“2001: An Odyssey In Words: Honouring the Centenary of Sir Arthur C. Clarke’s Birth” edited by Ian Whates, Tom Hunter

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Rating: 3/5 Stars

An anthology of stories with the premise that each one must be 2001 words long. The resulting stories are mostly average with some interesting ones by Emma Newman, Yoon Ha Lee, Liz Williams, Jeff Noon, Emmi Itaranta, Chris Beckett, Claire North, Becky Chambers and Alastair Reynolds.

• “Golgotha” by Dave Hutchinson: an alien who ‘swims’ in methane goes to meet a special creature from the sea who gives a message we may not like to hear.
• “The Monoliths of Mars” by Paul McAuley: a recommend tour of various Monoliths on Mars created in the image of the original Monolith.
• “Murmuration” by Jane Rogers: two returning spaceships in quarantine tell stories about a perfect alien world, with only one imperfection that was, depending on the ships’ point of view, was eliminated or created.
• “Ouroboros” by Ian R MacLeod: a former hacker gets a visit from a monk who gives him a task: to hack the reality that underlies the universe.
• “The Escape Hatch” by Matthew De Abaitua: a gateway to another world unexpectedly opens, and a video blogger is one of the first to go through and return and to encourage others to follow her.
• “Childhood’s Friend” by Rachel Pollack: children enhanced by neural ‘knobs’ inserted into their heads begin to act much with more intelligence than should be expected.
• “Takes from the White Hart” by Bruce Sterling: a meandering story set on a ship about a familiar looking man who lacks the time to tell a fantastical tale to a reporter.
• “Your Death, Your Way, 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed!” by Emma Newman: an old man prepares to die with the help of a paid for, and expensive, virtual angel. But in the real final moments, the unexpected happens, and he sees what the real world really thinks of him.
• “Distraction” by Gwyneth Jones: two people return from a long space mission to a world that has changed so much that they experience discomforts that have long vanished from the world.
• “Dancers” by Allen Stroud: an investigation on why some people react violently in space would reveal the hidden agenda of the computer in charge of the station, whose name happens to be HAL.
• “Entropy War” by Yoon Ha Lee: posed as a series of questions to the reader on warfare, the story concerns a conquering alien race who at the height of their powers retreats into an ark. The reason behind it would be because the alien race wants to win the ultimate war in the only way they can.
• “The Ontologist” by Liz Williams: a person who classifies all that is real, not real and may be real is asked to classify an unknown object. After much effort, he succeeds, but at a high cost to himself.
• “Waiting in the Sky” by Tom Hunter: two tales intertwine, with one story about family events around the announced death of David Bowie, the other from Curiosity’s point of view on Mars.
• “The Collectors” by Adrian Tchaikovsky: an expedition to a distant solar system finds it full of artificial objects and recordings, but no life. The expedition would have to learn to decipher the signal and then wait.
• “I Saw Three Ships” by Phillip Mann: a medical section is to be set up on the International Space Station. At its opening, two momentous events would occur: one a surprise, one unexpected.
• “Before They Left” by Colin Greenland: a tale set in Clarke’s book, “Childhood’s End”, about a girl who wishes to go to Mars. But then a visiting Overlord tells her that she won’t go for a good reason.
• “Drawn From the Eye” by Jeff Noon: a story about a collector of tears, which appear to hold secrets that the collector decides to explore one day.
• “Roads of Silver, Paths of Gold” by Emmi Itaranta: a faraway being is attracted by a human chant and becomes attached to our world, affecting it in various ways. But time passes by, and it may be time for it to move on.
• “The Fugue” by Stephanie Holman: an alien being on our world wakes up and discovers she has been here too long. But what is keeping her here and is she willing to give up the life she has lived to return to her world.
• “Memories of a Table” by Chris Beckett: in a museum that contains memories of events that happened in the past, one man comes to explore a certain memory from the recent past.
• “Child of Ours” by Claire North: an intelligent machine decides to have a child. But when her fellow machines on the network begin to argue about the characteristic of a child, the machine has to go with what it knows about human children; and act like a human itself.
• “Would-Be A.I., Tell Us a Tale! #241: Sell ‘em Back in Time! by Hali Hallison” by Ian Watson: when a burger company has saturated the world with its burger products, there is only one way it can sell more burgers; sell them to people from the past.
• “Last Contact” by Becky Chambers: a researcher makes one last effort to contact an alien race she has been monitoring for many years before her mission is recalled.
• “The Final Fable” by Ian Whates: a professor speculates that aliens are already among us and are hiding among the portion of the population indulges in a particular activity.
• “Ten Landscapes of Nili Fossae” by Ian McDonald: an artist paints a landscape on Mars as they await a rescue mission to get them off Mars that may or may not succeed.
• “Child” by Adam Roberts: as in “2001: A Space Odyssey”, the Star Child appears above the Earth. But other than that, the tale told here tells a very different story as to what happens to the Earth after that.
• “Providence” by Alastair Reynolds: an expedition to a habitable planet goes wrong, and all the expedition can do is return data to Earth for any future expedition that comes. But one man who ventures out alone makes an astonishing discovery, and he has to decide what to do with the secret he has found.

Book read from 2019/08/18 to 2019/08/30