Planet Stories (One)

Cosmic Tales: Adventures in the Sol System (Baen Books, ISBN 0-7434-8832-6). Edited by T.K.F. Weisskopf.

Rummaging through your book collection is a dangerous thing. Before you know it, you start re-reading a book you've read previously and you are on your way!

McAndrew and The Law (Charles Sheffield): As I hinted above, I'm almost reading this book by accident. I had just re-read this story last year, as part of a re-read of all the McAndrew stories that had been published before Sheffield's death. Here's my review of the tales. An enjoyable little tale that explores The Law, a.k.a., The Second Law of Thermodynamics. Alas, re-reading it just makes me sad (again) that Sheffield is not around to give us more of these stories. And no McAndrew novel. Drat. Darn. Damn. Etc.

Jailhouse Rock (James P. Hogan): A story that introduces us to the character that Hogan uses in the novel Martian Knightlife. It had some echoes of classic short stories by Arthur C. Clarke, but I only enjoyed it to a extent. I'll probably like it more after I read the novel (so many books, so little time).

Windows (Jack McDevitt): A sad story that ends on a slightly hopeful note. Mankind explored much of the Solar System before pulling back and leaving the exploration to robots. A young girl wonders why we're letting robots do everything, why the spirit of adventure seems to have left humanity.

Cleaning Lady and Are We There Yet? (Travis S. Taylor): This was my first encounter with Taylor's writings, as a result of this story I picked up Warp Speed (in hardcover, something I almost never do for a new author!) and Quantum Connection. The story draws heavily on Taylor's real-life experiences in designing some "exotic" propulsion systems for NASA. It adds the danger of near-Earth objects, terraforming Mars (actually using those Earth-orbit crossing asteroids to a good use) and eco-terrorists. While I've enjoyed Taylor's other solo and co-written works, I wish he would visit this near-future, hard SF setting again with either more stories or a novel!

Communications Problem (Margaret Ball): I've got a vague recollection of reading other stuff by Margaret Ball, but nothing that has stuck. This one was a lot of fun. She takes the optimistic outlook of some of the High Frontier folks and takes it to a logical conclusion. Sure, every culture or splinter group can have an O'Neil colony. But does that mean they'll get along? The main character, Elaine, works as a combination traffic cop and resource allocator for communications bandwidth among the various colonies. When one broadcasts Hindu chants too much, another one complains, etc. Toss in a friend who is trying to fix her up, and a client from another colony who keeps sending her flowering trees and kittens (which drives her hyper-allergic boss nuts) and you've got an amusing and light (lite?) tale on the frontier.

High Roller (Allen M. Steele): This story is set in Allen M. Steele's future history of short stories (e.g., Sex and Violence in Zero-G: The Complete Near-Space Stories) and several novels (e.g., Orbital Decay, Lunar Descent, etc.). After pretty much swearing off the series some time ago, it is nice to see him make another contribution to it! How can you knock off the largest casino on the Moon owned by the largest crime bo....errr..entrepreneur...in the Solar System? And get away with it?

Moon Monkeys (Wen Spencer): Why would anybody send an alphabet's worth of monkeys to a lunar colony? The ultimate answer is less satisfying than this pretty funny story. Slipstick and macabre humor as various monkeys die in and out of the colony.

Earth's First Improved Chimp Gets Job as a Janitor (John Ringo): The only story in the collection that either does not take place in space or deals primarily with space. Nonetheless, it was a fairly good tale of a teenaged improved primate trying to fit in with normals and his friendship with an another improved primate. Ringo sprinkles the story with a lot of backstory that has you wondering if there will be a future installment to explore this setting at more length.

Time in Purgatory (Rebeccas Lickiss): When I first read this story, I thought it was the weakest story in the collection. This time through, the story fared no better. Sure, there is a strong analogy between settling the Solar System and the Old West or the American Frontier. But there's a fine line between what works in science fiction using that analogy and what does not work. The best example is probably the short-lived television series Firefly and its motion picture sequel Serenity. Some episodes of the show, heck, most episodes of the show used the Western motif and it worked. Others (The Train Job) did not work. This story is also set in that motif, and it just doesn't work. It seems just plain silly as a result.

The Cutting Fringe and The Science in the Story (Paul Chafe): A updating, sort of, of Heinlein's classic The Man Who Sold the Moon. Instead of the Moon, we have a lot of cutting-edge science and technology and the asteroids. It's a enjoyable and fast-moving tale, weakened by a slightly silly government conspiracy sub-plot (which could have been excised from the story). The accompanying article does a good job of explaining the why to the gadgets. I'll be looking for more by Chafe in the future.

Blood's a Rover (Gregory Benford): An excerpt from his novel Beyond Infinity and probably the longest contribution to the collection. Beyond Infinity itself is an expansion of Benford's sequel to Arthur C. Clarke's classic Against the Fall of Night, a piece called Beyond the Fall of Night. Benford was apparently unsatisfied with the amount of space he had to explore the concepts he brought into the story, so eventually expanded it into the novel. The story is different from the others in the collection in that it is set much (much!) further into the future than any other story in the book. It has an interesting plot, but is weakened by the fact that it is an excerpt from a novel and you are dropped into the middle of the action. I enjoyed the story (and enjoyed the original version), but some will find it hard to get into, so it is a weaker contribution to the collection.

So there we have it. Overall a very good collection. Only one story that I was unsatisfied with. I'm happy to see that the series has continued with a second volume and I hope to see more beyond that! A collection of rousing hard SF. We need more of that!

Made up of: Introduction (T.K.F. Weisskopf); McAndrew and The Law (Charles Sheffield); Jailhouse Rock (James P. Hogan); Windows (Jack McDevitt); Cleaning Lady (Travis S. Taylor); Are We There Yet? (Travis S. Taylor); Communications Problem (Margaret Ball); High Roller (Allen M. Steele); Moon Monkeys (Wen Spencer); Earth's First Improved Chimp Gets Job as a Janitor (John Ringo); Time in Purgatory (Rebecca Lickiss); The Cutting Fringe (Paul Chafe); The Science in the Story (Paul Chafe); Blood's a Rover (Gregory Benford).

Counts as 13 entries in the 2006 Short Story Project.