Brainycat's 5 "B"s:
blood: 3
boobs: 1
bombs: 3
bondage: 4
blasphemy: 4
Stars: 5
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 is a big book. I don't use the "count pages" plugin in Calibre, but AZN says it's 400 kindle pages. Some of these shorts would qualify as novellas on their own. It took me a long time to get through it (short bursts before I fell asleep at night) but it was totally worth the effort. I actually finished each story in this anthology which is a rarity for me - most collections have at least one dud that I give up on. I wasn't familiar with the editor Jonathan Strahan before I bought this; Peter Watts and Charles Stross sold the book to me. I still haven't read any of Jonathan's books, but I've become a big fan of his ability to put a collection of stories together and I've already bought the next two anthologies in the Infinity Project series. I finished the book a few days ago but I wanted some time to digest the book before I wrote some gushingly fanboyish review.

The styles of these stories run the gamut from "free form speculative fiction" all the way to "old school hard science fiction". There's a couple of "creature feature" stories in here, but it's not about the critters as much as it is about how humans can adapt and change. Engineering has been described as "the application of science", and to that end all of these stories examine the dialectic relationship of human(ish) peoples to adapt to the reality of the world around them, and in turn adapt the reality to peoples' needs. All of the stories are thoughtful, well written and each of the authors is now on my "their name will help sell books to me" list. This is an example of what I expect from an anthology - I want to be challenged, I want to have my horizons expanded, and I want a series of knockout punches that together add up to a whole greater than the parts. This book delivers on all counts.

'Malak' by Peter Watts
    - A semiautonomous drone is programmed to assess the value of collateral damage before striking, and while optimizing it's algorithms to determine the easiest way to avoid politically costly civilian deaths it comes to some unexpected conclusions. I'm a HUGE fan of Peter Watts, and this story does not disappoint. Another knockout example of how dark, cynical and dystopic near futures needn't be cut from the same cloth as Neuromancer to be chillingly effective. Also, Peter did a spectacular job of writing from the POV of the drone without sounding like PacMan or Robocop, which is no small feat.

'Watching the Music Dance' by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
    - Over the last few years, major software sellers have been moving away from the boxed model - where you buy an unlimited license for a version - and replaced it with a subscription model, where you pay a much smaller fee every month and get a limited time license but all upgrades are included. This has caused no small amount of consternation among sizable number of consumers who want to own their tools outright. Software running on a computer is one thing, but what about software we install into our brains? To whom do we want to be beholden to with regards to neurological enhancements: The companies making products? Parents trying to give their young children every possible chance to succeed? This is a poignant story that addresses these questions and leaves the reader with a number of questions to ponder rather than a tidy conclusion.
    
'Laika's Ghost' by Karl Schroeder
    - Not the strongest story in the bunch, but that's a reflection of the overall quality of the collection rather than any real weakness in this story. What starts off as a straightforward cyberpunky conspiracy story a'la "young hacker finds out too much, has to go into hiding from Big Corporation" turns into a byzantine world where the conspiracy is much bigger and a lot older than Big Corporation, and has implications for everyone on the planet. Well written and very atmospheric, this story falls short of the others because I felt like it didn't really sink it's teeth into some of the questions it raises.

'The Invasion of Venus' by Stephen Baxter
    - Every so often, while reading SciFi, I run across a story that verbalizes so much more eloquently than I could my ideas about how Some Big Event would play out in reality. The Big Event in this case is "discovering alien intelligences", and the way it plays out is "They're not even a little bit interested in a bunch of primates flinging poo at each other on some watery ball of mud". The story plays out as an extended allegorical conversation between a scientist and a woo-woo vaguely theistic character who are trying to come to grips with the knowledge that humanity is only the center of it's own world, and is inconsequential on the interstellar scale.

'The Server and the Dragon' by Hannu Rajaniemi
    - A long, long time after the singularity and in a star system far, far away the fruits of technology are far from safe. What is the relationship between predator and prey in the interstellar scale? This is another of the (relatively) weaker stories in the collection; I felt it took a long time to get to where it's going, but one could make an argument that that helps to show the monumental scale of how these sorts of things play out.

'Bit Rot' by Charles Stross
    - I have no doubt posterity will remember this as the seminal Post-Human zombie story. In Charles's entirely capable hands, the story stays entirely clear of the obvious horror tropes and stays firmly in the scifi camp, even though it's basically a zombie story played out on an interstellar ship manned by post-humans many generations removed from their biologically bound progenitors. An excellent read, and a fantastic demonstration of how no matter how capable and how carefully you plan, something can always go catastrophically wrong.

'Creatures with Wings' by Kathleen Ann Goonan
    - This story could've been a disaster, but careful writing saved it. It veered dangerously close to reading like one of those intensely allegorical inward journey of self discovery, but deftly avoided feeling like I was witnessing the author mentally masturbating while gazing deeply into her navel. That's a fine line to walk along a slippery slope, and major kudos to the author for staying on the straight and narrow. While I'm not even a little bit religious in the slightest, I do have a soft spot for the Buddhists and this story is driven by Buddhist principles and ideals. The first of two stories that try to provide a scifi retelling of classic religious tales, I think this one works much better than the other and it's certainly left a more lasting impression on me.

'Walls of Flesh, Bars of Bone' by Damien Broderick and Barbara Lamar
    - A very well written story that tries to work out how time travelling paradoxes could be self-healing. Not much going in the way of characterization or setting, but the plot moves along well and it was very well written. The quality of the writing, in that it stays out of the way and paints details only where they're needed, is what made this otherwise pedestrian story maintain the caliber of the rest of the collection.

'Mantis' by Robert Reed
    - The most unashamedly postmodern of the stories, this plays on the idea that every window works both ways and then tries to push the analogy into the quantum realms by having the viewers effect the viewed - eg, everyone somehow effects each other even though they can only observe each other but not communicate. Not the strongest story in the book, but it's a notch or two above the likes of "Laika's Ghost" or "Mercies".

Judgement Eve, John C. Wright
    - The second SciFi retelling of a religious parable, this time the subject is the ejection of mankind from the Garden of Eden from the Abrahamaic traditions. The characters and the world they inhabit felt to me like a pale rehash of Walter Jon Williams' "Aristoi", though to be fair only a wee part of creation and a tiny cast of characters is important to this story so maybe the sample is skewed. I didn't feel particularly impressed by this rendition of what the fall could be like in a post-humanist, nano-machine enabled world and I found myself skimming hoping something unexpected would happen. I got to the end of story with no surprises. "Mantis" is the better religious parable in this collection.

A Soldier of the City, David Moles
    - A lost soldier, hopelessly cut off from the unit to which he owes fanatical allegiance, wins the hearts and minds of a distant and backwards people while in turn learning to be more empathic and understanding of other cultures. Not unlike the movie Soldier, actually. Except different - much more talking and a lot less action. I liked the world building, and any story where gods walk among mortals - and themselves can be killed by megatonnage weoponry - has my interest right away.

Mercies, Gregory Benford
    - Oh my. In Formula One racing right now, there's a debate going on about the cost of competing in the sport. The school of thought I subscribe to believes that the backmarker teams - less well funded, and who will never win races let alone championships - are a vital part of the sport because they make sure the big name teams never come in last and their sponsors never have to face the indignity of being on a car at the bottom of the results listing. I feel like this story does the same job for this book. There just wasn't anything new or interesting in the plot, the writing was average with some big plot holes and stiff dialogue, the premise was shaky at best, the setting was perpetually unpolished and I never found myself caring what happened to the protagonist. Other than all that, though, it was a good story.

The Ki-anna, Gwyneth Jones
    - This story has all the characterization and world building that's lacking in Mercies, with an interesting noirish detective thriller thrown in for good measure. It was a very enjoyable little "trek" story - ostensibly, it's about getting the protagonist from an orbiting station down to the surface of the planet and into a temple, but slowly and delightfully the plot thickens until all the players are trying to get somewhere physically and emotionally. An interesting story with some direct references to contemporary race and class struggles that works on a variety of levels, and has definitely put Gwyneth Jones on my watch list.

The Birds and the Bees and the Gasoline Trees, John Barnes
    - Probably the most relatable story to our contemporary world, it's placed in the near future where the first post-humans are still regarded as anomolous superstars. After using exophysics to try to tame rampant climate change, humans come to understand that for as much as we believe the anthropocene era is the most cataclysmic chapter in earth's history, the fact is we're still just a bunch of baby faced primates who just got here a few years ago - and our idea of "status quo" is hopelessly faulted by our tiny little sample size.

Brainycat's 5 "B"s:
blood: 5
boobs: 2
bombs: 2
bondage: 5
blasphemy: 5
Stars: 3
Bechdel Test: FAIL
Deggan's Rule: PASS (in spirit if not the letter)
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.

Natural Born Killers is one of my favorite movies. This story covers exactly the same emotional territory though not as deeply and doesn't make any greater comments about society's use of media for it's vicarious bloodsports. I also felt a strong resemblance to Kutter, but AM&NL is a much better read. This just a cute little love story about two special people fated to meet each other, fall in love, and end their lives together in a blaze of glory. It's written at what I'd consider a YA level of vocabulary and complexity, but I suppose it's probably inappropriate for younger readers (I'm not a very good judge of these things).  It's not a long story - it only took me a couple of short sittings to read it. As romance goes, this is the sort of romance I like, it's twisted, dark and gory. No explicit sex though, and that's a drawback that's worth at least a star. I was also hoping for more gore since killing is what brings these two people together, and I think opportunities to show them growing together were skipped over in a few scenes. It felt like a bit of fearfulness on the author's behalf, like she pulled back a little from truly committing herself to following the characters where they wanted to go.

It's hard to write an in-depth review of a short novella. Especially this one, as it's really all about atmosphere and mood rather than plot and character. We know the characters before the story starts, we know their arcs, and the setting really doesn't matter. To make a musical analogy, Natural Born Killers is like Psyclon 9's Parasitic and Atomic Montessa and Nuclear LuLu is like Mr. Kitty's Time. AM&NL is a good story and I see why it won the awards it has. I like what it does and where it goes, but I just wish it were more explicit. Readers with more delicate sensibilities will probably like it more than I did.

Brainycat's 5 "B"s:
blood: 4
boobs: 4
bombs: 3
bondage: 4
blasphemy: 4
Stars: 2
Bechdel Test: FAIL
Deggan's Rule: FAIL
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 book has all the right elements to make me a fan: zombies, nuclear holocaust, explicit taboo sex and cannibalism. Unfortunately, all this goodness is narrated through a pathetically emo protagonist. At just a few pages in I was hoping someone would smack this guy around for a bit, a few more pages and I was hoping that he'd meet a grisly demise. Against my better judgment I didn't put this down at 10%, but stuck it out until 49%. I wish I'd had and saved myself several minutes of my life that I'll never get back. What's magical about 49%? Nothing; it's where I was when I put my reader down and fell asleep. The next day when I opened my reader and found the rest of this story staring at me, I just couldn't bear to keep reading.

This book is set in a recently post-holocaust modern industrialized nation. I'm thinking it's England, but I can't remember the specific details that lead me to this conclusion. But the holocaust doesn't make sense - a certain number of the population became fast moving, dull witted zombies (aka "Romeros") and the other portion of the survivors got an odd sort of amnesia where they can't remember their own or anyone else's name nor any emotional relationships. Otherwise, the amnesiacs remember how to operate things and what their life was like before the war. At no point is any sort of attempt at reasoning or an exploration of how this came to be ever discussed.

Inside this setting that defies explanation are a set of characters - or more correctly, caricatures - that feel like the cast of an Edward Lee Apalachia story, but boiled down until the bones are soft and rubbery. Big Daddy Killer, Momma the Passive Incestous Harlot, Manipulative Incestous Sexpot Little Sister, and the aforementioned Useless Emo Big Brother. I really didn't care about these characters, there just wasn't enough going on with them for me to engage with them. This negatively effects the explicit sex, too - because the characters are so flat the sex scenes read as "mechanical" and "uninspired".

With a setting and characters like I've described, you're probably expecting the plot to be substandard. Dear reader, you would be entirely correct. Typical plot device: despite being trapped inside a house that's completely boarded up from the inside and pains taken to hide any evidence of occupation, every few days an amnesiac knocks on the door asking for help. But at no point do the Romeros show up anywhere near the house. WTF? The plot was like this distant galaxy hurling the occasional gamma burst into the character's lives; things just sort of randomly happened, everybody reacted to it according to their proscribed (painfully boring) roles and then the next chapter started. Yawn.

I don't know if this book is trying to be allegorical and my need for the setting and plot to relate to each other and make sense and for the characters to be more developed is entirely missing the point, or if this is supposed to be a more literal story that got published before it was fully developed. I feel like this book landed in a deep, steep valley between the two types of stories and can't find it's way up either side.

The writing isn't great; it's serviceable and didn't have any glaring typos but it the language was painfully plain. Not sparse; sparse belies an economy that's seeking eloquence through brevity. This writing just uses a small vocabulary and simple sentence structures. Granted, our MC is dimwit but the world is full of great books with lively, vibrant prose coming from the POV of characters who are less-than-geniuses. I expect the stories I read to use more language than the piles of emails I send and receive every day at work.

Brainycat's 5 "B"s:
blood: 5
boobs: 2
bombs: 3 (the economic violence of poverty)
bondage: 3
blasphemy: 4
Stars: 5
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.

What a fantastic find this is! Written against the backdrop of inner city poverty, this is a short story about deeply imperfect people trying to cope with extraordinarily crappy circumstances. Drugs are a major part of this story, as is the supernatural. I found myself reminded of The House by Edward Lee - a miasma from years of psychic pain builds up and takes on a life of it's own, which is the sort of Jungian inspired supernatural shenanigans I like the best.

Speaking as someone with six years of sobriety after a lifetime of chemical addiction, I found the portrayal of addiction in this story to be among the best I've ever read. According to the bios on the usual sites the author's day job is drug counseling. This experience shows through. The horror and depravity of addiction feels gut-wrenchingly visceral. I found parts of this short story difficult to read - they're that powerful. And I'm the guy that can read Edward Lee while eating dinner.

To be frank, I didn't have very high expectations for the book; Wicked Run Press is Mr. Mathew's own label. I was very pleasantly surprised at the quality of the writing - he uses an economy of words that flows very well, the characters were all developed well and voicing was especially well done. I do not recall any typos or grammatical errors. This is a well produced book gloriously free of the problems that beset too many self-published books.

I've since purchased several other books from Mark Mathews. They are not going to sit on my TBR list for years; knowing that I have some more stories that could be this good is like having a stash of the good stuff tucked away for later.

Brainycat's 5 "B"s:
blood: 4
boobs: 2
bombs: 4
bondage: 1
blasphemy: 3
Stars: 3.5
Bechdel Test: PASS
Deggan's Rule: PASS (with a non-literal interpretation of the test that preserves the intention)
Gay Bechdel Test: PASS

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.

To be honest, I'm not sure I'd call most of the included stories "cyberpunk" but I'm an old school first wave cyberpunker from way back in the days of Omni v1. Hipster reviewer says, "I was cyberpunk before Neuromancer was published". Nor are many of the stories post-cyber or transhumanist. If I were editing the blurb, I'd say most of these are dark-scifi or future-horror. Despite being disappointed that the contents do not match the tin, I persevered on through the 17 included stories. The older stories all feel dated, and most of the new stories feel derivative. Unlike most anthologies, I don't recall any stand-outs - I believe the best of the bunch is "pretty good".

I read a CJ Cherryh novel many years ago; I recall not enjoying the experience and I've since avoided her canon. The short story Mech did nothing to change my opinion of her writing. She's accomplished, skilled and confident - but her tone, verbiage and general "style" just don't do it for me I'm afraid. Let this be an example of my own shortcomings as a reader and not her skills as a writer. Also, the story was originally published over twenty years ago and doesn't survive the "dated" feeling well.

Last Human by Jorge Salgado-Reyes is definitely dark-scifi. "Will the last one left alive please turn off the lights?" would be another apt title. In fact, I think it's the title of a totally unrelated short that covers the exact same territory. That's my long-winded way of saying, "This wasn't particularly original".

Gregory J. Wolos's Annabelle's Children is the first to bring up a theme that's in a lot of these stories - the ubiquity of mass media and it's ability to manipulate people. This story emphasizes the effects on one person's legacy after her death through a mechanism I consider gimmicky; YMMV. I'd file this under future-horror as well.

Tom Borthwick's Living in the Singularity took too long to get to where it was going, and didn't surprise anyone once it got there. Not the strongest story in the anthology by any means. I'd call this future-horror; the only scifi element of the story is the gimmick the author uses to talk about loneliness.

Cotner's Bot by D.L. Young is one of the more traditionally cyberpunky stories in the anthology, and even starts to brush up against interesting notions of how much humanity does an entity need to be human - but rather than dig into the meat of the question, we keep to the periphery with a focus on the shenanigans of the people trying to pass off the forgeries.

Midnight Pearls Blue was "First published in Stardate magazine, Oct. 1985" according to the blurb. The film Bladerunner came out in 1982.

     "Do you believe [this story] is a replicant, Mr. Deckard?"

     Yes, Rachael, I do.

And I do mean exactly that it's a ripoff of Bladerunner and not DADoES.

Better Than Everything by Malon Edwards is another solidly cyberpunk story, and one of the top three stories in the collection. How can you grow up and move on when your first love is always available in a new iteration?

Cynthia Ward's Ex Machina reads like Sturgeon's More than Human for the Nintendo generation, written with a dose of "Kid Sister's Gangster Street Cred" trope thrown in for absolutely no reason at all. I think there's a kernel of a great story in here, but it needs some more workshopping before it develops it's unique voice.

Island by Terry Faust - As I look over the text for this review, I remember reading this but it made absolutely no impression on me whatsoever. And that's all I have to say about that.

John Shirley comes to the rescue and makes the anthology worth the couple of quid I paid for it with Meerga. Truly cyberpunk, truly thoughtful and truly one of the best stories in the book. Worth most of the price of admission right there.

To Sleep, Perchance is Mark Terence Chapman's contribution to the anthology. A super quick read, I think it's a great premise for the obvious conclusion but just needed a bit more honesty and vulnerability from the author to make the story really connect at a human level. Also, I think this is squarely in the "dark scifi" genre and isn't even remotely cyberpunk.

The Walk by Druscilla Morgan carries the posthumanist torch for the anthology, though again it would be better labeled Future Horror rather than cyberpunk. Mostly because it features a plot hole so big it could only be filled in with supernatural woowoo.

The Electrified Ants by Jetse de Vries is the third story that carries this anthology, and one of the stories that relies on the relationship between ubiquitous surveillance and nonstop consumerism. Imagine if Mark Zuckerberg ran GCHQ, and 10 Downing Street was a wholly owned subsidiary of Halliburton- that's the setting and origin of the conflict for this story. One of the longer stories in the collection, it reminded me of Wolf Time by Walter Jon Williams because of the bittersweet relationship stuff laid on top of some good ol' fashioned rebels vs. the Corporate Government.

Extrenum is a joint project from R. Thomas Riley and Roy C. Booth. I don't know who was responsible for which part of the finished product. It was originally in Apexology, and I've long been a huge fan of Apex Publications. This is not an example of the best work Apex has ever published. I'd call this just straight horror; the only thing remotely scifi about the whole thing is that it's set on Mars. Other than that, it reads like nearly every other multiple personality inspired short horror story.

Kerry G.S. Lipp's Attention Whore used a lot of words to make it's point. Too many words, actually. Speaking for myself, I'dve liked to have seen more conflict (story) and less exposition. It's a good start to what could be a great short, but like others in this collection it could use some more workshopping to develop the plot and tighten the characters. This story is overtly and self-admittedly based on the woowoo, and as such I'd call it Future Horror.

Frank Roger got shortchanged when they put his Unholy Grail in the same anthology as The Electrified Ants. For all intents and purposes, both of these stories cover EXACTLY the same intellectual territory and this makes it impossible for me not to compare them. I'd say Jetse's story is slightly better; but a significant part of my reasoning is the plot is more developed. Unholy Grail isn't as long, though, so it scores higher on the "brevity breeds eloquence" scale. I'd say this story gets an honorable mention, and helps make the anthology worth what I paid for it.

I think the people who put this anthology together read a lot of the same things I do (actually, they read a lot more than I do which is why they're putting this together and I'm buying it) and we share a lot of the same aesthetics. I am disappointed that the majority of the stories don't fit my strict definition of Cyberpunk, but since I like dark scifi and future horror I was still able to appreciate the stories. There aren't many "top shelf" writers in the collection, and this shows in the overall quality. Nevertheless, nobody gets to launch their writing career fully formed and at the top of their game - so we can forgive a bit of youthful exuberance and appreciate the efforts. I got this on Kindle Unlimited; I think the out of pocket price is about 3 quid, and I think that's a fair deal.