The collection is Fast Forward 1, edited by Lou Anders, author of one Star Trek genre novel, hundreds of articles, and editor of several well-known anthologies. The expected series features hard SF, and the story ideas cover quite a range of imagined futures. Nearly all the stories launch upon the synergy of two or more significant elements of those futures.
- "YFL-500" by Robert Charles Wilson — Almost everyone is on the dole, paid unemployed because machines do all work, including most intellectual work; art made from data is a unique medium in which AIs cannot work.
- "The Girl Hero's Mirror Says He's Not the One" by Justina Robson — The brain can be upgraded as simply as the automatic upgrades for MS Windows that appear almost daily; the world is at war between defenders and meme authors, including well-trained assassins.
- "Small Offerings" by Paolo Bacigalupi — Pollution is rampant, and nearly all first pregnancies are too damaged to live, but a fetus is known to take everything it can from the mother, including most of her stored pollutants...
- "They Came from the Future" by Robyn Hitchcock — Time travel turns out not to be worth the bother.
- "Plotters and Shooters" by Kage Baker — A balls-to-the-wall riff on "Revenge of the nerds" fantasies.
- "Aristotle OS" by Tony Ballantyne — Did you ever think of a computer's (actually an Operating System's) model of the world as a Platonic model (shadows on the wall)?
- "The Something-Dreaming Game" by Elizabeth Bear — For some kids, the strangle game may really connect to another dimension. I sure hope no youngsters ever read this story; it could be literally fatal!
- "No More Stories" by Stephen Baxter — Solipsism turned on its head.
- "Time of the Snake" by A. M. Dellamonica — An alien invasion and collaboration story with more than one ending twist.
- "The Terror Bard" by Larry Niven and Brenda Cooper — Five billion years hence, the sun is dying; million-year-old humans and a mysterious alien ship collaborate to save what can be saved. A hymn of love, betrayal and forgiveness.
- "p dolce" by Louise Marley — Time travel imagined as "insertion" into the past...in more than one way. p dolce means, "soft & sweet", literally, but what did Brahms mean by it, so frequently?
- "Jesus Christ, Reanimator" by Ken MacLeod — The Second Coming as a banal re-sacrifice of Jesus. It's been done before, and better, but this version has an interesting take.
- "Solomon's Choice" by Mike Resnick and Nancy Kress — Give us a few thousand years and interstellar travel: How many human species will there be, and how divergent will they become?
- "Sanjeev and Robotwallah" by Ian McDonald — A well-told tale of survival in a war-torn future India. Many Hindi words are simply thrown in, and must be guessed from context. After a while, I figured that "wallah" is pidgin for "warrior", but I am not totally sure.
- "A Smaller Government" by Pamela Sargent — Physical size is but one characteristic that could be coupled to character more literally. This story just opens that door.
- "Pride" by Mary A. Turzillo — Another take on a Jurassic Park resuscitation program.
- "I Caught Intelligence" by Robyn Hitchcock — A poem that takes more work o parse than I was willing to employ. I love poetry, but have yet to see much SF poetry that I can enjoy.
- "Settlements" by George Zebrowski — Almost a time travel story; descendants of our ancestors of the mid-Pleistocene, living among aliens who visited, return to supervise our survival.
- "The Hour of the Sheep" by Gene Wolfe — So when can a warrior let down his guard?
- "Sideways from Now" by John Meaney — Quantum entanglement-mediated telepathy and telempathy lead to a parallel-universe scenario.
- "Wikiworld" by Paul Di Filippo — Today a Wiki is a collaborative web site, just about as democratic an enterprise as is possible (with a bit of oversight to avert total anarchy). In the future, the principle extends to businesses, government, family structure...
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