METAtropolis

Lake: Too much POV of disdain for the greenies.

Buckell: Idiot protag, when hawt chick lands on your couch, maybe don't go to your sekkrit hiding place the very first night.

Bear: I made it through this one. Didn't find it brill, though.

Scalzi: Ugh. Not one sympathetic character. No thanks.

Metatropolis is a neat concept even removed from its origins as an audiobook - a set of five stories set in a shared future world, all focused on the same idea without being necessarily set in exactly the same place or involving the same characters. The "future cities" concept is one I have a personal interest in, and the various takes on it - from closely-managed enclosed cities to hidden anarchoenvironmentalist collectives to the ongoing tragedy of Detroit to MMO-like virtual nations - are different enough from each other to stay totally fresh while still all clearly belonging to the same version of the future.

A fun project, and worth looking at for some good crunchy near-future SF. ( )

The first couple of stories in this anthology started off rather slowly, but by the time that Elizabeth Bear’s story came around, I was really into it.

The anthology does get rather preachy on the ecological propaganda at times (Bear’s story being the most preachy of the set), but that makes sense because all but one of the stories are focused on someone from within a society attempting to recruit an individual from without the society, and thus having to convert the prospective citizen to their viewpoint.

I did like how each story independently built up the world a little farther though the stories had almost nothing to do with each other. One story would bring in a concept, like “turking”, and the rest of the stories would use it as well.

My favorite was the last story by Schroeder. I love the idea of augmented reality glasses being used to play LARP games, and though there’s some problems with it as it’s presented here, I have a feeling that this is a very plausible application of the technology. A steampunk augmented reality game would be a blast to play, I think.

My second favorite was Elizabeth Bear’s, which is the most emotionally complicated of the set. Katy is on the run from her mobster ex-husband, and working to keep both herself and her stepdaughter safe.

Third favorite was John Scalzi’s story about a slacker teenager who just wants to laze about and doesn’t care (or really even think about) the zero footprint philosophy of his city. This is the funniest of the lot and the best at pointing out how the ecological/social philosophies in the stories would influence your day-to-day life. ( )

An interesting and ambition anthology. The central concepts that united the individual novellas is the city of the future. Specifically, the city in a post-peak-oil future.

I didn't care so much for the narrative of Jay Lake's In the Forest of the Night. I did a great job of laying out the exposition needed to explain the common setting, but I found the Tyger Tyger character to be flat and poorly fleshed out. The story centered on his messianic charm, so that let some of the air out of the tires.

The rest of the stories were solid and stood well on their own and even better as separate pieces of a loose collection. Scalzi's story about pigs was really good, but the final story by Karl Schroeder—To Hie from Far Cilenia-- was staggeringly good. I'd not read Schroeder before and I'm going to be seeking his work out now. He is a master of the kind of five-minutes-into-the-future speculative fiction pioneered by William Gibson. ( )

An interesting and ambition anthology. The central concepts that united the individual novellas is the city of the future. Specifically, the city in a post-peak-oil future.

I didn't care so much for the narrative of Jay Lake's In the Forest of the Night. I did a great job of laying out the exposition needed to explain the common setting, but I found the Tyger Tyger character to be flat and poorly fleshed out. The story centered on his messianic charm, so that let some of the air out of the tires.

The rest of the stories were solid and stood well on their own and even better as separate pieces of a loose collection. Scalzi's story about pigs was really good, but the final story by Karl Schroeder—To Hie from Far Cilenia-- was staggeringly good. I'd not read Schroeder before and I'm going to be seeking his work out now. He is a master of the kind of five-minutes-into-the-future speculative fiction pioneered by William Gibson. ( )