sam

Ain’t It Cool News has recently launched a book review section, where reviewer Adam Balm plans to “take fandom back to its root” by acting as a pointer to good SF. In his second review, he tackles Fast Forward 1: Future Fiction from the Cutting Edge, which I’m most happy to say he likes. Adam proclaims that “Pyr’s going to be an interesting bird to watch, coming out of nowhere in the last year to fast becoming one of the big names in the industry, no small feat in a field made up of big publishers getting even bigger, as the market is getting smaller,” and goes on to say of FF1 that “probably half the stories here would be fitting entries in a ‘Year’s Best’ anthology.” He calls out stories by Paolo Bacigalupi, Stephen Baxter, Ken MacLeod, Justina Robson, John Meaney, with a special place for Paul Di Filippo’s “Wikiworld” (online here), of which he says, “Without a doubt, THE stand-out story (as has been mentioned at Boing Boing and other reviews) is Paul Di Filippo’s ‘Wikiworld…. Honestly I haven’t had this kind of vertigo after reading a short since Charle’s Stross’s ‘Lobsters’ in 2001, the first entry of what would become his Accelerando magnum opus. I really want to see Di Filippo explore this world he’s created some more. This is too good for just one short.”

In addition to FF1, Adam reviews The Antagonist by Gordon R. Dickson and David W. Wixon, and presents an introductory essay on his reasons for taking up the reviewer’s role along with his opinions on the current state of science fiction. (He sees SF as being at a bit of a crossroads, a fractured field competing with fantasy and slipstream.) Furthermore, Adam finds parallels between my introduction and one John W. Campbell’s wrote for his own 1952 Astounding Science Fiction Anthology which I now need to hunt up.

All in all, I was impressed with the review and hope that AICN keeps Adam Balm long employed, as shortening the gap between media SF and literary SF is a personal crusade of mine. Meanwhile, I love that he describes FF1 as “a kind of time capsule of where hard science fiction is, in the first decade of the second millennium,” though the line that really made me laugh was his description of Justina Robson as “she reminds me of a hard SF Neil Gaiman if Neil Gaiman was even more of a woman. ” Add this to Cheryl Morgan’s comment some time ago that Robson was “William Gibson with chocolate” and you can see just how special Robson is. Finally, on the question of SF’s relevance in 2007, I agree with Adam that “while the world might change, that tool for making sense of that change does not change.”

Cat Eldridge has a few thoughts about Fast Forward 1: Future Fiction from the Cutting Edge over on The Green Man Review:

“So what’s good here? A story by Kage Baker (‘Plotters and Shooters’) is set in her Company universe but which is not a Company story, but a space opera in the form of a look at war in space above and beyond. Or how about a witty look at the future of wikis? ‘Wikiworld’ by Paul Di Filippo takes the ideas of Cory Doctorow one step further by showing what would happen in a society run on gifts, wikis, fast and lose consensus, and running code. The Something-Dreaming Game’ by Elizabeth Bear is a gem of a great story as is Gene Wolfe’s ‘The Hour of the Sheep’. Most everything is superb here… Overall I think Anders has done an exemplary job of putting together first rate anthology.”

Nor is her comment that Pyr is “certainly one of the hottest new genre publishers we’ve seen over the past few decades” unappreciated.

The February 11th issue of the The San Deigo Union-Tribune has a brief but enthusiastic mention of Fast Forward 1: Future Fiction from the Cutting Edge at the tail end of a review roundup called “Thomas Becket would be right at home.”:

“More than a score of stories by favorite writers like Justina Robson, Kage Baker and Gene Wolfe. Oh, and don’t start on the lovely Rudy-Ruckerian “WkiWorld” by Paul Di Filippo unless you want to have your head spin several times to giggles and joy.’