Customer Reviews

New Skies: An Anthology of Today's Science Fiction

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It's hard to define the "modern era" of science fiction, but this anthology provides a good measure. The stories (originally published from 1981 to 2002) have a freshness, perhaps by asking questions about how we humans would react to future realities. These 17 stores are not hard on scientific details, but rather focus on human reaction. There are no rigid forms and Maureen McHughs "Lincoln Train" could be thought of as alternate history. Greg Bear's "Tangents" tells a story of a young boy interacting with an older experimental couple, and the boys reaching new worlds that the couple could only glimpse. Philip K. Dick (creator of Blade Runner) short tale of cat-kibble and boredom is easy to relate to. Orson Scott Card's "Salvage", perhaps updates the James Dean story of restlessness and homesickness. Less we think that the future belongs to the humans Terry Bisson's "They're made out of meat" puts us in our place. A great anthology!

This seventeen story anthology provides readers with some of the better shorts that focused on new scientific discoveries and theories. The tales include eight from the 1980s, six from the 1990s and three from the current decade. Each of the contributions is well written and applies recent scientific thought and theory to enhance a particular sub-genre. The authors, many of whom are major award winners, are some of the top guns of the past twenty plus years, but each entry shows why that writer is very highly regarded. Fans of short story collections that use modern science as a base for future predictions of what is to come or just want to understand some of the more current theories will take great delight in reading NEW SKIES, a well written strong collection with no weak stories.

Harriet Klausner

I enjoyed the stories in this book, but the editing was horrible. There were spaces in the middle of words all over the place. The title of Connie Willis' story was misspelled. There were line breaks in the middle of words. The list goes on.... I can get past a few editing errors, but there were so many that it made the book hard to read.