Armored [Mass Market Paperback]

John Joseph Adams (Editor)

Book Description

Release date: March 27, 2012

SUIT UP. POWER ON. LOCK & LOAD.

Decades ago, Starship Troopers captivated readers with its vision of a future war in which power armored soldiers battled giant insects on hostile alien planets. Today, with the success of Iron Man, Halo, and Mechwarrior--and with real robotic exoskeletons just around the corner--the idea of super-powered combat armor and giant mecha has never been more exciting and relevant.

Now acclaimed editor John Joseph Adams brings you the first-ever original anthology of power armor fiction. Join leading SF authors Jack Campbell, Brandon Sanderson, Tanya Huff, Daniel H. Wilson, Alastair Reynolds, Carrie Vaughn, and others as they explore the limits of what a soldier of the future might become--with the aid of the right equipment.

Imagine power armored warriors battling at the bottom of the sea, or on nightmarish alien worlds, or in the darkest depths of space. Imagine armor that's as smart as you are, armor that might keep on fighting even after you're no longer willing ... or able.

The possibilities are endless, but some facts remain constant: The soldier of the future will be fast. The soldier of the future will be deadly. The soldier of the future will be ARMORED.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Powered armor rocks our world...we're excited [by this] book of power-armor stories." -io9.com

"A collection exemplifying the theme, and definitely worth checking out." --Publishers Weekly

"Armored stands as the definitive anthology of its kind." --Bookgasm

"Whatever your tastes, Armored is sure to provide quite a few great tales, and it's always incredible to see the wide variety of styles and perspectives each author contributes to the whole. Some stories will have you wishing for a suit of your own, while others will have you vowing to never step foot inside anything that could run off on its own volition. Either way, you won't come away from Armored without feeling the impact." --Examiner.com

"Armored is a collection of short stories dealing primarily with powered armor of one variety or another. [...] I would heartily recommend this compilation to anyone interested in military science fiction and powered armor in particular." --MilitarySciFi.com

About the Author

John Joseph Adams, called "the reigning king of the anthology world" by Barnes & Noble, is the bestselling editor of many anthologies, such as EPIC, OTHER WORLDS THAN THESE, ARMORED, UNDER THE MOONS OF MARS: NEW ADVENTURES ON BARSOOM, LIGHTSPEED: YEAR ONE, BRAVE NEW WORLDS, WASTELANDS, THE LIVING DEAD, THE LIVING DEAD 2, BY BLOOD WE LIVE, FEDERATIONS, THE IMPROBABLE ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES, and THE WAY OF THE WIZARD. He is a four-time finalist for the Hugo Award and the World Fantasy Award. He is also the editor and publisher of LIGHTSPEED and NIGHTMARE, and is the co-host of Wired.com's THE GEEK'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY podcast. Forthcoming anthologies include THE MAD SCIENTIST'S GUIDE TO WORLD DOMINATION (Tor Books, 2013), WASTELANDS 2 (Night Shade Books, 2013), and ROBOT UPRISINGS (Doubleday, 2014). Find him online at johnjosephadams.com and on Twitter @JohnJosephAdams.

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 608 pages
• Publisher: Baen; Original edition (March 27, 2012)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1451638175
• ISBN-13: 978-1451638172
• Product Dimensions: 7.4 x 4.2 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #340,637 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Suit Up for One Hell of a Ride April 4, 2012

By Nickolas X. P. Sharps VINE™ VOICE

Format:Mass Market Paperback

If you know me then you know I absolutely hate short stories. If you don't know me: Hello nice to meet you, I hate short stories. I hate all short fiction really, novellas and poems and such. I took a fiction writing course and it was all about writing short fiction. I hated that too. But! If there was ever an anthology I was ever going to enjoy it had to be ARMORED, edited by John Joseph Adams and published by Baen. A whole collection of stories solely based around my favorite science fiction concept - power armor. With a foreword by Orson Scott Card and an unbeatable roster of authors from Dan Abnett to Brandon Sanderson to Tobias Buckell, ARMORED could be the military sci-fi Promised Land. So how did it fare? Read on.

The anthology opens up with a foreword by Orson Scott Card that really sets the stage for the stories to come. This is followed by an introduction by John Joseph Adams that also amps readers up and gets the gears going. Rather than review each of the stories (there are 23 in all) I will just dip into the highlights, and man are those highlights difficult to choose from. This anthology is just that good.

"The Johnson Maneuver" by Ian Douglas starts the book with a bang. Douglas knows his Marine Corps history and aptly develops the image of future soldiers in a satisfying fashion. The power armor featured is cool (and this is just ceremonial armor!) and the aliens are really interesting. The most important part of the story as the opening act of a whole collection about power armor is the reminder that it is never about the armor, it's about the man inside.

"Jungle Walkers" by David Klecha and Tobias S. Buckell is a near future tale that pits an unarmored weapons platoon in South America against some very heavy metal. I think what I liked most about this story was that the heroes aren't the guys wielding the devastating weapons of the future. The story also goes a little into the politics of the conflict which are at once familiar and yet different.

"Death Reported of Last Surviving Veteran of Great War" by Dan Abnett is a great example of why I love Dan Abnett and hate short fiction. The story is told in a very vague, testimonial style that teases the imagination. I would love to learn more about the protagonist and the world he inhabits but I realize the lack of detail and brief length hold the most punch and successfully encapsulate the nature of short-story telling.

"Find Heaven and Hell in the Smallest Things" by Simon R. Green is very cool and creepy. Green shows us a world that hates and desperately wants to kill any intruders. The world itself is hostile to human life and the very flora strives to eradicate the unwelcome. A great distinction of this story is that the power armor is actually a prison to the occupant, a life saving death sentence.

"The Last Days of the Kelly Gang" by David D. Levine is probably one of my favorite stories of the collection. This story features some rough riding Australian desperadoes and a suit of steampunk power armor. This is a very unique story that just oozes awesome and I'm not even that big of a steampunk fan.

"Field Test" by Michael A. Stackpole is another of my favorites. The story actually takes place during the revolution in Libya. The armor of this story is cool while being believable. The action is great and, again, believable. I can totally imagine a mech like the one in the story, running around performing black ops missions in destabilized countries.

"Heuristic Algorithm and Reasoning Response Engine" by Ethan Skarstedt and Brandon Sanderson is perhaps the story I am most iffy about. On one hand there are some extremely cool concepts to be found in the story, from the mechs to the self replicating machines. Then on the other hand the dialogue is offensively artificial and more than a little Anime-style melodramatic. Oh and the mech's artificial intelligence, HARRE, is probably the most annoying AI that I have ever encountered. I'm pretty love/hate about this story as well.

"The Green" by Lauren Beukes is probably my absolute favorite story of the collection. I had heard of Beukes before but never read her fiction. This story has just won me over. It is ironic because the story features no action, a shallow but ever present desire of my reading habits. Instead Beukes displays some superb world building capabilities, creating an environment that is even more haunting and subtle than Simon R. Green's short.

All in all, ARMORED is a fantastic anthology. I loved most all of the stories, and 23 stories by some of the best authors in science fiction and fantasy for paperback price is just a steal. If you're like me, and just the words "power armor" get your blood pumping then go grab a copy and let the metal fly.

Recommended Age: 14+
Language: Some but never offensively blatant
Violence: Tons, but none of it is excessively gory
Sex: Implied once or twice, nothing extensive

Nick Sharps
Elitist Book Reviews

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars A whole lot of good mixed with some bad or confusing May 8, 2012

By Mathachew

Format:Mass Market Paperback

Allow me to put it out there from the get go that I was interested in reading this book because I am a big Brandon Sanderson fan and enjoyed his short story Firstborn. All but one other author were unknown to me, but I had high hopes for this anthology. There are plenty of stories in here to enjoy and get your mental gears turning, but there are also several that were either difficult to follow (and thus not enjoyable) or simply uninteresting. I will touch on each story briefly and try not to be too verbose.

[The Good (or stories I enjoyed and had a positive impact)]

The Johnson Maneuver
The book starts with a futuristic retelling of an amazing real life event. Very enjoyable and a perfect opening story for this anthology.

Hel's Half-Acre
Amusing war story with a great twist that had me sadistically laughing.

Find Heaven and Hell in the Smallest Things
Neat concept with an ending I didn't see coming but enjoyed.

Armor: A Love Story
A love story, in a military science fiction story? Call me dumbstruck, but I liked it!

Trauma Pod
Not a lot in terms of action, but gives off a mysterious vibe that pays off at the end. As a side note, given the futuristic setting, I couldn't help but shake my head at the author's use of IPv4 for communication when, today, IPv6 is being pushed since we're running out of IPv4 addresses.

Nomad
Initially confusing due to the frequent use of the odd terminology, but ultimately an enjoyable read.

Human Error
Interesting concept where the alien enemy is fungus and the protagonists try to figure out how to defeat them using armor made for giant starfish.

Transfer of Ownership
A very short but neat story told from an AI's perspective, where it tries to decide between doing what it's told or rebelling.

Sticks and Stones
One of my favorite stories in the anthology with a very humorous ending.

[The Decent (or stories that are mildly amusing but ultimately fade into obscurity)]

Jungle Walkers
Lots of action pitting Marines against a foe more powerful than them, but that's about it.

Last Days of the Kelly Gang
A decent story that felt like a retelling from the Iron Man movie when Tony created his first armor in the desert.

Contained Vacuum
Pretty good action with traces of an interesting story that leaves you without much more than you started with.

Don Quixote
Interesting take on a before-its-time mech.

The Poacher
The story is not particularly great, but it entertains through and through.

[The Bad (or stories I did not like)]

Last Run of the Coppelia
Difficult to follow with an ominous ending, but no real pay off.

The Cat's Pajamas
Started off intriguing, but longer than it needed to be and felt like it was built up for the ending's punch line that failed to deliver.

Heuristic Algorithm and Reasoning Response Engine
The reason why I picked this up in the first place. Immediately thrust into a situation that you know nothing about and are trying to figure out, only to end with no satisfaction. Sanderson co-authored this, and while I see his hand in some of the writing, a part of me wants to blame Ethan Skarstedt for not liking this story because Sanderson's novels have a great track record with me.

The Green
Zombies meet powered armors. Nothing really to enjoy in this story.

Helmet
Monotonous, dull and unsatisfying. Feels like a story trying to pull off what Apple did in their 1984 Macintosh commercial, but you ultimately don't care because the setting just doesn't make sense.

[The Others (or stories that fall between the cracks)]

Field Test
This one falls between Good and Okay. Initially I kept getting confused between who was where due to the seemingly odd dialog between characters, but the story has some decent action and an amusing finish.

You Do What You Do
Another difficult to follow story with a nice twist in bonding flesh to armor.

Death Reported of Last Surviving Veteran of Great War
Really short story that would be more interesting if they made it into, well, a story, rather than more or less an obituary.

The N-Body Solution
Falling between decent and bad. Nearly halfway through the story do things start to finally make sense in the character's situation, only to be given an unsatisfying conclusion that, rather than give you something to chew on, leaves you with too much ambiguity that makes mulling over it a bad thing.

Most of the stories are worth reading. Others, not so much, including Sanderson's. Unfortunately the book gets judged as a whole, bringing down the overall rating. I cannot give it 3.5 stars, so because there are more positives than negatives, I gave it four stars.

4.0 out of 5 stars Happy. May 12, 2013

By Michael Oberbeck

Format:Mass Market Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

This book arrived within a week of my purchasing it. I bought it only for one story, and have been very impressed with the other stories by other authors.