author : Gregory Benford

Contents (possible spoilers)

• Blood on Glass

• In Alien Flesh

• Time Shards

• Redeemer

• Snatching the Bot

• Relativistic Effects

• Nooncoming

• To the Storming Gulf

• White Creatures

• Me/Days

• Of Space/Time and the River

• Exposures

• Time's Rub

• Doing Lennon. 1975

expansion of "Against the Fall of Night"

Contents (possible spoilers)

• Time Guide. 1979

• Slices. 1981

• Freezeframe. 1994

• Mozart on Morphine. 1994

• Centigrade 233. 1994

• Sleepstory. 1994

• Calibrations and Exercises. 1979

• Leviathan. 1994

• Shakers of the Earth. 1994

• Proselytes. 1994

• Touches. 1994

• Nobody Lives on Burton Street. 1970

• Dark Sanctuary. 1979

• Side Effect. 1994

• Knowing Her. 1977

• Stand-In. 1965

• We Could Do Worse. 1994

• Immortal Night. 1994

• The Bigger One. 1994

• Cadenza. 1981

• Matter's End. 1994

A collection of Benford novellas and short stories from the 1980s and 90s. Some of these depict well the sheer incomprehensible alienness of the aliens, from the nomadic Chupchups in "World Vast, World Various", to the electrical hexagons in "A Dance to Strange Musics". Generally good stuff, but nothing leaps out as extra special.

Contents (possible spoilers)

• A Desperate Calculus. 1995. = A Calculus of Desperation

(writing as Sterling Blake) Two scientists trying to understand new epidemics watch the planet dying from pollution and overpopulation.

• High Abyss. 1995

Battles and heresies in a world with a strange non-isotropic geometry.

• World Vast, World Various. 1989

The Japanese science team try to make first contact with the nomadic Chupchups, apparent remnants of a dying civilisation. But the Chupcups are hard to contact.

• As Big as the Ritz. 1986

Clayton Donner gets invited to visit the strange experimental world of the Brotherhood, but they don't realise that he is an astrophysicist, able to understand how the world works.

• Doing Alien. 1994

How far would you go to pick up an alien?

• In the Dark Backward. 1994

An historian time travels to reassure dead artists that they will be revered. How reassuring is such a visit? [The last paragraph rather unnecessarily explains what has just happened, even though it is obvious.]

• The Voice. 1997

Problems in a post-literate world.

• Kollapse. 1997

When civilisation falls, only the well-prepared will survive.

• The Scarred Man. 1970

[Possibly the first recorded computer virus?]

• Zoomers. 1995

Future trading

• A Worm in the Well. 1995

Mining wormholes, for profit, if not fun.

• A Dance to Strange Musics. 1998

First contact at Alpha Centauri is stranger than we can imagine

Contents (possible spoilers)

• Gregory Benford. As Big as the Ritz. 1986

Clayton Donner gets invited to visit the strange experimental world of the Brotherhood, but they don't realise that he is an astrophysicist, able to understand how the world works.

• John M. Ford. Fugue State. 1987

• Nancy Springer. Chance. 1987

At a time when much contemporary SF seems to be about tomorrow, Greg Benford has put together a superb collection of five original novellas about the Far Future, when the Earth, or even the Universe itself, is vastly older, maybe even at the end of its life. Every one brilliantly evokes the scope of immense age and size, whilst still telling a good human story.

Contents (possible spoilers)

• Greg Bear. Judgment Engine. 1995

The very last energy of the Universe is being carefully harnessed by the Libraries for the Endtime Work, when suddenly someone questions The Proof.

• Poul Anderson. Genesis. 1995

The galactic brains decide they should save the earth from destruction, for sentimental reasons. Only Gaia, the brain currently studying the earth, disagrees. And it seems she is not being entirely truthful about her reasons.
[Later expanded into the novel Genesis]

• Donald Kingsbury. Historical Crisis. 1995

A rogue psychohistorian is punished for publishing his theories. His punishment means he now can't remember what they were. But other people seem to think they were important. (This story, the only one set in an ongoing future, rather than at an ending, beautifully conveys the weight of thousands of years of history.)
[Later expanded into the novel Psychohistorical Crisis.]

• Joe Haldeman. For White Hill. 1995

Artists from the various human planets are gathered on an Earth devastated by war, in a competition to celebrate its resurrection. But the war isn't over.

• Charles Sheffield. At the Eschaton. 1995

[This novella was expanded into the novel Tomorrow and Tomorrow, which has the same setup and climax, with more intermediate detail.]