The stories are not simply about wish fulfillment. They involve what happens once you get your wish. The collection is Virtual Unrealities by Alfred Bester, stories selected by Robert Silverberg, Byron Preiss, and Keith R.A. Decandido.
A stack of ideas:
- Disappearing Act - Some shell-shocked veterans are teleporting in time and space. But are they visiting real times and spaces? Secondary idea, relevant today, AKA Lincoln's Dilemma: Can the republic be saved without destroying it?
- Oddy and Id - If some people are truly accident-prone, can there be an opposite, a "fortune-prone"? Can there be more than one?
- Star Light, Star Bright - Can the world survive the childhood of a truly all-powerful genius?
- 5,271,009 - Can an Artist every truly mature? What would it take to make one do so?
- Fondly Fahrenheit - A perfect robot among imperfect people…or is it>?
- Hobson's Choice - If you had to live in another place and time, what would youpick? Would it matter?
- Of Time and Third Avenue - An almanac from forty years in your future is dropped in your lap. How would you use it? Could you live with yourself?
- Time is the Traitor - They say you can't go back. If you did go back, are you the same you?
- The Men Who Murdered Mohammed - An exploration of time as a purely subjective phenomenon, and I do mean subjective.
- The Pi Man - A Compensator is a device that smooths out glitches. Here, a person is a Compensator for the Universe. It leads to interesting compulsions.
- They Don't Make Life Like They Used To - The last man and last woman on earth, with rather unexpected results.
- Will You Wait - Selling your soul to the Devil ain't what it used to be.
- The Flowered Thundermug - Living out of one's time, a common theme of Bester's. The future has a very weird understanding of its past (today).
- Adam and No Eve - The last man on Earth, because he wasn't on Earth when his new catalyst released all the nuclear forces in iron atoms. There's more left than I'd expect.
- And 3½ to Go - An uncompleted story, a fragment that ironically ends, "It's much easier to begin a thing than to finish it."
- Galatea Galante - Pygmalion with a twist.
- The Devil Without Glasses - We know the human race is largely asleep to reality. Among those trying to wake us up, which ones are the good guys?
Be careful what you wish for…
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