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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Wide Assortment of Station Stories, April 8, 2004
Space Stations is an anthology of stories about outposts in the void. It contains fourteen stories written specifically for this volume.In The Battle of Space Fort Jefferson by Timothy Zahn, the Park Service fights invaders with obsolescence and neglect. In Redundancy by Alan Dean Foster, an AI is smarter than expected. In Dancers of the Gate by James Cobb, two wormhole stations are saved by a shared interest in big band music. In Mikeys by Robert J. Sawyer, the support team stumbles into an artifact. In The Franchise by Julie E. Czerneda, refugees from the Quill menace reopen a lost station. In Follow the Sky by Pamela Sargent, a ward of the state gets an urge to roam. In Auriga's Streetcar by Jean Rabe, a salvage operator finds evidence of aliens on an abandoned station. In Falling Star by Brendan DuBois, an ex-astronaut returns to his hometown to be met with antipathy. In Countdown by Russell Davis, the station commander has stayed behind while the computer counts down to auto-destruct. In Serpents on the Station by Michael Stackpole, a Catholic priest finds herself among alien hedonists. In First Contact Cafe by Irene Radford, the station manager encounters a new type of alien from Texas. In Orbital Base Fear by Eric Kotani, the support team warns of a storm, but the primary team tries to land anyway. In Black Hole Station by Jack Williamson, a man searches for his father on an abandoned research station. In Station Spaces by Gregory Benford, the team terraforming Luna merge humans and computers into something different and dangerous. Although the common theme in these stories is space stations, the authors have approached the subject from many directions. Two of the stories -- Mikeys and Orbital Base Fear -- actually have the same initial scenario, but diverge rapidly thereafter. In Falling Star, the space station is not even evident except in the background. Not one of these stories is a dud. The Battle of Space Fort Jefferson is filled with subtle humor. Redundancy is a real tear jerker. Mikeys is a winner of an underdog story. Any reader of science fiction will surely find something to like in these tales. One of the best stories, in my opinion, is Dancers of the Gate, for its high tech ambiance and its offbeat solution to a problem. However, this story has a technical blooper, a geosynchronous station above the planetary north pole. See my guide on Orbits in Science Fiction for the reason why this is not possible. Highly recommended for anybody who enjoys science fiction tales about living and working in space. -Arthur W. Jordin
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