Engineering Infinity
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Product Description
The universe shifts and changes: suddenly you understand, you get it, and are filled with a sense of wonder. That moment of understanding drives the greatest science-fiction stories and lies at the heart of Engineering Infinity. Whether it's coming up hard against the speed of light and, with it, the enormity of the universe, realising that terraforming a distant world is harder and more dangerous than you'd ever thought, or simply realizing that a hitchhiker on a starship consumes fuel and oxygen with tragic results, it's hard science-fiction where sense of wonder is most often found and where science-fiction's true heart lies. The exciting and innovative science-fiction anthology collects together stories by some of the biggest names in the field including Stephen Baxter, Charles Stross, Hannu Rajaniemi, Gwyneth Jones, Kristine Kathryn Rusch.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
34 of 35 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Just in time for New Year, a nice selection of stories to clear the head. The book contains stories by 14 different authors, and the description above is rather misleading. For the record, the editor is Jonathan Strahan, and it contains stories by Stross and Baxter (also by Peter Watts, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Karl Schroeder, Hannu Rajaniemi, Kathleen Ann Goonan, Damien Broderick and Barbera Lamar, Robert Reed, John C Wright, David Moles, Gregory Benford, Gwynneth Jones and John barnes - but not, as far as I can see, by Bear).
The stories are nicely varied - the foreword discusses them in the context of "Hard SF" but admits that not all of them satisfy the criterion in the classic sense. I have to admit I don't really care about that, I simply enjoyed them as stories - there's a dash of quantum time travel, some deep space stuff, some pessimistic visions of the future (I liked Rusch's account of a marriage falling apart against a background of creepy genetic augmentation - all at a price, of course - which tells a very human and familiar story in a new and fresh way).
The stories are all high quality, with the best easily worth 5 stars, and only a couple below 4. Those that especially stood out for me were (beware: a couple of spoilers follow) "Malak" by Watts, a sort of recast Frankenstein: Or, the Modern Prometheus (Penguin Classics) which muses on the logical outcome of increasing the independence and intelligence of a military robot drone; "Laika's Ghost" by Schroeder, where a breakthrough leading to the possibility of homemade H-bombs has more positive results than you'd think, Rajaniemi's "The Server and the Dragon" (good to read more from him after The Quantum Thief last year), Stross's "Bit Rot", set some time after his Saturn's Children, "Walls of Flesh, Bars of Bone" by Broderick and Lamar which draws together quatum physics and literary theory to achieve time travel, Benford's "Mercies" (about a kind of anti Doctor Who: a billionaire builds his own timeship and uses it to track down serial killers in other timelines) and "The Ki-anna" by Jones.
However, everything in this collection is good - I suspect different stories will appeal to different readers - and it's a good showcase for the authors if you haven't read any of their stuff yet - I will be following up several of them.
At the risk of quibbling, I had one disappointment: as far as I can see the collection is only available in paperback. This seems to be a growing trend. Nor is it printed on particularly nice paper. A real shame if you buy books to keep.
The stories are nicely varied - the foreword discusses them in the context of "Hard SF" but admits that not all of them satisfy the criterion in the classic sense. I have to admit I don't really care about that, I simply enjoyed them as stories - there's a dash of quantum time travel, some deep space stuff, some pessimistic visions of the future (I liked Rusch's account of a marriage falling apart against a background of creepy genetic augmentation - all at a price, of course - which tells a very human and familiar story in a new and fresh way).
The stories are all high quality, with the best easily worth 5 stars, and only a couple below 4. Those that especially stood out for me were (beware: a couple of spoilers follow) "Malak" by Watts, a sort of recast Frankenstein: Or, the Modern Prometheus (Penguin Classics) which muses on the logical outcome of increasing the independence and intelligence of a military robot drone; "Laika's Ghost" by Schroeder, where a breakthrough leading to the possibility of homemade H-bombs has more positive results than you'd think, Rajaniemi's "The Server and the Dragon" (good to read more from him after The Quantum Thief last year), Stross's "Bit Rot", set some time after his Saturn's Children, "Walls of Flesh, Bars of Bone" by Broderick and Lamar which draws together quatum physics and literary theory to achieve time travel, Benford's "Mercies" (about a kind of anti Doctor Who: a billionaire builds his own timeship and uses it to track down serial killers in other timelines) and "The Ki-anna" by Jones.
However, everything in this collection is good - I suspect different stories will appeal to different readers - and it's a good showcase for the authors if you haven't read any of their stuff yet - I will be following up several of them.
At the risk of quibbling, I had one disappointment: as far as I can see the collection is only available in paperback. This seems to be a growing trend. Nor is it printed on particularly nice paper. A real shame if you buy books to keep.
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Kindle Edition
This is an odd little collection of fifteen science fiction stories. For one thing, the table of contents is on the last page. I have no idea why. I also can't see what the theme of the collection might be. The editor, Jonathan Strahan, outlines the history of science fiction from Hugo Gernsback to the present. The field has matured beyond the restrictions of early hard science fiction and become something wider, richer, and apparently harder to define.
What about the stories? "[S]ome of the stories are classic hard SF, some are not. [I]t is part of the ongoing discussion about what science fiction is in the 21st century." Since the stories are not related in any systematic way, perhaps the collection is a celebration of diversity. I am never sure what people mean by that, either. Ah, well. The stories are all pretty good, each in its own way. Four stood out for me:
Hannu Rajaniemi's "The Server and the Dragon" has no human characters. But it is rich with motives and emotions that humans have no trouble understanding. From two, one.
Robert Reed's "Mantis" is two stories, edited. A man and a woman exercise and watch another man and woman meet on the street outside. Between the two couples a high tech window subtly alters what they see of each other. Oh, and there's a bug.
In Gwyneth Jones' "The Ki-anna" a fraternal twin investigates his sister's death on a war-torn planet. An accident or a murder or the self-sacrifice of a seasoned anthropologist?
In John Barnes' "The Birds and the Bees and the Gasoline Trees" the growth of a huge undersea structure is investigated by a nearly-indestructible genetically engineered woman who has been recalled to Earth from the environment she was designed for. She works with her ex-husband and his new wife.
I recommend the collection for its interesting and dissimilar stories. Don't invest a lot of time trying to figure out how the stories are related or what this means for the future of science fiction. Just read and enjoy.
What about the stories? "[S]ome of the stories are classic hard SF, some are not. [I]t is part of the ongoing discussion about what science fiction is in the 21st century." Since the stories are not related in any systematic way, perhaps the collection is a celebration of diversity. I am never sure what people mean by that, either. Ah, well. The stories are all pretty good, each in its own way. Four stood out for me:
Hannu Rajaniemi's "The Server and the Dragon" has no human characters. But it is rich with motives and emotions that humans have no trouble understanding. From two, one.
Robert Reed's "Mantis" is two stories, edited. A man and a woman exercise and watch another man and woman meet on the street outside. Between the two couples a high tech window subtly alters what they see of each other. Oh, and there's a bug.
In Gwyneth Jones' "The Ki-anna" a fraternal twin investigates his sister's death on a war-torn planet. An accident or a murder or the self-sacrifice of a seasoned anthropologist?
In John Barnes' "The Birds and the Bees and the Gasoline Trees" the growth of a huge undersea structure is investigated by a nearly-indestructible genetically engineered woman who has been recalled to Earth from the environment she was designed for. She works with her ex-husband and his new wife.
I recommend the collection for its interesting and dissimilar stories. Don't invest a lot of time trying to figure out how the stories are related or what this means for the future of science fiction. Just read and enjoy.
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
I had high hopes for this book. Not only is it edited by Jonathan Strahan, whose The New Space Opera I enjoyed earlier in the month, it also has a new short story by the splendid Charlie Stross, which is always a good start for an anthology of short stories. And I wasn't disappointed. There are perhaps not as many stand-out works of genius as in The New Space Opera, but there are also fewer disappointments too. There's still a couple of stories that left me scratching my head and wondering why the hell the editors didn't reject them for being a load of incoherent nonsense - I can only assume that they build upon ideas in the authors' other stories that I've not read, and so they make sense to people who've read 'em - but the majority are clear, original and entertaining. Worth buying.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
An interesting mix
Some of the stories seem more sci-fi than others. Some are verging on the metaphysical and leave you guessing as to what they are about.
Published 7 days ago by Stephen J. Wilson
Splendid little anthology.
As I have stated more than once in previous reviews, I am a great fan of short stories and they are one of the best means to experience unfamiliar authors. Read more
Published 4 months ago by Willy Eckerslike
Excellent Eclectic Collection of Hard (ish) SF
Engineering Infinity is a collection of modern science fiction which gives a broad view of the work being produced towards the hard end of the spectrum. Read more
Published 7 months ago by P. G. Harris
Good and consistent anthology of hard sci-fi
"Engineering Infinity" is an anthology, a collection of short stories, edited by Jonathan Strahan. He as been editing since the early nineties and since then he has brought to... Read more
Published 8 months ago by ManInsideTheHelm
Suberb collection
Absolutely superb collection, showcasing the best of current cutting-edge science fiction.
Peter Watts - Malak
A mobile robotic war machine gets an upgrade: a... Read more
Peter Watts - Malak
A mobile robotic war machine gets an upgrade: a... Read more
Published 13 months ago by A. J. Poulter
si-fi shorts
This book contains stories from some of the best si-fi writers that are publishing now. If you like to be streached and made to think when you read try this.
Published 13 months ago by Jovi Fan
Serious talent
With the science fiction genre taking off, there's a huge choice about the subgenres for readers to pick from, so how do you narrow it down what to try and especially with finances... Read more
Published 17 months ago by Gareth Wilson - Falcata Times Blog
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