Futuristica, Volume 1 by Chester W. Hoster

Futuristica, Volume 1 Reviews

• 
  Mike

  Disclosure: I received an advance review copy from the publisher because I have a story in Volume 2.
  
  These are some fine stories, and I'm honestly flattered to be in such good company. Although the authors are not yet well known, I have a feeling that many of them eventually will be.
  
  This is just the kind of science fiction I like: fresh ideas interestingly and competently explored, in a way that leaves you both thought-provoked and emotionally moved (sometimes disturbed). A few are funny; a few are horrific; most of them are just straight-out engaging. When they use tropes, and sometimes they do, they often twist them or mash them up in unexpected ways, and a good many of them combine more than one near-future or current technology trend.
  
  A couple did break my suspension of disbelief. Daryna Yakusha, in "Felis Helianthus", shows us an Internet without cat photos, for example. I'm actually kidding about that one, but Robert Lowell Russell's closing mecha-mercenaries story, "Love That Easy Money", gave me a few fridge moments, and the more I thought about it the more plot holes it seemed to have. That's not to say it wasn't moving, in its own way.
  
  A lot of the stories show us futures where people are struggling, often because of climate change. Megan Chaudhuri's "Sterile Technique", for example, takes themes of vat-grown meat and infectious prions and places it within a story of human struggle, love, family, conflict and working for difficult employers. James Beamon's "Whole Lives in Hammered Fragments" takes tropes that have seen more use than most of those in the other stories - poor asteroid miners exploited by corporations, rebellion of the space colonies against Earth - and does something fresh with them, again bringing family in as a strong theme. Then we get the humorous "End of My Rope" by Holly Schofield, which is literally about herding cats (and space trade with difficult aliens, and intelligence enhancement).
  
  Patrice Sarath's "Murder on the Hohmann" is in the mould of classic murder-on-the-isolated-transport stories, whether that transport is an oceangoing ship or the Orient Express. But it has a clever twist, which takes the mystery trope of "everyone has something to hide that makes them a suspect" in a fresh direction.
  
  L. Chan's "Coin Toss" plays with AI, cryptocurrency and another family connection. Wole Talabi's "If They Can Learn" does something clever with AI training and systemic racism. Both give us nonwestern locales and protagonists, something it's good to see more of in SF.
  
  L. H. Davis's "Shoot Him Daddy" mashes up alien invasion and redneck zombie apocalypse survival, but with a romance element, and does a fine job with tension. Marina Berlin's "Life and Death in the Frozen City" features a courtesan who must make a difficult choice in an occupied country. Anne E. Johnson's "Dreamwire", by contrast, shows us a trust fund princess obsessed with body modification, and what happens when she takes it too far.
  
  Nancy S.M. Waldman's "Hu.man and Best" is set after the end of a robot uprising, and once again brings in themes of family and caring for the young. Ciro Faienza's "The Soma Earth" is a cli-fi story featuring scientific agriculture which touches on racism and the culture of criminal gangs, while Mary Mascari's "Debugging Bebe" does something completely different with scientific agriculture, cultural tradition from a very different place, and social class and privilege.
  
  Mike Morgan's "Something to Watch Over Us" involves half-Japanese people in Japan; AI; and what happens when a corporate wellbeing program works a little too well. It's amusing. So, in a darker way, is Stephanie Burgis's "Mums' Group", with very different protagonists: young mothers in a British city of the fairly near future, also interacting with AIs that are supposed to give guidance for social good, but with an entirely different outcome.
  
  Bo Balder's "Even Paradise Needs Maintenance" crosses the world again to Australia, with downloadable skills, universal income, ocean cleanup, alien trade, remote avatars, and libertarianesque religious states which produce inept terrorists. She runs all those elements through a blender and produces a good adventure story.
  
  E. E. King's "Light-Years from Now" is a lovely first-contact story, set in the present day, with an underlying theme of accepting difference. And Gary Kloster's "Llamacide" is a hilarious tale of brain hacking, which makes the most of the parallel between debugging a program and solving a mystery.
  
  All in all, I'm greatly encouraged that there are so many good stories being written in SF by so many diverse, widely scattered writers. There's plenty of life left in the old field, is the message I take from this collection, and will be for many years to come.
• 
  Arnis

  
  https://poseidons99.wordpress.com/201...
• 
  Wealhtheow

  A collection of sf short stories ranging from good to not-so-much. My favorites of the book were by Stephanie Burgis and Ciro Faienza.
  
  Sterile Technique by Megan Chaudhuri--Rubaiyat drops out of university to culture prion-free meat for rich people so she can pay for her sister's medical treatment. I really like the details of the future here.
  
  Whole Lives in Hammer Fragments by James Beamon--Marcus Lyon was the best damn pilot the Hegemony had ever seen. And now they've offered him his freedom in exchange for one job: kill his brother. I totally bought Marcus as a person, and even the story doesn't go in-depth into how his universe works, I got a solid feel for its mercilessness.
  
  End of My Rope by Holly Schofield--A captain is transporting 100 cats and 100 plug-n-play augmentation chips. I didn't like this. It didn't get into what it means to augment intelligence on an ethical or interpersonal level, the characters lacked personality, and there was no plot besides cats annoying the shipcrew.
  
  Murder on the Hohmann by Patrice Sarath--Kinda like an Agatha Cristie mystery in space. A disliked passenger dies on board a spaceship, and during the months it takes the ship to reach Earth all the passengers eye each other with suspicion. It ends with two pages of infodumping, which made me go from mildly liking this story to outright disliking it.
  
  Coin Toss by L Chan--Frank investigates a new cryptocurrency. The world building is cool but the case is not.
  
  If They Can Learn by Wole Talabi--Borg police officers are perfectly logical. So why did one kill an unarmed civilian? I really liked this one: good characters, interesting world, a plot that fits perfectly into the space of the short story.
  
  Shoot Him Daddy by L.H. Davis--Aliens seed the planet's water with something that basically turns humans into zombies. A small group of humans are left thanks to coincidence and their moonshine, which protects against turning. Not well written.
  
  Life and Death in the Frozen City by Marina Berlin--A mysterious courtesan hears rumors of unrest in the city that they've made their home. I liked it.
  
  Dreamwire by Anne E Johnson--A rich girl gets cyber part after cyberpart, fixing every bit of herself piece by piece, but something is still missing. Then she hears about a new invention that will let you connect to your dreams...I liked the beginning and premise of this story, but the ending was way too pat.
  
  Hu.man and Best by Nancy S.M. Waldman--An old soldier comes across a human girl in the no-mans-land between the androids and humans. I liked this.
  
  The Soma Earth by Ciro Faienza--A deaf African-American immigrates to Italy to create a high-tech working farm in an ecologically collapsed Italy. I loved this: everything from Tiche's feelings about her lost love Paolo to her ruminations on the privilege of communication to how she experiences the sensors hidden about the farm. It takes the same view of the future as Paolo Bacigalupi, but without the misanthropic hopelessness undertone.
  
  Debugging Bebe by Mary Mascari--Britta is on the brink of a bright future with the corporation that runs the space station when her graduation project, a nanobotanic plant, is infested. She turns to the station's underworld of botanists for a solution, but in so doing discovers that her career expectations are not a good fit for her. The writing felt just a little clunky somehow, but I liked the ideas and worldbuilding enough that it didn't spoil my enjoyment.
  
  Something to Watch Over Us by Mike Morgan--In a company in future Japan, employees are expected to take an e-nurse's advice in order to pay lower insurance payments. Weirdly enough, the program seems to be causing a lot of coincidences that make people happy...I like the idea of this, which felt like a Connie Willis story. The delivery feels pretty clunky, though, as though the author wanted to dump in every bit of knowledge about living in Japan as a noticeable foreigner he could.
  
  Mums' Group by Stephanie Burgis--Modern moms get a Mumplant to help them be better mothers. It prompts them to be the best possible parents they can be--but when something goes wrong with Megan's Mumplant, it might be the push she needs to downgrade the level of control she gives it. I loved the way this mimicked concern trolling and mom-shaming in our current world, but with a sf twist.
  
  Even Paradise Needs Maintenance by Bo Balder--Jones is an alien ambassador because she has nothing better to do, but after she and the alien's avatar are kidnapped, she finds her true vocation. I liked the characters, story, and futuristic world (complete with plastic continents).
  
  Light-Years from Now by E.E. King--A grad student looks for extraterrestrial life every night in his lab. One day a handsome young man comes to keep him company, and they fall in love. The mysterious hot guy is very obviously an alien; the hints are beyond hints. Yet Tom never suspects a thing. I did not like this. Everything felt telegraphed. This could have been a single paragraph story.
  
  Felis Helianthus by Daryna Yakusha--Eri spends her days chipping away inside landfills trying to find genetic samples of Earth's lost biodiversity. She finds the bones of a creature that just might be a long-lost species, and thereby a ticket to riches. But she's so puzzled (in a way that's obviously cover for being charmed) by the weird little thing that she keeps delaying turning it in...It's a kitten and therefore I am totally into this story. Good low-key worldbuilding. I liked all the details about solar gel paneling for houses and humans being so separated from other types of beings that they comb historical records for a mere picture of a sunflower.
  
  Llamacide by Gary Kloster--Milo is a grad student trying to nudge llamas, goats, sheep, etc. into usable behavioral patterns using a computer program. One of the llamas almost kills the university chancellor, so a police detective (who Milo continually lusts after) checks the lab out. It's kinda a pointless tale, I figured out the mystery 6 pages into this 17 page story, Milo doesn't have much personality beyond thinking the detective is hot, and nothing stood out to me about this future. Fine, but forgettable.
  
  Love That Easy Money by Robert Lowell Russell--The MTA fleet was built to fight AIs, but now that the war is over they've splintered into individual mercenaries who take any job the Martians will pay for. Kassie is one of the best, and has to push herself to her limits when one Martian city-state has the bright idea of ridding themselves of the MTAs by putting a price on every one of their heads. Suddenly Mars goes from easy pickings to an all-out brawl between tanks. I found myself skimming this after a while. The premise is an interesting one, but the way the action was written felt dry and pointless.
• 
  Stephanie

  Hooray! My short story "Mums' Group" was just published in this anthology. It's set in Leeds, where I lived when my older son was born, and it's a near-future science fiction story about the social pressure mothers face to be PERFECT, no matter what...and about the way that the other women in our mums' groups get us through it! (With huge thanks to [a] my brother Dave, who asked me to stretch myself, do something different, and write him a near-future SF story as a Christmas gift; and [b] the members of the real-life mums' groups who've supported me and saved me ever since my own first son was born.)
• 
  Irena

  I received a free copy of this book through Goodreads Giveaways.
  
  This was an interesting collection for sure and a few stories were great. I really loved "End of my rope" and "Sterile Techique".
• 
  MJ

  Well dang, a book where every story is a good one and seemed all to have been written for me: female friendly, culturally sensitive, men and women doing the right thing & the honorable thing in imaginations of the far future. Can't wait to get hold of the second one.
  
  Website informative and lots of info on the authors, oh yes, authors I've never heard of but will now look for their work.
• 
  Rose

  I received a free copy of this book through Goodreads Giveaways.
  
  Really great collection of sci-fi stories. Lots of interesting concepts, varied tones, great characters. I loved almost every single story. I would definitely recommend this.
• 
  Esther

  Lots of varied settings and visions of the future. My favourites were probably the Burgis and Yakusha stories. Lots of strong relational and emotional content through the stories.
  
  Perfect for me
  
  Enjoyable, worked for me
  "Sterile Technique" by Megan Chaughuri - An Indian woman must use her skills to grow meat to save her sister from her mistakes.
  "Whole Lives in Hammered Fragments" by James Beamon - A man gets one last chance in space but only because he is the only one who can hunt down his brother.
  * "End of my Rope" by Holly Schofield - Charming story about the risks of transporting cats in space.
  "If They Can Learn" by Wole Talabi - A mystery about robots disobeying their protocols and the dangers of taking shortcuts as well as how learning happens. Set in Nigeria which was novel and a fun setting. Some interesting political comment on the US today.
  * "Life and Death in the Frozen City" by Marina Berlin - An alien courtesan sees too much of what lies inside her clients and must decide what to do with that insight. [Stories revolving around tea are awesome!]
  "Dreamwire" by Anne E. Johnson - A woman's journey to discover herself is even harder in a world where you can anything that you want.
  "Hu.man and Best" by Nancy S.M. Waldman - A soldier discovers the frontier between man and artificial intelligence. Set in Southern Africa.
  * "Debugging Bebe" by Mary Mascari - It is the day of final examination and a young nanobotanist discovers who she can really trust.
  "Something to watch over us" by Mike Morgan - The dangers of employee well-being programmes! Set in Japan.
  * "Mums' Group" by Stephanie Burgis - Tragic take on the struggles women face to be the "perfect mum" and how far they would be willing to go.
  "Light-Years from Now" by E.E. King - A sweet story of first contact in the SETI programme.
  * "Felis Helianthus" by Daryna Yakusha - A post-apocalyptic tale about the surprising things you can find in junk, and how even in a world where survival is on the edge, sometimes other things are still more important than food.
  
  Fine, but didn't talk to me
  "Murder on the Hohmann" by Patrice Sarath - Fun retelling of a murder story set in the closed confines of space. It was cute but I probably would have appreciated it more if I understood the other origin genre better.
  "Coin Toss" by L Chan - Another mystery set in a future world, this time revolving around crypto-currencies.
  "Shoot Him Daddy" by L.H. Davis - Post-apocalyptic piece about sisters and young love.
  "The Soma Earth" by Ciro Faienza - Another post-apocalyptic piece about trying to rebuild agriculture in southern Europe.
  "Even Paradise Needs Maintenance" by Bo Balder - In a world where you can be anything, why not an ambassador to an alien species? Set in Australia.
  "Llamacide" by Gary Kloster - What happens when a llami tries to commit murder and only has a graduate student to defend them?
  
  Not my cup of tea
  "Love that Easy Money" by Robert Lowell Russell - Battles in a far future set the stage for changing allegiances. I struggled to follow this one. It felt like a video game.
• 
  E.J. Shumak

  This is a great read. I rushed through it in an all-nighter.
  I have worked with the editor, Chester Hoster, before and hope to in the future, though my work is not included in this collection. Many other fine authors have been selected by Mr. Hoster to superb result that should not be missed.
  Futuristica is three hundred, thirty-one pages of exciting and challenging stories that manage to be fun to read, as well as stimulating and intriguing. This anthology is Science Fiction that, by its nature, improves the genre as a whole. These are good solid stories, each and every one a pleasure and escape, combined with a thought-provoking hook every time.
  Grab it. Read it. You will not be disappointed.
• 
  Carrie Ives

  I really liked this book. The stories were all different and set both on distant future earth, not so distant future earth, and alien planets. Some of the stories really stuck with me with the issues they presented.