Overview
From multiple award-winning author David Brin comes this extraordinary collection of tales and essays of the near and distant future, as humans and aliens encounter the secrets of the cosmos--and of their own existence. In "Dr. Pak's Preschool" a woman discovers that her baby has been called upon to work while still in the womb. In "NatuLife" a married couple finds their relationship threatened by the wonders of sex by simulation. In "Sshhh . . . " the arrival of benevolent aliens on Earth leads to frenzy, madness . . . and unimaginable joy. In "Bubbles" a sentient starcraft reaches the limits of the universe--and dares to go beyond. These are but a few of the challenging speculations in Otherness, from the pen of an author whose urgent and compelling imaginative fiction challenges us to wonder at the shape and the nature of the universe--as well as at its future.Together for the first time, here is a thought-provoking and imaginative collection of works by one of today's leading SF writers. A woman discovers that her baby has been called upon to work while still in the womb; a married couple finds their relationship threatened by the wonders of sex by simulation; and more. Original.
Synopsis
From multiple award-winning author David Brin comes this extraordinary collection of tales and essays of the near and distant future, as humans and aliens encounter the secrets of the cosmos—and of their own existence. In "Dr. Pak's Preschool" a woman discovers that her baby has been called upon to work while still in the womb. In "NatuLife" a married couple finds their relationship threatened by the wonders of sex by simulation. In "Sshhh . . . " the arrival of benevolent aliens on Earth leads to frenzy, madness . . . and unimaginable joy. In "Bubbles" a sentient starcraft reaches the limits of the universe—and dares to go beyond. These are but a few of the challenging speculations in Otherness, from the pen of an author whose urgent and compelling imaginative fiction challenges us to wonder at the shape and the nature of the universe—as well as at its future.
BookList
In his latest collection of short fiction, essays, and insightful commentaries on both, Brin defines the term "otherness" as the currently popular relativistic dogma that other points of view are just as important as our own. Using this conception as a loosely organizing theme, Brin assembles some of his finest recent work, from "Shhh," a wryly original tale about alien first contact in which humans may hold a secret edge on their otherwise overwhelmingly superior visitors, to a skeptical critique of reports of extraterrestrial abductions. In "Bubbles," otherness is explored through the electronic awareness of a sentient spacecraft that discovers a doorway to another universe. In perhaps his most penetrating nonfiction piece concerning otherness, "The New Meme," Brin explores the limits to human interpretations of reality. Although, falling short on plot and character, the stories here often read as thinly disguised thought-experiments, they succeed as entertaining hard sf. A treat for Brin fans and connoisseurs of first-rate speculative science.