Skylife: Space Habitats in Story and Science

by Gregory Benford (Editor), George Zebrowski (Editor)

Respected science fiction author-editors Gregory Benford and George Zebrowski present an anthology, with unique color illustrations, that is filled with the excitement, poetry, and adventure awaiting us in the limitless final frontier that is the sky. For years, science fiction has portrayed humankind growing away from the cradle of Earth through spacecraft, space stations, and space homes. Skylife features stories by such masters of science fiction as Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, Larry Niven, Joan Vinge, and James Blish-in addition to several essays by scientists-all of which come together in one spectacular volume to provide a picture of our possible future beyond Earth.

Genres: Science Fiction, Anthologies, Short Stories, Space, Fiction

368 pages, Hardcover

First published April 21, 2000

About the author

Gregory Benford is an American science fiction author and astrophysicist who is on the faculty of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of California, Irvine.

As a science fiction author, Benford is best known for the Galactic Center Saga novels, beginning with In the Ocean of Night (1977). This series postulates a galaxy in which sentient organic life is in constant warfare with sentient mechanical life.

Reviews

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some good stuff in this anthology, but for me it felt like an uneven mix - I was hoping for more of the science side, too, and this seemed almost all story, with some of the stories being very old at that. I guess I was looking for more material that was at least contemporary when this was published; a lot of it was decades old then, and a lot of this content feels to me more like it was scraped together to fill it out to a minimum length than carefully chosen because it was really good.

[Ray Savarda · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good selection of scifi about various live-in-space habitats from space stations to planet-encircling (ringworld-like) options. All decent scifi reads, nothing that stood out way above the others.

[Faith Justice · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book some time ago, but copied these paragraphs from a longer article I wrote about it and three other books that appeared in The Writer in 2001 .

I found the first book in the SF anthology section: Skylife: Space Habitats in Story and Science (Harcourt) edited by Gregory Benford and George Zebrowski. Benford is a physicist, author of over a dozen novels and two-time Nebula award winner. Zebrowski's credits include science fiction novels, short fiction collections, anthologies and a book of essays. In this collection of fourteen prescient essays and stories, they plot the course of humanity as it takes its first steps away from Cradle Earth and colonizes space. Benford and Zebrowski introduce the book with a piece on how space travel and living have been portrayed in literature from the late 19th Century to the present day and end with a selected bibliography of space stations and habitats in fiction, non-fiction, and visual media.

The book contains 350 pages of visionary writing by SF luminaries. Larry Niven explains his Ringworld as well as Dyson spheres, multi-generation ships, and flying cities in "Bigger Than Worlds." Isaac Asimov explores the possibility of moon colonies and hollowing out asteroids for habitation in "Spomelife: The Universe and the Future." Arthur C. Clarke foreshadows life on a space station in "The Other Side of the Sky." In this book you learn from the masters how to put "science" back into "science fiction." The eight vintage color plates showing artists' renditions of space living also go a long way to replacing stray images of the Millenium Falcon and Deep Space Nine.

[Charles · Rating 4 out of 5]

The quality ranged from good to great for the individual stories. Usually I try for more variety, but I happened to be reading a book of short stories by David Brin at the same time. It had another version of a story in this book. That version was better.

The last story was actually an excerpt from a novel. It basically ended on a cliffhanger. That was a little frustrating.