My reticence is waning, though. In large part due to stories like David Barr Kirtley’s Power Armor: A Love Story, which is about time traveling renegade Anthony Blair, who never-ever-ever takes off his power armor. As you could probably assume from the title, there is also a woman. A woman who does not want Anthony Blair in his power armor for a variety of reasons, including the desire to be close to the man in the iron suit. But also to maybe kill him. Continue reading…
Out of Copyright by Charles Sheffield was prescient for its time. The story was first published seven years before Dolly the sheep made headlines as the first cloned adult mammal. Our protagonist, Al, is on his way to the draft pick which determines which large companies will get the exclusive rights to clone famous geniuses in order to use their superior intelligence to solve problems. Its pretty telling that the problem Al’s company is currently solving is a completely ridiculous task of launching asteroids at Jupiter’s moon Io. Continue reading…
Maybe it’s just me, but when I hear the world ‘multiverse,’ I instantly think of superheroes, villains, and/or Dr. Daniel Jackson trying to explain the phrase to yet another person at Stargate Command. Perhaps that’s because I’m a bit of a nerd. Maybe not just a bit.
Joseph Bates’ Mirrorverse is about the multiverse. But there are no superheroes, no villians, and certainly no Lieutenant Samantha Carter. His story actually concerns what happens when an ordinary person, dissatisfied with life, gets hold of a new technology under the guise of writing a review for a newspaper. The wonderful and bizarre device allows anybody to see what is happening throughout the multiverse, whether that is their own lives or those of famous people. Continue reading…
C.C. Kelly’s Gamma Series is also about robots. No, I mean that literally. Its central scene is a conversation about the problems with creating a robot army that won’t kill all humans indiscriminately, as played out by a scientist, the military, and a bumbling idiot senator tasked with overseeing the whole mess. Continue reading…