Customer Reviews

Shine: An Anthology of Optimistic SF

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

 

 

The Earth of Yunhe by Eric Gregory

The world is covered in ash. One young man can revive it all. Problem is that no one in his home town believes him.

**** 4 Stars! Optimistic. Imaginative. A good start to the anthology. ****



The Greenman Watches the Black Bar Go Up, Up, Up by Jacques Barcia

A mysterious group of young people ask a self-employed sustainability analyst to do some very quick work for them. But what is the real product and what is really going on?

**** 4 Stars! Mysterious, vague, and a bit confusing until all the pieces begin to fall into place. ****



Overhead by Jason Stoddard

Insurance scams are all around. FOLR (Fund of Last Resort) has a small colony on the moon. When ruthless corporation big-heads decide to stop everything, those on the moon do what they must.

***** 5 Stars! So possible that it makes me shiver in fear for the future. Outstanding! *****



Summer Ice by Holly Phillips

The city has morphed from wealth to poverty. Water is scarce, lawns and parks are gone, and people labor over needed plants. Heat abounds. Can someone ever call such a place home?

**** 4 Stars! Basically a story of acceptance and moving onward to make things better. Well written and gripping. ****



Sustainable Development by Paula R. Stiles

In a small African village, the men have their robotic toys and the women have their mind-numbing work. That is, until the ladies find the right attachments.

**** 4 Stars! Very short story and very well done. ****



The Church of Accelerated Redemption by Gareth L. Powell & Aliette de Bodard

Does an AI simply execute its programmed instructions or can it actually become genuinely intelligent?

**** 4 Stars! Though the plot line about machines becoming self-aware is not new, this story will give you a short pause. Interesting and compelling. ****



The Solnet Ascendancy by Lavie Tidhar

A small backward island, not even with internet capabilities. But what if, by using old and discarded equipment, the internet can be accessed? What if the locals soak up knowledge like a sponge? And what if the environment even lends a hand?

**** 4 Stars! An optimistic, rags-to-riches story. Written in such a way that all can easily understand, be they DOS-illiterate or total geek-gurus. ****



Twittering the Stars by Mari Ness

A five-man crew has been sent out to mine lithium and iridium from an asteroid on the other side of the galaxy.

***** 5 Stars! This story follows the female microbiologist who is in charge of the plants. The entire story is written as if she is sending very short messages to various of her friends back on Earth. She is using the Twitter site, so the last message she sent is the first seen in the story. This means I, as the reader, must start from the end of the story and read backwards to the beginning (if I want to read the messages in order of events as they happen). As I began, I thought this would be the worst story in the anthology. Once finished, I concluded this story to be the absolute best! I read it twice. Stellar! *****



Seeds by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

A company has made the perfect seed. But nothing is ever really perfect.

**** 4 Stars! Very short story and well done. ****



At Budokan by Alastair Reynolds

People in the music business are always looking for the next big thing. This time they think outside the box.

**** 4 Stars! I admit that this one creeped me out a bit. Interesting look at the future of music. ****



Sarging Rasmussen: A Report (by Organic) by Gord Sellar

What if you could use pick up lines for saving the Earth? And what would happen if you teamed up with someone your equal when it came to smoozing others?

*** 3 Stars! This shows how slick some are at networking. Good story. I must admit thought, Organic reminds me of a shady used car salesman. ***



Scheherazade Cast in Starlight by Jason Andrew

As a government attempts to oppress its citizens, especially the females, one young lady fights back.

*** 3 Stars! A very short story set in Iran. An optimistic look forward. ***



Russian Roulette 2020 by Eva Maria Chapman

In a future where most everyone is hooked up to the internet via gadgets, such as computers in the form of a sleeve worn wrapped around an arm, there are still some that only use the net sparingly.

**** 4 Stars! An interesting story. Well written with believable characters. ****



Castoff World by Kay Kenyon

Child is almost seven-years-old. She and her Grappa live on a small ship made out of refuge. Nora began as a seed with nanobots. She was put into the ocean and programmed to clean up the garbage. Nora made the small refuge ship. Though Grappa did not seem to believe it, Nora has been getting smarter. When Child is finally all alone on the ship, Nora continues to take care of her.

***** 5 Stars! A fascinating blend of primitive and high tech. This story grabbed me quickly, getting better and better as I read onward. *****



Paul Kishosha's Children by Ken Edgett

When Paul finds out his mother is dying, he leaves the States and returns to Tanzania. Leaving his NASA career behind, Paul begins teaching children about the planets. He captures their attentions by using characters from a story he had made up long ago about a Martian named Joe.

**** 4 Stars! A light-hearted story. The author has done a great job blending together outer space and down-home Earth. ****



Ishin by Madeline Ashby

Ishin is a surveillance co-op involving tiny unmanned aerial systems. But these two men deal with more than simply Tink.

**** 4 Stars! A bit confusing at times, but also an interesting look at tiny surveillance possibilities. Very enjoyable. ****

Reviewed by Detra Fitch of Huntress Reviews.

Science fiction is not a cheerful genre. You might think that people preoccupied with the future would be purveyors of all that is happy and uplifting-flying cars, wonder cures, brave new worlds, friendly aliens, robot maids-a merry universe filled with optimistic geekery.

You'd be wrong, mostly. Oh, the happy-sappy stuff is out there, but it's dominated by gloomy, grimy, horrific tales of Humanity Gone Wrong. Stories that wake you in the wee hours to whisper in your ear, "You will all die-or you will desperately wish you had."

Enter Shine, "an anthology of near-future optimistic science fiction." Editor Jan de Vries has collected 16 stories with a common theme: There is hope for the future. Is he peddling naive visions of rainbows and lollipops? Hardly. de Vries is convinced that getting to the future is going to be an uphill climb. It will require blood, sweat, and ingenuity. We will fall along the way, and we will pick ourselves up and keep going. We will never surrender, and we will win through.

Lofty sentiments-more worthy, I think, than your run-of-the-mill apocalyptic death cult dystopias, though I expect it will take something more than a stiff upper lip to set things right on `ol Terra del Sol, and I consider myself an optimist.

At any rate, these are some thoughtful, well-written stories that don't settle for easy answers. Like all speculative fiction, they are children of the times that spawned them. There's a preoccupation with Green issues and technology. Transhumanism, the melding of mind and machine, pops up quite a bit. There are fewer space travel/colonization stories than I expected, but Shine focuses on the near future, wrestling with problems we experience now or expect soon. The authors are multinational, offering some fresh perspectives set in unusual locales.

An exhaustive review of all the stories would be too time-consuming, and I've rambled enough. It's a good anthology. If you're hankering for optimistic, sophisticated sci-fi, it's here. Buy, read, enjoy, and prepare to be challenged a little. A few of the stories include rough language and adult situations, so if you're sensitive to that, be forewarned.

What a great idea! A refreshing change from dystopian visions yet in a manner that isn't really 'utopian' either, but intelligently optimistic.

My favorites were:

The Earth of Yunhe by Eric Gregory
Summer Ice by Holly Phillips
Overhead by Jason Stoddard
Church of Accelerated Redemption, Gareth L. Powell & Aliette de Bodard
Russian Roulette 2020 by Eva Maria Chapman

Although not the most 'sci-fi-ish' or technical, Holy Phillip's piece was by far the most beautifully written, reminiscent of Walker Percy, Michael Chabon and Virginia Woolf. In this sense she might be a kind of heir to Ray Bradbury in bringing such skill with style and metaphor to the sci-fi genre.

I feel like Russian Roulette 2020 would be a great story to assign to teenagers and discuss- the author definitely has her fingers on the pulse of 2010.

Stoddard, Powell & de Bodard and Gregory's stories have clever ideas, pacing and make you want to jump up and cheer.

I heartily look forward to reading more stories by these authors and more anthologies by this editor.

When I'm running low on new authors, I buy an anthology. I found _Shine_ when it was mentioned as proof-of-life in an [otherwise mediocre] article re-hashing the "Is Science Fiction Dead?" debate. It isn't dead a'tall, according to _Shine_ and its energetic editor Jetse De Vries. The collection is well-chosen and stays on target with the editor's vision. De Vries's introductions are a real delight. I also was intrigued by the publication of tweets as sort of scifi haikus, along with the leverage of social networking to solicit for the collection.

Although I always appreciate a few spaceships to balance the nanites and greenhouse effects, and I didn't get any spaceships here, I feel De Vries was true to the stated mission and effectively communicated the editorial choices to the reader.

While I was not reeling with delight after each and every tale, a few left me breathless, especially Holly Phillips's _Summer Ice_. I came away with several new authors to explore. It's worth the purchase.

The stories all appear to be well-written but I didn't make it past the first few pages for most of them.

Just not my type of sci fi. I mostly like hard sci, and stories set in space and/or the far future. I also usually need a writer to engage my interest in the first couple pages. If you don't mind a lot of harsh swearing and/or you like stories set in the third world - this anthology might be interesting to you.

However, the story Castoff World by Kay Kenyon I did enjoy quite a lot. Discovering Kenyon was alone worth reading this book - I'm now off to find more of her stories.

SHINE is a sadly depressing collection of dark stories, which are set in a dystopian nightmare world of tomorrow. There are several disturbing themes that run through the collection, the first being a style of writing designed to create the illusion that the authors are street savvy, inner city teenagers. Here are a couple of examples:

(Unfortunately the censors at Amazon refuse to publish reviews with quotes, so I had to delete this section)

Although having dumbed down characters in visions of the future like these may be realistic, they do not make for pleasant reading.
Another theme is the constant beating of the drums of doom and gloom, which are illustrated in the following excerpts:

(Once again the rigid minded folks at Amazon will not allow quotations from the books that you are reviewing, which is a shame because they so clearly would have been helpful to you: the potential buyer)

This last quote captures the feeling perfectly that these stories produce: emptiness, and a longing for something more, something better:

(Yes, yet another quote deleted for the sake of the the fine Amazon censors, who are ever vigilant in keeping the public safe from an excess of information.)

For everyone who was attracted to SHINE for its wonderful cover and its promise of optimism, I can only wish you the best of luck as your quest continues. At least you now know where not to look, and that's an encouraging thought.