Worlds Vast and Various: Stories [Paperback]

Gregory Benford (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1, 2000

SF readers have come to expect the universe from Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author Gregory Benford: fascinating multilayered characters, thrilling plots, and mind-bending scientific speculations firmly based in cutting-edge technological fact. When it comes to literate, human, unassailably possible science fiction, Benford is in a class by himself--as he proves once again in a stunning array of tales that have never been collected in one volume before.

A time-traveler on an illegal trip into the past learns a chilling truth about her own destiny... As a deadly Superflu runs rampant through a polluted, overpopulated Earth, a husband-and-wife scientific team races to salvage a livable future...On a planet where the laws of physics are strangely twisted, a brilliant scientist work undermines an ancient faith and leads to a shattering revelation...An ore-hauler on Mercury, desperate to save her endangered ship and career findsa remarkable way out: a wormhole trapped in the hellish flux of magnetic fieldsand fiery plasma generated by the nuclear furnace of the sun...

These are but a few of the various worlds the respected astrophysicist and SF luminary now transports us to in ships constructed of evocative words and ingenious ideas. Astonishing, provocative, and intellectually stimulating, each selection is a glittering star in the vast cosmos of Gregory Benford's unparalleled imagination.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

A collection of short fiction can be an excellent intro to a writer whom you're not familiar with. But--as any Gregory Benford fan would likely tell you--Worlds Vast and Various might not be the best way to get to know this enormously likable and talented author. Which is not to suggest that there aren't some great stories here--there are, like the Greg Bear-edited "A Calculus of Desperation" and the F. Scott Fitzgerald-inspired novella "As Big as the Ritz," to name just two. But like similar hodgepodge affairs, drawn from many sources and stages of a career, Worlds shouldn't be considered comprehensive or representative of Benford's best work. Benford himself admits to including the oldest story, 1969's "The Scarred Man," in part "to show how badly one can write and still get a start." (His other reason for including the short, though, turns out to be far more interesting.)

Caveats aside, these 12 stories do demonstrate what the Campbell- and Nebula-winning Benford does best: tight hard-SF that's plausible for both its science and its characterization. (Or, in the case of the dark "A Dance to Strange Music," the clever and deliberate omission of characterization.) Benford is inarguably one of the genre's big guns, alongside dons like Greg Bear and Paul J. McAuley, with whom Benford shares the distinction of being an accomplished scientist to boot (he teaches plasma physics and astrophysics at UC-Irvine).

Any way you cut it, a collection of Benford stories is going to be worth your time whether you're already familiar with his work or not. But if you're not, consider a longer piece--like Cosm or Timescape--to get properly acquainted. --Paul Hughes

From Publishers Weekly

For readers more familiar with this acclaimed hard-SF author's illuminating and genre-stretching novels (Eater; Cosm; etc.), this story collection is an excellent chance to discover his equally adept shorter work. The 10 stories and two novellas here offer a neat cross-section of Benford's writing career. The gripping "A Calculus of Desperation" demonstrates the brutal lengths to which truly dedicated environmentalists could go to keep humanity from devastating Earth. "Doing Aliens" and "World Vast, World Various" present some of the possible relationshipsAor lack thereofAbetween humans and aliens. For readers who treasure scientifically rigorous settings, "High Abyss" and "A Dance to Strange Musics" offer a fine blend of the exotic and surprising. "A Worm in the Well" is old-fashioned high adventure in space, while "The Voice" keeps its traditional heart closer to home, with riffs from Golden Age writers like Asimov and Bradbury. "As Big As the Ritz" takes F. Scott Fitzgerald out for an SF spin, and "In the Dark Backward" is a lighthearted time-travel story with a nifty twist ending. In a short afterword, Benford writes, "All short stories are strategies. Working in a confined space, one must render the essentials and get off the stage with a minimum of fuss." While faithfully following that advice, Benford (who is also a working physicist) ably demonstrates the falseness of the old literary saw that scientists don't make good fiction writersAor popular ones: Benford always sells well, and this book will, too, though not as well as his novels. (Oct.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Eos; 2nd edition (October 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0380790548
• ISBN-13: 978-0380790548
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.3 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #240,141 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Worlds too vast for the space opera glutton, December 11, 2000

By 

J. A. Bellamy "bluejaye" (Dallas, TX USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Worlds Vast and Various: Stories (Paperback)

Worlds Vast and Various is a dense collection of at least three incredible stories, two really good stories, and seven entertaining so-so stories. Well worth an adventurous reader's time. But if your version of hard science fiction is Star Wars, steer clear. These stories are well thought out, well reseached, grounded in real science, and often pretty difficult to understand. I felt it neccesary to stop three or four pages into my three favorite stories and reread their beginnings entirely.

#1: A Dance to Strange Musics. Strange they are, but beautiful. Ominous. Discover a planet in the Alpha Centauri system like no other you've ever encountered. An existentialism is explored within the pages of this one, as humanity's tiny fraction of existence and following self-importance is stripped away by the simple existance of the planet Shiva.

#2: High Abyss. Another visit to a place completely and totally foreign. But this time, through the eyes of the foreigner. An excellent example of exposition for any beginning writer.

#3: World Vast, World Various. This title story is taken from a themed collection put together by Robert Silverberg: Murasaki. In it, a group of Japanese anthropologists try to figure out what the sentient race on a distant planet is up to... yet first contact is difficult when that aforementioned race ignores you.

Zoomers and a Worm in the Well also stand out as greats. Benford packs a punch in all these stories, sometimes just under the conscious level, but be warned: you do have to work for them. His writing style isn't stilted or steeped in irrelevant techno-jargon, but harbors a difficult rhythm, one that takes a few readings to successfully hear. A fine collection for the devoted reader.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Worlds Vast, February 1, 2001

By 

Wildness (Colorado Plateau) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Worlds Vast and Various: Stories (Paperback)

Overall this is an uneven collection of short to near novella-length stories from Gregory Benford. A couple of the entries are quite good; such as:

A Calculus of Desperation - the story of a married couple working on different ends of the Earth in the near future as disease is rampant and the ecosystem is collapsing;

The Voice tells of a distant time when everyone is connected to a global voice that tells them all they need to know and no one even knows what the written word is let alone knows how to read;

As Big as the Ritz - A young Physics student finds himself the guest of a utopian society of clones that orbits a tiny black hole with a secret hidden just outside its event horizon.

The rest of the stories in this collections were just so-so; they don't quite measure up to Benford's full-length works.

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A Guide to my Book Rating System:

1 star = The wood pulp would have been better utilized as toilet paper.
2 stars = Don't bother, clean your bathroom instead.
3 stars = Wasn't a waste of time, but it was time wasted.
4 stars = Good book, but not life altering.
5 stars = This book changed my world in at least some small way.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Greg Benford is getting better, June 20, 2001

By 

H. J. Spivack (Yardley, PA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Worlds Vast and Various: Stories (Paperback)

All his books (and I've read them all) are very hard science edged. This is a good thing. The problem is that sometimes he loses his characters to the science and the story gets a bit muddled.

This one is terrific. They are short stories, so, simply, there isn't time to lose the story.

For a great Benford book, check out Timescape or Benford and Brin's Heart of the Comet.