David G. Hartwell (1941–2016)

This is an anthology of post-2000 sf written by authors who "came to prominence" after 2000. That is to say, they may have published something prior to 2000, but they didn't break through into wider consciousness until after; see for example Charles Stross, whose first publication is all the way back in 1985, but achieved wider acclaim with his 2001 novel The Atrocity Archive. I got the book as a gift back when it came out in 2013, but as is usual for me, did not get around to reading it for show more another decade. In a way, this was helpful for evaluating the book's "argument."

It's been my thesis that large anthologies (and this one clocks in at 572 pages, with over thirty stories) are arguments. In this case, the argument seems to be: "These writers are the future of science fiction." In that case, reading it ten years late lets me estimate how right the editors got it. Did these talents pan out?

Overall, I have to say yes, but sort of with reservations. There's no denying that, say, Mary Robinette Kowal has gone on to be a juggernaut of twenty-first century science fiction. But enjoy as I might her "Lady Astronaut" books, the story included here ("Evil Robot Monkey") didn't grab me—this isn't the reason. (Though given the story was a Hugo finalist, it must have grabbed other people.) Similarly, some of the stories feel like stretches, in that they're sf tales from writers much better known for publishing fantasy or even horror, like Jo Walton's "Escape to Other Worlds with Science Fiction" or Daryl Gregory's "Second Person, Present Tense"; these were two stories I enjoyed a lot, actually, but I wouldn't put either Walton or Gregory in the pantheon of great twenty-first century sf writers, based on what I've read of them at least.

And of course, there are a couple stories I found outright bad... but they're by writers whose work in general I struggled to enjoy yet I cannot deny that those writers are generally popular. I speak here of John Scalzi's "The Tale of the Wicked," which requires all of its main characters to be idiots, and Catherynne M. Valente's "How to Become a Mars Overlord" which at eight pages still had me skimming to get to the end. So I guess the anthology is right to include them: both works read as fairly typical for their writers even if I did not like them. They are a key part of twenty-first century sf. I just wish they weren't.

But of course there are areas where the editors totally get it right. I always like a bit of Vandana Singh, and her story "Infinities" (one of only three rereads for me in the book) is a typically excellent piece of work. I don't think Rachel Swirsky has ever published a novel, but her story "Eros, Philia, Agape" is astounding, a masterful tale of what might it mean for an android to love, and she's an acclaimed writer of short science fiction and fantasy, with two Nebula wins and a number of Hugo and Nebula finalists. Madeleine Ashby is someone I haven't read much of, but I really enjoyed her story "The Education of Junior Number 12" here (another story of androids in love, actually, but very different from the Swirsky) and everything else I have read by her I have enjoyed; she's an incisive writer on the cutting edge of current technology, and now I want to seek our her related novel, vN. Ken Liu is an acclaimed writer of short sf, and though I've personally found his stuff hit or miss, "The Algorithm of Love" is probably the best thing I've read by him, a dark meditation on the implications AI might have for human consciousness.

"A Vector Alphabet of Interstellar Travel" is a pretty typical piece by Yoon Ha Lee: told in the form of a series of encyclopedia entries, so purely exposition, it nonetheless manages to say interesting things about how societies interact, especially with a really strong last line, and it's no wonder he went on to do acclaimed work like Machineries of Empire. Peter Watts is a highly acclaimed writer of hard sf about consciousness, and his story "The Island" here is great on many levels, examining how people think, how machines think, and how something we don't even understand thinks, and how different that might or might not be; dark but highly effective. There's a Cory Doctorow story here, too: "Chicken Little," about a lot of stuff, including immortality, marketing, and rational calculations of risk. I don't think I've ever enjoyed a Doctorow story before, but I thought this was great. So you have a lot of great stuff here by acclaimed writers.

Beyond that, though, you have great stuff from writers I actually had never heard of... but if Hartwell and Nielsen Hayden are making an argument, it's that I should have heard of them, and so I'm prepared to accept that it's not the anthology that's at fault but the universe—or, perhaps, me. I'd never heard of David Moles, but I loved his story "Finisterra" about a gas giant with an Earth-like atmosphere where people build communities on the backs of giant floating life-forms. Similarly, I didn't know Karl Schroeder but found his "To Hie from Far Cilenia" very intriguing, a story about digital communities overlapping with the physical world that we might not even notice unless we learn how to see differently. "The Prophet of Flores" by Ted Kosmatka was fascinating, set in a world where the Earth really was created in 4,000 B.C. but otherwise science is the same, and exploring what implications the discovery of the so-called hobbits of Flores would have. It was expanded into a novel, which I'll have to seek out. These people ought to be the face of twenty-first century sf if they're not.

It's not all great, of course; I've mentioned a couple I didn't like already, and there were some more that I bounced off of, including Stross's "Rogue Farm" (too clever for me, maybe), Marissa Lingen's "The Calculus Plague" (some improbably bad research ethics; where's the IRB?), Paul Cornell's "One of Our Bastards Is Missing" (I love Cornell but have never gotten much out of his Hamilton shorts), Oliver Morton's "The Albian Message" (less a story, more a thought experiment), and Alaya Dawn Johnson's "Third Day Lights" (I just could not be bothered to work out what was actually happening). But most of what was left was usually good, if not great, or among the best short stories I've read in the past year.

One story is a bit tragic: Kage Baker's "Plotters and Shooters" was good fun, a take on Ender's Game where the protagonists are all thirty-year-olds who are stuck in their mothers' basements. But Kage Baker can't be the future of sf, because she unfortunately died at the age of 57 in 2010. It reminded me I really must get around to finishing her Company series, though.

There's a lot of great stuff here; I think this probably has one of the best hit rates for an anthology I've read outside of something like The Science Fiction Hall of Fame volumes. Perhaps the real argument here is that "Twenty-first century science fiction is in rude health." If that's the case, then the editors have assembled evidence that demonstrates their conclusions thirty times over. show less

A thousand-page anthology devoted to a subgenre feels like an argument to me. A shorter book would claim to be nothing more than a sampling, while even a thousand-page book devoted to whole genre of science fiction couldn't rightly claim comprehensiveness. But with one thousand pages and over sixty stories from a single subgenre, The Ascent of Wonder can claim to be defining that subgenre's entire form and purpose. Unfortunately, it gets off to a rough start: I found the introductions (there show more are three!) by Gregory Benford and Kathryn Cramer more befuddling than illuminating, but I keyed in on a passage from David Hartwell's introduction: "Hard sf is about the beauty of truth. It is a metaphorical or symbolic representation of the wonder at the perception of truth that is experienced at the moment of scientific discovery" (30). I don't know that I entirely agree, but it's an intriguing formulation that explains why Hartwell and Cramer picked the stories they did for this anthology.

Judging by the stories included here, Hartwell and Cramer's definition of hard sf is a lot more capacious than my own. I love Cordwainer Smith, and "No, No, Not Rogov!" is indeed about the "perception of truth that is experienced at the moment of scientific discovery," but the inclusion of stories like this make me think that definition isn't specific enough-- I don't think Smith cares about science except as a source of beautiful imagery and fantastic ideas, and if sf is to be "hard" I feel like it needs something more than that. It's not that Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Rappaccini's Daughter" or Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore's "Mimsy Were the Borogoves" or Isaac Asimov's "The Last Question" are bad stories, or even stories uninterested in science, but it's that they're not invested in following the implications of actual science in a way that, say, Tom Godwin's "The Cold Equations" is-- a story that despite its flaws (or maybe because of them) epitomized the hard sf ethos of logic over all else. There are times I found myself wishing Hartwell and Cramer had included some kind of counterpoint story: if "Nine Lives" by Ursula K. Le Guin (a story that has clones in it, but no science behind them) or "The Very Slow Time Machine" by Ian Watson (which has a neat concept at its heart, but not as far as I can tell, one from actual science) or "The Longest Science Fiction Story Ever Told" by Arthur C. Clarke (which is an unfunny joke about unfunny jokes) are all hard sf, then what isn't? Show me the other side of the subgenre so I can see its edges more clearly.

That said, with over 150 years of stories to pick from, Cramer and Hartwell assembled an excellent collection of stories, and despite some dubious enclosures, I do feel I understand the parameters and possibilities of hard sf more than I did before reading. Some were by authors I knew and loved already: James Blish's "Beep" has a clever and interesting conceit that would make Steven Moffat's head spin. Donald Kingsbury's "To Bring in the Steel" was a surprising tale of a Paris Hilton-esque media floozy discovering a new side of herself on an asteroid mine; after enjoying Psychohistorical Crisis so much, I ought to seek out more of his work. "Waterclap" was an interesting Isaac Asimov story I hadn't read before, but let down by the fact that Asimov can imagine a moon colony and an underwater colony, but can't imagine a woman having any role in either outside of childbearing... in 1970! Le Guin's "The Author of the Acacia Seeds" wasn't a story, but had neat enough ideas (about ant language!) to succeed regardless. And I'm always happy to reread James Blish's "Surface Tension," which is in my sci-fi top five. David Brin's "What Continues, What Fails..." shows science fiction at its best as well, combining future reproduction with black hole physics to deliver a testimony for the human need to reproduce and leave a mark on the universe. (I did appreciate that unlike most anthologists, they included the contextual material with Rudyard Kipling's "With the Night Mail," though I wish they hadn't dumped it all at the end, after the actual story.)

There was the occasional outright bad one: Rudy Rucker's "Message Found in a Copy of Flatland" was sort of a non-story, not doing anything that Flatland itself didn't do; I got the feeling that it was in the book because being a novel, Flatland itself couldn't be. And James P. Hogan's "Making Light" is an unfunny joke stretched out way too long with dubious claims to be science fiction, much less hard sf. I think it's only in here because Hogan didn't write much short fiction, so Cramer and Hartwell had limited options (his novel Inherit the Stars is probably one of the best examples of the subgenre).

I was kind of a sucker for stories involving academia, I guess for obvious reasons. "Davy Jones' Ambassador" by Raymond Z. Gallun was surprisingly interesting, a tale of a professor (who's married to a dean) chasing a giant leviathan. I particularly loved Katherine Maclean's "The Snowball Effect," a rare sociological hard sf tale about a sociology department head defending his program against budget cuts by an overeager administrator by accidentally transforming a local knitting club into a global power. Michael F. Flynn's "Mammy Morgan Played the Organ; Her Daddy Beat the Drum" was surprisingly moving tale of a physics professor hunting ghosts as he destroys his academic career.

This review just scratches the surface of the good stuff contained within. (I want to read more Bob Shaw and Gordon R. Dickson now, for example, and I was very glad to see H. G. Wells's "The Land Ironclads" in this context.) Presumably no anthology is perfect, but I suspect this one comes closer than most: it's probably a better sf anthology than any I've read outside of The Science Fiction Hall of Fame series. I discovered a lot of new stories, developed a new appreciation for a subgenre I've thought little about, and have some new authors to look up. show less

The Space Opera Renaissance is the kind of book that deserves to drift in stately orbit around a gas giant while "Also sprach Zarathustra" plays. It's a massive tome of a book, 941 pages, 32 stories, close to 90 years of science fiction history. There are some very good stories in this collection. With this much diversity, you're sure to find something that you love, and the authors read like a who's who's of the field.

Space opera has always been something of an archaism, as science fiction show more tried to carve out a niche as serious literature. While early pioneers like E.E. 'Doc' Smith and Olaf Stapledon could imagine mythologies of cosmological scope, much of the early pulps were filled with poorly written adventurous tripe, the 'horse operas' of cheap western fiction redone on the Red Hills of Mars, rather than the Dakotas. Serious science fiction in the vein of Campbell's Astounding Science Fiction could discuss the engineering challenges of rocketry as a venue for a kind of Heinlein-Clarke 'competent hero', a man handier with a slide rule than a ray blaster. New Wave and cyberpunk turned defiant against outer space, conquering new realms of inner space and cyberspace. Yet the flame remained alive in the hands of M. John Harrison, and then a host of British retro-scifi writers (Banks, Hamilton, Reynolds) who imagined new kinds of post-imperial space opera. As fans, we love space opera, even as we're embarrassed by it.

Yet there's also an unbalanced quality to this collection, editorial choices that I found puzzling. No stories by Doc Smith or M. John Harrison, despite their status as grandmasters of the genre. Cramer and Hartwell use the page count to include complete novellas, but the early stories are some very rough pulps that outstay their welcome. Lois McMaster Bujold is represented by "Weatherman", which is a fantastic character study but entirely planetbound, while David Drake gets a fragment of a story about a Roman legion kidnapped and used as intersteller mercenaries, another mud bound adventure.

Space opera is a big tent of a sub-genre, but if I were to define it, it'd be about a certain grandeur of scope, of clashing planets and galaxies at stake, as well as a larger-than-life quality of its characters. It's a big universe, but with a fast spaceship, they can make it their own. There's lot of room to construct, parody, deconstruct the genre, to generate that necessary sensation of awe. There's a spot for a really great thematic collection, one that links the history of the genre to it's future, and frustratingly this is not that. I doubt anyone knew more about science-fiction than Hartwell, and Cramer was his partner of almost 20 years. So it's not enough for them to pick good stories. I want perfect stories, and this collection is about 500 pages overweight for perfection. show less

This is a very big science fiction anthology, the first of two parts. There are 27 stories in Volume One. The editor writes a somewhat meandering introduction and doesn't fully explain the motives behind this collection. One might think it is meant to document the history or progress of science fiction writing through the 20th century, but that is not the stated intent. The intent seems to supplement a number of other anthologies the editor had compiled in the 1980s-1990s. He had highlighted show more all the famous authors in the other collections and here he wanted to include many of the lesser famous but still, to his mind, noteworthy authors.

I had read perhaps 6 or 7 of these stories before, some fairly recently such as the Jack London and Mildred Clingerman and in particular James Blish's excellent "A Work of Art" and I didn't mind revisiting them. The editor provides a very good introduction to each author and story and I always appreciate that. There is no claim that these are the best stories of the century or anything similar. There are a couple of relatively famous stories in here but I doubt that more than a few could make any science fiction list of 100 best science fiction stories of the 20th century. There are also a number of obscure stories here. So this collection comes across as somewhat odd. A mixture of some very good stories with a few that make you wonder just why they were included and a few I could call just plain weak. Some of this is pretty mediocre. For example, there is a novella from H.G. Wells, "A Story of the Days to Come". The editor states he is the Shakespeare of science fiction. This story however, even though written during his prime period of classic works, is a pretty bland story - it has some interesting things in it but piddles off to an unsatisfactory end. As the title states, it is a story of days to come, two centuries in the future London. I had never heard of it before and I suspect most people would not have. Which is probably why the editor included it. On the other hand, I compared this to E. M. Forster's remarkable story from 1909 "The Machine Stops" which appears a few stories later in the collection. This tale of a dystopian future is quite remarkable and I was quite caught up in it and the sad fate of mankind with a life almost completely controlled by a machine. I knew I had read this long ago but could not remember it so I appreciated having it here to experience it anew.

There's a Pulitzer Prize winning author in here, Michael Shaara famous for his Gettysburg novel "The Killer Angels", here with "2066: Election Day" from 1956. Also, having Hal Clement with "Hot Planet" a science heavy story of the exploration of Mercury is pretty good! Overall I did appreciate this collection as I read stories I was very unlikely to encounter elsewhere and really appreciated several of the stories in here. The weak material only lets me give no better than an average grade for an anthology. There is a second volume which I will get to one day ...

11 • Introduction (1997) • essay by David G. Hartwell
15 • Beam Us Home (1969) • short story by James Tiptree, Jr.
25 • Ministering Angels (1955) • short story by C. S. Lewis
33 • The Music Master of Babylon (1954) • novelette by Edgar Pangborn
51 • A Story of the Days to Come (1899) • novella by H. G. Wells
106 • Hot Planet (1963) • short story by Hal Clement
121 • A Work of Art (1956) • novelette by James Blish
133 • The Machine Stops (1909) • novelette by E. M. Forster
155 • Brightness Falls from the Air (1951) • short story by Margaret St. Clair
160 • 2066: Election Day • (1956) short story by Michael Shaara
171 • The Rose (1953) • novella by Charles L. Harness
226 • The Hounds of Tindalos (1929) • short story by Frank Belknap Long
236 • The Angel of Violence • shortstory by Adam Wisniewski-Snerg (trans. of Aniol przemocy 1978)
245 • Nobody Bothers Gus • (1955) • short story by Algis Budrys
255 • The Time Machine • (1997) • short story by Dino Buzzati (trans. of La macchina che fermera il tempo 1952)
259 • Mother • (1953) • novelette by Philip José Farmer
279 • As Easy as A.B.C. • (1912) • novelette by Rudyard Kipling
298 • Ginungagap • (1980) • novelette by Michael Swanwick
321 • Minister Without Portfolio • (1952) • short story by Mildred Clingerman
327 • Time in Advance (1956) • novelette by William Tenn
346 • Good Night, Sophie (1973) • novelette by Lino Aldani (trans. of Buonanotte Sofia 1963)
363 • Veritas • (1987) novelette by James Morrow
376 • Enchanted Village (1950) • short story by A. E. van Vogt
387 • The King and the Dollmaker • (1970) • novella by Wolfgang Jeschke (trans. of Der König und der Puppenmacher 1961)
429 • Fire Watch • (1982) • novelette by Connie Willis
456 • Goat Song • (1972) novelette by Poul Anderson
480 • The Scarlet Plague (1912) • novella by Jack London show less