Mammoth Book of Extreme Science Fiction (Mammoth Book of S.) [Paperback]

Mike (ed) Ashley (Author)

Book Description

Series: Mammoth Book of S. | Publication Date: May 25, 2006

Here are 25 stories of science fiction that push the envelope, by the biggest names in an emerging new crop of high-tech futuristic SF - including Charles Stross, Robert Reed, Alastair Reynolds, Peter Hamilton and Neal Asher. High-tech SF has made a significant comeback in the last decade, as bestselling authors successfully blend the super-science of 'hard science fiction' with real characters in an understandable scenario. It is perhaps a reflection of how technologically controlled our world is that readers increasingly look for science fiction that considers the fates of mankind as a result of increasing scientific domination. This anthology brings together the most extreme examples of the new high-tech, far-future science fiction, pushing the limits way beyond normal boundaries. The stories include: "A Perpetual War Fought Within a Cosmic String", "A Weapon That Could Destroy the Universe", "A Machine That Detects Alternate Worlds and Creates a Choice of Christs", "An Immortal Dead Man Sent To The End of the Universe", "Murder in Virtual Reality", "A Spaceship So Large That There is An Entire Planetary System Within It", and "An Analytical Engine At The End of Time", and "Encountering the Untouchable."

Editorial Reviews

Review

"'A thought provoking diversity of imagination... this remarkable volume is just as enjoyable if you only dip into it.' Tony Lee, Starburst"

About the Author

Mike Ashley is editor of the The Mammoth Book of Science Fiction and The Mammoth Book of New Jules Verne Adventures.

Product Details

• Paperback: 512 pages
• Publisher: Robinson Publishing (May 25, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 184529307X
• ISBN-13: 978-1845293079
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.1 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,473,817 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

37 of 43 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars The SF is extreme, but not all that interesting, December 20, 2006

By 

William Merrill "eclecticist" (San Antonio, TX United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Mammoth Book of Extreme Science Fiction: New Generation Far-Future SF (Paperback)

Unlike a previous customer review of the Extreme Science Fiction anthology, I'm writing this review after reading the entire book, every story, all 562 pages. First I'd like to address the fact that most of the stories have been previously published. (Although there are actually three new stories original to this book.) I've been reading science fiction on and off for nearly four decades and have been a subscriber to F&SF for almost all of that time, and there were only one or two of these stories I had read before. In a couple of cases the editor explains that the stories had never been reprinted since their original publication. Anyway, I did not find that aspect of the book to be a problem. In fact, I appreciated the editor's sequencing of the stories from least to most extreme (except for the final one). He possibly could not have done that so well without drawing from prepublished material, including several tales from the early days of the genre.

What I DID have difficulty with was the relatively uninteresting nature of the majority of the stories. There were too many that were either baffling - i.e., the author's striving to write an "out there" tale meant they left understandability behind - or densely scientific at the expense of good storytelling. To illustrate the latter problem, here is a quote from "Wang's Carpets" by Greg Egan: "Catalytic sites strewn along the sides of each unit trapped the radicals in place, long enough for new bonds to form between them. Some simple sugars were incorporated straight into the polymer as they were created..." There's a LOT of stuff like that throughout the various stories. Too much Scientific American, not enough FICTION in this SF.

I also found the degree of overlap or redundancy between stories to be a problem. Two separate stories had almost identical plots, and there was also a bad editing choice to put two stories back to back with each having a secondary character named Elena, each the lover of the main character.

There were really only two stories in this entire collection I liked a lot, the entries by Theodore Sturgeon and James Patrick Kelley. I was also grateful to the book for steering me clear of any writing by Pat Cadigan in the future - the Cadigan story is so awful I know I will never want to read anything by her ever again. Otherwise, the Extreme Science Fiction anthology was one of the least worthwhile books I've read this year.

25 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Deceptive Title, October 5, 2006

By 

S. Schwartz (Near Philadelphia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Mammoth Book of Extreme Science Fiction: New Generation Far-Future SF (Paperback)

I was looking forward to this as cutting-edge SF. However, despite the title "New Generation Far-Future SF," 11 of the 19 stories in this anthology are pre-2000. I dislike the experience of being halfway through something and realizing I've read it before, so I'm moving this from my high-priority-read to my whenever-I-get-around-to-it pile.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hot Dog! Something different!, November 9, 2009

By 

Roger B. White Jr. "technofiction reviewer" (Salt Lake City, Utah) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Mammoth Book of Extreme Science Fiction: New Generation Far-Future SF (Paperback)

These days I grow so tired of never ending space opera, post-holocaust and save-the-world fantasy that it is a delight to see a collection of stories that talk about other kinds of science speculations.

This book is a nice collection of stories exploring other ideas.

Because the ideas are new, and because the writers sometimes get wrapped up in over-explaining their own ideas, the reading is hard slogging in some stories--the Harlan Ellison story was the worst offender in this way. But these writers were trying hard to bring us readers new ideas, and that I liked a lot, a whole lot.

Here are my thoughts on the individual stories.

Anomalies -- Gregory Benford (1999)

A fun little story, half about how we might be living in a Matrix-like universe (which suffers a small glitch), and half a spoof of the UK university science social system. The ending was a disappointment as the writer gave into "the end of the world as we know it" cleche, but up until then it was original and a lot fun.


The Dish Ran Away with the Spoon -- Paul Di Filippo (2003)

A neat exploration of how nanotechnology can be used to create intelligent appliances, and those can change how we live. A nice mind-opening piece.


Crucifix Variations -- Lawrence Person (1998)

A scientist uses a time viewer (a time machine that allows you to look, but not travel) to search for proof that Jesus really existed as the Bible describes him, and is frustrated by quantum uncertainty. The concept of using a time machine to search for Jesus is not new, but this time viewer approach was novel enough that I enjoyed the story.


Pacific Mystery -- Stephen Baxter (2006)

The imagery in this story was fun and familiar, but the story itself was so contrived that I couldn't keep my belief suspended. The heart of the story is that the Earth is not actually round, but has a time-fold running through the middle of the Pacific Ocean. The problem that kept bothering me was that if this world always had this "Pacific Anomaly" as the story calls it, it wouldn't be an anomaly of that world, it would be a given! Globes would not represent this world accurately, and the edges of Mercator projection maps would have "Beyond here be dragons", or some such, on the east and west edges where they fold into the Pacific. And if this geometry was a given, then using the huge airplane to "solve it" makes no sense. There are other similar contrivances all through this story.


Flowers from Alice -- Cory Doctorow and Charles Stross (2003)

Another exploration of nanotech becoming intelligent appliances with some cyberintelligence mixed in. It was as fun as the Dish story, and came out quite differently. I like it when that happens.


Merlin's Gun -- Alastair Reynolds (2000)

This one was a disappointment. It was contrived and predictable -- a Star Trekish technology level that mixed romance with save the universe. Ho-hum.


Death in the Promised Land -- Pat Cadigan (1995)

This one was neat and had a lot of foresight in it, especially given when it was written, which is just as multimedia was becoming widely distributed throughout the computer gaming world. It's about living in VR, and does a credible job of describing both the VR experience and the motivations of the people experiencing it.


The Long Chase -- Geoffrey A. Landis (2002)

This story writes about one of my favorite themes: slower-than-lightspeed (STL) space travel -- space travel without "warp speed" or any other faster-than-lightspeed (FTL) contrivance. The writer mixes in some nanotechnology and the outcome was a good read.


Waterworld -- Stephen L. Gillett and Jerry Oltion (1994)

Another good STL universe story. This time the space travelers have to get back on the road after having an interstellar collision. The engineering problem they face is magnificently described. I loved it! I found the characterizations a bit too cranky given the crisis they were facing -- they were sniping at each other like this was a committee trying to organize an office Christmas Party. But other than that, I loved it.


Hoop-of-Benzene -- Robert Reed (2006)

This one did not come across as well as I hoped. The environment was nicely alien, but the mystery ended up being too subtle for my taste -- the bad guy's nefarious scheme depended on too much precise timing. This is the same problem that really bothered me at the end of the 2009 Angels and Demons movie.


The New Humans -- B. Vallance (1909)

This one was an eye-opener! It was amazing to see that one hundred years of change in writing science fiction stories brought more change to the English language used to tell the story than it did to the story line being told!

The start was the same as the 1999 Blair Witch movie -- we discover a journal, but not the person who wrote it. From there it proceeds into a 1956 Forbidden Planet/Shakespeare's Tempest story where a handsome adventurer encounters a coldly analytical chief scientist with a beautiful, cloistered, naive daughter who wants to see the world. Add a comic relief character and voila!


The Creator -- Clifford D. Simak (1935)

This one is much like my story Searching For Angels (in Tips for Tailoring Spacetime Fabric Volume 2). It was spooky for me to read because the voice I wrote my story in was so similar to the voice this story was written in.

In this story two scientists work together to build a time/dimension traveling machine and use it to pop out of our universe and meet our universe's creator. All-in-all, it was a good story. It had some neat aliens and some nice time/dimension traveling concepts.

The weakest part of the story was not taking into account that if a creator of our universe lives outside of it, and looks upon it, he or she has to be a 4D/2T creature, not a 3D/1T creature as we are. And as a result that creator sees all of time as well as all of space. This point was missed by the writer, which screws up the ending for me. Other than that, it was an interesting story.


The Girl Had Guts -- Theodore Sturgeon (1956)

A story of alien parasite infestation. It was a nicely queezy story, with some credible-acting characters in it.


The Region Between -- Harlan Ellison (1969)

This is the first Harlan Ellison story I have encountered in print. I have heard a lot about him. Now I have experienced his writing, and I feel I haven't missed much. I don't like the altered-mind style of writing. To me, what comes out is writing words for word's sake, and not something that is taking me into some new level of thinking. It got so annoying I stopped about a third of the way through. Ah Well... now I have learned about Harlan Ellison.


The Days of Solomon Gursky -- Ian McDonald (1998)

This was an interesting exploration of nanotechnology, virtual reality and resurrection all mixed together. I found the writing style was hard slogging through--too much effort on describing things that are hard to describe--but the story underneath the style explored some of the interesting differences that this mix of technologies can make in how humans live. I liked that part.


Wang's Carpets -- Greg Egan (1995)

This story is another interesting exploration of mixing virtual reality and nanotechnology. This one centers on using VR to crew star-exploring ships and nanotechnology to build bodies and other necessary parts when the destination is reached. It's a first encounter with aliens story, but nicely different in perspective, both of the people and of the aliens they encounter. I thoroughly enjoyed this one.

So, all-in-all, I was really happy to find this book. My biggest disappointment with it is that Rick Ashley is a story collecting buff, not a science fiction buff, so a sequel is unlikely, that's too bad.