Future Histories

ISBN: 0-9530648-0-8 Order from: Amazon.com

This Nokia-sponsored collection of interviews and short stories by well-known SF authors and technologists is highly uneven in quality and somewhat fuzzy in focus.

Reviewed by David on September 20, 1998

Genre: Science Fiction (Anthology, Communications)

Synopsis: A collection of articles/interviews with famous Science Fiction writers and futurists, interspersed with general musings and stories, usually by the less famous ones. The theme is the future of communication, in line with the sponsor company's business.

Full Review: While I admire Nokia's forward-thinking decision to use Science Fiction as a vehicle to explore (and perhaps hasten) the future of communication, this anthology suffers from a common malady of such collections: the stories are widely uneven and are only vaguely bound by the theme. While the interviews and essays are pretty much on the future of communication technology and its role on humanity; the stories are mostly centered on humanity, with communication playing a minor role, if any.

The most famous names, such as Clarke, Vinge (Vernon), Gibson, Sterling and Negroponte are only present in non-fiction articles, where they propound on the future of communications. The afterward reads the most like an industry article; most other articles make do with rather vague futuristic statements. The only significant point is made by Vinge, where he summarizes his view of the evolution of intelligence, Intelligence Amplification, and Singularity. Due to my emphasis on fiction, I did not include any interviewees or non-fiction contributors as authors in this review.

Reading this book, I recalled why I dislike the shorter form of fiction. The unevenness of stories, and the fact that most end up depending on a single trick which could not be sustained for any length, frequently makes getting into the world of a short story an effort disproportionate to the reward.

"Steamship Soldier on the Information Front" by Nancy Kress presents an interesting view of a high-tech venture capitalist, living the ultimate (and surprisingly plausible) life of a road warrior in the near future. The point of the story, however, is superficial and fuzzy.

"Glass Earth, Inc" by Stephen Baxter is ostensibly a mystery. It presents another interesting concept as a logical extrapolation from the current trends: a virtual "angel", an agent that monitors each human since birth, filters his email, his entertainment, in fact, his entire input acording to the person's preferences and abilities. The conclusion of the story was a cute, but unsatisfying and superficial twist, unsupported by the previous plot.

"Back Door Man" by Paul J McAuley is story of a professional cyber-troubleshooter at work. A cliché-based world, together with completely unrealistic presentation of how complex systems are debugged, make this an uninspired part of the anthology. The most laughable, however, was McAuley's completely unsuccessful attempt to make a story more concrete through the use of modern technical jargon. The author clearly has little concept of STP's, PBX's, Zip drives and Beta tests. Even his grammatically correct usage such as "case-hardened firewalls" is jarring. This is especially ironic in a book sponsored by Nokia, a leader in telecommunication technology. I am now convinced that the reason Gibson, a self-professed computer illiterate, was so successful, is that he was forced to invent his own jargon, tropes and abstractions to describe the cyberspace. A little knowledge is indeed a dangerous thing, as this story shows.

"Zoomers" by Gregory Benford is a light-weight piece about extremely wired entrepreneurs.

"Exploding, Like Fireworks" by Pat Murphy, as well as "In the Flesh" by Brian Stableford, are explorations of how technology can help cope with failure of frail flesh. "Exploding" is more of a classic SF story, while "Flesh" concentrates on human emotion and the nature of hope in the face of tragedy.

"Think Tank" by Stephen McClelland is an almost nostalgic exploration of Cambridge, combined with a humorous look at near-future business consulting. Its tone resembles some of Willis's works.

"The Final Remake of the Return of Little Latin Larry, With a Completely Re-Mastered Soundtrack and the Original Audience" by Pat Cadigan is a humorous but pointless story of a future where chemical recovery of ancestral memories becomes an entertainment industry.

"Getting to Know You" by David Marusek is an intriguing vignette of a future where your income determines how long you live, and enough money can grant immortality. The story uses a flawed AI assistant, a bit like Tanith Lee's Silver Metal Lover, to explore the age-old problems of loneliness and hope.

"New Ninevehs" by Gregory Benford, paints a chillingly plausible future or a society sharply separated into illiterate, computer-guided masses, and the complacent scientific elite. This story, while also relying to some extent on tricks, is the only one that could be expanded into a novel.

Note: the book was published in London, and is probably available through Nokia or UK booksellers.

Overall: 4;

Copyright date 1997, Horizon House Publications (Horizon House), June 1997, Trade paperback, 312 pages

ISBN: 0-9530648-0-8 Order from: Amazon.com