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War And Space: Recent Combat (2012)

by Sean Wallace(Favorite Author)

3.33 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

1607013371 (ISBN13: 9781607013372)

languge

English

genre

Science Fiction

publisher

Prime Books

review 1: A collection of stories all focusing on, surprisingly enough, war, and space. Usually both in the same story, although a few take place entirely on Earth and deal with those left behind, or those on the fringes of war, or the aftermath. Still, it's safe to say that this is a fairly well-titled analogy (the subtitle "Recent Combat" is a little iffy, considering it all takes place in the future, but why quibble?).As an anthology, it's, by nature, a mixed bag. Some stories will grab you, some will leave you cold, and two different people reading it will often disagree on which stories fall into which category. For my tastes, my favorite was *The Long Chase* by Geoffrey A Landis, but most were solid... a few would have been great if not for some weird decision made for styl... moreistic reasons that makes no logical sense at all (like technology that stores consciousness and allows severed body parts to be reanimated with the 'soul' of the person who mostly died, but apparently can't be connected into an artificial voice box and let them speak). But those moments were few, my main complaint was simply that some stories didn't interest me as much, but even they usually had some good idea or image I could smile over for a moment.Single-theme anthologies can sometimes run the risk of burnout, where you lose interest in the theme and thus don't enjoy it as thoroughly as you would an anthology that takes you all sorts of different directions... and this is no exception, but it's a reasonably mild problem here.
review 2: Uneven, but don't let that bother you because there are some excellent stories in this collection. A rush job would leave you with these must reads: Alastair Reynolds' "Scales," Catherynne Valente's "Golubash," America's short fiction master Robert Reed's "Leave" and Adam-Troy Castro's unnerving "Her Husband's Hands." I had already encountered Charles Coleman Finlay's excellent "The Political Officer" in F&SF, but would list it among the top-rank. less

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