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Better . . . Stronger . . . Faster . . . The doctors rebuilt Hugo Award-winning editor Neil Clarke and made him a cyborg. Now he has assembled this anthology of twenty-six original cyborg stories by Greg Egan, Madeline Ashby, Elizabeth Bear, Peter Watts, Ken Liu, Robert Reed, Yoon Ha Lee, and more!
368 pages, Kindle Edition
First published September 1, 2014
About the author
Neil Clarke
367 books375 followersNeil Clarke is best known as the editor and publisher of the Hugo and World Fantasy Award-winning
Clarkesworld Magazine.
Launched in October 2006, the online magazine has been a finalist for the Hugo Award for Best Semiprozine four times (winning three times), the World Fantasy Award four times (winning once), and the British Fantasy Award once (winning once). Neil is also a ten-time finalist for the Hugo Award for Best Editor Short Form (winning once in 2022), three-time winner of the Chesley Award for Best Art Director, and a recipient of the Kate Wilhelm Solstice Award. In the fifteen years since Clarkesworld Magazine launched, numerous stories that he has published have been nominated for or won the Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, Sturgeon, Locus, BSFA, Shirley Jackson, WSFA Small Press, and Stoker Awards.
Additionally, Neil edits Forever —a digital-only, reprint science fiction magazine he launched in 2015. His anthologies include: Upgraded, Galactic Empires, Touchable Unreality, More Human than Human, The Final Frontier, Not One of Us, The Eagle has Landed, , and the Best Science Fiction of the Year series. His next anthology, The Best Science Fiction of the Year: Volume Seven will published in early 2023.
He currently lives in New Jersey with his wife and two sons.
Additionally, Neil edits Forever —a digital-only, reprint science fiction magazine he launched in 2015. His anthologies include: Upgraded, Galactic Empires, Touchable Unreality, More Human than Human, The Final Frontier, Not One of Us, The Eagle has Landed, , and the Best Science Fiction of the Year series. His next anthology, The Best Science Fiction of the Year: Volume Seven will published in early 2023.
He currently lives in New Jersey with his wife and two sons.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 67 reviews
October 19, 2014
Here, Liu tackles a familiar story: detective decides to take on an overlooked case, and solve the murder of a prostitute. However, in his hands, an old trope becomes a fresh-feeling, genre-crossing thriller. It's not just a murder mystery with a sci-fi veneer - new (believable, fascinating) technology is essential to the crime, the motive, the investigation and the solution. It's also not just an exploration of new ideas in tech innovation - it fully works on a human, emotional level as well. I hope to see this one up in year-end awards lists.
Update 6/7/15: I see that this was indeed nominated for the Nebula, but it lost out to Nancy Kress. (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...). I still like this one better!
Merged review:
This is a very strong collection of all-new short stories on the them of cyborgs, or modified humans. Some of the best writers currently working in speculative fiction are featured here. The book gives the reader a lot to think about - as well as plenty of great sci-fi entertainment.
*** Always the Harvest by Yoon Ha Lee
A good opener for an anthology on the theme of cyborgs. Our narrator is a woman living on the fringes of her society - an outer-space habitat where prosthetic replacements and enhancements are common. Rejected and cast-out by her 'circle' due do a problem she doesn't have the money to fix, she takes pity on a seeming beggar who looks worse-off than herself - and discovers something truly unexpected.
The theme is a classic riff on strains often found in this genre - played beautifully. What do we believe it means to be human? And what would an 'other' intelligence assume it means to be human, based on observation?
**** A Cold Heart by Tobias S. Buckell
Cyber-soldier Pepper has been working for the alien Satrapy that controls Earth (this is the same universe as his 'Xenowealth' series. I've only read one of them, but apparently there are a few other stories featuring this character.). He's been kept hanging on by the promise of the return of his stolen memories. Now a free man, he has a desperate plan to regain what he has lost by force. Will those around him be sacrificed to his dream?
This would make a great opening to a novel... and I'd definitely read it.
*** The Sarcophagus by Robert Reed
In a far-future, the outer hulls of enormous spaceships are inhabited by beings known as remoras, which, like their namesake fish, cling on, doing what they need to do, cleaning and repairing the surface. Technology means that they can live thousands of years... but it's a dangerous job, and most die by misadventure. The remoras are regarded almost as drones, but here we see an incident that illustrates their humanity.
**** Oil of Angels by Chen Qiufan, translated by Ken Liu
I see why Ken Liu picked this story... it has a lot in common with his writing: a strong, idea-based concept that is given voice through a strongly emotional, very human short story.
The idea here is based on the current research into epigenetics, some of which has suggested that traits, sensitivities, and even memory may be passed down to us an a genetic level. Trauma experienced by our mothers and grandmothers may still be felt in us.
Here, the author adds in the chemical potential of 'aromatherapy' and technological memory enhancement - and then tells a moving, very individual story.
*** What I’ve Seen With Your Eyes by Jason K. Chapman
Corporations will sponsor necessary medical operations for the poor. Lisa Wei went blind as a child - and had her eyes replaced. Of course, now her eyes feature a corporate logo, and she sees burger commercials where ever she looks. But if a corporation can control what someone sees - there's always a hack. Someone can make you see something else... Nicely drawn situation and characters, and a crime thriller lurks around the edges. I'd love to see this expanded into a novel.
**** No Place to Dream, but a Place to Die by Elizabeth Bear
Two cyber-enhanced miners meet in a tunnel where neither of them is supposed to be - and then end up weathering a disastrous accident together. The setting is space-opera, but the situation could be 19th-century company mining town... because, perhaps, both the darkest and the best of human nature are constants.
*** Married by Helena Bell
A psychological study, narrated by a wife and mother dealing with the effects that a new technology has on her family: replacing flesh and blood with a new, artificial material.
*** Come From Away by Madeline Ashby
Bodyguard and teen client face a school-shooting scenario together. Both weaknesses and resourcefulness surface in unexpected places. Not bad, but there's a lot of character background established that ends up being extraneous to the story. I suspect this 'story' is actually an opening to Ashby's upcoming novel, 'Company Town' - the blurb and character names match. I look forward to reading the full book!
*** Negative Space by Amanda Forrest
Caught by those who were chasing her, a young woman contemplates using technology to literally erase her identity, to protect the secrets she holds in her memory.
*** Fusion by Greg Mellor
Reminded me, in style, of A.A. Attanasio. (Of course, it's been a while since I read Attanasio, so I'm not going to swear that my association has basis in fact...) In a weird, post-apocalyptic landscape full of cyber-infected humans and falling 'angels,' a young man is enigmatically driven to run... but from what, and to what?
*** Taking the Ghost by A.C. Wise
A palace guard is rescued from the scene of a coup by a strange man who saves his life and outfits him with ghost-powered prosthetics. Waking to consciousness, the guard must face the fact that he has failed everyone who ever put trust in him - on both sides of a conflict. He is driven to atone... and things get weird.
*** Honeycomb Girls by Erin Cashier
Certainly, the stilted language used here is meant to convey the main character's uneducated status, but I found it a bit distracting from the story. In this post-apocalyptic future, an unspecified disaster has caused social collapse. Most women are gone. The majority of people live in filthy slums, scavenging as they can. An upper class lives in 'hive'-towers, each hoarding and sharing a woman. Ignorance and violence are widespread. It's a topic that easily could've been done quite badly, but here it actually becomes a bittersweet and true commentary on what really matters to humanity.
***** The Regular by Ken Liu
Here, Liu tackles a familiar story: detective decides to take on an overlooked case, and solve the murder of a prostitute. However, in his hands, an old trope becomes a fresh-feeling, genre-crossing thriller. It's not just a murder mystery with a sci-fi veneer - new (believable, fascinating) technology is essential to the crime, the motive, the investigation and the solution. It's also not just an exploration of new ideas in tech innovation - it fully works on a human, emotional level as well. I hope to see this one up in year-end awards lists.
**** Musée de l’Âme Seule by E. Lily Yu
Skipped ahead to read this one in advance of hearing the author read the story at KGB Fantastic Fiction. It actually made for a bit of a strange experience, reading it and then hearing it read about an hour later.
A woman survives a terrible road accident. The accident itself is the least of her trauma, however, as she learns what life will be like for her, dependent on medical technology, prostheses and artificial organs.
Extremely well-crafted, some nice shifts in perspective. Contains a lot of insight into how people view and handle (or fail to handle) disability.
**** Small Medicine by Genevieve Valentine
I skipped ahead to read this one too, in advance of the reading at KGB. (The author read a different selection, however.) This story is actually somewhat similar in theme to Yu's.
Here, a girl is faced with her family's decision to purchase a robotic version of her grandmother, after her actual grandmother passes away. She has quite a lot of resentment about being expected to treat this 'memorial doll' as a relative. Will her attitude change after she has to have a nano-treatment which, on some level, fundamentally changes who she is, as well?
** Tender by Rachel Swirsky
A glimpse into the head of a suicidally depressed woman. She sees her protective lover as a mad scientist keeping her from her goal of dying. I read it as metaphorical, not as an actual sci-fi story. This may be well done, but I can't say I enjoyed it.
*** Tongtong’s Summer by Xia Jia (translated by Ken Liu)
A young girl's grandfather comes home from the hospital, accompanied by a new & experimental home health care "robot." The device is not actually a true robot, but a remote-operated device that allows a distant care worker to be 'on-call' as needed. The device ends up revolutionizing society, but not exactly in the way that was expected. The main idea here is a sweet but idealistic call to respect the elderly and to develop technology that will make them more able to contribute to society in a meaningful way. Unfortunately, the 'call to arms' overwhelms the actual story, and at times it crosses a line into feeling like a piece of government propaganda.
*** Wizard, Cabalist, Ascendant by Seth Dickinson
Three college friends came up with a transhumanist breakthrough that has changed human society forever. However, each of them now disagrees about exactly what the future should look like. Due to 'backdoors' in their creation, they have unthinkable power - but which of their ideas will win?
(I probably spent too much time trying to figure out if the fantasy/wizard metaphor here is specifically supposed to refer to Katherine Kurtz' Deryni series [one of the 'versions' of the mental software here is called 'Haldane'], but I'm still not sure if there's a parallel.)
*** Memories and Wire by Mari Ness
What if your girlfriend was a terminator-style secret cyber-agent? And what if she was suicidal? There's not much you can do, when she could kill you with her little finger. A weird, psychologically-oriented piece.
*** God Decay by Rich Larson
A doctor has made a young athlete her pet project; enhancing his performance with extensive bio-mods, and in the process changing the face of pro sports. She's also crossed a professional barrier...
However, now things have gone bad, with unexpected revelations about side effects. How will they weather this crisis, both emotionally and professionally?
**** Mercury in Retrograde by Erin Hoffman
True cyberpunk. Loved this action-packed corporate-hacker-espionage tale. Clearly owes a debt to both Gibson and Stephenson - but I'd love to read more of Jenny Mercury's adventures.
*** Coastlines of the Stars by Alex Dally MacFarlane
A poverty-stricken worker makes a kind of connection to a missing artist through an innate understanding of his work, and convinces an acquaintance to team up with her to try to find him - and, incidentally, collect a significant reward. Space opera with a thoughtful, philosophical bent.
*** The Cumulative Effects of Light Over Time by E. Catherine Tobler
A spacer has to team up with an alien. Bumping it up a star for beautiful language and an interesting exploration of having to deal with a truly alien intelligence and way of perceiving. But I found the style rather distancing and somewhat disorienting.
** Synecdoche Oracles by Benjanun Sriduangkaew
A companion piece (or, at least, set in the same world as) 'The Bees Her Heart, the Hive Her Belly.' (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...) Again, I didn't really connect with this piece. It's a complicated, original world, but I wasn't convinced to care about the characters or events.
**** Collateral by Peter Watts
Fans of 'Ender's Game' may very well like this one. A soldier with enhanced reaction times, wired in to her weapons systems, must face the ethical questions brought up when innocents are killed. Caught between the media, the military, her own training and her sense of right and wrong, things play out in an unexpected - but utterly logical - fashion.
*** Seventh Sight by Greg Egan
What if some people could 'hack' their eyesight in order to see wavelengths greater than the normal human spectrum? How would it affect their lives? What kind of advantages - or disadvantages - would it give them?
A copy of book was provided to me by NetGalley. Many thanks for the opportunity to read. As always, my opinion is solely my own.
Update 6/7/15: I see that this was indeed nominated for the Nebula, but it lost out to Nancy Kress. (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...). I still like this one better!
Merged review:
This is a very strong collection of all-new short stories on the them of cyborgs, or modified humans. Some of the best writers currently working in speculative fiction are featured here. The book gives the reader a lot to think about - as well as plenty of great sci-fi entertainment.
*** Always the Harvest by Yoon Ha Lee
A good opener for an anthology on the theme of cyborgs. Our narrator is a woman living on the fringes of her society - an outer-space habitat where prosthetic replacements and enhancements are common. Rejected and cast-out by her 'circle' due do a problem she doesn't have the money to fix, she takes pity on a seeming beggar who looks worse-off than herself - and discovers something truly unexpected.
The theme is a classic riff on strains often found in this genre - played beautifully. What do we believe it means to be human? And what would an 'other' intelligence assume it means to be human, based on observation?
**** A Cold Heart by Tobias S. Buckell
Cyber-soldier Pepper has been working for the alien Satrapy that controls Earth (this is the same universe as his 'Xenowealth' series. I've only read one of them, but apparently there are a few other stories featuring this character.). He's been kept hanging on by the promise of the return of his stolen memories. Now a free man, he has a desperate plan to regain what he has lost by force. Will those around him be sacrificed to his dream?
This would make a great opening to a novel... and I'd definitely read it.
*** The Sarcophagus by Robert Reed
In a far-future, the outer hulls of enormous spaceships are inhabited by beings known as remoras, which, like their namesake fish, cling on, doing what they need to do, cleaning and repairing the surface. Technology means that they can live thousands of years... but it's a dangerous job, and most die by misadventure. The remoras are regarded almost as drones, but here we see an incident that illustrates their humanity.
**** Oil of Angels by Chen Qiufan, translated by Ken Liu
I see why Ken Liu picked this story... it has a lot in common with his writing: a strong, idea-based concept that is given voice through a strongly emotional, very human short story.
The idea here is based on the current research into epigenetics, some of which has suggested that traits, sensitivities, and even memory may be passed down to us an a genetic level. Trauma experienced by our mothers and grandmothers may still be felt in us.
Here, the author adds in the chemical potential of 'aromatherapy' and technological memory enhancement - and then tells a moving, very individual story.
*** What I’ve Seen With Your Eyes by Jason K. Chapman
Corporations will sponsor necessary medical operations for the poor. Lisa Wei went blind as a child - and had her eyes replaced. Of course, now her eyes feature a corporate logo, and she sees burger commercials where ever she looks. But if a corporation can control what someone sees - there's always a hack. Someone can make you see something else... Nicely drawn situation and characters, and a crime thriller lurks around the edges. I'd love to see this expanded into a novel.
**** No Place to Dream, but a Place to Die by Elizabeth Bear
Two cyber-enhanced miners meet in a tunnel where neither of them is supposed to be - and then end up weathering a disastrous accident together. The setting is space-opera, but the situation could be 19th-century company mining town... because, perhaps, both the darkest and the best of human nature are constants.
*** Married by Helena Bell
A psychological study, narrated by a wife and mother dealing with the effects that a new technology has on her family: replacing flesh and blood with a new, artificial material.
*** Come From Away by Madeline Ashby
Bodyguard and teen client face a school-shooting scenario together. Both weaknesses and resourcefulness surface in unexpected places. Not bad, but there's a lot of character background established that ends up being extraneous to the story. I suspect this 'story' is actually an opening to Ashby's upcoming novel, 'Company Town' - the blurb and character names match. I look forward to reading the full book!
*** Negative Space by Amanda Forrest
Caught by those who were chasing her, a young woman contemplates using technology to literally erase her identity, to protect the secrets she holds in her memory.
*** Fusion by Greg Mellor
Reminded me, in style, of A.A. Attanasio. (Of course, it's been a while since I read Attanasio, so I'm not going to swear that my association has basis in fact...) In a weird, post-apocalyptic landscape full of cyber-infected humans and falling 'angels,' a young man is enigmatically driven to run... but from what, and to what?
*** Taking the Ghost by A.C. Wise
A palace guard is rescued from the scene of a coup by a strange man who saves his life and outfits him with ghost-powered prosthetics. Waking to consciousness, the guard must face the fact that he has failed everyone who ever put trust in him - on both sides of a conflict. He is driven to atone... and things get weird.
*** Honeycomb Girls by Erin Cashier
Certainly, the stilted language used here is meant to convey the main character's uneducated status, but I found it a bit distracting from the story. In this post-apocalyptic future, an unspecified disaster has caused social collapse. Most women are gone. The majority of people live in filthy slums, scavenging as they can. An upper class lives in 'hive'-towers, each hoarding and sharing a woman. Ignorance and violence are widespread. It's a topic that easily could've been done quite badly, but here it actually becomes a bittersweet and true commentary on what really matters to humanity.
***** The Regular by Ken Liu
Here, Liu tackles a familiar story: detective decides to take on an overlooked case, and solve the murder of a prostitute. However, in his hands, an old trope becomes a fresh-feeling, genre-crossing thriller. It's not just a murder mystery with a sci-fi veneer - new (believable, fascinating) technology is essential to the crime, the motive, the investigation and the solution. It's also not just an exploration of new ideas in tech innovation - it fully works on a human, emotional level as well. I hope to see this one up in year-end awards lists.
**** Musée de l’Âme Seule by E. Lily Yu
Skipped ahead to read this one in advance of hearing the author read the story at KGB Fantastic Fiction. It actually made for a bit of a strange experience, reading it and then hearing it read about an hour later.
A woman survives a terrible road accident. The accident itself is the least of her trauma, however, as she learns what life will be like for her, dependent on medical technology, prostheses and artificial organs.
Extremely well-crafted, some nice shifts in perspective. Contains a lot of insight into how people view and handle (or fail to handle) disability.
**** Small Medicine by Genevieve Valentine
I skipped ahead to read this one too, in advance of the reading at KGB. (The author read a different selection, however.) This story is actually somewhat similar in theme to Yu's.
Here, a girl is faced with her family's decision to purchase a robotic version of her grandmother, after her actual grandmother passes away. She has quite a lot of resentment about being expected to treat this 'memorial doll' as a relative. Will her attitude change after she has to have a nano-treatment which, on some level, fundamentally changes who she is, as well?
** Tender by Rachel Swirsky
A glimpse into the head of a suicidally depressed woman. She sees her protective lover as a mad scientist keeping her from her goal of dying. I read it as metaphorical, not as an actual sci-fi story. This may be well done, but I can't say I enjoyed it.
*** Tongtong’s Summer by Xia Jia (translated by Ken Liu)
A young girl's grandfather comes home from the hospital, accompanied by a new & experimental home health care "robot." The device is not actually a true robot, but a remote-operated device that allows a distant care worker to be 'on-call' as needed. The device ends up revolutionizing society, but not exactly in the way that was expected. The main idea here is a sweet but idealistic call to respect the elderly and to develop technology that will make them more able to contribute to society in a meaningful way. Unfortunately, the 'call to arms' overwhelms the actual story, and at times it crosses a line into feeling like a piece of government propaganda.
*** Wizard, Cabalist, Ascendant by Seth Dickinson
Three college friends came up with a transhumanist breakthrough that has changed human society forever. However, each of them now disagrees about exactly what the future should look like. Due to 'backdoors' in their creation, they have unthinkable power - but which of their ideas will win?
(I probably spent too much time trying to figure out if the fantasy/wizard metaphor here is specifically supposed to refer to Katherine Kurtz' Deryni series [one of the 'versions' of the mental software here is called 'Haldane'], but I'm still not sure if there's a parallel.)
*** Memories and Wire by Mari Ness
What if your girlfriend was a terminator-style secret cyber-agent? And what if she was suicidal? There's not much you can do, when she could kill you with her little finger. A weird, psychologically-oriented piece.
*** God Decay by Rich Larson
A doctor has made a young athlete her pet project; enhancing his performance with extensive bio-mods, and in the process changing the face of pro sports. She's also crossed a professional barrier...
However, now things have gone bad, with unexpected revelations about side effects. How will they weather this crisis, both emotionally and professionally?
**** Mercury in Retrograde by Erin Hoffman
True cyberpunk. Loved this action-packed corporate-hacker-espionage tale. Clearly owes a debt to both Gibson and Stephenson - but I'd love to read more of Jenny Mercury's adventures.
*** Coastlines of the Stars by Alex Dally MacFarlane
A poverty-stricken worker makes a kind of connection to a missing artist through an innate understanding of his work, and convinces an acquaintance to team up with her to try to find him - and, incidentally, collect a significant reward. Space opera with a thoughtful, philosophical bent.
*** The Cumulative Effects of Light Over Time by E. Catherine Tobler
A spacer has to team up with an alien. Bumping it up a star for beautiful language and an interesting exploration of having to deal with a truly alien intelligence and way of perceiving. But I found the style rather distancing and somewhat disorienting.
** Synecdoche Oracles by Benjanun Sriduangkaew
A companion piece (or, at least, set in the same world as) 'The Bees Her Heart, the Hive Her Belly.' (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...) Again, I didn't really connect with this piece. It's a complicated, original world, but I wasn't convinced to care about the characters or events.
**** Collateral by Peter Watts
Fans of 'Ender's Game' may very well like this one. A soldier with enhanced reaction times, wired in to her weapons systems, must face the ethical questions brought up when innocents are killed. Caught between the media, the military, her own training and her sense of right and wrong, things play out in an unexpected - but utterly logical - fashion.
*** Seventh Sight by Greg Egan
What if some people could 'hack' their eyesight in order to see wavelengths greater than the normal human spectrum? How would it affect their lives? What kind of advantages - or disadvantages - would it give them?
A copy of book was provided to me by NetGalley. Many thanks for the opportunity to read. As always, my opinion is solely my own.
February 9, 2015
I was a backer of this Kickstarter funded anthology. As a rule I am more drawn to non-themed collections than themed but was keen to support, curious and optimistically enthusiastic to give Neil Clarke's original anthology debut a try after enjoying so much of the Clarkesworld magazine stories he has published.
Rachel Swirsky - As is usually the case with her we have a poetic, beautifully written piece. Unexpected and powerful exploration of the theme. Very short and more to my taste than the recent "If I were a dinosaur..." currently nominated for a Hugo. First in the collection I read and likely to be a favorite.
Xia Jia - a personal story looking at cyborg type potential exploring robotics and care for the elderly. Old school SF focusing perhaps more on ideas than beautiful prose but very enjoyable, interesting story even if I might argue it is not quite about cyborgs per se. Good to get a non-western story by a writer not overly familiar to me.
Greg Egan - What I liked about this story is that it really looked at the potential around cyborgification in a way that was specific (vision) and credible. People often suggest Egan as a hard science fiction writer who fills his fiction with science but this was science lite although felt credible. Enjoyable story, well told, fitted great into the anthology but didnt rock my world
Seth Dickenson and Mari Ness - perfectly decent but not for me. Might give the Dickenson a second try though.
Ken Liu - the regular - very well done crime PI near future SF - well written, tense and enjoyable. Also quite dark. Didnt feel like it reinvented the wheel but still very solid and quite inventive.
Rich Larsen - God Decay - Looking at Cyborgification in sports - One thing I really like about this volume is the amount of variety and though I didnt massively gel with this I quite liked it and liked how it took the theme differently than some of the other stories.
Genevieveve Valentine - Small Medicines - another good one.
Erin Hoffman - Mercury in Retrograde - I really enjoyed this one, might need to check one more of Erin's work. Its a cyberpunky kind of thrill ride.
More to follow.
Rachel Swirsky - As is usually the case with her we have a poetic, beautifully written piece. Unexpected and powerful exploration of the theme. Very short and more to my taste than the recent "If I were a dinosaur..." currently nominated for a Hugo. First in the collection I read and likely to be a favorite.
Xia Jia - a personal story looking at cyborg type potential exploring robotics and care for the elderly. Old school SF focusing perhaps more on ideas than beautiful prose but very enjoyable, interesting story even if I might argue it is not quite about cyborgs per se. Good to get a non-western story by a writer not overly familiar to me.
Greg Egan - What I liked about this story is that it really looked at the potential around cyborgification in a way that was specific (vision) and credible. People often suggest Egan as a hard science fiction writer who fills his fiction with science but this was science lite although felt credible. Enjoyable story, well told, fitted great into the anthology but didnt rock my world
Seth Dickenson and Mari Ness - perfectly decent but not for me. Might give the Dickenson a second try though.
Ken Liu - the regular - very well done crime PI near future SF - well written, tense and enjoyable. Also quite dark. Didnt feel like it reinvented the wheel but still very solid and quite inventive.
Rich Larsen - God Decay - Looking at Cyborgification in sports - One thing I really like about this volume is the amount of variety and though I didnt massively gel with this I quite liked it and liked how it took the theme differently than some of the other stories.
Genevieveve Valentine - Small Medicines - another good one.
Erin Hoffman - Mercury in Retrograde - I really enjoyed this one, might need to check one more of Erin's work. Its a cyberpunky kind of thrill ride.
More to follow.
October 15, 2014
(I got a copy courtesy of NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.)
As usual with anthologies, always a tricky read to rate. Some of the stories I really enjoyed, others I found average, others yet were too far from my own tastes to hit home. Nothing unexpected here. All in all, there was only one story I really skipped/skimmed over, and a few that I struggled with at first, but ended up reading all the same, thinking "in the end it was somewhat worth it."
Perhaps the theme of "cybernetics" is making things a little hard in that regard: either it works or it doesn't, you won't really find many other different themes to check for if it ends up not being your cup of tea. But that's kind of a given, considering the anthology's title and blurb.
A lot of the stories also toy with concepts questioning whether cybernetic enhancement would be a good or a bad thing: hopes crumbling, cyberntics leading to madness or violence, and so on. Those definitely open a path for deeper reflection here.
Stories I really liked:
* Seventh Sight: Part of my enjoyment probably stemmed of a personal fascination with tetrachromats, colours, and whatever is related to how we perceive the latter.
* Always the Harvest: This short story opens the anthology, and provides an interesting view on what defines "humans", and on how a non-human conscience may interpret the image we project of ourselves.
* Wizard, Cabalist, Ascendant: A bit hard to grasp at first, but definitely interesting if one's looking for reflections about transhumanism.
* The Regular: A more "typical" story, on the model of detective shows, which probably makes it easier to grasp.
A word of warning: a few stories made use of a second person point of view, which unfortunately is a serious break-it for me (frankly, apart of Choose Your Own Adventure books, it never works—and even in such cases, it has always tended to grate on my nerves). It doesn't mean they're rubbish, just that I can't stand that point of view. Too bad, because Musée de l'Âme Seule has really touching moments (granted, it's not 100% second person POV; but it felt like it too much to make me forget the constant "you"...).
As usual with anthologies, always a tricky read to rate. Some of the stories I really enjoyed, others I found average, others yet were too far from my own tastes to hit home. Nothing unexpected here. All in all, there was only one story I really skipped/skimmed over, and a few that I struggled with at first, but ended up reading all the same, thinking "in the end it was somewhat worth it."
Perhaps the theme of "cybernetics" is making things a little hard in that regard: either it works or it doesn't, you won't really find many other different themes to check for if it ends up not being your cup of tea. But that's kind of a given, considering the anthology's title and blurb.
A lot of the stories also toy with concepts questioning whether cybernetic enhancement would be a good or a bad thing: hopes crumbling, cyberntics leading to madness or violence, and so on. Those definitely open a path for deeper reflection here.
Stories I really liked:
* Seventh Sight: Part of my enjoyment probably stemmed of a personal fascination with tetrachromats, colours, and whatever is related to how we perceive the latter.
* Always the Harvest: This short story opens the anthology, and provides an interesting view on what defines "humans", and on how a non-human conscience may interpret the image we project of ourselves.
* Wizard, Cabalist, Ascendant: A bit hard to grasp at first, but definitely interesting if one's looking for reflections about transhumanism.
* The Regular: A more "typical" story, on the model of detective shows, which probably makes it easier to grasp.
A word of warning: a few stories made use of a second person point of view, which unfortunately is a serious break-it for me (frankly, apart of Choose Your Own Adventure books, it never works—and even in such cases, it has always tended to grate on my nerves). It doesn't mean they're rubbish, just that I can't stand that point of view. Too bad, because Musée de l'Âme Seule has really touching moments (granted, it's not 100% second person POV; but it felt like it too much to make me forget the constant "you"...).
August 31, 2016
This is a short story I read as part of The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories.
An escort is murdered and the police are quick to close the case saying it was a gang killing. The mother doesn't think so. She hires a PI to look into it. Well written as per usual by Liu but no surprises - it leads exactly where you think it will. The difference between this an any other generic story of this nature is the people (mostly) all have cybernetic parts. Cameras hidden in the eye, strengthened bones and muscles, a regulator to keep emotions from playing a part in decision making. Pretty cool stuff that seems like it could possibly be destined for our future.
Not my favorite story by Liu, not by a long shot, but he's set his own bar pretty high.
An escort is murdered and the police are quick to close the case saying it was a gang killing. The mother doesn't think so. She hires a PI to look into it. Well written as per usual by Liu but no surprises - it leads exactly where you think it will. The difference between this an any other generic story of this nature is the people (mostly) all have cybernetic parts. Cameras hidden in the eye, strengthened bones and muscles, a regulator to keep emotions from playing a part in decision making. Pretty cool stuff that seems like it could possibly be destined for our future.
Not my favorite story by Liu, not by a long shot, but he's set his own bar pretty high.
March 17, 2017
Ruth Law is a private detective, ex cop, with augmented body and emotion regulator, chasing the murderer of a Chinese prostitute. The police have it down to Chinese gangland violence, but the girl's mother and Law are not convinced. Law works to discover the reason and the linkage with the deaths of other girls in seveal cities. Liu neaty melds Law's own back story - loss of job, marriage and child - into the finale of this murder investigation.
Offering great scope for visual effects, sgi, atmospheric Chinatown landscapes and a wealth of human emotions this story has movie written all over it. It made me recall James Cameron's Strange Days directed by Kathryn Bigelow. Can't wait if the author gets a movie deal on this one, I'll be first in the first row watching!
Offering great scope for visual effects, sgi, atmospheric Chinatown landscapes and a wealth of human emotions this story has movie written all over it. It made me recall James Cameron's Strange Days directed by Kathryn Bigelow. Can't wait if the author gets a movie deal on this one, I'll be first in the first row watching!
May 4, 2021
Worth one reading. Not worth a second reading, IMHO.
October 25, 2014
reviews.metaphorosis.com
4 stars
A collection of stories about cyborgs.
I've been a fan of editor Neil Clarke's Clarkesworld magazine for some time now. The stories are consistently good, if with a certain similarity of tone. I was interested to see what he would do with a themed anthology.
Happily, Updated has a wide array of styles. It's true that the cyborg theme gets a little wearing - 26 stories about cyborgs is a lot of cyborgs - so there may just be too much of a good thing. But within that parameter, there's variation in theme, concept, impact, and tone.
Clarke has attracted a lot of today's newish writers for this anthology - there are few of the old guard here; in fact, maybe only middle guard. With few exceptions, though, the writers are good. The ones that do get off track tend to be aiming for a poetic or avant garde approach that ends up choppy, and, in one case, almost incomprehensible.
The best stories in the anthology:
Always the Harvest by Yoon Ha Lee
The opener for the anthology is also one of its strongest stories, with an interesting and affecting look at alien contact. I believe I've only read one of Lee's stories before (surprising, given how much she's published), but I'll definitely be looking for more.
The Sarcophagus, by Robert Reed
This one takes its time to get going, and leaves out quite a bit of useful information, but eventually wends its way to a satisfying end.
Oil of Angels, by Chen Qiufan
A study of memory, this has one of the best, most interesting, concepts in the book. The writing is a bit stilted, and ordinarily I'd put that down to translation. When you've got Ken Liu translating, though, who not only is a highly talented writer, but seems to have a second job translating Chinese authors, it's hard to complain. The style makes it a bit hard to get beneath the surface of the character, but the story works well overall.
Honeycomb Girls, by Erin Cashier
As with much SF, about the effects of technology on culture. The story is burdened with an awkward vocal style meant to emphasize the distance between two groups, but the bulk of the story is well told, with an interesting perspective on a possible future.
The Regular, by Ken Liu
A mystery story clad in SF, but also genuine SF as a look at how humans are regardless of technology. What can I say? I try to be critical, but Liu seems to go from strength to strength as an excellent writer, plus near single-handed purveyor of new Chinese SF voices (and what a good thing that turns out to be).
Tongtong's Summer, by Xia Jia
Quite a few of the stories in this anthology are about family, and this is one of the best. Relatively simple construction and concept, but a moving story about love.
Memories and Wire, by Mari Ness
Ness is another one of those writers who (for me) seems to have come out of nowhere to be everywhere. It's a happy result. As with Ken Liu, Ness seems incapable of writing anything that's not good. This story is a creepy, even disturbing, story about relationships. Frankly, I don't know quite what to make of it, but it worked.
Small Medicine, by Genevieve Valentine
Grandparents seem to figure quite a lot in this anthology. This story, about a young girl's relationship with her grandmother, does a great job of presenting a child's view of change.
If you want stories about cyborgs, this is the place to go. The stories here get at the idea from all sorts of angles, and most of them do it very well. In fact, there's so much variation and skill here that this may be the definitive collection of cyborg stories. If you like cyborgs, get this. If you don't like cyborgs, you should probably get it anyway (just read it in more, shorter sittings).
NB: Received free copy from Net Galley.
NB: Received free copy from Net Galley.
January 4, 2015
Brainycat's 5 "B"s:
blood: 4
boobs: 1
bombs: 3
bondage: 0
blasphemy: 3
Bechdel Test: PASS
Deggan's Rule: PASS
Gay Bechdel Test: FAIL
This collection is exceptionally well curated; I feel like every story fits the theme and every story is strong enough to stand on it's own and provide it's own interpretation of the topic. I really enjoyed the way each story took off in an entirely new and unexpected direction. Perhaps because the topic is so big there's lots of room for wildly different interpretations (and there are!) but the total collection leaves an impression bigger than just the sum of the stories. This is proper Capital "S" Science Capital "F" Fiction that asks the reader to interpret and define their own humanity.
There were two stories in the collection that I didn't finish. Musée de l’Âme Seule by E. Lily Yu isn't bad, it's just written in that dreamy stream of conscious second person POV that I loathe with an irrational passion. You know the kind of writing: every paragraph tries to stand on it's own like a lone tree in a deserted field, and little details weighted with importance glitter throughout every sentence like shards from a broken bottle in an empty alley. I don't doubt that it's fun to write, but I've never seen an example that's compelled me to pretend I'm someone else long enough to read their story.
The other story I didn't finish was Alex Dally MacFarlane's Coastlines of the Stars. It's written in the third person, but it's too lyrical with new chapter headings every two or three paragraphs. This is another device that I'm just not wired to appreciate properly, and while I'm sure it's an accomplished story I just couldn't bear to sit through it.
The real standouts in this collection, for me, are The Sarcophagus by Robert Reed, who takes the standard question "how much of your humanity can you change and still be human" and extrapolates it out to the nth degree in an engaging and thoughtful way. Taking the Ghost by A.C. Wise is another winner; what could have fallen into every post-apocalyptic cliche actually emerged as an example of how to do paranormal sci-fi correctly. E. Catherine Tobler's The Cumulative Effects of Light Over Time is one of those allegorical "the deeper they go into this cave the deeper they go into their self" stories, but it's done very well and kept me interested right up until the predicted end. I'll definitely be looking for more of her work. Seventh Sight by Greg Egan works for me on a number of different levels; I'm not sure it's remarkable in the objective sense but I felt a number of parallels between the protagonist and myself and that counts a lot for me.
Memories and Wire by Mari Ness sort of fell off my radar, but as I went back through the TOC for this review it sparked a rush of affection. IIRC, it's a brilliant concept but needs a bit more development to really come into it's own.
Also notable is The Regular by Ken Liu isn't as allegorical as most short stories, but it's also the longest story in the book and reads like a simple whodunnit. I liked it well enough, but I think I'd like it a lot more if it were fully developed into a novel length story.
This is a great collection of short stories. There is a depth and breadth represented here that makes the collection feel much larger than just the 26 stories it contains, and any fan of scifi should find more than enough worthwhile writing to justify buying this.
blood: 4
boobs: 1
bombs: 3
bondage: 0
blasphemy: 3
Bechdel Test: PASS
Deggan's Rule: PASS
Gay Bechdel Test: FAIL
Please note: I don't review to provide synopses, I review to share a purely visceral reaction to books and perhaps answer some of the questions I ask when I'm contemplating investing time and money into a book.
This collection is exceptionally well curated; I feel like every story fits the theme and every story is strong enough to stand on it's own and provide it's own interpretation of the topic. I really enjoyed the way each story took off in an entirely new and unexpected direction. Perhaps because the topic is so big there's lots of room for wildly different interpretations (and there are!) but the total collection leaves an impression bigger than just the sum of the stories. This is proper Capital "S" Science Capital "F" Fiction that asks the reader to interpret and define their own humanity.
There were two stories in the collection that I didn't finish. Musée de l’Âme Seule by E. Lily Yu isn't bad, it's just written in that dreamy stream of conscious second person POV that I loathe with an irrational passion. You know the kind of writing: every paragraph tries to stand on it's own like a lone tree in a deserted field, and little details weighted with importance glitter throughout every sentence like shards from a broken bottle in an empty alley. I don't doubt that it's fun to write, but I've never seen an example that's compelled me to pretend I'm someone else long enough to read their story.
The other story I didn't finish was Alex Dally MacFarlane's Coastlines of the Stars. It's written in the third person, but it's too lyrical with new chapter headings every two or three paragraphs. This is another device that I'm just not wired to appreciate properly, and while I'm sure it's an accomplished story I just couldn't bear to sit through it.
The real standouts in this collection, for me, are The Sarcophagus by Robert Reed, who takes the standard question "how much of your humanity can you change and still be human" and extrapolates it out to the nth degree in an engaging and thoughtful way. Taking the Ghost by A.C. Wise is another winner; what could have fallen into every post-apocalyptic cliche actually emerged as an example of how to do paranormal sci-fi correctly. E. Catherine Tobler's The Cumulative Effects of Light Over Time is one of those allegorical "the deeper they go into this cave the deeper they go into their self" stories, but it's done very well and kept me interested right up until the predicted end. I'll definitely be looking for more of her work. Seventh Sight by Greg Egan works for me on a number of different levels; I'm not sure it's remarkable in the objective sense but I felt a number of parallels between the protagonist and myself and that counts a lot for me.
Memories and Wire by Mari Ness sort of fell off my radar, but as I went back through the TOC for this review it sparked a rush of affection. IIRC, it's a brilliant concept but needs a bit more development to really come into it's own.
Also notable is The Regular by Ken Liu isn't as allegorical as most short stories, but it's also the longest story in the book and reads like a simple whodunnit. I liked it well enough, but I think I'd like it a lot more if it were fully developed into a novel length story.
This is a great collection of short stories. There is a depth and breadth represented here that makes the collection feel much larger than just the 26 stories it contains, and any fan of scifi should find more than enough worthwhile writing to justify buying this.
October 31, 2014
What do you do when you have a major heart attack and you're also creator/sustainer of Clarkesworld? You decide to edit an anthology. Natch. And you decide to make the theme of that anthology cyborgs, because you are now one yourself. Thus, Upgraded.
Now, before you go all 'hmm, themed anthology' side-eye on me, just steady on. In some stories, being a cyborg is the point; in others it is incidental. Sometimes being a cyborg is a good thing, a positive addition, welcomed. Others, it is something to be dreaded, confronted, Dealt With. Sometimes being a cyborg makes you better, and sometimes it seems to make you less. Cyborg-ness ranges from fully integrated and augmented body modifications to one seemingly small addition. Augmentation might be for aesthetics, or employment; for someone else's sake or your own. It ranges from being socially acceptable to being almost beyond the pale.
Some stories happen tomorrow, here; some of them are way over there, temporally and physically. Sometimes there are aliens. Sometimes there are robots. Sometimes they are in love stories, detective stories, war stories, family stories. Not all the cyborgs are attractive characters. Sometimes they become cyborgs before our very eyes, and sometimes they've been cyborg so long it's just what they are. Sometimes they were actually made that way from the start.
These stories feature men, and women, and sometimes genders are unstated. There are white characters and black characters and a variety of ethnicities. One of the central issues is that of disability, dealing with it and changing it and how those around you react to it. There's queer and straight and none-of-your-business. Authors are from a variety of backgrounds, too.
So sure, it's a themed anthology. But this is no Drunk Zombie Raccoons in Upstate New York. This is a vibrant, fun, intriguing and varied set of stories that have a basic concept in common.
The stories. Well, let me say upfront that I was so destroyed by Rachel Swirsky's "Tender" that I had to put the book down and go to sleep. No more reading for me that night. As for the rest, here's a sampler: Yoon Ha Lee's "Always the Harvest" is creepy and disconcerting and sets a really great tone for the anthology - it's the opening story - by being completely unlike any of the others. Ken Liu's story is also deeply disconcerting because (very mild spoiler here) it is absolutely not the story you think it is. Alex Dally McFarlane does wonderful things with maps, while Peter Watts taps into the zeitgeist to suggest uncomfortable things about the military. And I have a feeling I know something Greg Egan might have read before writing "Seventh Sight" but I'm not going to mention it here because that would be way too much of a spoiler.
This is a really great anthology, with stories that absolutely stand as marvellous science fiction quite apart from their brethren.
Now, before you go all 'hmm, themed anthology' side-eye on me, just steady on. In some stories, being a cyborg is the point; in others it is incidental. Sometimes being a cyborg is a good thing, a positive addition, welcomed. Others, it is something to be dreaded, confronted, Dealt With. Sometimes being a cyborg makes you better, and sometimes it seems to make you less. Cyborg-ness ranges from fully integrated and augmented body modifications to one seemingly small addition. Augmentation might be for aesthetics, or employment; for someone else's sake or your own. It ranges from being socially acceptable to being almost beyond the pale.
Some stories happen tomorrow, here; some of them are way over there, temporally and physically. Sometimes there are aliens. Sometimes there are robots. Sometimes they are in love stories, detective stories, war stories, family stories. Not all the cyborgs are attractive characters. Sometimes they become cyborgs before our very eyes, and sometimes they've been cyborg so long it's just what they are. Sometimes they were actually made that way from the start.
These stories feature men, and women, and sometimes genders are unstated. There are white characters and black characters and a variety of ethnicities. One of the central issues is that of disability, dealing with it and changing it and how those around you react to it. There's queer and straight and none-of-your-business. Authors are from a variety of backgrounds, too.
So sure, it's a themed anthology. But this is no Drunk Zombie Raccoons in Upstate New York. This is a vibrant, fun, intriguing and varied set of stories that have a basic concept in common.
The stories. Well, let me say upfront that I was so destroyed by Rachel Swirsky's "Tender" that I had to put the book down and go to sleep. No more reading for me that night. As for the rest, here's a sampler: Yoon Ha Lee's "Always the Harvest" is creepy and disconcerting and sets a really great tone for the anthology - it's the opening story - by being completely unlike any of the others. Ken Liu's story is also deeply disconcerting because (very mild spoiler here) it is absolutely not the story you think it is. Alex Dally McFarlane does wonderful things with maps, while Peter Watts taps into the zeitgeist to suggest uncomfortable things about the military. And I have a feeling I know something Greg Egan might have read before writing "Seventh Sight" but I'm not going to mention it here because that would be way too much of a spoiler.
This is a really great anthology, with stories that absolutely stand as marvellous science fiction quite apart from their brethren.
September 27, 2014
Welcome to the future where cybernetic implants are the norm, and people look askance if you are more human than not. Well... not all stories show the might of machine over humanity, but it is one of the options available in this collection of tales all-cyber all-the time.
If you're a fan of a future or alternate present where mechanical or electrical limbs and organs are available, and where you can view the internet inside your skull, you will probably find at least one story to enjoy out of the twenty-six available by twenty-six authors. The enclosed tales include humans with implants made necessary by accident or disease, children wholly human who are raised with robotic grandparents, a future where cybernetic implants in your eyes or brain are considered natural, and everything in between. If someone wanted to put together a collection of every possible scenario regarding robots or humans with cybernetic parts, they are certainly as close as may be possible with this novel!
Not all of the stories in this collection were interesting to me... however, the majority of them were well-written and gave me an insight into a possible future in this world or another. For fans of science fiction, robotics, or just human nature when faced with unlimited possibilities, this is a great book and one that I would certainly recommend.
NOTE: I received a copy of this novel from NetGalley for review purposes.
If you're a fan of a future or alternate present where mechanical or electrical limbs and organs are available, and where you can view the internet inside your skull, you will probably find at least one story to enjoy out of the twenty-six available by twenty-six authors. The enclosed tales include humans with implants made necessary by accident or disease, children wholly human who are raised with robotic grandparents, a future where cybernetic implants in your eyes or brain are considered natural, and everything in between. If someone wanted to put together a collection of every possible scenario regarding robots or humans with cybernetic parts, they are certainly as close as may be possible with this novel!
Not all of the stories in this collection were interesting to me... however, the majority of them were well-written and gave me an insight into a possible future in this world or another. For fans of science fiction, robotics, or just human nature when faced with unlimited possibilities, this is a great book and one that I would certainly recommend.
NOTE: I received a copy of this novel from NetGalley for review purposes.
August 21, 2015
This is another 'themed' collection. I've read a couple of those earlier this year, and had mixed reactions to them. They had some excellent stories, but also some clunkers, so I gave them three stars. I expected the same from this collection, but here I was suprised by the quality on offer. There were no obvious misfiring stories in here. All were well written, with fascinating worlds and surprising twists and resolutions in the stories. There were a couple of stories that tried to be a little too interesting in their use of language, creating to me a bewildering effect and distancing me from the content. I myself think that language has to make the story more clear instead of creating distance. But even those stories were pretty good. The theme of the collection allowed for a wide range of interpretations, but all with a contemporary relevance, asking questions about humanity, the ethics of augmenting ourselves, and where the line is between machine and man. I liked thinking about those themes, and even about singularity and post-humanity issues, also alluded to in some of these stories. For anyone interested in top notch SF from a panel of upcoming international authors (some stories were translated from Chinese authors!) this is a great book. Heartily recommended.
October 10, 2014
Mr. Clarke's anthology was entertaining as well as intriguing. Stories about cyborgs should focus on the themes of what is human and what does augmentation do to someone - does he lose his humanity or become a blend or evolve into something better overall..
The stories are well written and intelligent. They span the different genres of science fiction and display the different facets of augmented humanity. I think this is a worthy goal, since the current world needs to think and develop ways to deal with the coming cyborg revolution.
This is a really nice collection and I enjoyed reading it. Mr. Clarke certainly maintains the high standards he has as an editor and publisher of Clarkesworld. with this collection of fine short stories.
The stories are well written and intelligent. They span the different genres of science fiction and display the different facets of augmented humanity. I think this is a worthy goal, since the current world needs to think and develop ways to deal with the coming cyborg revolution.
This is a really nice collection and I enjoyed reading it. Mr. Clarke certainly maintains the high standards he has as an editor and publisher of Clarkesworld. with this collection of fine short stories.
December 16, 2014
Neil Clarke, editor of Clarkesworld magazine, edited this Kickstarter anthology about the positive and negative impacts of cyborgs in science fiction. As a cyborg myself, I was curious enough to contribute to the project. There quite a few big-name authors involved, and the anthology is quite well written with very few duds. A few stories, while good, seem a better fit for a more general sci-fi anthology, but most do a good job presenting a more thoughtful look at the cyborg experience itself.
Rating: 8/10.
http://thedecklededge.blogspot.com/20...
Rating: 8/10.
http://thedecklededge.blogspot.com/20...
August 10, 2014
Backed this on Kickstarter and just got my ebook version a few days ago. As a rule with anthologies, I don't read the stories in order, and typically start with the stories of my favorite contributors and this anthology is no exception. So far, I've read just three stories by authors Tobias Buckell, Ken Liu & E. Lily Yu. If these stories are representative of the rest in the collection then this will be a 5-star book and be considered as one of my all time favorite anthologies.
Will update this thread after I've had the opportunity to read more.
Will update this thread after I've had the opportunity to read more.
September 26, 2014
Turns out I like Neil Clarke's editing style just as much in anthologies as in Clarkesworld. I was one of the kickstarter backers for this book, and I am so delighted with the result.
The theme works smoothly, and the stories feel both coherent and full of variety. Some of my personal highlights were
Married by Helena Bell
Tender by Rachel Swirsky (content warning for self harm on this one)
Small Medicine by Genevieve Valentine
Tongtong’s Summer by Xia Jia
The theme works smoothly, and the stories feel both coherent and full of variety. Some of my personal highlights were
Married by Helena Bell
Tender by Rachel Swirsky (content warning for self harm on this one)
Small Medicine by Genevieve Valentine
Tongtong’s Summer by Xia Jia
July 22, 2016
Neil Clarke is magical. This is a great collection, and although there are some problems with a good eighth of the stories, each is powerful, unique, and very engaging. Perhaps after reading fifteen stories about cyborgs I wanted something a bit different, but hey, I knew what I was getting into. Glad I was able to finish this after my Kindle broke in the boy's locker room and I didn't find out how a story ended for months. Now I know.
May 21, 2015
This was a really tight collection. I didn't quite finish all 26, but that was just because the stories were so dense that I needed a break in between and ran out of library time :) A few didn't quite connect for me, but there were none that I skipped or thought were at all bad.
Highly recommended, especially to cyberpunk and body mod fans.
Highly recommended, especially to cyberpunk and body mod fans.
April 29, 2016
Some excellent stories, some stories which are useful for my upcoming class purposes, some mediocre stories.
(Sorry, people, wrong time in the semester for me to have nuanced opinions. ;-) )
(Sorry, people, wrong time in the semester for me to have nuanced opinions. ;-) )
July 25, 2015
An above average collection of stories about cyborgs by Neil Clarke, editor of Clarkesworld Magazine who also considers himself a cyborg since his heart operation. Some of the stories consider the impact implants have on a person or on humanitity, other look the at 'daily lives' of cyborgs while others are, personally, a bit too weird for my tastes.
Stories I really like in this collection were from Yoon Ha Lee, Robert Reed, A.C. Wise, Ken Liu, Xia Jia and especially the closing stories by Peter Watts and Greg Egan.
- “Always the Harvest” by Yoon Ha Lee: an interesting tale set on a world that is apparently able to manufacture human body parts, both usual and unusual. People living on the world harvest the parts either for themselves or to sell. The story follows one harvester who encounters a stranger made up of human and manufactured parts but begins to suspect a connection between the stranger and some gruesome murders that have been taking place.
- “A Cold Heart” by Tobias S. Buckell: a man hunts for his missing memories, taken from him when he became a mercenary. Now he wants them back and not even the aliens who rule humanity may be able to stop him. But is he willing to give it up to ensure freedom for some humans?
- “The Sarcophagus” by Robert Reed: part of his 'Great Ship' series, this one tells two tales of survivors: one who has survived despite working in the dangerous outside of the ship and another who has survived after being lost in outer space. Now, they are destined to meet with each other in a collision.
- “Oil of Angles” by Chen Qiufan, Translated by Ken Liu: set in a time after a great catastrophe in the past has caused some of humanity to install devices to make them forget, this tells the tale of one woman who is resentful of her uncaring mother. But as she struggles to live her life, she goes for an unusual aromatherapy session that may be the key to unlocking her happiness and also reveals that what she remembers of her mother may be affected by what had happened generations ago during the catastrophe.
- “What I’ve Seen With Your Eyes” by Jason K. Chapman: a girl sees her brother being killed: by a yeti. It turns out she is blind and sees with the help of artificial eyes on which images can be superimposed, like the yeti. Yet she is unwilling to help the investigator as he is suspects her brother to be a super-hacker (which he is) as as the story ends, she is off to a place that only she can see.
- “No Place to Dream, but a Place to Die” by Elizabeth Bear: a tale set on a world where indentured people in cyborg bodies dig for ores. This story focuses on one who is digging illegally, hoping to return to her child, until she is trapped in an explosion with a company man who is also on the run. They will need to trust each other to escape not only the tunnels but the company who will come after them.
- “Married” by Helena Bell: a thoughtful tale of a woman married to a man who is gradually being changed into a synthetic being piece by piece from the inside. She explores the boundaries of which part is her husband; and which is not to her mind.
- “Come From Away” by Madeline Ashby: a somewhat muddled story of a girl assigned to protect a boy from people sworn to kill him. But the job becomes serious when the school they are in goes into lockdown and it is her job to keep him safe. The ending has a twist but ends abruptly.
- “Negative Space” by Amanda Forrest: a girl which can host code is desperate for the final elements that can help her find a better life. But when it turns into a trap by a corporation that wants her to code a new interface to a fragmented world network, she may have no choice but to erase her own personality to prevent her code from being used.
- “Fusion” by Greg Mellor: a fascinating tale about a time when the fusion between organisms and machine is causing strange mutations in plants, animals and people and causing large, strange formation to burst out the ground. In this story, a man is making a journey towards one such formation, meeting people who have been changed by the fusion and is himself changing as he approaches and ascends the formation. His journey ends with one final change as he makes a leap into the unknown.
- “Taking the Ghost” by A.C. Wise: a intriguing tale of a palace guard who, after the fall of the apparently cruel regime he was part of, is rescued by a junk man who 'heals' him by attaching an artificial arm. But the arm must be powered by a 'ghost'. Although warned that the ghost will whisper messages to him, he gives in and begins a journey back to the fallen palace where he performs uncomfortable, horrific actions to placate the ghost and his own internal agony at betraying his family to the palace.
- “Honeycomb Girls” by Erin Cashier: a tale I did not enjoy as the 'pidgin' language used to convey the point of view of the protagonist was too confusing and distracting.
- “The Regular” by Ken Liu: a fascinating tale about a murder of a girl and the investigation into her murder. What makes the tale fascinating is the involvement of implanted technology in the story. It is used by the girl to safeguard her future that becomes the cause of her murder, and also used by the investigator to keep her emotions in check during the investigation.
- “Tender” by Rachel Swirsky: a strange tale about intense love: if by 'intense' it means gradually replacing every part of the person you love so that she cannot die.
- “Tongtong’s Summer” by Xia Jia, Translated by Ken Liu: a fascinating tale of a grandfather moving in to a home of a grandchild, assisted by a remotely controlled robot. Resentful at first, both grandfather and grandchild gradually warm to each other and to the robot and accidentally trigger off a revolution in elderly care with the remote robot.
- “Musée de l’Âme Seule” by E. Lily Yu: After an accident where most of her body parts were replaced, a woman moves into a residential area for 'people like her'. There she discovers a new interest in art.
- “Wizard, Cabalist, Ascendant” by Seth Dickinson: a confusing tale of a far future where people with enhanced intelligence (post-Singularity type?) are fighting for control of the world.
- “Memories and Wire” by Mari Ness: a man living with a robot with an implanted personality fears losing it/her as it decides to take itself apart piece by piece.
- “God Decay” by Rich Larson: a famous physically enhanced individual in sports discovers the price of his enhancements. Now he has to decide what he wants to do with the time that he has left.
- “Small Medicine” by Genevieve Valentine: a grandmother is 'replaced' by a robotic version and is resented by the grandchild. But when an illness causes her to see the person beneath the robotic exterior.
- “Mercury in Retrograde” by Erin Hoffman: a 'cyberpunkish' tale of a girl who runs away from her mother to make a life on her own as she builds up her social network status. But it goes wrong when her health monitor gets hacked and she may have no choice but to return for help; unless her cry for help is answered by an unsuspecting personality.
- “Coastlines of the Stars” by Alex Dally MacFarlane: a fascinating tale of an individual who discovers a fascination with the physical maps of an artist and goes on a quest to retrieve him from a place full of traps which she can navigate with the help of the artist's map.
- “The Cumulative Effects of Light Over Time” by E. Catherine Tobler: a tale that starts off with a mercenary helping an alien squid-like creature to explore a crashed ship; then the true horror of what has been done to himself is revealed in the interior of the ship.
- “Synecdoche Oracles” by Benjanun Sriduangkaew: in a future of altered humanity, one person agrees to aid a fugitive general. In return, the general agrees to help her be free of a personage who is monitoring her from afar.
- “Collateral” by Peter Watts: a disturbing, thoughtful story about a soldier with enhanced weapons that can act on her thoughts; only this time it may have 'pre-acted' and caused the deaths of civilians. As the military braces itself for the fallout, it agrees to let her be interviewed for PR purposes. But the interviewer reveals some disturbing information that makes her rethink just who is in control of the weapons. Then the story gets even more disturbing when the military 'edits' her brain to 'optimise' her moral decisions about whether to shoot or not. In the end, she makes a very moral decision that would have major repercussions.
- “Seventh Sight” by Greg Egan: a fascinating piece about a boy with an artificial retina that he reprograms to be able to see more colours. As he gets used to seeing the world differently, he meets a girl who goes around leaving treasure hunts, using paints that only people like him can see. Many years later, they are married but life isn't the best as viewing technology has caught up with them and now most people can use mobile devices to view the world as they can. But do they still have an edge in this new world of vision?
Stories I really like in this collection were from Yoon Ha Lee, Robert Reed, A.C. Wise, Ken Liu, Xia Jia and especially the closing stories by Peter Watts and Greg Egan.
- “Always the Harvest” by Yoon Ha Lee: an interesting tale set on a world that is apparently able to manufacture human body parts, both usual and unusual. People living on the world harvest the parts either for themselves or to sell. The story follows one harvester who encounters a stranger made up of human and manufactured parts but begins to suspect a connection between the stranger and some gruesome murders that have been taking place.
- “A Cold Heart” by Tobias S. Buckell: a man hunts for his missing memories, taken from him when he became a mercenary. Now he wants them back and not even the aliens who rule humanity may be able to stop him. But is he willing to give it up to ensure freedom for some humans?
- “The Sarcophagus” by Robert Reed: part of his 'Great Ship' series, this one tells two tales of survivors: one who has survived despite working in the dangerous outside of the ship and another who has survived after being lost in outer space. Now, they are destined to meet with each other in a collision.
- “Oil of Angles” by Chen Qiufan, Translated by Ken Liu: set in a time after a great catastrophe in the past has caused some of humanity to install devices to make them forget, this tells the tale of one woman who is resentful of her uncaring mother. But as she struggles to live her life, she goes for an unusual aromatherapy session that may be the key to unlocking her happiness and also reveals that what she remembers of her mother may be affected by what had happened generations ago during the catastrophe.
- “What I’ve Seen With Your Eyes” by Jason K. Chapman: a girl sees her brother being killed: by a yeti. It turns out she is blind and sees with the help of artificial eyes on which images can be superimposed, like the yeti. Yet she is unwilling to help the investigator as he is suspects her brother to be a super-hacker (which he is) as as the story ends, she is off to a place that only she can see.
- “No Place to Dream, but a Place to Die” by Elizabeth Bear: a tale set on a world where indentured people in cyborg bodies dig for ores. This story focuses on one who is digging illegally, hoping to return to her child, until she is trapped in an explosion with a company man who is also on the run. They will need to trust each other to escape not only the tunnels but the company who will come after them.
- “Married” by Helena Bell: a thoughtful tale of a woman married to a man who is gradually being changed into a synthetic being piece by piece from the inside. She explores the boundaries of which part is her husband; and which is not to her mind.
- “Come From Away” by Madeline Ashby: a somewhat muddled story of a girl assigned to protect a boy from people sworn to kill him. But the job becomes serious when the school they are in goes into lockdown and it is her job to keep him safe. The ending has a twist but ends abruptly.
- “Negative Space” by Amanda Forrest: a girl which can host code is desperate for the final elements that can help her find a better life. But when it turns into a trap by a corporation that wants her to code a new interface to a fragmented world network, she may have no choice but to erase her own personality to prevent her code from being used.
- “Fusion” by Greg Mellor: a fascinating tale about a time when the fusion between organisms and machine is causing strange mutations in plants, animals and people and causing large, strange formation to burst out the ground. In this story, a man is making a journey towards one such formation, meeting people who have been changed by the fusion and is himself changing as he approaches and ascends the formation. His journey ends with one final change as he makes a leap into the unknown.
- “Taking the Ghost” by A.C. Wise: a intriguing tale of a palace guard who, after the fall of the apparently cruel regime he was part of, is rescued by a junk man who 'heals' him by attaching an artificial arm. But the arm must be powered by a 'ghost'. Although warned that the ghost will whisper messages to him, he gives in and begins a journey back to the fallen palace where he performs uncomfortable, horrific actions to placate the ghost and his own internal agony at betraying his family to the palace.
- “Honeycomb Girls” by Erin Cashier: a tale I did not enjoy as the 'pidgin' language used to convey the point of view of the protagonist was too confusing and distracting.
- “The Regular” by Ken Liu: a fascinating tale about a murder of a girl and the investigation into her murder. What makes the tale fascinating is the involvement of implanted technology in the story. It is used by the girl to safeguard her future that becomes the cause of her murder, and also used by the investigator to keep her emotions in check during the investigation.
- “Tender” by Rachel Swirsky: a strange tale about intense love: if by 'intense' it means gradually replacing every part of the person you love so that she cannot die.
- “Tongtong’s Summer” by Xia Jia, Translated by Ken Liu: a fascinating tale of a grandfather moving in to a home of a grandchild, assisted by a remotely controlled robot. Resentful at first, both grandfather and grandchild gradually warm to each other and to the robot and accidentally trigger off a revolution in elderly care with the remote robot.
- “Musée de l’Âme Seule” by E. Lily Yu: After an accident where most of her body parts were replaced, a woman moves into a residential area for 'people like her'. There she discovers a new interest in art.
- “Wizard, Cabalist, Ascendant” by Seth Dickinson: a confusing tale of a far future where people with enhanced intelligence (post-Singularity type?) are fighting for control of the world.
- “Memories and Wire” by Mari Ness: a man living with a robot with an implanted personality fears losing it/her as it decides to take itself apart piece by piece.
- “God Decay” by Rich Larson: a famous physically enhanced individual in sports discovers the price of his enhancements. Now he has to decide what he wants to do with the time that he has left.
- “Small Medicine” by Genevieve Valentine: a grandmother is 'replaced' by a robotic version and is resented by the grandchild. But when an illness causes her to see the person beneath the robotic exterior.
- “Mercury in Retrograde” by Erin Hoffman: a 'cyberpunkish' tale of a girl who runs away from her mother to make a life on her own as she builds up her social network status. But it goes wrong when her health monitor gets hacked and she may have no choice but to return for help; unless her cry for help is answered by an unsuspecting personality.
- “Coastlines of the Stars” by Alex Dally MacFarlane: a fascinating tale of an individual who discovers a fascination with the physical maps of an artist and goes on a quest to retrieve him from a place full of traps which she can navigate with the help of the artist's map.
- “The Cumulative Effects of Light Over Time” by E. Catherine Tobler: a tale that starts off with a mercenary helping an alien squid-like creature to explore a crashed ship; then the true horror of what has been done to himself is revealed in the interior of the ship.
- “Synecdoche Oracles” by Benjanun Sriduangkaew: in a future of altered humanity, one person agrees to aid a fugitive general. In return, the general agrees to help her be free of a personage who is monitoring her from afar.
- “Collateral” by Peter Watts: a disturbing, thoughtful story about a soldier with enhanced weapons that can act on her thoughts; only this time it may have 'pre-acted' and caused the deaths of civilians. As the military braces itself for the fallout, it agrees to let her be interviewed for PR purposes. But the interviewer reveals some disturbing information that makes her rethink just who is in control of the weapons. Then the story gets even more disturbing when the military 'edits' her brain to 'optimise' her moral decisions about whether to shoot or not. In the end, she makes a very moral decision that would have major repercussions.
- “Seventh Sight” by Greg Egan: a fascinating piece about a boy with an artificial retina that he reprograms to be able to see more colours. As he gets used to seeing the world differently, he meets a girl who goes around leaving treasure hunts, using paints that only people like him can see. Many years later, they are married but life isn't the best as viewing technology has caught up with them and now most people can use mobile devices to view the world as they can. But do they still have an edge in this new world of vision?
January 19, 2015
So what is so fascinating about cyborgs, anyway? Cybernetic organisms aren't just people with prosthetics, as is fairly obvious with just a little bit of thought... wearing eyeglasses, for example, probably isn't enough to make you one. But what if your glasses are electronically enhanced to give you better than 20/20 vision, or to let you see into the infrared, or to show you detailed information about the things you're looking at? Doesn't that at least start to qualify? What if they're not glasses at all, or even contact lenses, but rather a surgically-implanted device feeding imagery directly into your visual cortex, to let you see more than the people around you ever could?
It's also fairly obvious that becoming a cyborg is a matter of degree, not a simple binary choice, but... at what point, exactly, does increasing technological augmentation turn someone into a different kind of human?
Television's Steve Austin, the rebuilt "man barely alive" with his $6 million price tag, didn't do a whole lot of thinking about his condition. He was too busy zooming in on spies with his bionic eye, punching villains with his bionic arm, and outrunning getaway cars with his bionic legs. And, honestly, that was enough for most of us who, like Neil Clarke and myself, were watching Lee Majors doing his bionic thing, back in the 1970s. The original Steve Austin, hero of Martin Caidin's novel Cyborg and its sequels, did a somewhat better job of exploring the personal and philosophical implications of such rebuilding... but it's been forty years since then, give or take. It's not enough anymore to just patch up a test pilot with new parts and send him out with a slap on his bionic ass to battle the Commies. In print or on-screen, we need a little more depth now...
Enter Upgraded.
Although her name doesn't even appear on the cover, the brilliant and nowadays seemingly-ubiquitous Yoon Ha Lee leads off Upgraded with "Always the Harvest," whose characters routinely swap flesh for bioelectronic body parts growing in a mysterious alien installation. Kudos to editor Neil Clarke for choosing such a strong starting point. The story's intense, high-density prose comes across like a mashup of William Gibson and David Cronenberg, though its roots reach back at least as far as A. E. van Vogt's 1950 classic "The Enchanted Village."
The ensuing stories in Upgraded might not have had quite as much impact on me as the first one, but they do deliver the depth and range we expect from modern SF. But then, as editor of the long-running online magazine Clarkesworld, Clarke has proven that he knows his stuff. There are stories of augmentations gone wrong, and ones where only a cyborg could have resolved the conflict. There are post-apocalyptic dystopias and far-flung space empires.
The strongest entries in this anthology turn out to be the ones written by newcomers—unfamiliar names to me, though perhaps not to regular readers of Clarkesworld. Chen Qiufan, with "Oil of Angels," for example, where everyone's subject to memory editing (for the good of the state, of course); the cynical manipulation of one cyborg bodyguard in Madeline Ashby's "Come from Away." Ken Liu's gritty, rather creepy detective story, "The Regular." Seth Dickinson's ultimately luminous post-humanist "Wizard, Cabalist, Ascendant." What happens to a little girl and her robotic grandmother in "Small Medicine," by Genevieve Valentine. Stories like that.
The more established authors' stories here actually seemed to be the ones that had the least impact for me. Robert Reed's "The Sarcophagus," part of his Marrow universe, was good enough, but I'd already seen it elsewhere, more than once. Or take the one that ends the anthology, by flagship author Greg Egan. "Seventh Sight" takes a neat, if slight, idea—optical augmentation to see more than the standard three-color mixture most humans get—and runs with it, but the resulting future is curiously blind to what other effects such an ability to modify our sensory suite might entail, and the characters who gain the augmented ability use it very unimaginatively.
This is a very strong theme anthology in general, though. Read it for the shock of the new, for the thoughtful investigation of technology's implications—read it as science fiction, in other words—and you won't be disappointed.
It's also fairly obvious that becoming a cyborg is a matter of degree, not a simple binary choice, but... at what point, exactly, does increasing technological augmentation turn someone into a different kind of human?
Television's Steve Austin, the rebuilt "man barely alive" with his $6 million price tag, didn't do a whole lot of thinking about his condition. He was too busy zooming in on spies with his bionic eye, punching villains with his bionic arm, and outrunning getaway cars with his bionic legs. And, honestly, that was enough for most of us who, like Neil Clarke and myself, were watching Lee Majors doing his bionic thing, back in the 1970s. The original Steve Austin, hero of Martin Caidin's novel Cyborg and its sequels, did a somewhat better job of exploring the personal and philosophical implications of such rebuilding... but it's been forty years since then, give or take. It's not enough anymore to just patch up a test pilot with new parts and send him out with a slap on his bionic ass to battle the Commies. In print or on-screen, we need a little more depth now...
Enter Upgraded.
Although her name doesn't even appear on the cover, the brilliant and nowadays seemingly-ubiquitous Yoon Ha Lee leads off Upgraded with "Always the Harvest," whose characters routinely swap flesh for bioelectronic body parts growing in a mysterious alien installation. Kudos to editor Neil Clarke for choosing such a strong starting point. The story's intense, high-density prose comes across like a mashup of William Gibson and David Cronenberg, though its roots reach back at least as far as A. E. van Vogt's 1950 classic "The Enchanted Village."
The ensuing stories in Upgraded might not have had quite as much impact on me as the first one, but they do deliver the depth and range we expect from modern SF. But then, as editor of the long-running online magazine Clarkesworld, Clarke has proven that he knows his stuff. There are stories of augmentations gone wrong, and ones where only a cyborg could have resolved the conflict. There are post-apocalyptic dystopias and far-flung space empires.
The strongest entries in this anthology turn out to be the ones written by newcomers—unfamiliar names to me, though perhaps not to regular readers of Clarkesworld. Chen Qiufan, with "Oil of Angels," for example, where everyone's subject to memory editing (for the good of the state, of course); the cynical manipulation of one cyborg bodyguard in Madeline Ashby's "Come from Away." Ken Liu's gritty, rather creepy detective story, "The Regular." Seth Dickinson's ultimately luminous post-humanist "Wizard, Cabalist, Ascendant." What happens to a little girl and her robotic grandmother in "Small Medicine," by Genevieve Valentine. Stories like that.
The more established authors' stories here actually seemed to be the ones that had the least impact for me. Robert Reed's "The Sarcophagus," part of his Marrow universe, was good enough, but I'd already seen it elsewhere, more than once. Or take the one that ends the anthology, by flagship author Greg Egan. "Seventh Sight" takes a neat, if slight, idea—optical augmentation to see more than the standard three-color mixture most humans get—and runs with it, but the resulting future is curiously blind to what other effects such an ability to modify our sensory suite might entail, and the characters who gain the augmented ability use it very unimaginatively.
This is a very strong theme anthology in general, though. Read it for the shock of the new, for the thoughtful investigation of technology's implications—read it as science fiction, in other words—and you won't be disappointed.
April 17, 2020
All stories about cyborgs, but varied nonetheless, and of steadily good quality. There's a detective investigating the murder of a marginalized victim, people adapting to an alien planet that offers strange but usable parts for transplant, lost memories, space scavengers, hackers, societies with rigid caste systems and high-tech towers... All intriguing reads.
June 25, 2017
As with any short-story collection, the quality and interest of stories in Upgraded was variable. There was nothing here that I thought was terrible, but there were a couple I just plain couldn't follow. The ones which interested me the least were those which just told stories about people who happened to live in worlds where there were cyborgs, rather than reflecting on the personal/social effects of such a radical change to the human body. These far outnumbered those which had genuine solid SF premices about the impact of "upgrading" human beings with machinery. Indeed, a few too many of these stories focused less on the upgrading than on the permutation of mechanical additions - they focused on able-bodied people getting additions rather than the medical function of most cyborg additions.
Stand-out stories, for me, were: "What I've Seen With Your Eyes" by Jason K. Chapman; "Married" by Helena Bell; "Tender" by Rachel Swirsky (particularly for its appraoch to questions of bodily automony); "Tongtong's Summer" by Xia Jia; "Musée de L’Âme Seule" by E. Lily Yu (for a second-person narrative which works, a triumph in itself); "Memories and Wire" by Mari Ness; "God Decay" by Rich Larson; "Small Medicine" by Genevive Valentine; "Collateral" by Peter Watts (although I'm not sure I agree with some of the assertions made in this story, it certainly leaves a lot to think about); and "Seventh Sight" by Greg Egan. Most of these are in the latter half of the volume, which I suppose should encourage you to keep going if you're reading it! I flagged a little as I went on, I must say. Ken Liu's "The Regular" also deserves a mention as a solid story, although it was enjoyable to read while those above tend more towards the "left me with interesting questions" branch of SF.
I would recommend this volume. The good is worth it.
Stand-out stories, for me, were: "What I've Seen With Your Eyes" by Jason K. Chapman; "Married" by Helena Bell; "Tender" by Rachel Swirsky (particularly for its appraoch to questions of bodily automony); "Tongtong's Summer" by Xia Jia; "Musée de L’Âme Seule" by E. Lily Yu (for a second-person narrative which works, a triumph in itself); "Memories and Wire" by Mari Ness; "God Decay" by Rich Larson; "Small Medicine" by Genevive Valentine; "Collateral" by Peter Watts (although I'm not sure I agree with some of the assertions made in this story, it certainly leaves a lot to think about); and "Seventh Sight" by Greg Egan. Most of these are in the latter half of the volume, which I suppose should encourage you to keep going if you're reading it! I flagged a little as I went on, I must say. Ken Liu's "The Regular" also deserves a mention as a solid story, although it was enjoyable to read while those above tend more towards the "left me with interesting questions" branch of SF.
I would recommend this volume. The good is worth it.
December 8, 2016
This book should be titled Downgraded.
I walked into this with optimism about augmentation, and I was severely disappointed. I think the fact that the editor had to have a heart operation and a pacemaker installed really influenced this anthology. Most, if not all, of the stories are dismal and only show the negative aspects of human augmentation and becoming a cyborg. Most of the characters would prefer to go back to being vanilla human.
At least one story did not even have a cyborg in it, rather just technology used in augmentation. Two more stories could have the cyborg parts of them removed and not be much different. They HAVE cyborgs in them but are not actually about cyborgs, if you understand.
The stories in this book fail to underline the real pitfalls of transhumanism and human augmentation, except perhaps for . Instead, you face constant whining from the characters about how they want to be human again. Either that, or the story is couched in so much symbolism and metaphor (which might be your thing, but it's not mine) that you might as well be reading a book of euphemisms.
Below is a list of the stories in this anthology I think are worth reading.
1. Always the Harvest
2. A Cold Heart
3. What I’ve Seen With Your Eyes
4. No Place to Dream, but a Place to Die
5. Negative Space
6. The Regular
7. Tongtong’s Summer
8. God Decay
9. Mercury in Retrograde
10. Seventh Sight
I walked into this with optimism about augmentation, and I was severely disappointed. I think the fact that the editor had to have a heart operation and a pacemaker installed really influenced this anthology. Most, if not all, of the stories are dismal and only show the negative aspects of human augmentation and becoming a cyborg. Most of the characters would prefer to go back to being vanilla human.
At least one story did not even have a cyborg in it, rather just technology used in augmentation. Two more stories could have the cyborg parts of them removed and not be much different. They HAVE cyborgs in them but are not actually about cyborgs, if you understand.
The stories in this book fail to underline the real pitfalls of transhumanism and human augmentation, except perhaps for . Instead, you face constant whining from the characters about how they want to be human again. Either that, or the story is couched in so much symbolism and metaphor (which might be your thing, but it's not mine) that you might as well be reading a book of euphemisms.
Below is a list of the stories in this anthology I think are worth reading.
1. Always the Harvest
2. A Cold Heart
3. What I’ve Seen With Your Eyes
4. No Place to Dream, but a Place to Die
5. Negative Space
6. The Regular
7. Tongtong’s Summer
8. God Decay
9. Mercury in Retrograde
10. Seventh Sight
October 14, 2014
This collection of original stories was a Kickstarter Project. Like any short story collection, some stories will hit home more than others. Two or three of the stories were quite good, and I only skipped one. Most of the time I jump to the next story more than that, so that is a good thing. I enjoyed reading this book. I like short stories, because you can read most of them in a half hour or so. I used this book to fill in gaps, and it worked well for that.
The concept of the book was intriguing, but too many of the stories seemed similar. It was an easy read, but didn't really move me. Nothing bad to say, but it wasn't great either.
I give Upgraded 3 Stars out of 5. You may be more into this than I was.
I received a review copy of Upgraded. In return, I am giving an honest review.
The concept of the book was intriguing, but too many of the stories seemed similar. It was an easy read, but didn't really move me. Nothing bad to say, but it wasn't great either.
I give Upgraded 3 Stars out of 5. You may be more into this than I was.
I received a review copy of Upgraded. In return, I am giving an honest review.
October 8, 2014
Difficult to rate and review anthologies. A number of stories I enjoyed, including (but not limited to):
- "Seventh Sight" by Greg Egan
- "Always The Harvest" by Yoon Ha Lee
- "Collateral" by Peter Watts
- "Small Medicine" by Genevieve Valentine
- "Wizard, Cabalist, Ascendant" by Seth Dickinson
- "The Regular" by Ken Liu
And as is often the case with "modern" science fiction, there were a number of stories that were too weird or hard to follow for me, such as:
- "Coastlines of the Stars" by Alex Dally MacFarlane
- "Honeycomb Girls" by Erin Cashier
- "Fusion" by Greg Mellor
I'm glad I read it, but I don't know if I'd recommend it to anyone who wasn't a fan of cybernetics stories.
- "Seventh Sight" by Greg Egan
- "Always The Harvest" by Yoon Ha Lee
- "Collateral" by Peter Watts
- "Small Medicine" by Genevieve Valentine
- "Wizard, Cabalist, Ascendant" by Seth Dickinson
- "The Regular" by Ken Liu
And as is often the case with "modern" science fiction, there were a number of stories that were too weird or hard to follow for me, such as:
- "Coastlines of the Stars" by Alex Dally MacFarlane
- "Honeycomb Girls" by Erin Cashier
- "Fusion" by Greg Mellor
I'm glad I read it, but I don't know if I'd recommend it to anyone who wasn't a fan of cybernetics stories.
October 23, 2014
Upgraded has some great stories, but it's an uneven anthology.
Still, the kickoff of Always the Harvest & A Cold Heart were both good (A Cold Heart for structural reasons, Always the Harvest because of the enjoyable reveal)
Other standouts included Married, The Regular, and Tongtong's Summer, as well as the final 3: Synechdoche Oracles, Collateral, and Seventh Sight.
There's a diversity in styles (highly structured and highly evocative) and many takes on "Cyborg" (more creativity than I expected, but still leaving me with the sense that there are interpretations missing). But it's a spotty anthology with some duds along the way.
Still, the kickoff of Always the Harvest & A Cold Heart were both good (A Cold Heart for structural reasons, Always the Harvest because of the enjoyable reveal)
Other standouts included Married, The Regular, and Tongtong's Summer, as well as the final 3: Synechdoche Oracles, Collateral, and Seventh Sight.
There's a diversity in styles (highly structured and highly evocative) and many takes on "Cyborg" (more creativity than I expected, but still leaving me with the sense that there are interpretations missing). But it's a spotty anthology with some duds along the way.
February 26, 2015
Rating 4.5
Great sci-fi detective noir.
A serial killer that preys on (enhanced) escort girls, versus an emotionally damaged, cyborg (well, almost) ex-cop turned private eye. Liu doesn't disappoint.
A deep pain floods through her like forgiveness, like hard rain after a long drought. She does not know if she will be granted relief, but she experiences this moment fully, and she’s thankful. “It’s okay,” she says, stroking Carrie as she lies in her lap. “It’s okay."
You can download and read for free here: http://neil-clarke.com/the-future-is-...
Great sci-fi detective noir.
A serial killer that preys on (enhanced) escort girls, versus an emotionally damaged, cyborg (well, almost) ex-cop turned private eye. Liu doesn't disappoint.
A deep pain floods through her like forgiveness, like hard rain after a long drought. She does not know if she will be granted relief, but she experiences this moment fully, and she’s thankful. “It’s okay,” she says, stroking Carrie as she lies in her lap. “It’s okay."
You can download and read for free here: http://neil-clarke.com/the-future-is-...
October 23, 2014
Reseña completa en el blog
No la he leído completa.
He leído:
- No Place to Dream, but a Place to Die by Elizabeth Bear
- Tongtong’s Summer by Xia Jia
- Always the Harvest by Yoon Ha Lee
- The Regular by Ken Liu
- Musée de l’Âme Seule by E. Lily Yu
- Come From Away by Madeline Ashby
- Oil of Angles by Chen Qiufan
Aproximadamente un 50% de los relatos.
No la he leído completa.
He leído:
- No Place to Dream, but a Place to Die by Elizabeth Bear
- Tongtong’s Summer by Xia Jia
- Always the Harvest by Yoon Ha Lee
- The Regular by Ken Liu
- Musée de l’Âme Seule by E. Lily Yu
- Come From Away by Madeline Ashby
- Oil of Angles by Chen Qiufan
Aproximadamente un 50% de los relatos.
August 23, 2014
This is a very good anthology. I will admit that not every story is to my taste, but it is a matter of personal taste not that the stories are bad. There is a nice mix of easily accessible and fun to read stories and some that are a little more work. This has been a great lunchtime reading companion.
September 3, 2014
Full review will be up in next month's RT magazine, but I enjoyed the anthology! Some were weird, most were amazing and a few really stuck with me. There's seriously something for everyone since there's a story for hard core sci-fi fans needing facts, alien fans and odd fans wanting hands and feet sticking out of the wall ;-)
All in all I enjoyed
All in all I enjoyed
Displaying 1 - 30 of 67 reviews