One Million A.D.

by Gardner Dozois (editor)

One million years from now. It's a span of time so huge that it's hard for the mind to grasp. Even within science fiction, to conjure up a convincing portrait of what humanity might be like in such a remote future calls for writers with rare breadth of vision. Fortunately, Dozois and Dann have found them.Includes longer stories set in "One Million A.D." ReedRobert SilverbergNancy KressAlastair ReynoldsGreg EganAt the publisher's request, this title is sold without DRM (Digital Rights Management).

Genres: Science Fiction, Anthologies, Short Stories, Fiction

399 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

Gardner Raymond Dozois was an American science fiction author and editor. He was editor of Asimov's Science Fiction magazine from 1984 to 2004. He won multiple Hugo and Nebula awards, both as an editor and a writer of short fiction.
Wikipedia entry: Gardner Dozois

http://us.macmillan.com/author/gardne...

Reviews

[StarMan · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 good stories (3 to 4 stars) out of 5. These are longer 'short' stories, or short novellas. The murder mystery 'Thousandth Night' was my favorite.

VERDICT: Average of the stories was close to 3 stars.

[Peter Tillman · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an anthology of six original novellas of the very far future, commissioned by the Science Fiction Book Club, in a departure from their usual reprints-only policy. The authors are all well-known: Robert Reed, Robert Silverberg, Nancy Kress, Alastair Reynolds, Charlie Stross, and Greg Egan. Plus a nice introduction by editor Gardner Dozois. A stellar lineup!

The opening story, "Good Mountain" by Robert Reed, is set in an old water-world colony with some unusual terraforming adaptations. Reed's writing and characterizations are very fine, but the story has an odd twist ending that undercut its impact, at least for me. But who could resist a railway system where the passengers ride inside giant worms? Reprinted in Dozois #24.

Robert Silverberg has a long-standing interest in the far future. His "A Piece of the Great World" is a story of a world recovering from a Long Winter, after a heavy meteorite bombardment. It's set in the world of his novels _At Winter's End_ and _The New Springtime_. As you'd expect, Silverberg's writing is polished and professional. This isn't one of his best stories, though it has some nice moments, and some gorgeous images. Silverberg fans won't go away unhappy.

Nancy Kress has clone-sisters, a galaxy-spanning quantum AI and clashing branes in her far-future "Mirror Image". One clone-sister is convicted of an awful crime, and sentenced to life on a prison planet. Her sisters try to rescue her, and solve the mystery of who really dunnit. Fine world-building and a good story.

Alastair Reynold's clever, colorful and very fast-moving "Thousandth Night" takes us to 2,000,000 AD, for a family reunion of the clone-line of Abigail Gentian, a noted star-traveler who picked an unusual (but effective) way to "double the pleasure, double the fun!", carried to the eighth power. But the reunion turns into a murder-mystery, and the fate of the Galaxy is in the balance! Classic Reynolds, not to be missed.

Charles Stross's "Missile Gap" is a major new story. It's Yet Another Stross replay of the Cold War, set on a Very Big Dumb Object.... I can't say much more without spoiling the fun (which has a dismal outcome, for us Old Humans), except to say that "Missile Gap" will leave you scratching your head, wondering what the hell really happened. Who was that CIA 'man'? Denizens of rec.arts.sf.science will see the results of Charlie's past inquiries about ekranoplans. Stross is an astonishingly inventive author who's giving staid old SF some well-needed kicks in the pants. Stories like this are why I keep reading this stuff. "Missile Gap" is worth buying the book for.

The windup story is "Riding the Crocodile" by Greg Egan, who hasn't been writing much SF lately, more's the pity. And certainly not because he's forgotten how: this is a typically dazzling Egan story, and if it's not quite up with his very best, it's still very, very good. With such grace notes as the festival planet Tassef, where the Listening Party had proved so popular that the authorities "imposed a thousand-year limit on their presence, if they wished to remain embodied without adopting local citizenship..." Also reprinted in Dozois #24.

This is the strongest original-story anthology I've read in awhile. Recommended.
[Review written for SF Site, 2006. Minor adds, 2018]

[Iset · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found it hard to review this anthology because it's difficult when we're looking at a collection of disparate stories from different authors. The overarching theme is 'the far future', with the authors free to create their own novellas about anything within that theme and setting. I mainly picked the book up because of nostalgia. My parents collected a veritable library of sci fi and fantasy during the 60s and 70s, and one of the staple appearances were sci fi anthologies. Usually they were just "best of the year" anthologies, but I couldn't help but notice that sci fi from these decades tended to revolve around some very innovative themes, such as civilisations on Venus, heroes and space empires, and visions of the far future. As far as sci fi goes, I think it's fair to say that it was less about hard sci fi, and more the era of the space opera. One Million A.D. is a new book which is very much a homage to those old anthologies, but taking a 21st century guess at the same themes and settings.

As far as the stories goes, I found it to be a mixed bag, as one might expect from an anthology. In the first story, Good Mountain by Robert Reed, we seem to have a colonised Coreward planet undergoing craton destruction. This is just my best guess, because what is happening is never made explicit, as such. There's also a sub-plot with an unreliable character. Sometimes that works, other times it doesn't. I think here I wasn't feeling it, mainly because right up until the end the narrative this character presents us with is given as reliable, and the rug is pulled under us right at the last second when we're told they might not be reliable after all - and then, because this is a very short story - it just ends. I was left with too many unanswered questions and uncertainties. On the plus side, the story is unique in the anthology, with no other story addressing this particular scenario.

The second story is A Piece of the Great World by Robert Silverberg, which appears to take place on a far future Earth where new sentient species have arisen. The story mainly revolves around an architect and his personal relationship with an archaeologist, with a bit about studying ancient survivors. But honestly I found this one to be more fantasy than sci fi. The society we're thrust into is a kind of Medieval/antiquarian crossover with the tale revolving around the personal relationships and attempts to keep them apart. You're never quite sure if the archaeologist is lying, either, and it's hard to empathise with the aquatic people when there's no time given to developing them, they say virtually nothing, and you're never sure if you're being lied to about what they are supposedly saying. It was okay, just didn't feel particularly sci fi to me.

The third story and fourth story are worth discussing together, I feel. They are Mirror Image by Nancy Krees, and Thousandth Night by Alistair Reynolds. Both were the stories that I would say I enjoyed most from the anthology. The story was coherent, the sci fi was explicit, and both contained mystery plots that are unravelled by the end. I enjoyed that, I could get into it. However, there is one unfortunate thing... which is that by unhappy coincidence they are remarkably similar to one another. Both feature super advanced Humans turned into clones, able to upload themselves into computers and download themselves into a variety of bodies, living hundreds of thousands of years, and whose lives are spent shaping whole star systems and the cosmos at large. And in the plots of each story, there is a murder mystery to be solved. As if that weren't enough, Mirror Image features 'Quentiam' as a central plot figure, and Thousandth Night features 'Gentian' as a central plot figure. Ooops? These stories were probably the most interesting to me because they draw closely on our current best guesses about the future - greatly extended lifespan, terraforming, cloning, cyborg interfacing. But if I were the editor, I probably wouldn't have put them right next to each other in the book.

The fifth story, Missile Gap by Charles Stross, was a curious one. A strange proposition of the far future as a replay of alternate pasts, specifically, the Cold War. Points for originality, certainly... but something about it just didn't draw me in. I think I switched off a bit in this one because I came for the sci fi and got an awful lot of familiar historical material.

The sixth and final story, Riding the Crocodile by Greg Egan, was odd in some ways. It reminded me a little of the third and fourth stories, featuring long-lived Humans and the capacity to upload and download consciousness. The two protagonists want to go on one last challenging adventure to uncover the mysteries behind an isolationist region of space. But I found the ending to be rather flat. They figure out a way in... but nothing really happens when they get there. The mystery behind the ultimate intentions and society of these isolationists is never revealed, and I felt that it was a bit pointless.

I've calculated a final score by giving each story a rating out of ten, adding it up, and dividing by six, to give the anthology an overall score of:

5.5 out of 10

[Matthew J. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Six novellas about the ultra-far future of humanity (or our descendants), each very, very different. This is a really good collection. All six stories were very good in their own way. I was surprised and especially excited to read 'A Piece of the Great World' by Robert Silverberg, as it is set in the future of the world he created in "At Winter's End." Robert Reed's 'Good Mountain' is way, way out there, and by the end gives you some sense of a super strange future reality. 'Mirror Image' by Nancy Kress, 'Thousandth Night' by Alastair Reynolds, and'Riding the Crocodile' set up realities where humans have gone beyond our physical bounds. 'Missile Gab' by Charles Stross is an extremely odd story about the Cold War carrying on into a bizarre new future.
I strongly recommend this for those interested in some wild takes on the distant future. These stories take things even further than "Dune," and that's saying something. Also, if you've read Silverberg's New Springtime books, you've definitely got to read 'A Piece of the Great World.'

[Rob Stout · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some great stories, some not so great.

A mix of far future stories. Go into this expecting half to be worth reading, and the other half as filler. The good ones made it worthwhile to me.

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 stars for three good stories out of five.

[Florin Constantinescu · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one of the strongest original all-sci-fi anthologies I have ever come across. Gardner Dozois enlists six 'specialists' here to deliver novellas set, as the title suggests, in the year 1,000,000. The setting (or world-building if you like) is very original in all of these novellas, and totally worth checking out, even if you might have some problems with either the plot or the style of each individual piece.

Breakdown:

1. Good Mountain by Robert Reed - 3 stars
The action happens on a backwater planet where the rail system is actual gigantic worms which humans can actually ride inside of. Reed spends more time here describing the setting than the plot, and when the plot finally gets underway, ooops, we've come to the end.

2. A Piece of the Great World by Robert Silverberg - 5 stars
This novella is set in the same universe as his Winter's End & New Springtime novels. Humans awake from hibernation underground where they toughed out a nuclear winter. As is the custom with Silverberg, this is superbly written, granted not very sci-fi-ish, but I really loved how his characters must rediscover their surroundings. I added above novels on my 'to-read' list after finishing this one.

The core sci-fi novellas begin with this one. You get clones, linked minds, lifespans of millennia, galaxy shaping, quantum AI's, the whole shebang.

3. Mirror Image by Nancy Kress - 5 stars
A clone of one of the immortal beings inhabiting the galaxy is convicted of murder and sentenced to imprisonment on a remote planet. Her 'sisters' must rescue her and unravel the murder. As cool as it can get! Wish there were more novels set in this universe.

4. Thousandth Night by Alastair Reynolds - 5 stars
This time we're in luck. This novella DOES have a novel set in the same universe. I simply had to read that next. Another murder mystery among clones, however this is very different in setting and tone from the previous novella.

5. Missile Gap by Charles Stross - 3 stars
One of the weirdest settings you will ever find in science fiction. Can't even begin to explain it. I don't think the author had it fully figured out either. The surface of the Earth has somehow been re-rendered on a gigantic flat planet. Original, so that's worth 5 points in my book. Unfortunately, the plot involves the cliche of 60's era US vs USSR cold war, and the writing style is difficult (as is always with Stross), and the conclusion abrupt, so this can only be a 3.

6. Riding the Crocodile by Greg Egan - 3 stars
Another story featuring post-humans (or long-living humans if you will) set out to solve the mystery of a bizarre region of space where different rules apply (reminiscent of his "Schild's Ladder" novel). The style again is not very friendly, and the ending disappointing, so I can only go as high as a 3 again.

[Pat MacEwen · Rating 5 out of 5]

These six novellas, all set a million years into the future, brought very different dishes to the potluck. In some, humanity seems hardly to have changed at all. In others, humans have merged with machine minds, become digitized in their own right and/or found common ground with other species while seeking it with those even stranger. The wide range of the anthology makes me miss its editor that much more, now that he's gone. It took a guy like Gardner Dozois pull together a group of tales with this kind of breathtaking scope. All of the authors are first rate writers and imagineers, and all the stories are well worth reading, although my personal favorites would be "Mirror Image" by Nancy Kress and "Thousandth Night" by Alistair Reynolds. The first envisions an AI whose medium is space-time itself and a conflict with what might be another such being in a nearby universe while human clone-sisters try to work out what's actually happening and cope with the carnage. Reynolds' characters are also clone-clans, larger by far in size and age, and caught up in political problems related to another mega-engineering project - the so-called "Great Work" that is intended to change the size of the galaxy itself, by means of both genocide and murder most personal. Great stuff.

[Scott Breslove · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some pretty good stories, but not really my cup of tea. The ideas were good, but a lot got way too technical and the majority, if not all, didn’t have definitive endings. If there’s not a sequel, I hate when books are left open ended, it’s the authors story, I want them to tell me what happens, not leave it open for me and others to interpret.

[Kenneth · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of novellas set in the far future.

[Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read the Alistair Reynolds short story—prequel to House of Suns

[Mark Catalfano · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked "Missile Gap" by Charles Stross

[Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is what I would consider essentially a perfect collection of sci-fi shorts. The theme is the very general idea of exploring what humanity may look like in one million years. Each of the authors included takes a very different direction on this idea. I largely sought this book out because it included a story by perhaps my current favorite hard scifi author, Alastair Reynolds. His story is of particular note since it takes place within the same confines of his novel, House of Suns, which was a delight to read. It's hard to single out any of the stories in this book, but Charles Stross' Missle Gap was also a favorite. It explores a sort of alternate future (you'll see what I mean when you read it), rather than an alternate history. If you're a diehard scifi lover, I think you'd be an idiot to not look for a copy of this book.

[K. Farrell Germain · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have read so many of these kinds of collections that it is difficult to separate one from another. This one I keep on my shelf. I loved the humanity evolution theme that pops in this collection of insane perspectives. Kudos' to the authors who are creative enough to blow your mind.

[Leah Rosenberg · Rating 5 out of 5]

These stories were all well done and extremely memorable. I wish another anthology like this existed. The stories will stick with me and give me something to think about for a very long time.

[Chas · Rating 2 out of 5]

A couple of reasonable stories but nothing spectacular.