From Amazon.co.uk
The Mammoth Book of Science Fiction is the kind of fat anthology which traditionally used to get people hooked on SF. Its 22 stories (1901-2002) were chosen by SF expert Mike Ashley. Two are brand-new. Eric Brown links a manned Mars expedition with a famous SF classic--where did HG Wells get his inspiration? Stephen Baxter contributes the most cheerful story so far from the vast, chilly spaces of his Manifold sequence.
Oldies from the 1900s show Earth dying by ice and fire respectively. Peter F Hamilton evokes the dangers of hunting aliens; Greg Egan's hero spans all possible quantum worlds in "The Infinite Assassin"; Damon Knight does tricky things with time travel, also used by Connie Willis--whose "Firewatch" is a moving tale of saving St Paul's in the Blitz. Meeting your past self needs no time machine in Robert Reed's "At the 'Me' Shop".
Kim Stanley Robinson's "Vinland the Dream" imagines a gigantic historical hoax. Robert Sheckley and Philip Dick offer paired comedies: utopia with unnerving flaws, and an authoritarian state that secretly isn't. Hair-raising explorations include Geoffrey A Landis's mindboggling plunge into a black hole, Colin Kapp's "Unorthodox Engineers" assaulting a mystery object immune to nuclear blasts, and Michael Swanwick's doomed heroine trekking across Jupiter's moon Io, whose sulphur landscape speaks to her--this tale, "The Very Pulse of the Machine", won a Hugo.
Elsewhere, Keith Roberts imagines nightmare life in the electricity grid, Brian Aldiss seems to be writing surrealism until his shock punchline, John Morressy's four-clone team of identical private eyes investigates a murdered three-clone, Eric Frank Russell reveals the secret rulers of Earth, and Clifford Simak effectively blends alien contact with his trademark rustic nostalgia.
This is a meaty collection with almost no duds, recommended. --David Langford
From Publishers Weekly
Fans who prefer their SF heavy on ideas will enjoy prolific British editor Ashley's latest anthology, comprising 22 tales, mostly reprints, which focus on the question, "what if?" Stories range in tone from deadly serious, as a colonist on an alien planet avenges the desecration of his wife's grave (Peter Hamilton's "Deathday"), to a romp featuring clone private eyes (John Morressy's "Except My Life3"). Several takes on time travel foreground its danger: Connie Willis's "Firewatch" follows a time traveler sent back to 1940 to snuff out fires at St. Paul's Cathedral during WWII; and in Damon Knight's "Anachron," brothers feud over a time-travel device that allows access to unlimited treasures. Several stories explore sentience: Eric Frank Russell, in "Into Your Tent I'll Creep," asks what would happen if dogs were the real masters of humanity. What if electricity were sentient and hostile? Keith Roberts provides a chilling scenario in "High Eight." What if Io was an alien machine? Michael Swanwick presents an arresting view of the Jovian moon in the powerful "The Very Pulse of the Machine." The stories from the 1980s and 1990s are particularly strong; the ones from the 1950s haven't aged well but have intriguing ideas. The historical depth is sketchy, and two stories by Stephen Baxter and Eric Brown were commissioned just for this anthology. Despite these gaps and drawbacks, the juxtaposition of old and new sheds new light on some old classics and vice versa.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an alternate
Paperback
edition.
