The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction, Vol. 3 [Mass Market Paperback]

A mismatch anthology with only a few standouts, several lukewarm pieces, and a few real duds. Also, though I didn't factor it in the review, the pagination was a bit screwy--especially toward the second end of the book--so that page numbers didn't match-up with the table of contents. Overall grade: B-

"Rescue Mission" by Jack Skillingstead. Sentient biosphere drugs astronaut. Rescue follows. That's pretty much it. D

"The Fixation" by Alastair Reynolds. I'm becoming a fan of his. The Antikythera Mechanism and the many worlds hypothesis. B+

"Artifacts" by Stephen Baxter. Another brilliant piece from this "hard science" fiction writer. What I like about him is that he often infuses his stories with the human element, making them much more than just an extrapolation of a neat scientific idea into story form. Often sad and melancholy (as this is) but always great. A

"Necroflux Day" by John Meaney. A science fantasy piece about the strange power source of a civilization. B

"Providence" by Paul DiFilippo. Sentient robots talking like twelve-year-olds after us fleshy "carnals" have been destroyed and the robots get "high" off of vinyl records. And what an anti-climatic ending. Give me a break! C-

"Carnival Nights" by Warren Hammond. Police procedural/crime noir set in the far future. What happens when you augment someone too much? B

"The Assistant" by Ian Whates. Somewhat like "The Fixation" in that it uses alternate realities to do stuff in this reality. This time it's nano-engineered bugs. B

"Glitch" by Scott Edelman. The glitch is that some robots believe in mythical creatures called "humans." One whiny robot finds that her dead lover (how he dies isn't really clear) believes in these creatures and sends her into an existential tailspin. Robots with gender and the mythical humans constantly being addressed in the second-person "you" highlight this boring (I had to trudge through it in two sittings, despite its short length) and poorly thought-out story. D

"One of our Bastards is Missing" by Paul Cornell. An alternate history story in a setting with future technology? Not too sure. The story did keep me reading, but by the end all I truly understood was that one of their bastards was missing. C

"Woodpunk" by Adam Roberts. It's cyberpunk with trees! Get it? Not really. I guess I was supposed to think it as high-minded but it came across as banal and overly violent. Plus, I couldn't figure out the main character's gender. C

"Minya's Astral Angels" by Jennifer Pelland. Humans still rule human-founded civilization in the far future and post-human "Mods" are slaves. But wait!--there's a legal loophole. There's always a legal loophole. C+

"The Best Monkey" by Daniel Abraham. An investigative journalist investigates the phenomenal success of one company and thus stumbles upon a Big Idea. Maybe I got it. Maybe I didn't. If I did get it, then it left plot holes the size of the Grand Canyon. C-

"Long Stay" by Ian Watson. A quirky slipstream piece that keeps you wondering, "Why is this science fiction?" till the end. B-

"A Soul Stitched to Iron" by Tim Akers. A steam-punk tale set in an alternate world about the horror one family uses in order to achieve greatness and the sad, lonely machine that is that horror. A

"iThink, therefore I am" by Ken Macleod. Funny mock ad about the descendant of the iPod, with philosophy. B

The third and final in this artistically, if perhaps not commerically, successful series doesn't disappoint. There are no truly bad stories, just a few that didn't do much for me. Most I found good and one truly memorable. Mann lives up to his writ of widely varied stories that diverge from near future dystopianism.

Curiously, many of the stories seem twinned, thematically or in images or feel, with other stories. The "gothic suspense" of John Meaney's "Necroflux Day" with its story of family secrets in a world where fuel and information are stored in bones is also conveyed, better, in the gothic "A Soul Stitched in Iron" by Tim Akers. The latter story has an aristocrat, fallen on hard times, tracking down a putative murderer that's upsetting a crime lord's plans. That murderer happens to be an old friend of the protagonist, and the killer's motives involve subterranean secrets that underlie the status of a noveau riche clan. Meaney's story didn't do much for me. Akers interests me enough to that I'm going to seek out his Heart of Veridon set in the same city.

Alastair Reynolds' "The Fixation" and Paul Cornell's "One of Our Bastards Is Missing" are both, loosely defined, alternate history. Reynolds' story has a scientist restoring the Mechanism, very much like our Antikythera Mechanism - an ancient clockwork computer. In her world, while the Romans found no practical use for the Mechanism, the Persians did and founded the predominant power of the world. However, other universes are also interested in their versions of the Mechanism and prepared to vampirically leach its information structure from other universes to facilitate a complete restoration. The central idea is interesting, but the alternate history speculation is at a bare minimum. Not even really alternate history but an annoying, distracting melange of medieval European, Rennaisance, and 19th century politics, Cornell's story features personal teleportation, so called "Impossible Grace", that binds the solar system together and greatly complicates the balance of power in the royal houses of Europe. For me, its plot of political intrigue was ruined by the story's capricious use of history. Stephen Baxter's "Artifacts" is Baxter in his deep cosmological mode. Its scientist hero, provoked by the religious ideas of his father and early death of his wife, ponders why our brane (if I understand the concept correctly, a cluster of universes) has time flowing in one direction and the consequence of death. His discovery oddly echoes the theme of Reynolds' story, but I also liked the story's near future Britain noticeably not affected by any Singularity and poor enough to have to recycle computers for rare metals.

I've always had a soft spot for menacing vegetation in science fiction stories, and two stories supply that need here. Jack Skillingstead's "Rescue Mission" has a planet with a "gynoecious" jungle that has designs on a spaceman who has landed there. Adam Roberts' "Woodpunk" locates the central processing of Gaia's mind in the forests around Chernobyl and reveals the goddess' plans - after she gets a needed upgrade. I liked both stories with the Roberts' one being especially clever.

The world robots make after man has vacated the stage is the setting of two very different stories: Paul Di Filippo's "Providence" and Scott Edelmann's "Glitch". The former story reminded me, in its depiction of odd robot obsessions, here for analog music recordings, of Brian Aldiss' "Who Can Replace a Man?". "Glitch" is something very different, a melange of an authoritarian future albeit in a robot society, a story of a troubled marriage, and a plot rather like those erotic tales of a person initially repulsed - and then embracing - of a lover's sexual kink. And the narration, in a manner somewhat reminiscent of Frederik Pohl's "Day Million", is directed right at us, the protagonist's spiritual ancestors. Both stories are some of the highlights of the book.

Warren Hammond's "Carnival Night" is an effective mystery set on an impoverished colony world that caters to offworld tourists. It shares its setting with Hammond's KOP novels.

Ian Whates' "The Assistant" is part of that long and honorable line of a "day at work" science fiction stories. Here the job is clearing buildings of infestations of nanotechnology and microrobots, most put there as tools of corporate espionage.

Jennifer Pelland's "Minya's Astral Angels", a tale of a corporate heiress defying her mother to free a race of sentient, corporate chattel, was my least favorite story in the book. While the heroine's status was different than that of the usual sort of protagonist in this type of story, it's not a plot I much care for.

Ian Watson's "Long Stay" struck me as a more sociable version of J. G. Ballard's Concrete Island: A Novel. Here, though, the Robinson Crusoe-like retreat from urban life - while still in the midst of the city - may serve an actual agenda. Its protagonist gets stranded in a giant offsite airport parking facility.

"iThink, Therefore I Am", a short short story by Ken MacLeod, tells of a future Apple product that will record your thoughts - and that also comes with a rather disturbing applet that illustrates the possible fiction of free will (based on the very real Libet experiment).

The gem of the book is Daniel Abraham's "The Best Monkey". Its narrator encounters an old lover who heads the wildy successful Fifth Layer. But, as he investigates the company and remembers his conversations with her, he wonders what mutilations of human nature lie behind her efforts. A memorable extrapolation on neuroscience and evolutionary psychology.

Fifteen stories with only Cornell's, Pelland's, and Meaney's not appealing to me. Definitely worth reading.

1) iCity by Paul DiFilippo: People live in cities that can change formation over night.

2) The Space Crawl Blues by Kay Kenyon: Now there is QT, quantum teleportation. People can be instantly teleported to their destination of choice. But when people re-emerge on the other side, are they still the same?

3) The Line of Dichotomy by Chris Roberson: A team invades a bacteria farm in hopes of rescuing those trapped within.

4) Fifty Dinosaurs by Robert Reed: Kelvin has just turned twenty-one. The last thing he recalls is being at a bar. Now he finds himself in the company of a T-rex that can talk.

5) Mason's Rats: Black Rat by Neal Asher: Farmer Mason trains the rats on his farm.

6) Blood Bonds by Brenda Cooper: One twin sister lives in a virt bed due to an act of terrorism. The other twin goes to Mars in hopes of earning enough to help her crippled sister get surgery.

7) The Eyes of God by Peter Watts: Before traveling each person must go through a check point that reads minds.

8) Sunworld by Eric Brown: Yarrek has graduated and he parents finally tell him the truth about himself. Afterward, he is sent to Icefast to enter the office of the Inquisitor General.

9) Evil Robot Monkey by Mary Robinette Kowal: Sly may look like the other chimps, but he is much more.

10) Shining Armor by Dominic Green: A mining company prepares to invade the city. Their work will poison the water supply of the village. It is time to awaken the ancient Guardian.

11) Book, Theatre, & Wheel by Karl Schroeder: Lady Genevieve Romanal is under investigation to see if she is unlawfully educating her people or is a heretic.

12) Mathralon by David Louis Edelman: This mostly reads like a type of manual. It tells how to mine a mineral, Mathralon. This is followed by a few pages about the isolated people who do the actual mining.

13) Mason's Rats: Autotractor by Neal Asher: It is time, once again, for Farmer Mason to activate the Autotractor and send it out. The machine terminates vermin (except for his rat employees), ploughs, cultivates, and seeds the fields. Trouble arrives in the form of a suit from a health and safety agency. They want to exterminate all of Mason's rats.

14) Modem Timines, a Jerry Cornelius story by Michael Moorcock: In this story you will follow Jerry Cornelius (and sometimes see Mo). A bit of erotica is found in this tale as well.

15) Point of Contact by Dan Abnett: When a space craft lands and First Contact begins, will it be a historical event? Will our lives change for the better or for the worse? Or will we not really care?

*** Not as many good stories as the first volume, but this is still worth your time. None of the stories within are more entertaining than the two about a farmer named Mason and his intelligent rats. Like me, you will end this book with at least one new name in mind to search previous titles from. All-on-all, you will find this collection of stories a terrific way to spend a rainy night. There is simply no way to feel lonely when you are busy sampling the various treats from some of today's best BL sci-fi authors. ***

Reviewed by Detra Fitch of Huntress Reviews.