Otherness

Well worth the read, if only for these bits from "Detritus Affected" -

“Physicians swear a Hippocratic Oath whose central vow is ‘do no harm’. I wonder–how many other professions might do well to set that goal above all others?”

Excellent question.

“Look, see this broken plastic wheel? Part of a cheap toy, circa 1970. Giveaway prize in some fast food outlet’s promotional kiddie meal. Seventy grams of carboniferous petroleum cooked under limestone sediments for two hundred million years, only to be sucked up, refined, press-moulded, passed across a counter, squealed over, and then tossed in next week’s trash.”

The essays get just a titch political - Brin is opinionated. ?�But he doesn't bombast; he explores what we know to hypothesize what we should consider.
The stories are a lot of fun... but not so much humorous or even ironic (though they show traces of that) as anjoyable & temporarily satisfying, like hamburgers. ?áThought-provoking might be a bit too strong, though, imo--I'd rather save that for those that truly stick with me, or at least will satiate for longer, like pot roast. ?áI've been done with this for a day, and as I write I'm flipping through and having too much trouble recalling each story.

An interesting collection of short stories on the nature of humanity. It could have been titled "(m)otherness", because many of the stories are extensive meditations on the process and meaning of motherhood.

Probably not quite in the right frame of mind to appreciate this book.
I tend to go short stories because I don't need to concentrate or invest as much as when I read an epic series, but this one required more thought and consideration than I felt like giving.
On which note, I did like Brin's Uplift series.

From this, I most liked The Giving Plague and Ambiguity.
Also the final essay on Otherness

A little scifi, and a little non-fiction. This book mixes some scifi short stories and Brin's reflections on technology and society. Highly recommended!

A collection of short stories and essays mostly related to a theme of how we perceive others who are different from ourselves. The essays are interesting and tie in quite a bit with themes Brin explored in The Transparent Society. The stories were only average. Brin is more interesting at novel length than with short stories.
Best Stories: “The Giving Plague”, “Dr. Pak's Preschool”, “What Continues... and What Fails...”

Over all a good collection of short stories, but the reason I gave it 4 stars was "The Giving Plague." I thought that one was great.