Customer Reviews

Fast Forward 2

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

 

 

I had high expectations for this anthology given how delightful Fast Forward 1 was, and they were absolutely met. The stories are far-ranging and all thought-provoking. "True Names," by Benjamin Rosenbaum and Cory Doctorow, the novella-length centerpiece of the book, is downright mindbending in its inventiveness, and incredibly engaging. "An Eligible Boy," by Ian McDonald, examines a near-future India, while Kay Kenyon's "Cyto Couture" focuses on the means of production of genetically-grown fashion. "Catherine Drewe," by Paul Cornell, opens the book with a British spy called to an interplanetary mission. Paolo Bacigalupi closes with "The Gambler," an examination of journalistic ethics versus the number of hits a story generates. I highly recommend this strong anthology.

This is a great collection of sci-fi stories from a wide range of talented (and award winning) authors. Some of the stories are a little, shall we say, challenging (to a somewhat-novice sci-fi reader), but in a good way. So creative! So thoughtful and interesting!

I'd recommend this book to just-about any fiction fan - anyone with a hankering for something a little different.

Lou Anders is a trusted name. Although I can't recall now why. I think maybe a friend of mine once gave him a ride to a con or something. Which just might trump the time that I helped clean litterboxes at Edward Albee's apartment. But I digress.

This anthology is fairly average, which isn't, after all, altogether surprising. You expect some hits and some misses, since not every single tale is likely to appeal to any given reader's tastes. Still, I was hoping for something a bit better, like the "Adventure!" anthology put out a few years ago by Monkeybrain Books, to which Anders in fact contributed, ahd whose cover was done by John Picacio, an excellent illustrator who also does the honors here.

The stuff I liked: the novella "True Names" by Benjamin Rosenbaum and Cory Doctorow, although it gets a little overly recursive; Paul McAuley's brief and rueful "Adventure"; Karl Schroeder and Tobias S. Buckell's near-future "Mitigation", an unpreachy eco-warning; and the all-too-probable "The Gambler" by Paolo Bacigalupi, about the always-connected and perpetually updating world of infotainment a few years from now.

The other stuff: mostly unobjectionable and merely all right. A couple of stories annoyed me. For some reason, Kristine Kathryn Rusch just rubs me the wrong way, so I did not care for her "Seniorsource", about orbital outsourcing to geriatrics. The leadoff story, "Catherine Drewe" by Paul Cornell, is just terrible--some people are doing stuff that other people want to stop, but the tale is told so murkily that it's completely unclear who wants what and which side anyone is on. Ian McDonald's "An Eligible Boy" is not bad, but the writing style is very much a matter of taste, and while I appreciate the world he's created, it just wasn't my cup of tea.

Nothing really spectacular here, and nothing really awfully bogus. I'd check out a Volume 3, but only because my friend vouches for Mr. Anders. I think. It might've been some other guy.