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A review by nakedsteve
Carbide Tipped Pens: Seventeen Tales of Hard Science Fiction by Doug Beason, David DeGraff, Jean-Louis Trudel, Eric Choi, Daniel H. Wilson, Robert Reed, Gregory Benford, Carl Frederick, Dirk Strasser, Ben Bova, Aliette de Bodard, Jack McDevitt, Ken Liu, Leah Petersen, Kate Story, Cixin Liu, Howard V. Hendrix, Gabrielle Harbowy, Nancy Fulda
4.0
Full disclosure: I received an Advanced Reader Copy of this book (thus the review prior to publication) for free from tor.com. (Seriously: if you're not taking part in their sweepstakes, you really should. Odds of winning are actually quite high.)
What we have here is an anthology of new Science Fiction, with the "Hard" classifier thrown on there for good measure. This is supposed to mean that there's some scientific or possible futuristic element that's crucial to the story.
As is typical whenever I read an anthology, I wish I'd review the stories independently. Yet again, that didn't happen, so this review is less good than it should be...
At any rate: The stories here are reasonably high quality, and enjoyable to read, but few of them really stuck in my memory. (Though the first and last stories were quite good.) Tragedy is a minor sub-theme as well, which is probably possible only in shorter works these days. (Can't make an 11-book series out of a tragedy...)
4 of 5 stars.
What we have here is an anthology of new Science Fiction, with the "Hard" classifier thrown on there for good measure. This is supposed to mean that there's some scientific or possible futuristic element that's crucial to the story.
As is typical whenever I read an anthology, I wish I'd review the stories independently. Yet again, that didn't happen, so this review is less good than it should be...
At any rate: The stories here are reasonably high quality, and enjoyable to read, but few of them really stuck in my memory. (Though the first and last stories were quite good.) Tragedy is a minor sub-theme as well, which is probably possible only in shorter works these days. (Can't make an 11-book series out of a tragedy...)
4 of 5 stars.