“The Universe Box” Michael Swanwick
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Rating: 4/5 Stars.
Michael Swanwick is a well-known SFF writer of tales that twist reality and give the reader an unexpected view of the world around them as seen from a different perspective. The stories in this collection range from fairy tales, world-ending horrors, time-twisters, to perspectives on what makes us human.
- “Starlight Express”: a Roman in the far future sees a woman appear out of a teleporter. His relationship with the strange woman would change when they discover who she is, or isn’t, and why she appeared at that point in time.
- “The Last Days of Old Night”: set in long ago period, it tells the story of three trolls with the power to create things from their thoughts. In the journey, they encounter a vast ocean that does not obey them. Bringing a city to life, they learn that the sun will rise for the first time and turn everything to stone, unless they reach the far shore. They force the city to build them a ship; but their journey is at risk by a lone mouse whom they forced to become human to serve them.
- “The Year of the Three Monarchs”: a sorcerer raises an army to attack a city, only to be betrayed by the one he trusts. The usurper is, in turn, betrayed by a thief, who only gets to become the conqueror for a brief while.
- “Ghost Ships”: a contemporary ‘story’ with a brief, fantastical element, but is more about growing up and reminiscing about people who, as university students, do strange and, occasionally dangerous things. The author claims the story is true (apart from the names), so it is up to the reader to decide if it is a story at all.
- “The White Leopard”: a man finds a discarded war drone in the shape of a leopard, something that he once controlled in the army. While using it, he finds a woman operating a similar drone. As they continue to meet, he starts to think about ways to get rid of his wife. But the wife may have other ideas.
- “Dragon Slayer”: the story of a wanderer who saves a boy. Together they journey to a city, where they encounter a wizard with the power to travel through time. But an evil being has been following the wanderer. Now, the wanderer and the wizard must face the being, but the confrontation would involve a number of time paradoxes.
- “The Warm Equations”: a haughty scientist crashes on Mercury. Believing nobody will come and he has to save himself, he tried to free himself but starts to fail. But hope may appear if what he believes is wrong.
- “Requiem for a White Rabbit”: a white rabbit robot in an amusement park gets an intelligence boost after an accident and escapes from it with the help of a robot Cinderella. But it after they pick up a hitchhiking boy with a background of parental abuse, the story veers into a different territory after a sudden glitch in the narrative.
- “Dreadnought”: a man who cares for nothing but living his own life in his own way. But an apparently crazed priest keeps harassing him, along with a man with a name like Cthulhu, who appears to be waiting for a sign that evil would take over the land.
- “Grandmother Dimetrodon”: a man escapes into the prehistory past to run away from a murder. There’s he lives in Xanadu, a city populated by people from the future (ours and from further in the future), where he harvests meat from Dimetrodons for a living. A woman from our far future pays to see his farm and to witness the blood, gore and violence on his farm. Only at the end does he discover just what she is and why violence has always been a part of humanity, past, present and the distant future.
- “The Star-Bear”: An exiled Russian writer living in Paris has an unusual encounter with a bear. By the middle of the story, the bear has started a conversation with the writer, trying to convince him to return to the Soviet Union, to be celebrated as a Soviet writer. Should he remain true to the reasons he left Russia, or return to a country eager for a propaganda victory?
- “Nirvana or Bust”: the story starts with a cyborg woman who has discovered a way to link her thoughts and emotions with the artificial intelligence she shares. But this link is strongly objected to by both humans and robot intelligence, leading to a confrontation that may only be delayed for a while.
- “Reservoir Ice”: a mathematician falls in love with a woman but later breaks up with her. Throwing himself into his work, he discovers a way to ‘slip’ back in time and uses it to meet up with the woman again. Time paradoxes, of course, abound when she and others also begin to use his technique to slip back and forth in time.
- “Artificial People”: an artificial person is born and tries to live a life. But it has constantly been shut down by its owner, who is struggling to find a purpose for the person. Eventually, the person is set free and finds a way to live a life with a purpose by itself.
- “Huginn and Muninn—and What Came After”: a woman enters a mirror world where things are not what they seem. She eventually realises that she is being used by the mirror beings who claim to know who she is. But they don’t, and the realisation would shatter the universe.
- “Cloud”: a social gathering takes place in the clouds, but it is only a temporary one, for clouds can disperse and vanish.
- “Timothy: An Oral History”: a hilarious story set in a future where a Professor of Genomic Obstetrics does an act of genetic manipulation that sets off a social chain reaction in a society that has developed without a certain genetic personality.
- “Annie Without Crow”: An unusual fantasy story involving a time-travelling Lady Annie who is cross with her trickster lover Crow, and goes back in time to her land in 16th Century England. There, she finds a young lad (Shakespeare) in her home which is not meant to have any males. More to the point, she discovers a plot to change the future of humanity to which she is not invited to; so she invites herself. There, she royally messes up the plans of some Lords for future world domination, causing a conflict that is only resolved after an invasion of her home and her revenge via seduction. And all is apparently forgiven between her and Crow.
- “Universe Box”: a thief steals a box that contains everything that was, is and will be in the universe. The thief goes to Earth, and chooses a strangely boring person on Earth to hide it. But pursuers are close, and they kidnap the man’s girlfriend. To get her back, he would give them the box, if he can remember where he hid it. Through twists and turns, and the help of powerful beings, he gets her back, only to learn that he is now not so boring, and a whole new life has opened up for him.
Book read from 2026/07/20 to 2026/07/24.