present. Favourites such as [b:Hyperion|77566|Hyperion (Hyperion Cantos, #1)|Dan Simmons|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1405546838s/77566.jpg|1383900] or [b:Red Mars|77507|Red Mars (Mars Trilogy, #1)|Kim Stanley Robinson|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1440699787s/77507.jpg|40712] obviously have allusions, but they're not necessarily the focus and the setting is just as important. A lot of these stories, by contrast, have less to worry about in terms of worldbuilding, in terms of keeping you engaged for a multi-volume epic, and so they can play more directly with ideas. I think I appreciate this a great deal, because though not every idea resonates it's refreshing not to be reading genre fiction as fiction for the sake of being in or appealing to a genre, but fiction that uses the genre as a means to an end. I always described what I got out of SF/fantasy this way, but I think I can say it more confidently now!

I'll walk through some in the collection I have relatively cogent thoughts on:

The Witch of Orion Waste and the Boy Knight by E. Lily Yu absolutely nailed its tone, for me. I want to read this out loud at some point, to listen to it. It skewers the tropes of fairytale in a way I hadn't seen before, not just saying "what if we empathised with the witch" but "what does it mean to be a witch in fairytale?" Thought-provoking and enjoyable.

Openness by Alexander Weinstein is one I wish was longer. Exploring the consequences of the secrets and layers and technology dependence his characters have demanded a relatively swift resolution in short-story, but (and my worldbuilder is leaking) could be an amazing setting for longer drama.

Vulcanization by Nisi Shawl made me want to read more alternate-history fiction. It's easy to forget and hard to imagine the minds of colonisers of the time, and if anything I think Shawl's portrayal misses some of the likely lack of conscience/banality of the perpetrators, which might be scarier in hindsight.

The Venus Effect by Joseph Allen Hill really had me questioning at first. I think I had a tendency to view metafiction as somehow easier than the regular kind, because you relinquish some of the need to allow the reader to draw their own interpretations. But what you gain, at least here, is a unusually specific and revealing understanding of the patterns of stories of police brutality, and the ways they are left out as well.

In any anthology there will be some stories you like more than others, but at least I felt exposed to more niches in SF and fantasy than I had been previously, and enjoyed almost all of the stories. Excited to follow up on some of those leads!… (mer)