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Engineering Infinity [Mass Market Paperback]

Jonathan Strahan
3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)

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Book Description

December 28, 2010
The universe shifts and changes: suddenly you understand, you get it, and are filled with a sense of wonder. That moment of understanding drives the greatest science-fiction stories and lies at the heart of Engineering Infinity. Whether it's coming up hard against the speed of light and, with it, the enormity of the universe, realising that terraforming a distant world is harder and more dangerous than you'd ever thought, or simply realizing that a hitchhiker on a starship consumes fuel and oxygen with tragic results, it's hard science-fiction where sense of wonder is most often found and where science-fiction's true heart lies. The exciting and innovative science-fiction anthology collects together stories by some of the biggest names in the field including Stephen Baxter, Charles Stross, Kristine Kathryn Rusch and Gwyneth Jones.

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Engineering Infinity + Solaris Rising: The New Solaris Book of Science Fiction
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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Johnathan Strahan is an editor and anthologist. He co-edited The Year's Best Australian Science Fiction and Fantasy anthology series in 1997 and 1998. He is also the reviews editor of Locus. He lives in Perth, Western Australia with his wife and their two daughters.

Product Details

  • Mass Market Paperback: 400 pages
  • Publisher: Solaris; Original edition (December 28, 2010)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1907519521
  • ISBN-13: 978-1907519529
  • Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 4.3 x 1.1 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #735,857 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I was born September 4, 1962 in Brandon Manitoba. My family are Mennonites, part of a community which has lived in southern Manitoba for over one hundred years. I am the second science fiction writer to come out of this small community -- the first was A.E. van Vogt!

I moved to Toronto in 1986 to pursue my writing career. I married Janice Beitel in April 2001 and our daughter Paige was born in May 2003.

I divide my time between writing fiction and consulting--chiefly in the area of Foresight Studies and technology.

Customer Reviews

Don't get me wrong - it's a good read if you're looking for something just to 'read'. Erik Williams  |  1 reviewer made a similar statement
This collection is *not* hard science fiction. Julia M Nolan     
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
23 of 25 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars Gernsback to the Future April 18, 2011
Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase
This is an odd little collection of fifteen science fiction stories. For one thing, the table of contents is on the last page. I have no idea why. I also can't see what the theme of the collection might be. The editor, Jonathan Strahan, outlines the history of science fiction from Hugo Gernsback to the present. The field has matured beyond the restrictions of early hard science fiction and become something wider, richer, and apparently harder to define.

What about the stories? "[S]ome of the stories are classic hard SF, some are not. [I]t is part of the ongoing discussion about what science fiction is in the 21st century." Since the stories are not related in any systematic way, perhaps the collection is a celebration of diversity. I am never sure what people mean by that, either. Ah, well. The stories are all pretty good, each in its own way. Four stood out for me:

Hannu Rajaniemi's "The Server and the Dragon" has no human characters. But it is rich with motives and emotions that humans have no trouble understanding. From two, one.

Robert Reed's "Mantis" is two stories, edited. A man and a woman exercise and watch another man and woman meet on the street outside. Between the two couples a high tech window subtly alters what they see of each other. Oh, and there's a bug.

In Gwyneth Jones' "The Ki-anna" a fraternal twin investigates his sister's death on a war-torn planet. An accident or a murder or the self-sacrifice of a seasoned anthropologist?

In John Barnes' "The Birds and the Bees and the Gasoline Trees" the growth of a huge undersea structure is investigated by a nearly-indestructible genetically engineered woman who has been recalled to Earth from the environment she was designed for. She works with her ex-husband and his new wife.

I recommend the collection for its interesting and dissimilar stories. Don't invest a lot of time trying to figure out how the stories are related or what this means for the future of science fiction. Just read and enjoy.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
2.0 out of 5 stars Decent Stories, but False Premises October 9, 2012
Format:Mass Market Paperback
So, I purchased "Engineering Infinity" with the idea that, hey, I like short stories! I like hard science fiction! I want to read a collection of hard science fiction stories!

The thing is, most of the short stories are okay. Some I liked, some I disliked. Same as most short story collections. (Although there were no standouts in this one for me, but that may be personal taste. At the very least, none of the short stories were ghastly.)

But...out of the 15 stories in the book, only one could be classified as hard science fiction. The rest were sociological science fiction or fantasy with "nanotech" or some other buzzword added in to make them sound like science fiction. (Like the story about angels. Like, I'm cool with angels. The story was fine. But...it's not hard science fiction by any stretch of the imagination, unless we're going to use new definitions and classify Tolkien as "hard science fiction" since, hey, why not?)

I'd be fine with the premise if the anthology was sold as "vaguely science fiction-y concepts". But when it's explicitly supposed to be hard science fiction, and yet <10% of the stories are hard science fiction (and the copy on the cover doesn't seem to describe any of the short stories found within), I'm left wanting my money back. Like...I paid for hard science fiction. I want hard science fiction. This collection is *not* hard science fiction.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars Frustrating September 10, 2011
Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase
Overall, this collection was disappointing. There are a few real clunkers, and many stories just don't live up to the ideas behind them; or at least deserved better endings. A few stood out as pretty good. None of them blew my mind, that's for sure.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
2.0 out of 5 stars Not as much hard sci-fi as the blurb suggested
The cover illustration looks like a Giger alien from a distance and the Amazon blurb notes that "hard science-fiction [is] where a sense of discovery is. Read more
Published 3 months ago by Tghu Verd
3.0 out of 5 stars Good collection, but some are not very extreme.
Some of these stories were only barely scifi, and it took an active imagination and stretched interpretation of the stories to actually understand what would make them extreme--as... Read more
Published 3 months ago by kcd
4.0 out of 5 stars Lots of angels
Surprisingly many of the short stories included in this anthology contain angels in some form.

I liked almost all of the stories very much, and loved some.
Published 5 months ago by Rinnetmäki Samuel
3.0 out of 5 stars Different Stories
So far the stories are uneven. Some are good, but several are predictable and somewhat boring. That can happen when several different authors are put in the volume. Read more
Published 16 months ago by Ronald R. Eckiss
4.0 out of 5 stars Good fiction, worth a read
These stories are interesting. Some are very good, others just okay. Its not hard-SF, usually, but it isn't just fantasy either. Read more
Published 16 months ago by Jonah
1.0 out of 5 stars NOT Hard Science Fiction
This book claims to be a collection of Hard Science fiction. It Is NOT.
The stories in this collection are generally mediocre, one or two good, 3 or four poor. Read more
Published 23 months ago by Michael Lukacs
3.0 out of 5 stars Decent, but not fantastic.
I bought this because the title sounded super interesting; the collection, however, disappointed on that front. Read more
Published 23 months ago by Erik Williams
3.0 out of 5 stars meh...
3 stars for effort. 2 stars for content. only the first story *really* got to me....couple others were *good* and the rest were completely forgetable. Read more
Published on March 28, 2011 by S. Heise
4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent collection only half related to the title
Strahan has put together another excellent anthology; I enjoyed nearly all of the stories. My major gripe with Strahan continues to be the inclusion of a number of stories which... Read more
Published on March 5, 2011 by rk future unwritten
5.0 out of 5 stars The Table of Contents
Here's the ToC:

Introduction
"Malak" - Peter Watts
"Watching the Music Dance" - Kristine Kathryn Rusch
"Laika's Ghost" - Karl Schroeder
"The... Read more
Published on January 5, 2011 by Mr.JM
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