Scan barcode
A review by tricapra
The New Voices of Science Fiction by Jacob Weisman, Hannu Rajaniemi
5.0
Sometimes, you read a short story and you come away feeling that you've just been part of something important. It's a powerful feeling. Like an author has shared a secret with you, whispered into your ear something profound. A truth you didn't know that you were holding in your heart, an idea you hadn't yet polished into belief. Well, this collection managed to give me that sensation multiple times. Rajaniemi and Weisman have curated something beautiful here.
The title is a bold claim, "The New Voices of Science Fiction." You could not be blamed for being skeptical. But as an avid fan of the genre, I feel it has lived up to its promises, and more. After almost every story in this collection I scrambled to GoodReads to follow an author or mark a first novel as 'to read'. I feel like this anthology has turned me on to authors that I'll be following for many years to come, a series of stars on the rise.
The collection opens with a story that could best be described as a Black Mirror cautionary, if Black Mirror were even half as clever as it thinks it is. It ends with a meditation on remorse and the power of art, in a world where bots and nanotech can handle everything. The two stories couldn't be more different, but they felt perfectly connected by the thread uniting the collection.
Personal standouts:
The Shape of My Name by Nino Cipri
Mother Tongue by S. Qiuoyi Lu
Madeleine by Amal El-Mohtar
Ice by Rich Larson
The Doing and Undoing of Jacob E. Mwangi by E. Lily Yu
The title is a bold claim, "The New Voices of Science Fiction." You could not be blamed for being skeptical. But as an avid fan of the genre, I feel it has lived up to its promises, and more. After almost every story in this collection I scrambled to GoodReads to follow an author or mark a first novel as 'to read'. I feel like this anthology has turned me on to authors that I'll be following for many years to come, a series of stars on the rise.
The collection opens with a story that could best be described as a Black Mirror cautionary, if Black Mirror were even half as clever as it thinks it is. It ends with a meditation on remorse and the power of art, in a world where bots and nanotech can handle everything. The two stories couldn't be more different, but they felt perfectly connected by the thread uniting the collection.
Personal standouts:
The Shape of My Name by Nino Cipri
Mother Tongue by S. Qiuoyi Lu
Madeleine by Amal El-Mohtar
Ice by Rich Larson
The Doing and Undoing of Jacob E. Mwangi by E. Lily Yu