The "Jubilee Tides" will drown Miranda beneath the weight of her own oceans. But as the once-in-two centuries cataclysm approaches, an even greater catastrophe threatens this dark and dangerous planet of tale-spinners, conjurers, and shapechangers. For Gregorian has come, a genius renegade scientist and bush wizard. With magic and forbidden technology, he plans to remake the rotting dying world in his own evil image -- and to force whom or whatever remains on its diminishing surface toward a terrifying, astonishing confrontation with death and transcendence.
]]> Dozois's summation of the year in science fiction alone is worth the cost of admission to these annual collections. Along with his usual takes on publishing, literature, film, and more, Dozois delivers a retrospective on the state of science fiction in the year 2000. Contrary to those who claim science fiction is either dead or (at least) losing its heart and soul since the deaths of authors like Isaac Asimov and Robert J. Heinlein, Dozois emphatically argues that the health of SF has never been stronger. Discussing increased numbers of novels being published (he includes numbers to prove his point), discoveries of young new writers, ongoing evolution of the literature, and innovative viewpoints to mine, Dozois bubbles over with enthusiasm for the genre in which he made his name, as well as the coming century and its mysterious developments waiting to surprise and delight us. --Bonnie Bouman
Comprising:
The Juniper Tree by John Kessel;
Antibodies by Charles Stross;
The Birthday of the World by Ursula K. Le Guin;
Saviour by Nancy Kress;
Reef by Paul J. McAuley;
Going After Bobo by Susan Palwick;
Crux by Albert E. Cowdrey;
The Cure for Everything by Severna Park;
The Suspect Genome by Peter F. Hamilton;
The Raggle-Taggle Gypsy-O by Michael Swanwick;
Radiant Green Star by Lucius Shepard;
Great Wall of Mars by Alastair Reynolds;
Milo and Sylvie by Eliot Fintushel;
Snowball in Hell by Brian Stableford;
On the Orion Line by Stephen Baxter;
Oracle by Greg Egan;
Obsidian Harvest by Rick Cook and Ernest Hogan;
Patient Zero by Tananarive Due;
A Colder War by Charles Stross;
The Real World by Steven Utley;
The Thing About Benny by M. Shayne Bell;
The Great Goodbye by Robert Charles Wilson;
Tendeleo's Story by Ian McDonald.
And so begins Faust's transition from madman to savior--from Johannes to Jack--as he accelerates human progress at blinding speed, setting the mighty gears and pistons of industry in motion to first remake Germany, and then all Europe, in his own image. Ushering in a New Age of Mechanization hundreds of years before its rightful time, he is alternately adored and despised for his accomplishments, as he attempts to elevate humankind from the muck of ignorance, superstition and disease.
Yet it is love that damns Jack Faust and, ultimately, humanity as well. For Mephistopheles has revealed to him the beauty and purity of innocence in the person of Margarete Reinhardt, the daughter of a struggling businessman. To win her heart, Faust will give Margarete power and influence in an age when women are powerless-- and fame in a time when notoriety can be fatal-- and, in the process, blind his beloved, and himself, to the horrors Faust's "progress" has wrought. For brutality and greed will always pervert love and genius in a degenerate world--a world which now, thanks to Jack Faust, is rapidly sliding into chaos...or something far worse.
]]> A brief review cannot discuss all the stories, but can only suggest the range of subgenres within. These include the hard SF of Alastair Reynolds's extrasolar murder mystery "Glacial"; the soft SF of Maureen F. McHugh's wise "Interview: On Any Given Day"; the testosterone-drenched adventure SF of Paul Di Filippo's "Neutrino Drag"; the doomed lesbian love in a future so distant it seems like fantasy in Ian R. MacLeod's "Isabel of the Fall"; alternate history about Philip K. Dick and Richard Nixon in Paul McAuley's "The Two Dicks"; the triple-timeline Trojan fantasy of Howard Waldrop and Leigh Kennedy's excellent collaboration, "One-Horse Town"; the scathing satire of Carolyn Ives Gilman's "The Real Thing"; and the high-density postcyberpunk of "Lobsters," in which new author Charles Stross blends bleeding-edge infotech and venture-capital bizbuzz to create the standout SF story of 2001. --Cynthia Ward
Comprising:
New Light on the Drake Equation by Ian R. MacLeod;
More Adventures on Other Planets by Michael Cassutt;
On K2 With Kanakaredes by Dan Simmons;
When This World is All On Fire by William Sanders;
Computer Virus by Nancy Kress;
Have Not Have by Geoff Ryman;
Lobsters by Charles Stross;
The Dog Said Bow-Wow by Michael Swanwick;
The Chief Designer by Andy Duncan;
Neutrino Drag by Paul Di Filippo;
Glacial by Alastair Reynolds;
The Days Between by Allen M. Steele;
One-Horse Town by Howard Waldrop and Leigh Kennedy;
Moby Quilt by Eleanor Arnason;
Raven Dream by Robert Reed;
Undone by James Patrick Kelly;
The Real Thing by Carolyn Ives Gilman;
Interview: On Any Given Day by Maureen F. McHugh;
Isabel of the Fall by Ian R. MacLeod;
Into Greenwood by Jim Grimsley;;
Know How, Can Do by Michael Blumlein;
Russian Vine by Simon Ings;
The Two Dicks by Paul McAuley;
May Be Some Time by Brenda W. Clough;
Marcher by Chris Beckett;
The Human Front by Ken MacLeod.
"The Raggle Taggle Gypsy-O" is a mythic, Zelazny-tinged tale of time-transcending, world-hopping humans, monsters, and gods. In the Hugo Award winner "The Very Pulse of the Machine," the stranded surviving member of a Jupiter mission may have discovered the secret of the moon Io--or may be going mad. In "The Dead," the corporate mania for profit reaches a shocking nadir of exploitation. "Mother Grasshopper" explores a planet that might be the weirdest ever to appear in science fiction (a huge claim, but true). In the World Fantasy Award winner "Radio Waves," a peculiar science-fictional ghost in a strange and frightening afterlife recovers his memory, and regrets it.
Tales of Old Earth has one minor but potentially annoying problem: it doesn't give copyright information for the individual stories, so you can't see where, or when, they first appeared. Other books by Michael Swanwick include the novels In the Drift, Vacuum Flowers, Griffin's Egg, Stations of the Tide (a Nebula Award winner), and The Iron Dragon's Daughter (a New York Times Notable Book); and the collections Gravity's Angels and A Geography of Unknown Lands. --Cynthia Ward
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"In those 33 eventful years, I've won Nebula Awards and lost them (or, as this year's toastmaster, Michael Cassutt, put it, I've been 'differently victorious'). And I've read another 31 Nebula Awards collections and all the stories in them.... And you know what? I'm just as dazzled, just as awed and impressed, by the Nebula Award stories as I was that first time."
Nebula Awards 33 features Jane Yolen's Best Short Story winner, Sister Emily's Lightship, a tale of poetic inspiration from the stars; The Flowers of Aulit Prison, Nancy Kress's winner for Best Novelette, which beautifully examines the persistence of memory; the Best Novella winner, Jerry Oltion's Abandon in Place, an extraordinary space-ghost story; and an excerpt from Vonda N. McIntyre's lush historical fantasy The Moon and the Sun, which took Best Novel honors.
A terrific selection of "differently victorious" pieces rounds out this outstanding collection, along with the essays, author profiles (of Nelson Bond and Poul Anderson), and Rhysling Award winners (for science fiction poetry) we've come to expect in the Nebula series. The Nebula nominees represent some of the best science fiction and fantasy published each year, and Nebula Awards 33 is full of high-caliber writing, great ideas, and fascinating insight into the minds and hearts of the nominated authors. --Therese Littleton
]]>A bilious assemblage of self-congratulatory twaddle. . . jejune mixture of bluster and untried arrogance. . . My God, if this is the direction science fiction is going, it is doomed.. . .A self-conscious piece of snobbery not worth the powder to blow it to Kingdom Come.Like reading a history of Europe written from the point of view of Bulgaria.Swanwick's article has proved nothing, clarified nothing, accomplished nothing except to get his name before a large number of people where he can spout his conspiracy-literary theories in a pseudo-journalistic 'I'm above all this' manner better served by UFO magazines and the Flat Earth Society newsletter.Praise for "In the Tradition. . ."A brave, lonely attempt to stem the tide. - Nova Express
An incisive essay. . . - Publisher's Weekly
Thought-provoking and informative, the essay is as beautifully penned as any of the works lauded therein. - Terri Windling
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