read about half; none of them gripping - best was the Bujold about the woman caring for those killed in a space battle

One of the better sf collections I've read lately.
The bad:
"Mazer in Prison" by Orson Scott Card. Mazer Rackham, the first human to defeat the Buggers, is waiting in a near-lightspeed ship for the Buggers to return, or the next human commander to be found. Very disappointing, like most of Card's work in his Ender's Game universe. The story is basically a back and forth of "I knew you knew that I knew that you knew, so I..."

"Life-Suspension" by LE Modesitt, Jr. Ugh.

"Someone Is Stealing the Great Throne Rooms of the Galaxy" by Harry Turtledove. Like when a 13year old gets "high" off of pixie-sticks and posts "hilarious" and "wacky" crackfic on ff.net.

"Twilight of the Gods" by John C Wright. Clunky, melodramatic--like someone took JRR Tolkien and ran his dialog through a stupidizer. Randomly chosen sentence: "Several of the knights stared at the black-cloaked stranger in awe." How did this get published?


The Fine:
"Carthago Delenda Est" by Genevieve Valentine. Interesting, with moments of tragedy and humor. Diplomats wait generations for the Carthago delegation.

"Terra-Exulta" by SL Gilbow. A linguist talks about his work in destroying various alien life-forms.

"Different Day" by K Tempest Bradford. Gets her point across about how average, every-day people and politics would react to aliens. It seems like it tries a little too hard to be folksy--but I expect a lot from KTB's stories, so perhaps I'm judging this to an unreasonable standard.

"Spirey and the Queen" by Alastair Reynolds. War in space is not always what it seems. Far too many double-crosses and plot twists, but I like the science and the ideas he uses.

"Pardon Our Conquest" by Alan Dean Foster. The surrender ceremony of the Empire to the Commonwealth. I would undoubtedly have enjoyed this more if A)I had read Foster's Commonwealth stories or B)the differences between Empire and Commonwealth weren't presented so heavy-handedly.

"Symbiont" by Robert Silverberg. A young soldier is infected with another life form. Years later, he begs an old friend to put him out of his misery. Pretty dated, and there's not much to the characterization or plot, though the world-building is ok.

"The Ship Who Returned" by Anne McCaffrey. Helva-the-brainship has recently lost her brawn, Niall. Stricken with grief, she has created an unreasonably sophisticated holographic replica of him. They banter while they try to save the religious colonists of Ravel from Kolnari pirates. Really heterosexist and unimaginative, but not terrible.

"The Shoulders of Giants" by Robert J Sawyer. A colony ship arrives at a planet to find that while they were in crystasis, Earth already colonized it.

"The Other Side of Jordan" by Allen Steele. A young man reconnects with an old flame after years apart. I have no idea why he wrote this story. There's no point to it: no emotional climax, no character construction, no plot.

"Like They Always Been Free" by Georgina Li. An atypical love story. Hot and well-written, but there's not much to it.

"Eskhara" by Trent Hergenrader. Very clearly inspired/modeled by the US troops' occupation in Iraq.


The Good:
"Aftermaths" by Lois McMaster Bujold. A callow pilot watches as a med tech retrieves and identifies bodies from the recently finished war.

"Prisons" by Kevin J Anderson and Doug Beason. A prison revolt has succeeded, and the former prisoners have stopped all export of a drug that can only be made on their world. The Praesidentrix will stop at nothing to punish the prisoners for their temerity. (This was a weird story, because I felt like we were supposed to root for the Praesidentrix and the Warden, but in point of fact I thought the prisoners were in the right.)

"Warship" by GRR Martin and George Guthridge. The last surviving member of a crew killed by disease must destroy the ship to prevent contagion to reach Earth. A good ending.

"Swanwatch" by Yoon Ha Lee. A young woman is exiled to bear witness to ships that commit honorable suicide into black holes. The only way to escape the exile is to create a masterwork, which she sets out to do.

"My She" by Mary Rosenblum. The unnamed, unnoticed servant of a Speaker begins to realize the danger her Speaker is in--and just what the Speakers do, after all. Really interesting story in which tradition and religion is used to cloak uneven power.

"The Culture Archivist" by Jeremiah Tolbert. A standout of the collection. As he says, "I started thinking about what a realistically capitalistic federation would look like, and the story was born." Hilarious and poignant.

"The One with the Interstellar Group Consciousness" by James Alan Gardner. Very funny, and well thought out.

"Golubash, or Wine-Blood-War-Elegy" by Cathrynne M Valente. A tale of capitalist greed and strangleholds, as told by a wine merchant. Fantastic world building, beautiful language, and an engaging story. ( )

Federations
Author: Bujold, Card, Martin, McCaffrey, Reynolds, Silverberg, Valentine, Modesitt Jr, Turtledove, Anderson, Beason, Bradford, Wright, Guthridge, Lee, Foster, Silverberg, Rosenblum, Sawyer, Tolbert, Steele, Li, Hergenrader, Gardner, Valente,
Publisher: Prime Books
Date: 2009
Pgs: 379

REVIEW MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS

Summary:
Vast interstellar societies and the challenges facing them. Federations stories mix new fiction alongside reprints that represent what interstellar SF is capable of. Space is big.

Genre:
Adventure
Alternate History
Apocalypse
Cyberpunk
Disaster
Fiction
Military
Multiverse
Science fiction
Short stories
Space
Space opera
War

Why this book:
The cover. And the Wil Wheaton blurb on the back.
______________________________________________________________________
Mazer in Prison by Orson Scott Card
Favorite Character:
Mazer Rackham, war hero and deep space traveller, and Rip Van Winkle on a long trip through time on his roundtrip way to Earth and command a fleet that is on its way to enemy territory. The idea of his being launched on a trip like this so that he ages in conjunction with his crews as they race toward the enemy and will be of an age with his crew despite everyone else on Earth aging multiple decades in the interim.

The Feel:
The feel is claustrophobic through the early stages opening into infinity as Mazer and Graff make their play.

Favorite Scene:
When Mazer realizes the subtext in the previously omitted letters from home beamed to him on his relativistic trip as decades pass on Earth while a bare year has passed on his ship and the ship observing his upset tries to sedate him and reports his condition back to the panel of shrinks on Earth. Reminded me of the scene in Apollo 13 when Tom Hank’s Lovell ripped the sensors out of his space suit because he was tired of people knowing everything that was going on with him.

Pacing:
The pace of the short was great.

Hmm Moments:
Sending the commander into space at relativistic speeds on a trip to nowhere so that he maintains time with the fleets outbound from Earth for the Formic worlds.

Mazer’s take-it-or-leave-it was incredibly awesome.
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Carthago Delenda Est by Genevieve Valentine
The Feel:
Sort of a United Nations of space at the behest of an advanced civilization that drops into the local group and broadcast for all to hear, come join us. And then, leaves the locals hanging between contacts. The Carthaginian is on its way, but hasn’t arrived yet.

Hmm Moments:
The cloning ambassadors thing instead of having to send new ones out from Earth is odd. Cool...just odd. And just that quick, I’m confused, are the Yemenis clones or are they androids? Guess that will become clearer deeper into the text. They are clones. One of the aliens did send an AI instead of a flesh and blood being.

Clone ambassadors in deep space with other alien ships close at hand waiting on an “all powerful” alien to show up while keeping the peace between all those waiting for the arrival. What could possibly go wrong?

Casting call:
Reese Witherspoon as a young clone of Yemeni just awakened. And Helen Mirren as an older clone just before her expiration.
______________________________________________________________________________
Life-Suspension by L. E. Modesitt Jr
The Feel:
The text lends itself to a Godzilla movie cadence. Imagine the text in the narrative voice of the male lead from one of the Godzilla movies and the text flows better, for me anyway. I know how odd that seems. But just straight reading it, the flow is choppy. Employing this device makes the text more palatable. Not sure if this was the intention of the author or if this is the author’s normal style.

Plot Holes/Out of Character:
Flight Captain Ghenji Yamato’s physical description of the new officer entering the mess, which is presented as an inner monologue, doesn’t read like anyone would talk to themselves. The description is stilted.

Maybe I’m just being thick today, but I couldn’t figure out what Captain Rokujo Yukionna is/was. I looked up Yukionna and discovered that she is a snow ghost in Japanese folklore. She drains the life, vampire like, and takes away the heat of the body in cold weather. She is a winter spirit. This needed to be clearer within the text.
______________________________________________________________________________
Terra-Exulta by S L Gilbow
The Feel:
This is like a Reverse Earth Day diatribe hidden inside a discussion of language wrapped in a sci fi template. It’s grim. Very grim when viewed through that lens.
______________________________________________________________________________
Aftermaths by Lois McMaster Bujold
Favorite Character:
A wet behind the ears Pilot Officer on his first real mission and he’s doing recovery trips across dead battlefields recovering the bodies of troops from both sides. It would have to be a demoralizing bit of work for the newly minted officer, would be tough enough for the old hand who had been in the service for a long while.

The Feel:
Creepy. Wandering around a battlefield with the dead and the scavengers.

Hmm Moments:
The idea of carrion wagons crisscrossing interstellar battlefields to recover the bodies of soldiers and sailors. That’s not a concept that I recall running across in sci fi before. I’ve seen it used in Civil War and Revolutionary War stories.
______________________________________________________________________________
Prisons by Kevin J Anderson and Doug Beason
Favorite Character:
The Warden

Amu, the revolutionary.

Character I Most Identified With:
The Warden, the AI who while he did oversee the prison also was overseeing the terraforming of the Planet Bastille...and the production and process of ubermindist, a galactic drug that is very well received on the black market across the Federation.

The Feel:
One of the villains was an actual villain. The others were just people caught in the whirlwind of history.

Favorite Scene:
The climax and the aftermath. There are all kinds of prisons.

Pacing:
Well paced.

Hmm Moments:
I wonder if the the Federation’s Prasidentarix is a ubermindist addict and what that and her consort’s death all have to do with the uprising on Bastille. Excellent climax and denouement clear this up. Well done.
______________________________________________________________________________
Different Day by K Tempest Bradford
The Feel:
Too short. Reads more like the idea for a story than the actual story. I like the concept, just needed more.
______________________________________________________________________________
Twilight of the Gods by John C Wright
Favorite Character:
The last Watchman, his duty is to be carried through even if all is lost.

Least Favorite Character:
Acting Captain Weston II, he is every privileged silver spoon who thought that by virtue of birth he was chosen to lead that you’ve ever encountered in your life.

The Feel:
I like the idea of Wagner’s Ring Cycle in space.

Favorite Scene:
When the traitor Captain returns to the throne room and faced down the Acting Captain and went all Jedi on him and his knights in the darkness.

Pacing:
Great pace. Lots of action. This could have been much longer and still been awesome.

Hmm Moments:
How have we become so ignorant so soon?

My master said once that the Computer spoke to all the children, and instructed them. When the Computer fell silent, there were no written things aboard with which to teach the children. Much was lost; more was lost in the confusion of the wars and darkenings. What we know, we know by spoken lore; but in the past, all men knew the priestly arts, and could read the signs

That’s poignant in juxtaposition with what the future could hold IRL.
______________________________________________________________________________
Warship by George R R Martin and George Guthridge
Pacing:
Good pace, but what happened next. The ship did what the ship did and then...a bit of unsatisfying.

Hmm Moments:
Creepy when he uncovered the body of his dead lover and kissed her kneecap. I was worried where this part of the story was going.
______________________________________________________________________________
Spirey and the Queen by Alastair Reynolds
Favorite Character:
Spirey is us caught up in the flux of duty, honor, and what is right when all three don’t equal out.

Character I Most Identified With:
Spirey. He doesn’t want to surrender his humanity...perceived humanity for comfort in the ship’s aquatic interior atmosphere. He’s stuck in his job. He’s doing his duty. And he’s being challenged by the evidence before his eyes about what his duty truly is. And is he really seeing what he’s seeing or did the nanospores insides his suit survive the purge and infect him.

The Feel:
Love the concept. Two warring forces fighting over a nascent solar system filled with mineral riches. Winner is going to mine it. But the war has been going on forever, generation on generation. Intentional mutations and augmentations. Cyborgs. A.I.s taking control.

Favorite Scene:
Spirey’s surprise when he encounters the defector after crash-jumping to the splinter. And his ship having been taken over by the nanospores is trying to cook him from orbit with its particle beams.

Hmm Moments:
Posthuman men falling into barbarism while machines fight their wars. And across the Spiral, posthuman women who have evolved out of their need for men and bioengineered them out of existence, while they think they fight their war, but the machines fight for them too. And a wasp machine queen intelligence throwing out Noah’s arks into the depth of the Spiral’s oort cloud on long orbits to return them to the Spiral when the planets are fully formed and they can be settled. Wow! Just wow!

That’s a great twist on the evolution of the A.I.s.
______________________________________________________________________________
Pardon Our Conquest by Alan Dean Foster
Favorite Character:
Admiral Gorekii for that last line if nothing else, but he’s excellent throughout.

The Feel:
Love the “what the heck is going on here” feeling that the representatives of the Commonwealth engender in the Admiral.

Hmm Moments:
“...this war. We lost-didn’t we?” That made me laugh.
______________________________________________________________________________
Symbiont by Robert Silverberg
The Feel:
It’s a decent story about duty and honor.

Plot Holes/Out of Character:
But did he get it or not at the end?
______________________________________________________________________________
The Ship Who Returned by Anne McCaffrey
Favorite Character:
The ship is an excellent character.

Favorite Scene:
The rise of the flora

Why isn’t there a screenplay?
So much of the Ship books is internal dialogue against the backdrop of action happening off-screen or near screen that I’m not sure that it would translate.
______________________________________________________________________________
The Shoulders of Giants by Robert J Sawyer
Character I Most Identified With:
Toby MacGregor. He’s the narrator and the voice that leads us through the story. He’s our in to the world of giants.

The Feel:
This has that classic sci fi flavor.

Favorite Scene:
The moment when MacGregor and Woo realize that it isn’t vulcanism causing those lights on their target planet’s dark side.

Hmm Moments:
Love the Rip Van Winkle / Vance Astrovik / tortoise and the hare aspect of this story.
______________________________________________________________________________
The Culture Archivist by Jeremiah Tolbert
Favorite Character:
Bertie, the archivist, moving around the galaxy ahead of the swarm of the UP.

The Feel:
Join or be assimilated, no one has a body of uniqueness. If you aren’t conformed, you don’t belong and you are absorbed. Even when you conform, you are absorbed. Helluva concept. I disagree with the author on the concept of capitalism being about conformity. When it works best, it is absorbing culture and making it part of itself. The conformity here is more how I picture Soviet communism.

Favorite Scene:
When Captain Morgana recognizes Bertie and cries out his name and his non-human form attempts to respond as his human body would if aroused.

Pacing:
The pace is great.

Hmm Moments:
Love the idea that there are nodes out there with the “real” identiies of all these absorbed cultures, just waiting for their rediscovery by the drones who may escape the UP and rebegin again. The archivist’s job sounds very pyrrhic. The rebeginnings/regenesis may only last until the UP catches up with them again, but then, those nodes still exist out there waiting to be discovered again and causing another revolution.

The mindless Redshirts, basically flesh golem cannon fodder. Greatness.
______________________________________________________________________________
The Other Side of Jordan by Allen Steele
Favorite Character:
The narrator is great. His adventure and love story is very well told.

The Feel:
There is a great sense of wonder at the universe that the narrator is moving through.

Favorite Scene:
The climax scene, though I did see the storytelling part coming.

Pacing:
Greatness.

Hmm Moments:
The way that the danaii deal with warfare on The Hex.

Why isn’t there a screenplay?
Would make an awesome movie, Message in the Bottle in space.

Casting call:
Would love to see Brad Pitt as the Narrator and Angelina Jolie as Jordan. Would make a beautiful movie. The love story would work for all genders. Great story.
______________________________________________________________________________
Like They Always Been Free by Gerogina Li
Favorite Character:
Kinger and Boy are great characters. Kinger’s voice is so well communicated I can almost hear it.

The Feel:
This feels like Shawshank.

Pacing:
The story is very short. But the pace is incredible. It flows so fast that the short pages fly passed.

Hmm Moments:
I’m so happy that there wasn’t a final twist that undid the happiness of the ending. I was afraid there was going to be one. That feeling of impending doom was upon me as I read the final pages.
_____________________________________________________________________________
Eskhara by Trent Hergenrader
Favorite Character:
Xenologist Kiernan. He’s what you’d hope a diplomat would be in space.

Least Favorite Character:
Rauder comes across as every hard ass, ever. Blow it up. Kill ‘em all. A stereotype.

Character I Most Identified With:
Kiernan.

The Feel:
Feels real. Could be a story about a representative of the Crown in a foreign land trying to keep a militant regular Army officer from burning everything down before he has a chance to find out what it is.

And it’s a tragedy.

Hmm Moments:
The planet naming conventions.
______________________________________________________________________________
The One with the Interstellar Group Consciousness by James Alan Gardner
Favorite Character:
Both the Union and the Didge are great characters in possibly the weirdest romantic comedy of all time.

Least Favorite Character:
The Abundance reminds me of my ex.

The Feel:
A Douglas Adams rom com.

Favorite Scene:
When the Union realizes that the Abundance isn’t all she’s cracked up to be.

Pacing:
The pace is great. I flew through the shortness of it.

Hmm Moments:
I kept wanting to read the line “and this was regarded as being a really bad idea” or some variation of that.

Why isn’t there a screenplay?
This couldn’t translate to the screen.
______________________________________________________________________________
Golubash, or Wine-Blood War-Elegy by Catherynne M Valente
Favorite Character:
Our narrator and winetaster in chief

The Feel:
The illicit, illegal wine tasting history lesson is an awesome way to do world building for the background.

Favorite Scene:
Love the end. Love it.

Hmm Moments:
Possibly one of the oddest sci fi stories I’ve ever read. Interstellar wine wars...really? And now I’m thinking about writing a story about cheese smuggling...in space. It’s a cool concept and wrapped up in the power of corporations in the sci fi environ.

The Hyphens of Golubash could be elementals or parts of the Hyperion Cantos. Excellent stuff.

Why isn’t there a screenplay?
Considering how much of the story happens to Uncle Such-n-such so many years ago or Grandma This or Cousin That, the focus of the movie would skip around. Wouldn’t be impossible on the big screen, but the audience desire to be lead by the nose in too many films and studios wanting to make things as simple as possible would fight against anyone wanting to sink into the escapism of it. Would anyone really want to watch an outer space travelogue and history lesson with aliens using wine as its underpinnings? I wouldn’t have thought so either, but the story is good and well written.
______________________________________________________________________________
Last Page Sound:
This was a great collection of sci fi.

Author Assessment:
There are some incredible authors involved in this collection. Some I’ll no doubt read again. And some I might not. By and large, this has been a well written collection.

Editorial Assessment:
I give full marks to the editors.

Knee Jerk Reaction:
real genre classic

Disposition of Book:
Irving Public Library
South Campus
Irving, TX

Dewey Decimal System:
F FED

Would recommend to:
everyone
______________________________________________________________________________ ( )

I'd been looking forward to reading this. I love space opera, I love aliens and space ships and strange planets. However, as a whole, I have to admit I was a bit disappointed with this, and wouldn't rate the entire collection more than 'OK'.

There were three stories which I thought were outstanding:

Prisons, by Kevin Anderson and Doug Beason
Symbiont by Robert Silverberg (by whom I've yet to read a piece of fiction I didn't like)
Golubash, or Wine-Blood-War-Elegy by Catherynne M. Valente

Others I thought were OK, but in my opinion there were quite a few too many stories by big-name authors that sounded like they were either an advertisement for their longer work, were too reliant on my having read the longer work, with too much infodumping of backstory, or were just plain lacklustre and should probably have stayed in respective authors' trunks. ( )

Neat collection of sci-fi stuff with a bit of a star trek feel if that makes sense (they also mention star wars, but for some reason this felt mostly more trek to me). Rather than read straight through (as I often do), I found myself bouncing around in this one a lot as various stories appealed to me on different days. I'm a bit worried I might have missed some as a result, so maybe I'll pick it up again in a year or two when they won't all be fresh in my mind and I can read it cover to cover.