Status
Available
Call number
Publication
Ace Hardcover (2009), Edition: 1st, 368 pages
Description
In this collection of short stories, novelist Stross moves the U.S.-U.S.S.R. conflict onto a massive disk in another galaxy in "Missile Gap," offers a spam-filter solution to the Fermi paradox in "MAXOS," suggests clever bargains with the devil in a newly frozen Scotland in "Snowball's Chance," and sets the stage for appearances by Carl Sagan and Stephen Jay Gould in "The Colder War."
Media reviews
This is good representative sampling of Stross' fiction; a must-have for any Stross fan and a fine introduction for the uninitiated.
User reviews
LibraryThing member cammykitty
Stross always creates dense political worlds complete with all their economic ugliness. This is his strength, and also his curse. His readers have to be able adapt to his world quickly. He doesn't waste time with infodumps. Yeah! He doesn't waste time with infodumps. Oh no! This means your in for a
Some of the stories passed me by before I got my "sea legs" in his world. Some of them, I knew I was working hard to understand them. Some of them were absolutely brilliant though. "Rogue Farm" delighted me with it's novelty, but for some reason the Saturday Night Live phrase "Land Shark" kept running through my head. That only made it quirkier and funnier. "Trunk and Disorderly" was a twisty little romance, a Jeeves and Wooster go partying on Mars... only in this case it isn't Bertie who has to be saved from a bad marriage proposal. Palimpsest was a nice anti-Tuesday Next, that was both enjoyable and thought provoking. Stross's comments at the ends of the stories were enjoyable too. Even though I've never met Stross, I've always been aware of him as a person with a distinct personality when I read his fiction. Other authors are invisible behind their words, or long dead and perhaps never really lived. They just existed in photographs and quotations. His commentaries are part of why I feel this way about him.
And, of course, Stross is known for his biting humor, so it only seems right to end with a couple quotes.
"Brains, fresh brains for baby Jesus," crooned the farm in a warm contralto, startling Joe half out of his skin. "Buy my brains!" Half a dozen disturbing cauliflower shapes poked suggestively out of the farm's back, then retracted, coyly. from Rogue Farm
Uncontrolled civilization is a terminal consumptive state, as the victims of the first extinction discovered the hard way. from Palimpsest
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fast paced story where you better catch on quickly, or in the case of a short story, it will pass you by before you do. His stories are always witty, intelligent and full of allusions that will make the reader in the know chuckle with glee. The reader sort of in the know might wonder if he chose a name like "Manson" to refer to Charles Manson, the murderer? (Hint: I'm sure that was deliberate!) Some of the stories passed me by before I got my "sea legs" in his world. Some of them, I knew I was working hard to understand them. Some of them were absolutely brilliant though. "Rogue Farm" delighted me with it's novelty, but for some reason the Saturday Night Live phrase "Land Shark" kept running through my head. That only made it quirkier and funnier. "Trunk and Disorderly" was a twisty little romance, a Jeeves and Wooster go partying on Mars... only in this case it isn't Bertie who has to be saved from a bad marriage proposal. Palimpsest was a nice anti-Tuesday Next, that was both enjoyable and thought provoking. Stross's comments at the ends of the stories were enjoyable too. Even though I've never met Stross, I've always been aware of him as a person with a distinct personality when I read his fiction. Other authors are invisible behind their words, or long dead and perhaps never really lived. They just existed in photographs and quotations. His commentaries are part of why I feel this way about him.
And, of course, Stross is known for his biting humor, so it only seems right to end with a couple quotes.
"Brains, fresh brains for baby Jesus," crooned the farm in a warm contralto, startling Joe half out of his skin. "Buy my brains!" Half a dozen disturbing cauliflower shapes poked suggestively out of the farm's back, then retracted, coyly. from Rogue Farm
Uncontrolled civilization is a terminal consumptive state, as the victims of the first extinction discovered the hard way. from Palimpsest
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LibraryThing member RobertDay
Charlie Stross contributes a well-considered introduction to this collection of his short stories. Though he is better known for his longer-length work, Stross is one of the writers that came up through the UK sf magazine 'Interzone' and so cut his writer's teeth on short stories. Having reviewed
Which is odd, really. Because at least two stories in this collection - 'Missile Gap' and 'Palimpsest' have so many ideas in them and operate on such a large-scale canvas that you could imagine writers like, say, Harry Turtledove getting a series of doorstop-sized novels out of the ideas thrown off casually in these two pieces. Admittedly, in his afterword to 'Palimpsest', Stross does admit that it might still become a novel, some day. Another story, 'Trunk and Disorderly', an attempt to create a decadent post-human world, written as a P.G. Wodehouse pastiche, became a test run for Stross' novel 'Saturn's Children'; whilst another, 'Down on the Farm', is one of Stross' onging 'Laundry' stories, and so in passing reflects a particular take on a peculiar British institution, the Civil Service.
Indeed, many of the stories have a particularly British flavour to them. They also date from the decade up to 2010, so in at least one case ('Unwirer', co-authored with Cory Doctorow), the tech - and, indeed, the underlying legislative landscape that the story relies upon - has generally been overtaken by events and this story in particular feels seriously outdated. (It's one of the stories that doesn't share that British flavour I mentioned earlier, though.)
Throughout, Stross' inventiveness never flags. And I spent more time reading 'Palimpsest', a deep future time-travel intrigue, than I would like to admit to because I wanted to finish it to see how it worked out, so it certainly gripped my attention. Recommended.
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the place of the short story format in the history of science fiction, he then goes on to talk about the things he uses short stories for - mainly as a way to experiment with ideas, especially ones that don't justify the time and effort to expand them into novel form (he says).Which is odd, really. Because at least two stories in this collection - 'Missile Gap' and 'Palimpsest' have so many ideas in them and operate on such a large-scale canvas that you could imagine writers like, say, Harry Turtledove getting a series of doorstop-sized novels out of the ideas thrown off casually in these two pieces. Admittedly, in his afterword to 'Palimpsest', Stross does admit that it might still become a novel, some day. Another story, 'Trunk and Disorderly', an attempt to create a decadent post-human world, written as a P.G. Wodehouse pastiche, became a test run for Stross' novel 'Saturn's Children'; whilst another, 'Down on the Farm', is one of Stross' onging 'Laundry' stories, and so in passing reflects a particular take on a peculiar British institution, the Civil Service.
Indeed, many of the stories have a particularly British flavour to them. They also date from the decade up to 2010, so in at least one case ('Unwirer', co-authored with Cory Doctorow), the tech - and, indeed, the underlying legislative landscape that the story relies upon - has generally been overtaken by events and this story in particular feels seriously outdated. (It's one of the stories that doesn't share that British flavour I mentioned earlier, though.)
Throughout, Stross' inventiveness never flags. And I spent more time reading 'Palimpsest', a deep future time-travel intrigue, than I would like to admit to because I wanted to finish it to see how it worked out, so it certainly gripped my attention. Recommended.
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LibraryThing member AlanPoulter
Missile gap
Things change on a fateful day in 1962. The surface of Earth is moved to an immense platform in another galaxy in the far future. As increased gravity grounds missiles, and separated by much greater distances, the Cold War becomes irrelevant as the superpowers try to find where they are
A colder war
The story is a series of vignettes centred on the experiences of Roger Jourgensen, a family man, who is also a US government spook, monitoring the real struggle going on in the Cold War,and who is deeply affected by what he sees. This real struggle centres around the usage of alien lifeforms and relics, on Earth since before the dinosaurs. These lifeforms are so alien as to be things of nightmare fantasy or religious evil. They cannot reliably be controlled and killing them, even with a dedicated bomber wing using special plutonium nukes, is unlikely. On this alternate Earth, where Colonel Oliver North is a key figure in this Colder War, things go badly wrong. A classic, which opens up a new perspective on the boundary between science fiction and fantasy.
MAXOS
The universe around Earth is found to be teeming with alien signals beamed back to us in response to our outgoing broadcasts. However, decoding an alien signal reveals something worrying...
Down on the Farm
The Farm is a sanitorium for ex-operatives of The Laundry, a super secret arm of British Intelligence, set up during World War Two to counter the use of 'demonic-computing' by the Nazis. Another in the Laundry series, Bob Howard, the long suffering sysadmin turned sorcerer/spy, is sent to discover who smuggled out a complaint about conditions at the Farm. A somewhat vacant Dr Renfield, the Farm's head, Dalek-like nurses under the control of a possessed antique IBM mainframe and some lunatic inmates doing something that is not chess on a chess board, make for an entertaining encounter with evil.
Unwirer (with Cory Doctorow)
In an alternate America, 'free' (i.e. unmonitored] Internet connections are illegal. Roscoe has done time for being an 'unwirer' - someone who sets up connections to the free Internet via a border link. His roomate Marcel wants to get involved when a French journalist takes an interest in Roscoe. Worthy but overly paranoid.
A snowball's chance
A Scots barfly outwits Satan in a world where global warning has diverted the Gulf Stream away from Scotland, giving it a near-Arctic climate. A one-trick story distinctive for lots of realistic Edinburgh Scots patter.
Trunk and disorderly
A future robot society runs like the world of P.G.Wodehouse: upper class twits with butlers chasing girls and getting in 'scrapes on Mars'. I found it painful to read.
Palimpsest
A palimpsest is a surface written over, again and again. In this tale, spanning from creation to somewhere near the end of the universe, humans and their civilisations become palimpsests, re-recreated, changed or erased time and time again, under the aegis of the Stasis. Yet within the Stasis there are factions, fighting a time war of 'unhistory'...Absolutely mind-boggling.
Things change on a fateful day in 1962. The surface of Earth is moved to an immense platform in another galaxy in the far future. As increased gravity grounds missiles, and separated by much greater distances, the Cold War becomes irrelevant as the superpowers try to find where they are
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and why. It seems that other 'Earths' have been brought here as well. A chilling tale of humanity's ultimate failing. A colder war
The story is a series of vignettes centred on the experiences of Roger Jourgensen, a family man, who is also a US government spook, monitoring the real struggle going on in the Cold War,and who is deeply affected by what he sees. This real struggle centres around the usage of alien lifeforms and relics, on Earth since before the dinosaurs. These lifeforms are so alien as to be things of nightmare fantasy or religious evil. They cannot reliably be controlled and killing them, even with a dedicated bomber wing using special plutonium nukes, is unlikely. On this alternate Earth, where Colonel Oliver North is a key figure in this Colder War, things go badly wrong. A classic, which opens up a new perspective on the boundary between science fiction and fantasy.
MAXOS
The universe around Earth is found to be teeming with alien signals beamed back to us in response to our outgoing broadcasts. However, decoding an alien signal reveals something worrying...
Down on the Farm
The Farm is a sanitorium for ex-operatives of The Laundry, a super secret arm of British Intelligence, set up during World War Two to counter the use of 'demonic-computing' by the Nazis. Another in the Laundry series, Bob Howard, the long suffering sysadmin turned sorcerer/spy, is sent to discover who smuggled out a complaint about conditions at the Farm. A somewhat vacant Dr Renfield, the Farm's head, Dalek-like nurses under the control of a possessed antique IBM mainframe and some lunatic inmates doing something that is not chess on a chess board, make for an entertaining encounter with evil.
Unwirer (with Cory Doctorow)
In an alternate America, 'free' (i.e. unmonitored] Internet connections are illegal. Roscoe has done time for being an 'unwirer' - someone who sets up connections to the free Internet via a border link. His roomate Marcel wants to get involved when a French journalist takes an interest in Roscoe. Worthy but overly paranoid.
A snowball's chance
A Scots barfly outwits Satan in a world where global warning has diverted the Gulf Stream away from Scotland, giving it a near-Arctic climate. A one-trick story distinctive for lots of realistic Edinburgh Scots patter.
Trunk and disorderly
A future robot society runs like the world of P.G.Wodehouse: upper class twits with butlers chasing girls and getting in 'scrapes on Mars'. I found it painful to read.
Palimpsest
A palimpsest is a surface written over, again and again. In this tale, spanning from creation to somewhere near the end of the universe, humans and their civilisations become palimpsests, re-recreated, changed or erased time and time again, under the aegis of the Stasis. Yet within the Stasis there are factions, fighting a time war of 'unhistory'...Absolutely mind-boggling.
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LibraryThing member slothman
A good collection of Stross’ work, most of which was previously only available in anthologies and magazines. The tales range from chilling evocations of the spectre of annihilation in the Cold War (“Missile Gap”, “A Colder War”) to humorous (“MAXOs”, “Trunk and Disorderly”).
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“Palimpsest”, an original for this book, is an interesting tale of time-travel conflict that I rank highly for originality, next to Fritz Leiber’s The Big Time and Richard Garfinkel’s All of an Instant. Show Less
LibraryThing member elmyra
This is Charlie Stross's second short story collection, and collects a number of short stories previously published elsewhere, as well as the new "Palimsest". I'd read a few of these before - "A Colder War" is in TOAST, and I'd read both "Palimsest" and and "Trunk and Disorderly" in beta, so I
"Missile Gap" offers an interesting take on a number of old themes, SF and otherwise: the Cold War, humanity faced with superior god-like something, collectivism vs. individualism. Suffice to say the roaches win. I was amused.
I liked "Rogue Farm", though I find it difficult to describe. A post-Singularity take on country life maybe? The ending is both sad and creepy as hell.
"MAXOS" first appeared as one of the back page short SF pieces in Nature magazine. It is... delightful.
"Down on the Farm" re-unites us with the character of Bob Howard in the Laundry universe. It's entertaining enough, but I'm glad it wasn't my fist exposure to the Laundry series - for me that universe tends to work better at novel length, partly because the short story format doesn't leave neough room for world building, and world building for me is one of the key strengths of that setting.
"Unwirer" (written in collaboration with Cory Doctorow) is brilliant. For a start it makes a lot more sense if you read it in the right order. ;-) It's very dark, with a fair amount of political commentary, and unfortunately I don't think we're quite safe from that particular alternate reality yet. Which is probably why it had so much impact on me.
"Snowball's Chance" has its moments, but I like the supernatural characters in it more than I like the humans. (This may well be the point. ;-)
"Trunk and Disorderly" is a hilarious Wodehouse meets the Singularity pastiche - I will actually re-read it at some point.
And I guess I must admit that I'm not a huge fan of "Palimpsest". Partly, I think Charlie, in his afterword, is right and the story really, really wants to be a novel. Partly, a lot of it feels like a re-telling of Asimov's "The End of Eternity", which is possibly the only Asimov book I like, and it doesn't quite work for me.
Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed the anthology, and in no way regret buying it in hardback. I've read enough of Charlie's work for free either in beta or just generally on the Internet, that I'm very happy to find opportunities to give him money for it.
Which leaves me with, umm..., Bechdel: Not 100% sure but I think we might have Bechdel fail here. Pretty much all of the stories have strong female characters, but they rarely talk to each other. Although we may have a pass in Trunk and Disorderly - I don't remember.
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didn't re-read those. "Missile Gap" offers an interesting take on a number of old themes, SF and otherwise: the Cold War, humanity faced with superior god-like something, collectivism vs. individualism. Suffice to say the roaches win. I was amused.
I liked "Rogue Farm", though I find it difficult to describe. A post-Singularity take on country life maybe? The ending is both sad and creepy as hell.
"MAXOS" first appeared as one of the back page short SF pieces in Nature magazine. It is... delightful.
"Down on the Farm" re-unites us with the character of Bob Howard in the Laundry universe. It's entertaining enough, but I'm glad it wasn't my fist exposure to the Laundry series - for me that universe tends to work better at novel length, partly because the short story format doesn't leave neough room for world building, and world building for me is one of the key strengths of that setting.
"Unwirer" (written in collaboration with Cory Doctorow) is brilliant. For a start it makes a lot more sense if you read it in the right order. ;-) It's very dark, with a fair amount of political commentary, and unfortunately I don't think we're quite safe from that particular alternate reality yet. Which is probably why it had so much impact on me.
"Snowball's Chance" has its moments, but I like the supernatural characters in it more than I like the humans. (This may well be the point. ;-)
"Trunk and Disorderly" is a hilarious Wodehouse meets the Singularity pastiche - I will actually re-read it at some point.
And I guess I must admit that I'm not a huge fan of "Palimpsest". Partly, I think Charlie, in his afterword, is right and the story really, really wants to be a novel. Partly, a lot of it feels like a re-telling of Asimov's "The End of Eternity", which is possibly the only Asimov book I like, and it doesn't quite work for me.
Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed the anthology, and in no way regret buying it in hardback. I've read enough of Charlie's work for free either in beta or just generally on the Internet, that I'm very happy to find opportunities to give him money for it.
Which leaves me with, umm..., Bechdel: Not 100% sure but I think we might have Bechdel fail here. Pretty much all of the stories have strong female characters, but they rarely talk to each other. Although we may have a pass in Trunk and Disorderly - I don't remember.
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LibraryThing member lewispike
A collection of short stories... not my favourite thing... although they're mostly longish short stories. They range from not-quite-there workings of ideas that developed into proper books later to a ultra-tech homage to Wodehouse via a couple of more disturbing stories, including a very nicely
Overall, a good solid read with some real gems, and some reminders of why I prefer the longer form.
Also my first eBook.
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turned Laundry one.Overall, a good solid read with some real gems, and some reminders of why I prefer the longer form.
Also my first eBook.
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LibraryThing member NogDog
As is often the case with short story collections, I gave this a middling rating as some of the stories were good (though none I'd call great) while some were so-so.
LibraryThing member Dunx
Stross says in his prefatory remarks that short stories are not really his thing and I believe him: several of these are acknowledged experiments and the quality and voice varies wildly as a result. High points for me were the Laundry story "Down On The Farm", "A Colder War" (which can be seen as
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an alternative history to The Laundry), and the closing story "Palimpsest". That last reminded me strongly of two other books I've read recently: Transition by Iain Banks, and to a lesser extent the Neil Gaiman collaboration Interworld - the free-wheeling travel through multiple histories is very entertaining and the guns over the mantle are quite subtly placed. Show Less
LibraryThing member ballfresno
I loved some of the stories but almost disliked others so a strange collection. I particularly enjoyed the story written with Cory Doctorow but also a few others.
LibraryThing member JeremyPreacher
I really like Charlie Stross, and I really like the short story format for hard science fiction. This was a predictably successful combination. Stross's strength is the absolutely wild ideas he comes up with, and his willingness to experiment with voice and structure. Wireless was a great
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collection - if one idea or style didn't click with me, it was over and on to something completely different before I had time to get annoyed. Great stuff. Show Less
LibraryThing member rlangston
Missile Gap - the Locus winning novella - very good engaging story, but felt like it should have been a novel. Too many aspects felt worth exploring in more detail, and the premise behind the story was revealed quickly and rushed to a conclusion.
LibraryThing member kiparsky
I've always loved short stories much more than novels - an author worth reading always seems to be at his best in short form, where they're forced to do what they're going to do and get out.
Stross is definitely in good form in short fiction. This collection is pretty much excellent stories all the
The rest of the book, though, leaves no doubt. It's always nice to look up in the first few pages of the first story in a collection and realize that you're reading the work of a master craftsman, and to know that this realization takes nothing away from your enjoyment of the work itself. This experience repeated itself several times throught the book - over and over again, I found myself admiring the workmanship even as I was reveling in the flights of imagination.
Stross gets a few things particularly right. He has a way with opening lines: "Joe slid the tractor into gear, raised the scoop, and began turning it towards the open doors of the barn - just in time to see the itinerant farm coming down the road." " 'I want you to know, darling, that I'm leaving you for another sex robot - and she's twice the man you'll ever be.' Laura explained as she flounced over to the front door, wafting an alluring aroma of mineral oil behind her." Lines like that look like tricks, but they're craft. They get you into the story, and they keep you there. He has a way with humor - his stories don't generally depend on humor, but they're nicely leavened with it. And, most important, his characters are people, and you know the people early on. They have minds and thoughts, and you understand them, and they surprise you.
A friend of mine put it simply: "Stross is boss". I can go with that.
Stross is definitely in good form in short fiction. This collection is pretty much excellent stories all the
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way through, with possibly one exception - the last of the bunch is perhaps a little weak, but an impressive stylistic experiment in any case. The rest of the book, though, leaves no doubt. It's always nice to look up in the first few pages of the first story in a collection and realize that you're reading the work of a master craftsman, and to know that this realization takes nothing away from your enjoyment of the work itself. This experience repeated itself several times throught the book - over and over again, I found myself admiring the workmanship even as I was reveling in the flights of imagination.
Stross gets a few things particularly right. He has a way with opening lines: "Joe slid the tractor into gear, raised the scoop, and began turning it towards the open doors of the barn - just in time to see the itinerant farm coming down the road." " 'I want you to know, darling, that I'm leaving you for another sex robot - and she's twice the man you'll ever be.' Laura explained as she flounced over to the front door, wafting an alluring aroma of mineral oil behind her." Lines like that look like tricks, but they're craft. They get you into the story, and they keep you there. He has a way with humor - his stories don't generally depend on humor, but they're nicely leavened with it. And, most important, his characters are people, and you know the people early on. They have minds and thoughts, and you understand them, and they surprise you.
A friend of mine put it simply: "Stross is boss". I can go with that.
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LibraryThing member richardderus
Rating: 4* of five
The Publisher Says: Science fiction guru Charles Stross "sizzles with ideas" (Denver Post) in his first major short story collection.
The Hugo Award-winning author of such groundbreaking and innovative novels as Accelerando, Halting State, and Saturn's Children delivers a rich
My Review: As always, I'll rate the stories individually:
--"Missile Gap": 3*; ~meh~
--"Rogue Farm": 4.25*; I regained hope for the remainder of the collection about here
--"A Colder War": 2.5*; who the hell is this story about? It's littered with characters and I don't get to know any of 'em
--"Maxos": ?; I can't even rate this because it's just not a story, it's an article and it clangs like a cast-iron pot lid on a cheatin' husband's head
--"Down on the Farm": 5*; subject, characters, and voice all came together perfectly
--"Unwirer": 3.5*; alternative history in short form always frustrates a little bit, but this one overcame the inevitable and left me wanting more
--"Trunk and Disorderly": 2*; humor? Not for me
--"Snowball's Chance": 2.5*; anyone who doesn't "get it" instantly probably has one digit in their age, and absent any sense of suspense, so what?
--"Palimpsest": 5*; glitters with the glamour of everything being in precisely the right place
The Publisher Says: Science fiction guru Charles Stross "sizzles with ideas" (Denver Post) in his first major short story collection.
The Hugo Award-winning author of such groundbreaking and innovative novels as Accelerando, Halting State, and Saturn's Children delivers a rich
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selection of speculative fiction- including a novella original to this volume- brought together for the first time in one collection, showcasing the limitless imagination of one of the twenty-first century's most daring visionaries.My Review: As always, I'll rate the stories individually:
--"Missile Gap": 3*; ~meh~
--"Rogue Farm": 4.25*; I regained hope for the remainder of the collection about here
--"A Colder War": 2.5*; who the hell is this story about? It's littered with characters and I don't get to know any of 'em
--"Maxos": ?; I can't even rate this because it's just not a story, it's an article and it clangs like a cast-iron pot lid on a cheatin' husband's head
--"Down on the Farm": 5*; subject, characters, and voice all came together perfectly
--"Unwirer": 3.5*; alternative history in short form always frustrates a little bit, but this one overcame the inevitable and left me wanting more
--"Trunk and Disorderly": 2*; humor? Not for me
--"Snowball's Chance": 2.5*; anyone who doesn't "get it" instantly probably has one digit in their age, and absent any sense of suspense, so what?
--"Palimpsest": 5*; glitters with the glamour of everything being in precisely the right place
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LibraryThing member kevinashley
My admiration for Charles Stross's writing grows with each new work of his I've read. This collection of short stories is an excellent showcase for the variety that he's capable of, in style, subject matter and underlying ideas. I would strongly recommend it to anyone with even a passing interest
Brief summaries (without spoilers) of the stories follow.
Missile Gap
What seems to begin as a cold-war space-race story slowly evolves into something quite different, as we discover that the world that these events are taking place on isn't Earth - and isn't even a planet.
Rogue Farm
In a future rural England, a farming family with an intelligent dog has to do battle with wandering sentient farms that want to go to Jupiter. Yes, it is that odd.
A Colder War
A cold-war conspiracy theory story with a difference. Terrible forces are unleashed, going against a tacit agreement that's held between world powers for over a century.
Maxos
A short-short about communication from extra-terrestrials. The payoff should make you smile.
Down On the Farm
As Stross himself says, a part of the Laundry series. In this case involving the agents who were broken in the field and need to be kept part for their own and everyone else's protection.
Unwirer (with Cory Doctorow)
An alternate-future tale in which communications technology are subject to extreme state control, and rogue elements attempt to bypass this.
Snowball's Chance
A pact with the devil story; in this case he has to deal with the not-so-good people of Scotland.
Trunk and Disorderly
A story of a future solar system with humans, androids and evil schemers told in the style of P G Wodehouse. Stross pulls it off, but as he admits in the epilogue and introduction it was harder work than he planned. He had thought to do a novel in this style, but decided to write "Saturns Children" instead.
Palimpsest
The setting involves a kind of police force that can act outside the boundaries of time. An idea that others have explored, but Stross takes the paradoxes involved in changing the past to an extreme and adds in his own flavour of paranoia to the organisation itself. It makes for excellent, if compressed reading. It wants so badly to be a novel, as Stross himself admits.
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in science fiction as a form.Brief summaries (without spoilers) of the stories follow.
Missile Gap
What seems to begin as a cold-war space-race story slowly evolves into something quite different, as we discover that the world that these events are taking place on isn't Earth - and isn't even a planet.
Rogue Farm
In a future rural England, a farming family with an intelligent dog has to do battle with wandering sentient farms that want to go to Jupiter. Yes, it is that odd.
A Colder War
A cold-war conspiracy theory story with a difference. Terrible forces are unleashed, going against a tacit agreement that's held between world powers for over a century.
Maxos
A short-short about communication from extra-terrestrials. The payoff should make you smile.
Down On the Farm
As Stross himself says, a part of the Laundry series. In this case involving the agents who were broken in the field and need to be kept part for their own and everyone else's protection.
Unwirer (with Cory Doctorow)
An alternate-future tale in which communications technology are subject to extreme state control, and rogue elements attempt to bypass this.
Snowball's Chance
A pact with the devil story; in this case he has to deal with the not-so-good people of Scotland.
Trunk and Disorderly
A story of a future solar system with humans, androids and evil schemers told in the style of P G Wodehouse. Stross pulls it off, but as he admits in the epilogue and introduction it was harder work than he planned. He had thought to do a novel in this style, but decided to write "Saturns Children" instead.
Palimpsest
The setting involves a kind of police force that can act outside the boundaries of time. An idea that others have explored, but Stross takes the paradoxes involved in changing the past to an extreme and adds in his own flavour of paranoia to the organisation itself. It makes for excellent, if compressed reading. It wants so badly to be a novel, as Stross himself admits.
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LibraryThing member PDCRead
Not too bad a collection of short stories. There is the odd duff one though
LibraryThing member jonbrammer
Science fiction is not my favorite genre, mainly because you have to wade through a lot of mediocre writing that is in service to some imaginative concept. In other words, the writing comes second to the ideas. This is the main issue I have with Stross's stories: his ideas are often ingenious, but
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the way that he unspools his narrative leaves the reader confused and detached. The twisty time travel novella "Palimpsest" is a good example of this - while I liked the idea of an organization of time travellers whose job it is to preserve humanity until the death of the universe, the implications of this mission, while obviously well-thought out by Stross, is not explained very well to the reader. Show Less
Awards
Locus Award (Finalist — Collection — 2010)
Locus Recommended Reading (Collection — 2009)
Language
Original language
English
Original publication date
2009-07
Physical description
368 p.; 9.32 inches
ISBN
9780441017195