Supermen: Tales of the Posthuman Future [Paperback]

"Would we ordinary, garden-variety human beings like the Posthuman Future if we were somehow suddenly catapulted into it? Or would we find it a terrifying, hostile, and incomprehensible place, a place we were no more equipped to understand and deal with successfully than an Australopithecus would be equipped to deal with Times Square? Are human beings, as we understand the term, as the term has been understood for thousand upon thousands of years, on the way out? Doomed to extinction, or at the very least to enforced obsolescence in some future equivalent of a game reserve or a zoo? Certainly the prospect for "normal" humans sometimes seems bleak in these stories, with author after author postulating the inevitability of a constantly widening gap between the human and the posthuman condition... with the humans left ever father behind, unable to cope." (Preface, pp. xii-xiii)

Editor Gardner Dozois provides a rough sketch of a "superhuman" posthumanity in his outline of the criteria used in selecting these stories. Science fiction, once dominated by stories of space conquest and interstellar adventure, had by the early 1970s begun to yield to the fundamentally unsettling discoveries of modern cosmologists and space researchers. Solar system changed into galaxy, which in turn had gave way to galactic clusters, galactic superclusters, and ultimately to a universe of such analogy-defying proportions that the space conquest fantasies of the 1950s came to be regarded as impossible. So SF writers and some scientists began to develop new scenarios and strategies for space colonization; after all, if the crux of the problem is a dearth of nearby earthlike planets, then two possible solutions are to make planets earthlike (i.e., terraforming) or to change the nature of human beings and adapt them to a wide variety of habitats. It is this latter notion, changing the very nature of what it has meant thus far to be a human being, that is the subject of this collection.

But it is not just any change of what it means to be human. Dozois invokes various filters in his anthology: the stories contained don't deal with "accidental" posthumanity brought about through mutation or post-apocalyptic scenarios, nor do they deal with posthumans who are angels, machines, or gods in disguise (it is SF after all and not fantasy), nor do they deal with virtual realities and downloaded posthuman consciousness. In this collection, all the posthuman situations are the direct result of deliberate change, often for the purposes of space colonization and conquest, and occur primarily in the "meat" world, as opposed to that of disembodied cyberspace.

Alas the stories in this collection did not, for the most part, live up to the promise of Dozois' introduction. While many of the tales were quite good in terms of craft, not many very meaningful or memorable. Too often I found myself shaking my head at the glibness of the authors and at how far they hadn't come from the Wild West, Manifest Destiny, cowboys in space mentality that characterized much of so-called Golden Age SF. A few stories do stand out, though, and so merit special mention.

* In "The Chapter Ends," by Poul Anderson, the Earth has become a rustic backwater that has been traded to an alien civilization in a cosmic territorial exchange. The posthuman descendents of Earth, who have absolutely no connection to this obscure planet in an outer spiral arm of the Milky Way Galaxy, move the few thousand remaining human beings off of the homeworld. They leave behind one Wendell Berry-esque holdout who realizes what it like to be the last person on earth--after the last flight out has gone.

* "Aye, and Gomorrah," by Samuel R. Delany, is the sort of sexy science fiction I'd expect from Phillip Jose Farmer. The story centers on spacers, "modified" posthumans whose exotic asexuality makes them the target of fetishists called frelks.

* "Understand," by Ted Chiang, features a patient who is resuscitated from a vegetative state through the use of an experimental new synthetic hormone. Of course, the vegetable becomes an uber-genius, escapes from the hospital as a fugitive from CIA, begins meddling in the affairs of humanity in pursuit of his posthuman aesthetic agenda, and finally discovers another pharmaceutically engendered uber-genius out to save the world.

* "None So Blind" finds Joe Haldeman (one of my favorite authors) telling a love story of sorts about an odd couple whose love begets an experimental surgery that turns regular folks into geniuses. And all they need to do is give up their eyes.

* "Border Guards," by Greg Egan (another author I've always liked), poses a good challenge to the McKibbenses (Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age) of the world with their argument that death gives our lives meaning and dignity. Egan asks the simple question, "is that true?" If we could find a way to get rid of death once and for all, would it be fair to our children not to do so?

* "A History of the Human and Post-Human Species," by Geoffrey A. Landis, was my favorite story, I think. It is found in the epilogue, and constitutes a "scientific" abstract covering all the speciation and evolution, engineered and naturally selected, that facing the human race in the next few million years. Intelligent species arise after humans, but none achieve spaceflight, and in a final twist reminiscent of Dougal Dixon's *Man After Man: An Anthropology of the Future,* posthuman descendants of Terrestrial colonists on Mars return to Earth in the far future, with no memory of their original connection.

I found most of the selections in this anthology to be quite entertaining. Some of them were a bit rough, but none were what I would call poor quality. There is variation from hard SF to far future "high tech as magic" within the collection. I recommend this collection as a good introduction to the post-human genre.

This is Supermen in the SF sense. Although in tales like Brother Perfect, there are, indeed, your standard superhumans. Then you have stories like Mortimer Gray's History of Death, a look at immortality and death, which definitely does not fall into the prior category, so a variety. These two stories form part of longer works, or when edited became parts of books. There is certainly a broad range here, from some talented authors.

Supermen Tales of the Posthuman Future : 01 The Chapter Ends - Poul Anderson
Supermen Tales of the Posthuman Future : 02 Watershed - James Blish
Supermen Tales of the Posthuman Future : 03 Slow Tuesday Night - R. A. Lafferty
Supermen Tales of the Posthuman Future : 04 Aye and Gomorrah... - Samuel R. Delany
Supermen Tales of the Posthuman Future : 05 Nobody's Home - Joanna Russ
Supermen Tales of the Posthuman Future : 06 The Hero as Werwolf - Gene Wolfe
Supermen Tales of the Posthuman Future : 07 Halfjack - Roger Zelazny
Supermen Tales of the Posthuman Future : 08 Dancers in the Time-Flux - Robert Silverberg
Supermen Tales of the Posthuman Future : 09 Spook - Bruce Sterling
Supermen Tales of the Posthuman Future : 10 Understand - Ted Chiang
Supermen Tales of the Posthuman Future : 11 None So Blind - Joe Haldeman
Supermen Tales of the Posthuman Future : 12 Mortimer Gray's History of Death - Brian Stableford
Supermen Tales of the Posthuman Future : 13 Brother Perfect - Robert Reed
Supermen Tales of the Posthuman Future : 14 A Child of the Dead - Liz Williams
Supermen Tales of the Posthuman Future : 15 Nevermore - Ian R. MacLeod
Supermen Tales of the Posthuman Future : 16 The Wisdom of Old Earth - Michael Swanwick
Supermen Tales of the Posthuman Future : 17 Toast A Con Report - Charles Stross
Supermen Tales of the Posthuman Future : 18 The Gardens of Saturn - Paul J. McAuley
Supermen Tales of the Posthuman Future : 19 Grist - Tony Daniel
Supermen Tales of the Posthuman Future : 20 Fossil Games - Tom Purdom
Supermen Tales of the Posthuman Future : 21 The Wedding Album - David Marusek
Supermen Tales of the Posthuman Future : 22 Steps Along the Way - Eric Brown
Supermen Tales of the Posthuman Future : 23 Border Guards - Greg Egan
Supermen Tales of the Posthuman Future : 24 Homo Sapiens Declared Extinct - Bruce Sterling
Supermen Tales of the Posthuman Future : 25 A History of the Human and Post-Human Species - Geoffrey A. Landis
Supermen Tales of the Posthuman Future : 26 The Great Goodbye - Robert Charles Wilson

Last person off Terra please close the door and prepare for mutation.

4 out of 5

Seal Man gives lecture on change and equality, minority basic types grumpy.

3.5 out of 5

There really are Morning People. Whenever you sleep, get rich quick.

4 out of 5

Gender altered space workers provide exotic rough trade on shore leave.

3 out of 5

Only smart girls at parties, please.

4.5 out of 5

Postapocalyptic necrophiliac cannibal culture.

4 out of 5

Cyborg bodyglove = get no love.

4 out of 5

Travelling titan tutors Dutch bloke.

3 out of 5

Super spies not like us.

4.5 out of 5

A man with brain damage is given a hormone treatment that has the effect of increasing his intelligence, only in this case it doesn't wear off, but keeps going.

When he takes another dose, even further. So much so, avoiding all the spooks is trivial. However, he comes across another man like himself, and one with different aims, and now both of them have superhuman intelligence and body control.

4.5 out of 5

Supergenius, you see. Not.

4 out of 5

Immortal's morbid mortality research.

3.5 out of 5

Two of the oldest of a family of superhuman overlords of the galaxy have plans for their youngest sibling. With stellar screwups.

4 out of 5

Computers are too old school.

3.5 out of 5

Arty unreality.

2.5 out of 5

Posthuman a tad fragile on holiday.

3.5 out of 5

Retrogeekgeargabfest.

4.5 out of 5

Dodgy woman and programmed pilot no match for meal ticket fat boy's multiple mum.

4.5 out of 5

Ferret girl proves vital in time tweaking titans massive personality conflict.

3.5 out of 5

Even for poor man's posthuman asteroid ship bailout, politics is problematic.

4 out of 5

If you think the only intelligent conversation you can get is talking to yourself, Sim Polis is the place for you.

3 out of 5

Astronaut revival futureshock.

3.5 out of 5

It is about human immortals, and how they deal with people and society when living so long. One man joins back into life, and meets the best quantum soccer player going around, and loses a friend.

The discovery is made is that she is one of the earliest immortals, instrumental in posthuman travel to other planets, and knows what death is actually like, and has to work out how to relate to the new people.

Now, I can't get this story out of my head, like happens with songs sometimes, so, I am upgrading this, 5 stars, given I reread it recently and hadn't read it for quite a wihle.

And, as far as Australian goes, as far as pixel-stained technopeasant wretches, well, I'd hate to be caught paraphasing the Devil Went Down to Georgia, but, he's the best there's even been.

5 out of 5

The old grey matter. Who needs it?

4 out of 5

Post-Humans coulda used a few garden variety homo sapiens ecologists.

4 out of 5

See ya later granddad, you stock old bastard.

4 out of 5

› Go to Amazon.com to see all 7 reviews  3.4 out of 5 stars