Amazon.co.uk Review
John Barnes writes hard SF with a heart; his speculations are always grounded in working things out from first principles, but he remembers to think also about how his imaginary situations might feel. "Gentleman Pervert, Out on a Spree", for example, starts with some speculation about tagging, and the speed with which an information age can make a marginal life get worse--Ken is photographed kerb-crawling and is then divorced and sacked before he even gets home.
It moves, though, in unexpected directions--no excuses are made for Ken and his compulsions, and yet we get to know and even love him like a deeply flawed younger brother. When Barnes writes of the fall of civilisation to Christianity and/or barbarism, his rationalism does not rule out empathy for other ways of seeing--and a sense that armed conflict always involves collateral losses of more than just lives. The doomed soldier of "Advice to the Civilized" knows that in that regret lies the whole difference between civilisation and barbarism. The stories come packaged with some non-fiction--Barnes writes well about building a world and his views on style and criticism; inspirationally about education and his hopes for the future. --Roz Kaveney
Product Description
A collection of stories from a master of modern sf, this volume will include a number of original stories alongside stories which have appeared in Asimov's and Amazing magazines but have never before appeared in book form. All the stories are hard sf or intelligent future extrapolation. Several of the published stories have received Nebula nominations and were published between 1987 and 1990. Barnes describes some of the stories as predictions for the end of the world - hence apocalypses - and others as apostrophes, speeches addressed to a non-existent being or to something which cannot understand speech. All are genre expanding, intriguing and thoroughly entertaining.
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