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A review by russk
Engineering Infinity by Jonathan Strahan
4.0
I was pleased with the variety of stories in this collection. You've got aliens, robots, time-travel, all the main sci-fi tropes are hit upon at one point or another. I got this as a gift from someone who knew I like Gaiman and Dick, and I hadn't heard of any of these authors so I wasn't really sure what to expect. The opener, "Malak" by Peter Watts is a great story looking into the mind of a machine. "Walls of Flesh, Bar of Bone" by Damien Broderick and Barbara Lamar was another one of my favorites, and one of those stories where you can't tell which "type" of story it is until you're already invested in the characters. Like you're halfway through this character's short adventure and you suddenly go, "Oh, so THIS is what this story is going to be about."
Honestly there were a couple I didn't finish all the way through. I couldn't get into Charles Stross's "Bit Rot," even though on the front and back cover he's one of the top-billed writers. But as I read some of the other stories I realized, maybe I'm just not into the space stories right now. And that's okay. Some people are really into complex world-building, I'm into characters and more realism (if that makes sense in sci-fi). Now this just means I can put this on my shelf and re-read them another time.
Honestly there were a couple I didn't finish all the way through. I couldn't get into Charles Stross's "Bit Rot," even though on the front and back cover he's one of the top-billed writers. But as I read some of the other stories I realized, maybe I'm just not into the space stories right now. And that's okay. Some people are really into complex world-building, I'm into characters and more realism (if that makes sense in sci-fi). Now this just means I can put this on my shelf and re-read them another time.