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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 |
Charles Sheffield: The Lady Vanishes
Charles Sheffield (1935-2002) is a physicist and writer. He was born in UK, but has lived in the US since the mid-1960s. In 1998, he married writer Nancy Kress. He was educated at Cambridge -- his friend David Bischoff reports that Sheffield's "advisor at Cambridge was none other than another English SF author and mathematician -- Sir Fred Hoyle. However, Charles had told me that Sir Fred was always away somewhere . . . Charles seldom saw him." Sheffield began publishing SF in the 1970s and quickly gained a reputation as a new star of hard SF in the tradition of Arthur C. Clarke. He in fact writes SF of all descriptions but always with a positive view of scientific knowledge as a tool for solving problems. Kim Stanley Robinson says, "Charles writes hard SF, which as you know is science fiction played with the net up and with a handy portable device that will shrink any balls actually hit at the net so that they will pass through without impediment. This of course makes for a great game, in which anything is possible but everything seems real. Charles is one of the best currently working this game, extending its limits and testing the possibilities."
Sheffield says in a recent article in The Washington Post Book World:
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Without a strong scientific content, a science-fiction story fades into fantasy. . . . What's the difference between the two? Let me answer by defining science fiction -- and then fantasy by exclusion. Science is like a great, sprawling continent, a body of learning and theories. Everything in science is interconnected, however loosely. If your theory doesn't connect with any part of the rest of science, you may be a genius with a new and profound understanding of the universe; but chances are you're wrong. Science fiction consists of stories set on the shore or out in the shallow coastal waters of that huge scientific landmass. Stay inland, safe above high tide, and your story will be not science fiction, but fiction about science. Stray too far, out of sight of land, and you are writing fantasy -- even if you think it's science fiction. |
He further recommends a catalog of today's practitioners of hard SF:
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. . . no reader seeking well-written stories that respect, emphasize and depend on modern science should be disappointed by the works of any of the following: Roger MacBride Allen, Catherine Asaro, Stephen Baxter, Greg Bear, Greg Benford, Ben Bova, David Brin, Octavia Butler, Michael Cassutt, Greg Egan, Michael Flynn, Joe Haldeman, James Hogan, Nancy Kress (who happens to be my wife, and I originally thought it unwise to include her; it seems, however, less than fair to leave her out), Geoffrey Landis, Paul McAuley, Jack McDevitt, Larry Niven, Gerald Nordley, Kim Stanley Robinson, Rob Sawyer, Bud Sparhawk, Joan Slonczewski, Neal Stephenson, Bruce Sterling, John Stith and Vernor Vinge. |
Sheffield is a prolific novelist, averaging more than a book a year since he began publishing in the 1970s. His novel Spheres of Heaven (2001), is a sequel to The Mind Pool (1993). He had two books out in 2002: Dark as Day, a sequel to Cold as Ice (1992), and The Amazing Dr. Darwin. He won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for his novel Brother to Dragons (1992), and was awarded both the Hugo and the Nebula Award for his story "Georgia on My Mind" (1993). His short fiction is collected in Vectors (1979), Hidden Variables (1981), Erasmus Magister (1982), The McAndrew Chronicles (1983), and Georgia On My Mind, and Other Places (1996). He is also the author of the nonfiction book Borderlands of Science: How to Think Like a Scientist and Write Science Fiction (1999).
This story is a wicked satire on the government intelligence services organized around the idea that a very bright woman scientist has penetrated the secret of invisibility in order to quit working for what is obviously the CIA. Sheffield has worked out plausible optics explanations and combines this with knowledge of how intelligence services work.