Natural Shorts

Henry Gee (editor); Futures from Nature: 100 Speculative Fictions from the Pages of the Leading Science Journal (Tor Books; November 2007; ISBN 978-0-7653-1805-3; cover by Howard Grossman).

This book consists of 100 short works (plus a short introduction) from the pages of the well-known and considered science journal Nature (I spotted it at the bookstore and this is one that is constantly recommended to me...but at $10.00/issue and about $200.00/year, I'll have to pass!). Gee ran short (very short) stories in the magazine as a way to get readers to think. The stories range from very good to very bland; not surprisingly, the best are by established science fiction writers. Others, not so much (for example, why did it take ten...I kid you not...ten writers to come up with the short work A Concrete Example?). The stories are arranged alphabetically by author. Sometimes this ends up with an interesting combination (like two stories on post-humanism or trans-humanism coming together), but in most cases, there are no consistent themes.

I found the book better to be read a few stories at a time or even one story per day. They're short...sometimes too short, but some are packed with an idea that expands within you given some time. If you cram too many into one sitting, the unpacking does not happen.

Made up of: Introduction: Nostalgia for the Future (Henry Gee); Cognitive Ability and the Light Bulb (Brian Aldiss); Don't Imitate (Gilles Amon); Check Elastic Before Jumping (Neal Asher); Twenty2 (Nate Balding); Under Martian Ice (Stephen Baxter); Party Smart Card (Barrington J. Bayley) RAM SHIFT PHASE 2 (Greg Bear); A Life with a Semisent (Gregory Benford); Damned If You Don't (Lucy Berman); The Punishment Fits the Crime (David Berreby); Toy Planes (Tobias S. Buckell); A Concrete Example (J. Casti, J.-P. Boon, C. Djerassi, J. Johnson, A. Lovett, T. Norretranders, V. Patera, C. Sommerer, R. Taylor and S. Thurner); The Aching of Dion Harper (Arthur Chrenkoff); Improving the Neighborhood (Arthur C. Clarke); Omphalosphere: New York 2057 (Jack Cohen); Picasso's Cat (Ron Collins); My Grandfather's River (Brenda Cooper); Sandcastles: A Dystopia (Kathryn Cramer); Adam's Hot Dogs at the End of the World (Jeff Crook); The Party's Over (Penelope Kim Crowther); Transport of Delight (Roland Denison); The Perfect Lover (Paul Di Filippo); Printcrime (Cory Doctorow); A Brief History of Death Switches (David Eagleman); Only Connect (Greg Egan); At the Zoo (Warren Ellis); The Liquidators (Michae Garrett Farrelly); In the Days of the Comet (John M. Ford); Ars Longa, Vita Brevis (James Alan Gardner); Are We Not Men? (Henry Gee); It Never Rains in Vr (John Gilbert); Gordy Gave Me Your Name (Jim Giles); Nostalgia (Hiromi Goto); Spawn of Satan? (Nicola Griffith); Take Over (Jon Coutrenay Grimwood); Speak, Geek (Eileen Gunn); Heartwired (Joe Haldeman); The Forever Kitten (Peter F. Hamilton); The Road to the Year 3000 (Harry Harrison); Operation Tesla (Jeff Hecht); Making the Sale (Fredric Heeren); Subpoenaed in Syracuse (Tom Holt); Men Sell Not Such in Any Town (Nalo Hopkinson); Total Internal Reflection (Gwyneth Jones); Bringing Up Baby (Ellen Klages): Semi-autonomous (Jim Kling); Product Development (Nancy Kress); I Love Liver: A Romance (Larissa Lai); Avatars in Space (Geoffrey A. Landis); COMP.BASILISK FAQ (David Langford); Gathering of the Clans (Reinaldo Jose Lopes); Taking Good Care of Myself (Ian R. MacLeod); Undead Again (Ken MacLeod); Words, Words, Words (Elisabeth Malartre); My Morning Glory (David Marusek); Don't Mention the "F" Word (Neil Mathur); Meat (Paul McAuley); The Candidate (Jack McDevitt); A Modest Proposal for the Perfection of Nature (Vonda N. McIntyre); The Republic of George's Island (Donna McMahon); The Stars My Incarnation (Robert A. Metzger); The Computiful Game (Paul Steven Miller); Oscar Night, 2054 (Syne Mitchell); The Visible Men (Michael Moorcock); The Albian Message (Oliver Morton); Photons Do Not Lie (Euan Nisbet); Stranger in the Night (Salvador Nogueira); Tick-Tock Curly-Wurly (Gareth Owens); Daddy's Slight Miscalculation (Ashley Pellegrino); Brain Drain (Frederik Pohl); Great Unreported Discoveries No. 163 (Mike Resnick); Feeling Rejected (Alastair Reynolds); The Trial of Jeremy Owens (Peter Roberts); Prometheus Unbound, at Last (Kim Stanley Robinson); Dreadnought (Justina Robson); Falling (Benjamin Rosenbaum); Panpsychism Proved (Rudy Rucker); The Abdication of Pope Mary III (Robert J. Sawyer); The Charge-up Man (Catherine H. Shaffer); From the Desk of Jarrod Foster (Biren Shah); Pluto Story (Robert Silverberg); Madame Bovary, C'est Moi (Dan Simmons); Tuberculosis Bacteria Join UN (Joan Slonczewski) For He on Honeydew Hath Fed... (Paul Smaglik); A Man of the Theater (Norman Spinrad); Ivory Tower (Bruce Sterling); Play It Again, Psam (Ian Stewart); MAXO Signals (Charles Stross); Golden Year (Igor Teper); Paratext (Scarlett Thomas); Murphy's Cat (Joan D. Vinge); Win a Nobel Prize! (Vernor Vinge); A Leap of Faith (Theo von Hohenheim); Nadia's Nectar (Ian Watson); Statler Pulchrifex (Matt Weber); All Is Not Lost (Scott Westerfeld); The Key (Ian Whates); The Godmother Protocols (Heather M. Whitney); The Great Good-Bye (Robert Charles Wilson); Pigs on the Wing (K. Erik Ziemelis).

Counts as 101 entries in the 2009 Year in Shorts.