Review: Mostly older stories but you can't really go wrong for the price
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 08 11, 2013
If you like sci-fi shorts there are enough here that you're likely to be satisfied with at least a few of the stories, so the bang for buck factor is high.However, the content is best described as 'venerable', and it shows, even though I could not find an individual story copyright list. Still, the opening act, Allen Steele's 'Agape amongst the Robots', has a scientist loading "...a fresh 100Mb disk", so I'm immediately thinking 1990's just from that and the feeling stayed with me pretty much all the way through.And indeed, the cover notes credit George Zebrowski's 'The Eichmann Variations' as being included in a 1984 anthology, but I did not read that until afterwards.Of course, depending on the writing style and depth of technology, some stories stand the test of time better than others. Darrell Schweitzer's 'The Fire Eggs' is thirteen-odd years old but remains timeless because even though there is technology, it is so otherworldly that it might as well be magic. Similarly, 'The Starship Mechanic' by Jay Lake and Ken Scholes has a contemporary feel and does seem to be a recent story with a 2010 date.By way of counterpoint, Rick Raphael's 'Code Three' is particularly cumbersome with its investment in over the top American Autobahn's and super-sized Highway Patrol cars. And that's quite apart from having to put our oil-conscious, global warming world out of your head while you read about cars zipping by at a handy few hundred klicks an hour. I'm still not sure when it was written, but it does not have a post-GFC vibe by any means.Of course, you know some have to be older still - Robert Sheckley died in 2005 and his 'Cost of Living' was written in the early 1950's and despite his mastery of writing the balance of technological impact on the human psyche is dated. Another old timer, Sterling E. Lanier (who died in in 2007) is represented by 'Join Our Gang?' which was written in 1961, and it holds up better but there was a purity of expectation back then that leeches through even a "the evil things men do" story like this one.So unfortunately, irrespective of when these shorts were written, the most common thought that lept to my mind as I meandered through was 'quaint'.That's not a bad thing per se, and if you are new to sci-fi or particularly like shorts, the odds are good that this collection will pique your interest more than a couple of times. But if you're looking for shorts that were written this decade, then this is not the anthology for you.