Customer Reviews

Far Horizons: All New Tales from the Greatest Worlds of Science Fiction

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I was so excited to find another story in Dan Simmons' Hyperion Cantos. It was great. While it does not directly tie in characters from the earlier books, it was nice to be in Hyperion universe once again. The rest of the book is a treasure of original stories by some of my favorite authors in their best series like Card and Brin. I may even pick up a few of the authors that I have yet to read that are featured in this book.

Robert Silverberg returns with a new anthology, similar in form to 1998's well-received Legends. While the previous book featured eleven stories by well-known fantasy writers, working in their famous "worlds", this volume features eleven stories by well-known science fiction writers, again working in their famous "worlds".

I have some mild misgivings about the concept behind these books, really just a personal thing. I tend to think that we do well to encourage writers to branch out in new directions, to invent new universes. A book like this guarantees that the writers will be rehashing somewhat familiar territory. I also like to see anthologies feature a mix of established talent and new writers: partly because I'm interested in seeing what new voices have to say, and partly because I think it helps new writers to have venues in which to publish their work which will be promoted, as it were, by the presence of big names alongside them. But I emphasize that these are quibbles, and that despite all that a book like this is an attractive package, and that most of the series involved have plenty of room for interest further explorations.

That said, I was mildly disappointed by the final results. Most of the stories are pretty good, but not a one of them quite bowled me over, though the Simmons and Le Guin pieces came close. Dan Simmons' entry, "Orphans of the Helix", is set in the universe of his Hyperion Cantos. Some centuries following the events of that series, a "spinship" carrying frozen colonists looking for a new world to settle detects a distress signal. A few of them are wakened, and they deal with a desperate problem involving an ancient colony of "Ousters" (space adapted humans) and some unusual aliens. The plot is not the interesting part of this story: Simmons is having fun with a passel of big, "Space Opera", ideas. Simmons' reputation is as a somewhat "literary" writer, and I think this obscures his impressive Sfnal imagination at times. This story considers Ringworld-sized forests, some very odd humans indeed, some interesting political speculation, aliens living inside a sun, a really big, really scary spaceship, and several more sense-of-wonder inducing ideas. Le Guin's story, on the other hand, is much quieter in tone. It's another story set on Werel, the setting of her collection of linked novellas, Four Ways to Forgiveness. "Old Music and the Slave Women", like the previous Werel stories, treats of the revolution against the long-established slave-owning societies on Werel. The protagonist, called Old Music, is a Hainish diplomat, that is a representative of the interstellar organization called the Ekumen. As war rages, the Ekumen has been prevented from gaining information about conditions on Werel, and Old Music jumps at a chance to speak to the rebels. But he is betrayed, and ends up at a compound of slaveholding loyalists. As the war rages back and forth across this area, he learns at first hand a great deal about this culture. It's a fine story, and it fits in very well with the other stories in its series, so much so that I wouldn't be surprised to see Le Guin reissue her collection including this story: Five Ways to Forgiveness, anyone?

Many of the other stories are enjoyable but minor: in the nature of things they tend to be sidelights to the existing series of which they are parts. There are two outright stinkers, Orson Scott Card's wish-fulfillment story "Investment Counselor" about how Ender meets Jane (the latter character one of my least favorite characters ever), and Anne McCaffrey's awful "The Ship That Returned".

A collection of the biggest names in contemparory science fiction return to their most famous creations for another fling. Rob Silverberg, himself a big name science fiction writer, follows up Legends, a collection of new stories in classic fantasy worlds with this impressive editorial effort in his own field. A must-read if only because of the scope and ambition of the project, the stories themselves are mostly of a higher than average standard, although none of them break much new ground in their respective worlds, many of them serving as postscripts, parallel visions, or the tying up of loose ends. Some of them come perilously close to what the industry calls "infodump", elaborating on the peripheral world-building information inherent but not explicit in the original works, but generally stay on the right side of tasteful. Only on very rare occasions do the stories disappoint significantly, for various reasons, most prominantly the departure of style or mood from the classic which first birthed the world. Introductions to the worlds and other background info at the start of every story by their respective authors, in themselves worth the price of admission, is a great initiative giving the reader an insight into the workings of the creative mind and other interesting behind-the-scene tidbits. All in all an impressive effort, definitely worth a look.

If (for example) you would like to know how Ender first became acquainted with the self-aware computer personality known as Jane (from the Ender Series, by Orson Scott Card) or any of a dozen other "missing pieces" in other great series, you will want this book.

I agree with the other reviewers- very uneven.

My summary for what its worth:

Old Music and the Slave Women- 3.5 of 5. Well written but not particularly compelling.

A Separate War- 3 of 5. Mildly amusing but that's it. I didn't particularly like the book either. Writing and themes seemed dated and juvenile.

Investment Counselor- 3 of 5. Ender books were better- this one is only mildly amusing.

Temptation- 3 of 5.0. Series was in general better. Nothing special.

Getting to know the Dragon- 2.5 of 5. Nothing special. Don't know the series.

The Hyperion Cantos- 3 of 5. Series much better.

Sleeping Dogs- 4 of 5. Very well done, very well written. Have not read the series- but will now.

The Boy Who Would Live Forever- 2 of 5. Juvenile writing and not a very compelling story. Never read the series.

The Hunger for the Infinite- 4.5 of 5. Not sure why but I really liked this. I only read the first two books in the series and found them exasperating- the writing and themes alternately impressive and mediocre. The short story format eliminated the uneven writing I found in his books.

The Ship That Returned- 2 of 5. Painful. I wish the ship would stay away.

The Way of All Ghosts- 4.5 of 5. Another one that I liked. Creative and bizarre. I will have to read the series.

Bottom line, I seemed to like the gloomy stories the most. However, since the stories are varied in style and themes I believe most people will find at least a couple of stories they liked.

A decent collection of stories from previously written about universes. How much you ike them will be somewhat related to how you like the originals, if you have come across them before. The story average is 3.41.

Far Horizons : Old Music and the Slave Women [Ekumen] - Ursula K. Le Guin

Far Horizons : A Separate War [Forever War] - Joe Haldeman

Far Horizons : Investment Counselor [Ender Wiggin] - Orson Scott Card

Far Horizons : Temptation [Uplift] - David Brin

Far Horizons : Getting to Know the Dragon [Roma Eterna] - Robert Silverberg

Far Horizons : Orphans of the Helix [Hyperion Cantos] - Dan Simmons

Far Horizons : Sleeping Dogs [Sleepless] - Nancy Kress

Far Horizons : The Boy Who Would Live Forever [Heechee (Robinette Broadhead)] - Frederik Pohl

Far Horizons : A Hunger for the Infinite [Galactic Center] - Gregory Benford

Far Horizons : The Ship That Returned [Helva] - Anne McCaffrey

Far Horizons : The Way of All Ghosts: A Myth from Thistledown [Way] - Greg Bear

Race war communications.

3 out of 5

War waiting, bi the way.

4 out of 5

AI accountants are cool.

4 out of 5

Dolphin escape and magic time diaspora subservience scheme rejection.

3.5 out of 5

Imperial travel brutality.

3 out of 5

Hyperion kid and Shrike buddy pay a visit for some teleporting fun.

3.5 out of 5

Dog dreaming denial dangerous.

4 out of 5

Gateway ship, black hole timeslip.

3.5 out of 5

Collecting horror.

3 out of 5

Prosthetic palsy.

3 out of 5

Had enough.

3 out of 5

The ambitious plans Silverberg works out in the introduction turn out to become a real bore. Most stories are sedatives rather than stories, above all Silverberg's own contribution. It is not so much that I miss action, but if there are contemplative passages they have to be interesting and discuss themes of interest and relevance. Good science fiction always has to mirror reality and its problems in a way, and doing so it must not just play with a given subject, but has to involve the reader and take sides. And of course, stories need real plots - and some action after all. But telling most of these stories Scherazade would have been killed right after the first night.
There are some exceptions, though. Ursula Le Guin's yarn is quite good, but we have seen better stories from her. The same is true for Frederik Pohl's story. Dan Simmons wrote an acceptable tale, but those three are not worth laboring through 577 long and slow pages.

the book is a collection of stories by known SF writer, which are based on sequels series of books written by this writers. the collection is good mostly for people who are not familiar or didn't have the power to read this sequels, and would like to taste some of the writing. it also intended to the fanatic SF readers whow will read every thing about their sequel series.

the stories were not so apealimg to me, since i haven't read most of this books, and the impression i got is that i didn't missed most of them.

anyway, it look likes a lot of effort was put in this book by the editor SILVEBERG, and his fellow writers, but the outcome is a litle dissapointing.

If you want to be in on what's new in science fiction check this book out. I've also read a couple of intriguing new books-- AREA 51 and ATLANTIS which were intriguing.