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| "This colossal anthology covers the return of sf to themes based in the hard sciences. . . . A very satisfactory overview of a major portion of contemporary sf and a sterling achievement by Tor and the Hartwell-Cramer team."
Booklist
From Paul McAuley's tale of runaway technology ("Gene Wars") to Gregory Benford's story of evolution and murder ("Immersion"), the 41 stories in this annotated anthology provide a strong argument for the revival of hard sf as a major force in the genre in the 1990s. Library Journal |
Michael Flynn: Built Upon the Sands of Time
Michael Flynn (1947- ) is a statistician by profession. In his fiction, Flynn is concerned with technology and the people who work with it. His first story appeared in Analog in 1984, and, as The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction remarks, he "soon became identified as one of the most sophisticated and stylistically acute 1980s Analog regulars." So he's a perfect match for the traditional image of the hard SF writer, except that his interest in characterization goes deeper than most. In this regard he is more like Nancy Kress and James Patrick Kelly than, say, James P. Hogan, though the politics of his major work certainly leans to the Libertarian right. His first novel was In the Country of the Blind (1990), now revised and reissued in hardcover in 2001; his second novel was Fallen Angels (1991) in collaboration with Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. His third, The Nanotech Chronicles (1991), is a series of linked stories. At that point in his career, John Clute (in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction) said, "[Flynn] is on the verge of becoming a central creator of hard SF."
His major work of the 1990s is comprised of Firestar (1996), Rogue Star (1998), Lodestar (2000), and Falling Star (2001); four volumes in an ongoing future history concerned with reinvigorating the space frontier through private enterprise, done in a very Heinleinesque manner. It is an interesting parallel and political contrast to Allen Steele's future history (see Steele note). Many of Flynn's best stories, including the excellent novella "Melodies of the Heart," are collected in The Forest of Time and Other Stories (1997).
"Built Upon the Sands of Time" is Flynn the Analog writer doing a bar story about scientists and ordinary people. Clarke defined the tradition with a series of stories collected in Tales from the White Hart (1957), full of clever notions and (occasionally bad) jokes following the lead of L. Sprague De Camp and Fletcher Pratt's Tales from Gavagan's Bar (1953). Larry Niven's Draco Tavern stories and Spider Robinson's Callahan's Crosstime Saloon stories have been the standard bearers for the tradition since the 1970s. Flynn's story is notable for its deft and economical characterization, humor, and its scientific twist.