Hieroglyph: Stories and Visions for a Better Future

by Ed Finn (Editor), Kathryn Cramer (Editor), Neal Stephenson (Contributor)

Hieroglyph-Inspired by New York Times bestselling author Neal Stephenson, an anthology of stories, set in the near future that reignites the iconic and optimistic visions of the golden age of science fiction. A remarkable anthology uniting twenty of today's leading thinkers, writers, and visionaries, among them Cory Doctorow, Gregory Benford, Elizabeth Bear, Bruce Sterling, and Neal Stephenson, to contribute works of "techno-optimism" that challenge us to dream boldly and do Big Stuff. Engaging, mind-bending, provocative, and imaginative, Hieroglyph offers a forward-thinking approach to the intersection of art and technology that has the power to change our world.
Contents:
Foreword (Hieroglyph: Stories and Visions for a Better Future) • essay by Lawrence M. Krauss
Preface: Innovation Starvation (Hieroglyph: Stories and Visions for a Better Future) • essay by Neal Stephenson
Introduction: A Blueprint for Better Dreams • essay by Kathryn Cramer and Ed Finn
Atmosphaera Incognita (2013) / novelette by Neal Stephenson
Girl in Wave: Wave in Girl (2014) / novelette by Kathleen Ann Goonan
By the Time We Get to Arizona (2014) / novelette by Madeline Ashby
The Man Who Sold the Moon (2014) / novella by Cory Doctorow
Johnny Appledrone vs. the FAA (2014) / novelette by Lee Konstantinou
Degrees of Freedom (2014) / novelette by Karl Schroeder
Two Scenarios for the Future of Solar Energy (2014) / short story by Annalee Newitz
A Hotel in Antarctica (2014) / novelette by Geoffrey A. Landis
Periapsis (2014) / novelette by James L. Cambias
The Man Who Sold the Stars (2013) / novelette by Gregory Benford
Entanglement (2014) / novella by Vandana Singh
Elephant Angels (2014) / novelette by Brenda Cooper
Covenant (2014) / short story by Elizabeth Bear
Quantum Telepathy (2014) / novelette by Rudy Rucker
Transition Generation (2014) / short story by David Brin
The Day It All Ended (2014) / short story by Charlie Jane Anders
Tall Tower (2014) / novelette by Bruce Sterling
Science and Science Fiction: An Interview with Paul Davies • interview of Paul Davies (1946-) • interview by uncredited
.

Genres: Science Fiction, Short Stories, Fiction, Anthologies, Solarpunk, Speculative Fiction, Science Fiction Fantasy

560 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 9, 2014

About the author

Ed Finn is Founding Director of the Center for Science and the Imagination at Arizona State University, where he is also Assistant Professor with a joint appointment in the School of Arts, Media, and Engineering and the Department of English.

Reviews

[Ed Finn · Rating 5 out of 5]

You should know I edited this book, but that only adds depth and passion to the five-star rating. Seriously, it's awesome: full of great stories by amazing writers. Even better, it's part of a remarkable ongoing experiment in collective imagination: hieroglyph.asu.edu.

[S. Price · Rating 2 out of 5]

A few gems in the collection, but too many are just interesting ideas wrapped in preachy, paper-thin plots.

[Miles · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hieroglyph: Stories & Visions for a Better Future is an outgrowth of Arizona State University’s Center for Science and the Imagination. Since the project was inspired by a Neal Stephenson essay (one of my favorite authors), I figured it would be an enlightening and worthwhile collection of speculative fiction. And while that turned out to be partly true, I was surprised to find myself resisting many of the assumptions on which these stories are founded. Not unlike many modern notions of progress, Hieroglyph suffers from split personality disorder. Taken as a whole, the book vacillates between humbly interconnected and shockingly egocentric visions for humanity’s near future. Such visions are not by definition mutually exclusive, but my sympathies and intellectual loyalties favor the former over the latter.

Editors Ed Finn and Cathryn Cramer claim that the tales in Hieroglyph are imaginative depictions of what they call the “moonshot idea”: “the intersection of a huge problem, a radical solution, and a breakthrough discovery that makes the solution possible now or in the near future” (xxv). It’s a promising idea, but one that can be easily mishandled. While a good chunk of Hieroglyph‘s moonshot ideas would make worthy additions to any desirable human future, an equal portion offer little more than juvenile fantasies spun from myopic webs of profit-driven competition, socioeconomic inequality, and consolidated power.

Hieroglyph’s dark side stems from a mélange of ambitious whimsy and staggering disconnectedness from the mundane problems that ail normal human beings. The worst offenders here are Neal Stephenson, Geoffrey A. Landis, Gregory Benford, and Charlie Jane Anders. These authors write about small groups of people pursuing eccentric, large-scale tech dreams that vary in their practical usefulness and contain little or no moral substance: Building a 20-km tall tower in the middle of a desert, turning Antarctica into a tourist destination for the hyper-wealthy, pursuing interstellar travel by hoarding capital and tax dodging while global warming ravages an overpopulated Earth, and saving the planet by selling kitschy gadgets that secretly fight climate change to an idiotic, blindly-consumptive public. These might sound like fun pursuits for Silicon Valley tycoons and ambitious entrepreneurs, but most readers will disregard them as anti-social, haughty, and hubristic ideas that fail to seriously acknowledge––let alone significantly mitigate––the sufferings of normal folks and Earth’s compromised ecosystems.

The core problem here is a fundamental mistrust of average people and modes of collective self-governance. I’ll be the first to admit that modernity doesn’t always make a great case for cheering on the little guy or trusting democratically-elected governments. This would be a lot more damning, however, if corporations, autocracies, and the super-rich didn’t have equally awful––and oftentimes far more detestable––track records. Consider this moment from Benford’s “The Man Who Sold the Stars,” where protagonist Harold Mann learns he’s been indicted for massive tax fraud: “When he was growing up, the paradigm had been with liberty and justice for all, but now on a world stage jammed with swarming masses in desperate need, it seemed to be three hots and a cot and whatever you got” (342, emphasis his). Instead of facing the music, Mann decides to head into outer space with his wife, remarking, “‘This is going to be more fun than retirement to a prison’” (342). I’d be surprised if these same words hadn’t escaped the mouths of any number of white-collar criminals who caused the 2008 housing market meltdown. Benford should be ashamed to glorify such behaviors and the worldviews that justify them.

It would be disingenuous to claim that we don’t need ambitious individuals and wealthy companies to spur innovation and take big risks, but too often we ignore the greater context in which such pursuits take place. The aggregate results of small day-to-day actions taken by billions of normal people, combined with our still paltry understanding of the natural ecosystems on which all human communities depend, paints a confounding picture that is much harder to quantify or assess intuitively than the aspirations and soundbites of a highly visible socioeconomic elite. It’s easy to gawk at guys like Bill Gates and Elon Musk, shrug, and assume they will save civilization for us. It takes a lot more effort to imagine and actively pursue small, ameliorative progress within the scope of our personal lives and communities.

Although it gives voice to more than a few silly ideas and a handful of repugnant ones, this book is far from beyond redemption. Thanks to a group of feisty, empathic, and refreshingly creative authors, Hieroglyph also sheds light on ways in which future generations might better comprehend and improve ourselves and the natural world, giving birth to ethically responsible and physically sustainable communities. These authors indicate that such communities can be created via the cultivation of decentralized, technology-based methods of social organization that optimize collective action in order to solve big problems.

Hieroglyph‘s best moments are summed up nicely by this assertion from Vandana Singh’s “Entanglement”: “The days of the lone ranger were gone; this was the age of the million heroes” (369). Singh and her fellow forward thinking authors (Kathleen Ann Goonan, Karl Schroeder, Brenda Cooper, and Elizabeth Bear) understand that technology’s greatest gift is its ability to circumvent physical and cultural boundaries by connecting individuals with overlapping interests and struggles in ways that enrich human experience while simultaneously generating workable solutions to our toughest challenges. Their stories make it clear that the various methods for accomplishing this are limited only by the human imagination. Here are some examples: Mentor-based education focused on learning through empathy; virtual reality overlays that impose ownership boundaries, capital flows, and civil disputes onto physical landscapes; social networking tools designed to clarify terms prior to community meetings and/or elections; wrist bands that monitor vital signs and moods in order to automatically match people up with friendly strangers in times of need; highly effective international activist networks enabled by enhanced texting, face-chats, and remotely controlled drones; advanced neuroscience techniques that transform psychopathic killers into beings capable of empathy and possible redemption.

My personal favorite of these is Karl Schroeder’s idea for an app called Wegetit:

“There were two text fields, one for a word or concept (very short) and a longer one, for about a tweet’s worth of definition. You could let fly your idea of what something meant and wait. After a while, people would respond with restatements of your definition. If you thought a restatement accurately represented your meaning, you could click the Wegetit button. There was no button for disagreement…Somewhere out there were thousands of people who shared his understandings of many basic concepts, even if they might disagree with his politics. Wegetit was drawing lines connecting all those people, and every agreement strengthened the connections.” (221)

Schroeder’s story suggests that collective use of such an app could radically improve the effectiveness of community and national decision-making by highlighting from the outset where different groups agree and disagree, obviating the need to clarify terms in the moment. This idea didn’t just make me smile and think––it filled me with effervescent excitement about the coming wave of apps that will pivot toward helping people do a lot more than buy consumer products or communicate frivolous personal details. It’s a great example of a truly worthy “moonshot idea,” one in which average people could easily participate. It also wouldn’t require a centralized authority or wealthy corporation to create and implement.

I’d rather this weren’t the case, but I can’t help but notice that almost all of Hieroglyph’s best stories (with one or two exceptions) were written by female authors, while all the ones that bothered me were written by men. This made me think that perhaps the futurist movement could use a solid injection of feminine brainpower. This could help move us away from male-dominated, radically individualist visions toward ones that are more democratic, distributed, and pluralistic. We need the next few decades to be “the age of the million heroes,” and while there are many ways to get there, there are also lots of ways to make societies even less equal, opportunities even scarcer, people even more blinded by competition rather than liberated by cooperation. We should take seriously the possibility that female leaders might be a key (or even the key) to nudging us in the right direction.

Hieroglyph closes with a charming and enigmatic story in which author Bruce Sterling lays down by far the wisest piece of prose in the Hieroglyph‘s 500+ pages:

“Mankind can build a Great Thing. Sometimes we do it. But then we have to live with the consequences of greatness. What does a Great Thing tell us about ourselves? Not that we are great, but that our Great Things are so rare, and so much abused. So many in our dreams, so few to loom like towers in the light of day.” (506)

This trenchant passage just about cut me in half. The distance between our inflated notions of our own importance––both as individuals and as a species––and the reality of our “rare, and so much abused” Things of Greatness cannot be stressed enough. Still, few would dispute that we find ourselves at a critical juncture; the coming century will determine much about the long-term future of human civilization, and perhaps about the viability many other lifeforms on Earth. We lack the time and resources to waste any more of our Great Things, so we’d better do everything we can to make sure we pledge our loyalties to the best possible projects and minds. This mixed-bag of a book––every bit as capricious, inventive, self-obsessed, and noble as human nature itself––might help you sort out where your attentions and energies can be put to good use.

This review was originally published on my blog, words&dirt.

[Kalin · Rating 4 out of 5]

A varied, stimulating, generally satisfying anthology. Some of these futures I would love to claim as my own. Or work towards. I hope I already am. :)

A few words about each story that particularly captivated me (my foremost favorite is in bold):

https://choveshkata.net/forum/viewtop...

[Andrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

The is an interesting piece of work - not only for its contents but also for the principle of the book itself. The book is basically a series of short science fiction stories. The subjects of which vary from piece to piece. Now in its own right this is nothing special - the stories are all creative, varied, well written and interesting to read in their own right - however on their own they are nothing different that several months worth of say the Locus magazine (which in its own right is a brilliant publication).
No the really fascinating and I think unique aspect is he reason for the book and the project in general. The fact they are all based on "near" future speculations, and in a generally positive and productive way - now I am not going to try and paraphrase or improve of the introductions to the book - (and those that have read my comments in the past know that I find introductions potentially as insightful and interesting as the book itself) but one of the results of science fiction (I am not going to say reasons, although so writers and commentators feel that it should be) is that it acts as a Hieroglyph - a clear and easily recognisable sign to look for, focus on and work towards. With this in mind each story in this anthology has end notes - about the concept that inspired the story that preceded it. Often with links and discussions for further reading. For me this is popular science and engineering "fictionalised" and in a positive way, as commented on dystopia and armageddon have been intentionally omitted.
For me the stories are great - it takes me back to my early days of science fiction and the sense of wonder it gave me - but also the fact that this is the possibility of a better future and that sometimes you just need a little encouragement and focus to see it - this book I think is a step in that direction.

[Lena · Rating 4 out of 5]

Atmosphæra Incognita by Neal Stephenson ★★★★☆
“There was carping on the Internet but the journalists and businesspeople who rode the helirail up to the top and sat at the bar taking in the black sky and the curvature of the earth—well, none of them doubted.”
Strong start with beautiful imagery. A vertical city touching space and future gateway to the stars. A ground-level legacy of green fields, prairie dogs, and bison.


Girl In Wave: Wave In Girl by Kathleen Ann Goonan ★★★★★
“Unlike earlier children, we have a new power. With the invisible power of literacy we can put ourselves in the place of others... We are far too addicted to the joy of learning and life to have time to contemplate the destruction of others.”

Brilliant! Through individualized teaching methods, and minor nanobiotechnical assistance, all children are able to read and learn with an ease previously known to few.

By empowering children, giving them the space and freedom to learn, they build, and pass on, a better world.

It reminded me of Vegan Stories. Children have good moral instincts about what’s wrong but we acculturate them to accept degrees of violence: adulteration.

The excellent notes section after the story pointed out that, “In 1963, Finland made a decision to make education its number one economic priority, and the highly effective educational system that emerged is the result.”

So now I have to read Finnish Lessons 2.0 and contemplate moving there.

Hei, nimeni on Lena.


By the Time We Get to Arizona by Madeline Ashby ★★★☆☆
It’s an interesting idea to promote border security by turning the desert into a solar farm - thus corporate security.

But this idea is highlighted in the notes section whereas the story is bogged down with abortion and a surveillance/points environment that’s ripped from an episode of Black Mirror.


The Man Who Sold the Moon by Cory Doctorow ★★★★★
“I realized that this is what a utopian, postscarcity world would be like. A place where there was no priority higher than pleasing the people around you and amusing yourself.”

Gorgeous. I did not know there had been a prequel to Walkaway! It may not be listed as such but it is.

With a 3D printer, open source programming, and a belief in the basic goodness of others, you can change the world!


Johnny Appledrone vs. The FAA by Lee Konstantinou ★★☆☆☆
This one might have flown over me. I believe the big idea was to litter the sky with drones as micro-satellites to create a secondary, and more private, internet.

No.

Just use the darknet and leave the sky for the birds and the planes.


Degrees of Freedom by Karl Schroeder ★★★★★
“Soon every citizen on- and offline would have access to the kind of political second sight that previously, only rare people like Rob had possessed.”

I loved this optimistic story about data mining and open source programming. It pairs well with Designing Regenerative Cultures where there is an emphasis on formulating important questions before looking for answers.

The sort of programs described could make monumental differences in our daily choices.

Currently it would seems such tech is used for hate: https://youtu.be/xH-oScnJXB0


Two Scenarios For The Future of Solar Energy by Annalee Newitz ★★★☆☆
“They were whole industries devoted to “pest control,” which actually meant destroying all the bugs and molds and animals and microbes that I just devoted my morning to keeping healthy.”

This was story was 1/3 a snapshot Solarpunk City story and 2/3 notes. It just didn’t give the effort of the previous stories.


A Hotel in Antarctica by Geoffrey A. Landis ★★☆☆☆
This was a slice of a story with no meat. I would love to read about a hotel in Antarctica because of how much I enjoyed Antarctica: A Year on Ice. Pity that was not part of the story.

Periapsis by James L. Cambias ★★★☆☆
Teen drama science fair competition for citizenship. Not particularly exciting but, yes, I would probably watch it.

This is the second time Alcubierre drives have been mentioned in my reading. The world of Dark Run used them.



The Man Who Sold The Stars by Gregory Benford ★★★★☆
“A strange new world, he thought.”

I enjoyed this story of an industrialist who doggedly purses his childhood science fiction dream until he stands on the beach of a new world.


Entanglement by Vandana Singh ★★★☆☆
“There are people who don’t care about dead polar bears, or even dead children in trash heaps. They don’t see how our fates are linked. Everything is connected. To know that truth, however, is to suffer.”

A near-future grassroots collection of first-person stories about making positive changes. The fake icebergs were particularly interesting.

But it dragged. Especially the part in India.


Elephant Angels by Brenda Cooper ★★★★☆
A future where an interconnected world comes together to protect elephants. I hope this happens before it’s not too late.


Covenant by Elizabeth Bear ★★★★★
“Where I die as a noun and only the verb survives.
I run. I am running.”

Damn this was good. I’ve always meant to read Elizabeth Bear and now I she’s a must read for 2019.

I was not expecting a bit a of criminal psycho drama in this collection but I welcomed it.

Run girl, run!


Quantum Telepathy by Rudy Rucker ★★★☆☆
“You might say that - telepathy is a sexually transmitted disease.”

It’s been a long time since I’ve read anything like Cronenberg’s eXistenZ. More than eco-positive this was bio-strange. But it could also be the first step to Nalini Singh’s psynet.

I appreciated this but didn’t enjoy it.


Transition Generation by David Brin ★★☆☆☆
While the imagery was lovely the story was the least based on science. Hell, if felt downright lazy in comparison.


The Day It All Ended by Charlie Jane Anders ★★★☆☆
“...but if we claimed to be making overpriced, wasteful pieces of crap that destroy the environment? Then everybody would need to own two of them.”

Gasp! Are iPhones overpriced because they secretly contain Save the World Mode?

Doubt it.


Tall Tower by Bruce Sterling ★★★☆☆

I appreciated the animal-human bond central to the story. I wouldn’t leave without my horse(dog) either.

But this wasn’t a good story, especially compared the other tall tower story based strongly on science. This was aliens and religion and a strange suicidal ending. WTF?

Average 3.47 which I feel confident rounding up to four because the premise of the anthology was revolutionary!

[Michael Burnam-Fink · Rating 5 out of 5]

Back in 2011, a chance encounter between Michael Crow and Neal Stephenson lead to a discussion about who was to blame for the sorry state of our collective imaginations: the best minds of our generation who spend their time design spam filters and social media apps, or science fiction writers who churn out endless dystopias and apocalypses. From this chance encounter was born the Center for Science and Imagination and Project Hieroglyph, with the goal of bringing scientist fiction writers in contact with actual scientists with a mandate to imagine a world where problems could be solved, as an inspiration to solving them. Now, three years later this is the book, and trust a guy who has read 117 science fiction books since 2010, it is GOOD.

The stories in this collection cover topics including space exploration, entrepreneurship, drones, civil liberties, education, climate change, and more, book-ended by Stephenson's Tall Tower, a 20 km steel structure that could cut space launch costs in half-for starters. Stephenson opens with a classically Heinleinian engineering epic of how the Tower is built--think "The Roads Must Roll" or "Blowups Happen". Bruce Sterling closes with the same tower 200 years in the future, inhabited by the decadent and wicked religious dreamers of an Earth that is being abandoned by the Ascended Masters, and the quixotic quest of a cowboy to ride his old horse to the very top. My two very favorite stories were "By the time we get to Arizona" by Madeline Ashby, who provides a The Prisoner inspired take on reforming American's Kafkaesque immigration system with a six week panopticon trial period in a model border town, and "Degrees of Freedom" Karl Schroeder, who uses augmented reality to provide a fascinating and inspiration lens on democracy, legitimacy, and collective decision making. Not everyone manages to hit as solidly, but there's no filler here, and very few reused ideas.

I've rarely seen such a creative, energetic, and yet solidly themed collection. The tent-poles are pieces from masters of the genre, names that you should recognize like Neal Stephenson, Bruce Sterling, Elizabeth Bear, Gregory Benford, David Brin and Cory Doctorow. All these major talents bring their A game, and fans of any of them should check out the collection. This might just be some of the best science fiction you'll read in a long time: Retro without being old-fashioned, optimistic without being panglossian.

Disclosure notice: While I am a grad student at ASU and have been following Hieroglyph's progress eagerly since it's inception, I have no financial or institutional connection to it. I just think it's super cool.

((Addendum: And Lawrence Krauss is a blowhard. Skip the introduction))

[Rachel (Kalanadi) · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sadly underwhelmed. Boring on audiobook. Ideas weren't very inspiring. "Covenant" remains the only story I really enjoyed.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love, love, love the goal of this anthology. I'm always looking for SF that posits positive futures. I really enjoyed the Elizabeth Bear story, the Vandana Singh novella, and the Cory Doctorow. The Doctorow was a bit didactic - characters "as you know, Bob," each other all over the place - but it's also sweet and a fun read.

[Martin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nnothing less than great top shelf stories. I would say that this is the best collection of SF short stories since Dangerous Visions. And hopefully it does for science what DV did for SF.

[Cathy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was not what I expected. According to the introduction and the book flap it was supposed to be stories where the writers worked with the scientists to create stories that are inspiring, have cutting edge ideas and also explore ethical and social issues at the same time. I did find a couple of them to be inspiring, but only a couple. Several of them were pretty depressing, more dystopian than inspiring. A couple were kind of silly, or too outrageous to be in a book that was supposed to be based on real ideas. Even if the scientific foundations were sound, that doesn't mean the social and economic concepts made sense; the fiction was too outrageously fictional for the premise of this anthology. Most of them were not great reading, only a few were actually enjoyable. I got really bogged down in the middle and put the book down and it was months later before I was finally able to finish it. The only reason I picked it up again was actually because I read that Elizabeth Bear's story was nominated for an award and I wanted to read it before I finally returned the book to the library. But there were a few quite interesting stories and ideas, and two that I will definitely remember. And I really enjoyed reading the extra scientific information about each story on the Project Hieroglyph website. The whole concept of matching authors with scientists to try and spur greater creativity and forward thinking is fantastic. I encourage you to spend a few minutes looking into Project Hieroglyph and Arizona State University's Center for Science and Innovation.

For a really terrific summary of the book, I also encourage you to read Miles's review, he does a terrific job of analyzing and summing it up, much better than I've done.

As for the stories, I'm not commenting on all of them. Several didn't make a big impression, were OK, or not too great but I don't need to complain.

I didn't like Stephenson's, it was too intellectual, too dry and the concept was too preposterous. Yes, the concept of building at huge "Tall Tower" was about taking a big risk, but that risk didn't make any sense. I understand a space elevator, or private space shuttles like are actually being done now, or who knows what other ideas. I didn't get the idea in the story. And the story was super dull.

I didn't understand how Ashby's story was supposed to be optimistic, it felt really depressing and dystopian to me. I was really looking forward to David Brin's story but it pretty much just confused me. Rudy Rucker's was confusing and silly, but that's his MO from what I understand so it didn't bother me, and at least there was an interesting idea in there. Then the book ended with Sterling's Tall Tower's story. I totally get the main character's loyalty to his horse, I wouldn't leave any of my animals behind either after only the too few years that dogs live, much less the decades you spend with a horse. But the rest of it was dull and I skipped most of it. It was cute to open the book with the building of the Tall Tower and close with another story about it later years, but both stories (Stephenson and Sterling) weren't great for me.

I'm not sure if Elizabeth Bear's award-nominated story was positive or not. As someone who suffers from mental illness I like the idea of curing the various manifestations of it, but not if it so completely changes a person that he or she feels like an entirely different person afterward. This story seemed more much more ominous than positive, with a lot of typical governmental coercive elements. A very short story.

But...the good:

Kathleen Ann Goonan - Girl In Wave : Wave In Girl - I don't think it's any coincidence that she used a Heinlein word, grok. He was referred to several times in the book's various introductions as an author who looked forward and thought of big ideas so I'm guessing he's someone many people involved with Project Hieroglyph talked about a lot. And obviously he's Heinlein, pretty much everyone who writes sci-fi knows him. Though grok isn't a technical idea like stasis, or as popular an idea as water beds, it may well be his most influential idea. Ask people to describe what it means and they'll get distant looks in their eyes, and end up using four words or forty, ranging from intellectual to emotional. But the people who know what it means "know" what it means, deeply. Its positive impact bonds book lovers and I find its continued use in and of itself deeply optimistic as those bonds continue to form and spread.

The story was quite good, blending concept and storytelling effectively. There wasn't much action or plot, similar in some ways to Stephenson's in tone, but it was much more impactful in its use of technology to tell an optimistic story. Universal literacy could indeed change the world, as could better teaching methods. It's a nice vision.

Cory Doctrow - The Man Who Sold The Moon - Now this was more what I imagined for this theme. It looked forward while still honoring the past, the way the essays at the beginning of the book said they hoped to. The book had Heinlein's big old moon boots stomped all over it, from the title to free lunch, and there were references to other classics as well. And there were other parallels to the original story by Heinlein, some were among what gave the story a lot of heart to go with its science and it's cleverness. It was well-balanced, I liked the people, though like the other stories in this book, they weren't why I was turning the page. It wasn't a character based story, it was about what they were doing, not about who they were and how they were changing and growing. Though they were that too, at least some. It must have appealed to the dreamers in the sci-fi crowd, it was nominated for a bunch of awards, and I think it won a few. Who knows, maybe this could be a blueprint for exploring space, hackers and hobbyists kickstarting it all the way there. Too optimistic? Maybe not.

Karl Schroeder - Degrees of Freedom - I loved this one, the technology and politics were really fascinating. Having lived in DC for ten years even barely peripherally involved in politics, you get sucked in. Long talks with my best friend about the budget progress and sequester and major decisions that are, or more like aren't these days, made for the most petty reasons, brings this kind of thing powerfully home. And the modeling and decision-making took me back to grad school and my one optional class, which was decision-making. It probably should have been required, you can't sell or protect what you don't even understand. We have solutions to the problems, but, "The only problem worth solving is the problem of how we govern ourselves." Or as Schroeder said in the story notes, humanity's biggest problem isn't that we can't imagine or design solutions for our problems, it's that we can't agree to implement them. He went on to write effectively about defining the problems, and more, following the structure of his story, it was very interesting. And none of the very technical basis for his story, political, psychological, technological and much more, took away from it being a very enjoyable story to read with a strong basis in family and the tension between the generations and father and son that anyone could identify with or recognize. There was a lot going on there and I thought all of it was good.

Brenda Cooper - Elephant Angels - This is the only that got me really worked up and emotional. Drone doesn't have to be a dirty word. They don't have to just be a tool of the military or big business. I loved this tale of a nonprofit or NGO using them along with volunteer operators worldwide and on the ground to help protect these intelligent, social, and beautiful animals from blatantly illegal and horrifically violent poaching. It's a clever idea of how to solve the manpower issue. They don't have weapons to threaten the local government, just some additional tools to help prod the elephants in the right direction when they're in danger, and the ability to get people moving to help when it's needed from the information they provide from instant reports. This could work. Students and retired people would volunteer for shifts. This plan has legs. This one gives me hope. Could this or something like this could be applied in other situations too? It's similar to an aspect of the first part of Vandana Singh's Entanglement story and the thread that weaves it all together, that people all over the world are connected and can directly influence each other even when they don't realize it, but also some aspects of the Million Eyes project, which has gone beyond having the world watch their results real-time and has their interaction becoming a part of the project just as the project is interacting as well. These two stories had a lot of point and counterpoint, though Singh's was more dreamy and poetic and Cooper's hit like a ton of bricks, had me hitting my fist into my palm in anger and frustration. Cooper also said that there would be Angel programs for tigers, rhinos and whales. And it was optimistic, even though it was sad too. It used a newer technology in a positive way. And I wouldn't actually say anyone won in the end, even if the bad guys did get caught and everyone was celebrating, because the good guys had already lost when all of that ivory was harvested from the elephants in the first place. But at least it was a more forward looking story, with the drones and with her ideas about the commons and revitalizing the wilderness areas as well.

[Alan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am totally on board with Neal Stephenson's Hieroglyph project. I've often bemoaned the scarcity of optimistic science fiction myself, amid the proliferation (not so recent now) of dystopias and apocalypses and cautionary tales—those were always a strong component of SF, to be sure, going back to Frankenstein, but the dark clouds really seemed to start rolling in with the New Wave of the 1960s, an unhappy climate change that has only intensified in the 21st Century. But, even though I endorse the project as a whole... I wish that reading this book hadn't felt so often like being told to eat my broccoli.

Now, I like broccoli, and I liked just about all of the stories in Hieroglyph too. But they are, almost all of 'em, didactic in nature—a couple are in fact just brief futurist scenarios, not really stories at all. The multiple introductions run to a couple dozen pages of manifesto and justification; the stories themselves are bookended by bibliographic references and links to further discussion, and interrupted by tiny, monochrome reproductions of student art that really did not benefit from the compression... all to the point that reading this anthology sometimes felt like a homework assignment.

And why is it that "a homework assignment" automatically sounds like such a dull thing, anyway? That's actually the point of at least one of the stronger (and, not coincidentally, one of the more lyrically convincing) stories here, Kathleen Ann Goonan's "Girl in Wave : Wave in Girl"—that education itself can and should be reimagined, refined and improved, using findings from current and future neuroscience rather than holding onto management fads from the early days of the Industrial Revolution—and that fixing how we teach could lead to a much better future than the ones we so often see awaiting us.

Other stories that focused on reimagining societies, rather than on dramatic advances in hardware, included Karl Schroeder's brilliantly net-enabled democracy in "Degrees of Freedom," and Vandana Singh's vision of worldwide connectivity in "Entanglement."


The brighter futures imagined in Hieroglyph are all over the map, though, and sometimes contradictory. In particular, "The Man Who Sold the Stars," by Gregory Benford—from its homage to Robert Heinlein's similarly sexist title to its uncritical reverence for Randian robber barons—seemed oddly backward-facing for this otherwise futurist anthology. In contrast, once you get past the title of "The Man Who Sold the Moon," Cory Doctorow's story turns out to be a hard-nosed and deeply personal look at what 3D printing could mean for enterprises like individual space colonization in the future, that avoids falling into any Objectivist traps along the way.


In the main, the human—and humane—destinies imagined here fulfill both the goals of entertainment and education, while adhering pretty closely to plausibility. Some of 'em are more plausible than others, of course. Rudy Rucker's entry "Quantum Telepathy" was full of his usual wanton loopiness, and even if the technologies he posits are technically possible, I don't think they're at all likely. Rucker may not have taken this assignment quite as seriously as the others, but then by the time this story came in I was ready for a little break anyway.

The story that followed Rucker's, "The Day It All Ended" by io9.com editor and author Charlie Jane Anders, was especially fun as well. Another io9 regular, Annalee Newitz, penned the "Two Scenarios for the Future of Solar Energy" I mentioned above—which, while really just vignettes, were fairly amusing ones.


Hieroglyph is begun and ended with stories about a great engineering achievement—a Tower that reaches from the surface of Earth to almost ten miles high. Neal Stephenson's "Atmosphæra Incognita" covers the construction of that structure, and Bruce Sterling's "Tall Tower" describes its latter days.

In between are a lot of hopeful visions... and, my curmudgeonly reaction notwithstanding, such hope—the notion that such hope is possible—is a very good thing.

[Edgar Guedez · Rating 2 out of 5]

Stories and visions for a worst future?

The title states that these are "stories and visions for a better future". However, some of the stories show a dystopian future and dysfunctional world. Cory Doctorow's " The man who sold the moon" is more about a relationship of two friends, one who is dying of cancer, than the development of robotic 3D printers technology. And the setting is chaotic. Konstantinou's "Johnny Appledrone vs the FAA" shows a chaotic development of drone and networking technology, and abuse of power by the current government. Schroeder's "Degrees of Freedom" shows Canada's territorial integrity on the verge of collapse due to territorial claims by indigenous Canadians that are using software and networking to manipulate popular opinion. And Bruce Sterling's "Tall Tower" , set just two hundred years after the "magnetic launching tower" of Atmosphera incognito is completed, shows the same social divisions among the tower society that are common nowadays in our world.
Thus, at least half of the stories fail to meet the title criteria.
It's scary that we're so short of visions for a better future.

[Oliver Brackenbury · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great follow-up to Neal Stephenson's speech from a few years back (http://tinyurl.com/mdupwq6), I highly recommend this strong step towards breathing some life back into the genre of science fiction. There are a couple of stories which don't feel like they are close enough to the driving concept of the anthology to really be there, but the majority of the stories more than compensate. My personal favourite was "Degrees of Freedom", by Karl Schroeder, which explores possible solutions for the societal decision-making quicksand Canada and the United States (among others) seem perpetually mired in.

Yup, social science, it's not just a bunch of sky elevators - although the engineering driven stories are pretty cool too! Here's hoping the Hieroglyph project succeeds in inspiring both scifi authors and scientists, engineers etc to reach higher.

[Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Full disclosure: I have a story in the anthology called "Johnny Appledrone vs. the FAA," but it's also still totally worth checking out.

[Mat · Rating 1 out of 5]

As a total package, I really disliked this anthology (though if you keep reading I will eventually get to a few stories I liked). I picked it up because I'm always on the lookout for good non-dystopian SF, and this anthology kept coming up as a collection of hopeful stories. But I found the great majority of these stories, at best, too tepid to challenge our current depressing status quo, and, at worst, straight up dystopian (in which the masses are starving but maybe some rich guy is tinkering with cool crap. Who the hell puts a story in which a guy leaves earth alone in a rocket ship while starving masses fester on earth into a book of stories "for a better future"? I can’t get my head around it.) I have been simultaneously reading Naomi Klein discussing actual probably-non-divertible climate crisis, and I found Hieroglyph so much more depressing than that. In particular, Klein talks about the phenomenon in which, in the imaginations of most modern Americans, the idea of massive geoengineering schemes with wildly unpredictable and highly improbable chances of success seems more probable than regulating the profit motive of capitalism to prioritize the survival of the planet. In her characteristic brand of narrow-slice-of-cautious-hope, she reminds us that it is totally possible to rethink runaway greed in order to save humanity -- we humans have all the imagination we need if we just trust in what we and science already know. I thought about that snippet of Naomi Klein wisdom through much of this collection. Many of these stories were hemmed in by the exact limitation of imagination named by Klein. It was very palpable to me how much that limitation formed a wall almost as tall as Neal Stephenson’s tower between most of the stories and anything that actually resembles a hopeful future. One glaring example was in The Man Who Sold the Moon by Cory Doctorow. The characters literally discuss the idea that to get to the root of the problem, one has to address the deeper corruption of those in power. Then they fliply conclude that, no, that’s too hard, so they resort to manufacturing piles junk (which might one day be useful to someone) in hard to reach places. What???!!! Other stories that notably triggered that particular frustration for me were Neal Stephenson’s Atmosphera Incognita, Geoffry Landis’ A Hotel in Antarctica, Quantum Telepathy by Rudy Rucker, and Tall Tower by Bruce Sterling. These stories give us quite a few well off white guys (or in some cases, non-whites or non-guys written by white guys) tinkering with cool tech in a vacuum. To me, there was a glaring lack of big picture thinking dealing with how that cool tech actually affects the lives of people beyond the narrow circles of said protagonists. I don’t know, maybe that is a utopia for people who are a lot less socialist than me. If you are rich white dude for whom erasure of the rest of the world outside your sphere is a perfect universe, perhaps you will find these stories utopian.

Other reviewers have pointed out that the best stories in this anthology seem to be written by the women authors. That did not completely hold true for me, as there were some notably good stories by male authors, but there’s truth in it, as many of the best stories are by women and all the worst stories are by men. Additionally, for the time this was published it is notably short of many of the prominient voices in post colonial and POC speculative fiction that have been steadily emerging over the past 20 years. I understand that the focus of this was more on those SF writers who are tackling hard science. But how the editors didn’t look at the final author list and say “oh shit, this is a white writer wank-fest; we need to figure out how to do some collaborative work to include voices of POC scientists and writers to get a more well rounded and global perspective,” I really don’t know. My overall impression of this as an anthology is that its failure to live up to the theme is deeply linked with it’s failure to include many of the voices it failed to include.

That said, there are more than a few stories that were worth reading and a few standouts, if read individually and without the expectation that they fit into a vision of a better future. By the Time we get to Arizona by Madeline Ashby, Periapsis by James Cambias, Covenant by Elizabeth Bear, Elephant Angels by Brenda Cooper, and Transition Generation by David Brin were all stories that were very thought provoking and worth reading, but none of them ticked hopeful for me, and some were downright dark. I do think the unusual application of technology were fascinating, particularly in the case of Bear’s, Coopers, and Ashby’s stories. Brin’s story had a really nice commentary on intergenerational interplay, and was a light break from some of the other stories. Cambias’ story was a on the fence for me – the world was pretty dystopian but the ending allowed for an unexpected loophole of hope. And Lee Konstantine’s Johnny Appledrone falls somewhere between the overly dudely myopic tech selections and this middle ground group of interesting but slightly off topic stories. I love a good revolution movement, and the main character’s background definitely pulled me in, but maybe it was too early in the book for me to have let go of my desire for a non-dystopian setting.

There were also a couple stories that did a good job painting a hopeful future, with variable results in terms of storytelling. A stand out was Girl in Wave, Wave in Girl by Kathleen Anne Goonan. Her ability to have a surprising small innovation focusing on the improvement of lives of neuro divergent people evolve into a larger step that betters all of humanity was brilliant, and interesting. And she didn’t gloss over the disability rights perspective that neuro divergent people don’t’ need to be fixed; she allowed for some really thoughtful nuance with the whole series of topics. The fact that this story was given ample space in the anthology, unlike most of the selections by women, was also a fun surprise. Vandana Singh’s piece, a rare inclusion from a POC voice I might add, was also a bright spot. I just love the character Singh created in the protagonist, and the phrase “The days of the lone ranger were gone, this was the age off the million heroes” is one I will be quoting. Degrees of Freedom also needs to mentioned in this group, even though it doesn’t hold together that well as a story for me, because it tackles the aspect of a better future that is mostly overlooked in this anthology: communicating in a way that represents communities more fairly. As far as stories that hit the theme with unexpected and charming results, I loved the offerings of Annalee Newitz and Charlie Jane Anders for very different reasons. Newitz’s Scenarios for the Future of Solar is not really a story, but the development of science into compelling and very readable scenarios does a lot of what I craved in this book. I would have loved to see this developed into a real story, or better yet a full fledged novella that took up almost as much space as Doctorow’s particularly self indulgent piece. As it stood, it was a nice sorbet bite between heavy entrée courses. The Day it All Ended by Anders was a surprising turn, and even though it was a bit hard to give in to at first, the pay off was really satisfying. If we are going to have a “quick fix” to the mess we are in, this is a really clever way to play it. It’s not my favorite Anders story by a long shot, but I love her versatility, as always, and I’d say she does epic practical jokes as well as everything else she sets her pen to.

Looking back at this ridiculously long review (just call me Cory Doctorow), I realize there is a larger percentage of redeemable stories than my initial impression led me to believe. Nonetheless, I feel like I slogged through some real self important epic novelette/as in need of some more editors just to get to a handful of fleeting gems. And even among the better selections, very little of this anthology actually satisfies it’s stated intent of being “towards a better future”. I hope that some day the mainstream voices of Science Fiction will let go of their Singular Hero and Tech Genius Dude tropes long enough to allow for a deeper and broader imagination to finally get it’s deserved audience. And I hope Naomi Klein’s general appeal for us to open our imagination to the possibility of a world that does not need to be detonated gets enough cache that we are able to one day (preferably within 7 years) have a more robust body of Science Fiction that does actually show a better future. But this anthology, I’m sorry to say, is not that occasion.

[Julianne Vantland · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection has been my lunch companion for most of the summer, slowly winding through its 500 pages. These short stories have helped me gain a new imagination for a future where we work together to avert climate disasters, better understand our connections to one another and the planet, and reach beyond our despair to make a beautiful new future.

Every story isn’t a literary masterpiece, but each one offered me another opportunity to practice optimism and hope, to stretch myself in wonder at what could be. I am so grateful to these writers for their work.

[Richard]

At some point I heard that Cory Doctorow's short story, The Man Who Sold the Moon had won the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award, a pretty significant prize. What I don't remember is why I thought that meant it was worth tracking down (I don't make a point of hunting down most award-winning fiction), but I'm glad I did.

Of the four stories which I actually read within this fat tome, it was the one that made it worthwhile.

Now, I wanna say: the reason I'm abandoning this book is simply lack of time. Many of the other short stories might be quite worthwhile, so I don't want to dissuade anyone else from reading the collection.

But just in case you only want to read Doctorow's story, he's a bit peculiar in that he makes it available for free on his website, boingboing. Read it here; it's very good. Curiously, that's also the name of a book by old-school scifi author Robert Heinlein in which he expounds on his libertarian politics (it isn't particularly good story). Any connection other than the name escapes me, although I probably read Heinlein's story only once, three decades or more ago.

The rest of this is what I started when I expected to read the whole book. It's mildly critical of the preface and first story, both by Neal Stephenson, questioning whether the whole book was going to be like his pieces. Good news: apparently not.

                            ❦

This is a collection of “stories and visions for a better future”, so as I make my way through it, I expect to be updating this.

But to begin:

The preface and the first story are written by Neal Stephenson, a white American male just a few months younger than I am. Reading both of those pieces left me somewhat disappointed with him, frankly.

First, the preface, titled “Innovation Starvation”. Stephenson relates how he feels let down that the United States no longer appears to be the creative engine of thrilling new technologies that he fondly recalls from his youth. The now cliched narrative arc from NASA’s Gemini missions and moon landing to the retirement of the Space Shuttle is emblematic. What galvanized him into engaging with this was the oil spill of the Deepwater Horizon in 2010 — the people of the United States had been told almost forty years before, in the first oil crisis, that petroleum was politically problematic, yet we’d done very little about it (other than to fight wars and subsidized nations in the middle east).

The goal of the book is to provide conceptual templates to future innovators, the same way the writers of the Golden Age of science fiction had mesmerized and energized the generation of scientists and engineers behind NASA.

The story he writes, Atmosphæ Incognita, is about the engineering of a twenty-kilometer tall building. It is a good story, similar to Ron Howard’s Apollo 13 in its focus on the technology. It felt like something written in the 1950s, though (well before the actual mission of Apollo 13 in 1970). The first-person narrator is a lesbian, true, but that doesn’t really seem to matter. In one way, that’s great. Letting people just be themselves is quite post-modern. But that also means that the only element that hinted at being interesting was set aside, and so the entire story ends up being rather bland. Yeah, the technology is interesting, and the failure of some of the technology lends some interest, but no enticing drama.

Which brings me to why I’m mildly disappointed in Stephenson. I thought he would be clever enough to understand that technology isn’t going to save the United States, and that we can’t invent our way out of our malaise. Well, yeah, sure: some fascinating new toys might distract us from the adult problems we’re confronting, and might even boost the economy enough to mitigate some of them, but that isn’t much.

The problems we’re facing are cultural and sociological, and don’t have simple solutions — we really don’t know whether they have solution at all (if you think you know of a solution, then you just need to take a step backwards and recognize that you didn’t see that it is entangled within an even larger problem).


I’ll have to see whether the other stories largely rest on similar false illusions.

[Nick · Rating 2 out of 5]

I freely admit that this book rubbed me the wrong way from the very beginning, and it never got back in my good graces after that.

The first comment I have to make is that Neal Stephenson is a successful author who also takes money from Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin company. He lives (presumably by choice) in Seattle, which is a really lovely city with great public infrastructure. He probably does not spend much time worrying about where his next meal is coming from, whether he'll have a place to live next month, or if the water coming out of his tap is full of toxic lead. So for this person to complain about how our country doesn't build moon rockets or nuclear reactors any more, when this country ALSO fails to provide basic amenities for many of its citizens, it honestly comes off as a bit self-centered and tone deaf.

In explaining the concept behind the Hieroglyph project, Stephenson talks about how modern science fiction fails to provide an image of the future we wish to live it: it's too dystopic, without the grand vision of the future that golden age sci-fi provided. In talking about this, Stephenson does not acknowledge all the ways in which that rosy vision of tomorrow turned out to be a load of horsefeathers. He doesn't mention the way the Apollo program was a public relations stunt with limited potential for sustainability; he doesn't talk about the nuclear waste piling up because nobody came up with a plan for long-term disposal; there's no mention of the ways our tall buildings and enormous dams wrecked the environment. There's not even a moment's thought spared to the way the benefits of modernity have landed mainly in the laps of rich, white westerners. I dunno, Neal, maybe some of these things explain why the utopian sci-fi of yesteryear fell out of fashion?

Apart from that (perhaps unreasonable) complaint, I also have to say it's just a really uneven collection. At least two of the 'stories' are more like descriptive essays, lacking in any real characters or plot. Cory Doctorow's entry is a full-fledged novella, and given my feelings on Doctorow's writing, that's not a point in favor.

And surprisingly, despite that stated goal of the anthology, most of the stories are actually pretty dystopic! Several portray a world suffering terrible environmental degradation in which the best technology can do is slow down the pace of decline; another has the federal government murdering a 'dronepunk' activist who wants to build an internet free of government control; another imagines prospective immigrants to the US living in a panopticon society where the most minor social failing could lead to deportation. This is the brighter future we're meant to dream of?

I would love to see what modern, optimistic sci-fi looks like in the early days of the 21st century. This book is not it.

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an attempt to bring back old school bang-zowie wonder science fiction of the big idea variety. Luckily it mostly fails except for one or two preachy stories with cardboard characters and a bad 60's feel. ASU sponsored this book, hence a really crappy preface and ASU student fan art (nostalgic! SF mostly had bad art thru the 60's). They did hire real editors and writers so it's a decent shorts collection, but not a knockout.

The preface by Lawrence M. Krauss is so obnoxious I have to vent a bit. First off, he's apparently confused about the difference between science and technology, there is not a single word about engineers or engineering who usually are the developers and sometimes inventors of real world stuff. Two examples that he gives as being invented by scientists, CAT scans, had an engineer who shared the Nobel Prize, oops, and the Ultrasound was invented by an Obstetrician and engineer. Since he only gave three examples, that's pretty bad research. Then he says is unimpressed by science fiction since it doesn't precede science (true) but then gives technological examples like the web, patently false. Anybody who wants to read some great predictions of what social changes and issues the web, PCs, smartphones and self-driving cars have caused can read some of Mack Reynolds's stories from the 60's and 70's that now read like alternate histories. Only one example from many. I guess since his university probably funded this collection, the editors have to put up with it.

[Christopher Hellstrom · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a great collection. I was interested because it was inspired by Neal Stephenson (and includes the story "Atmosphæra Incognita") However I enjoyed most of the other stories as well. There are engaging realistic stories like "A Hotel in Antarctica" by Geoffrey Landi and wild speculation like David Brin's "Transition Generation"

I don't agree with some critics who think that having a didactic component to art devalues the work. Star Trek certainly inspired many people to learn about science. Heinlein juveniles, like "Have Spacesuit Will Travel" and even "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" was more interesting in its explanation of how revolutionary cells and artificial intelligence would work than plot or characters. Neal Stephenson calls Science Fiction "idea porn" and people pick up books like this for the ideas.

The other objection that this is blind techno optimism is also wrongheaded. There are a wide variety of viewpoints in this book. "Covenant" by Elizabeth Bear, included in this collection is not simple minded pro science cheerleading. However, "Hieroglyph" does skew optimistic about how science and technology can improve things. So what? Technology is part of our lives. The genie is out of the bottle. We may as well try and get the wishes we hope for.

Hieroglyph is a great step toward shaping the future and making the world a better place by using reason, courage, and imagination.

[Kat · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book of short stories born of Project Hieroglyph:
http://hieroglyph.asu.edu/

This is seriously one of the most exciting things I've heard about in quite awhile. A bunch of sci-fi authors and a bunch of scientists are getting together and saying "We're sick of these dystopias that have become so popular! Let's look for ways the world could be made a better place in the near term!" This is a big part of what sci-fi is all about, to me.

Digging down into the individual stories in the book: some are "meh," a couple left me wondering how the future they're painting is a "better world," but many of them are absolutely mindblowingly amazing. More than once, I had to just put the book down after I'd finished a story, and process it and think about it for a long time before I could even think about picking anything else up. Some of these futures, some of these technologies, I WANT! So! Much!

I'll try to write up some specific thoughts on the individual stories here; it may be a couple of weeks though:
http://ciaracatscifi.blogspot.com/

Quite a few of these stories will be on my Hugo nomination short list.

[Charles Dee Mitchell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Full of good stories but probably destined to be known for the expanded program it is a part of. You can spend many extra hours following up the speculations int the stories by going to the hieroglyph project website, reading essays, interviews, and source material. it will be interesting to see if this becomes a prototype for other projects, or if it remains a stand alone effort.

[Alex Trembath · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stories are hit or miss, as with most anthologies, but the intro is spectacular and the mission statement sublime. Sci-fi that is optimistic, adventurous, yet grounded in the not-to-distant future. What a concept.

[Alexis · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really liked the concept behind this collection but I only liked 3 or 4 of the stories.

[Kaylee · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hieroglyph is a collection of stories meant to show better futures. "...if we want to create a better future, we need to start with better dreams. Big dreams—infectious, inclusive, optimistic dreams—are the vital first step to catalyzing real change in the world." There were a few stories that were very negative and depressing and didn't seem to fit the theme, but I'm happy to say that most of the stories did succeed in showing better futures.

Individual ratings are below. As usual, I'm using spoiler tags to shorten a long review and keep it tidy; there are no actual spoilers unless otherwise indicated.

Atmosphæra Incognita 4/5
I loved the descriptions of the various fascinating middle- and upper-atmospheric phenomena. The science and technology was interesting and obviously based on solid research. The writing is also very good. But the story itself was not all that enjoyable for me. The ending was really good, though.

Girl in Wave : Wave in Girl 5/5
This story had a dyslexic character, who was growing up in a time when a cure for dyslexia had been developed. Discussion between the doctor, parents, and the girl:
"I know it may be difficult to come to terms with this, but the way your daughter processes information will make it hard for her to do what she wants to do. She may indeed develop creative responses and strategies, but why deny her the opportunity to communicate with the rest of society?"
"You don't have to be the same as everyone! You can be unique!"
"I will always be unique! I love being able to paint. I always will. I want to know how to read, too."
Later she tells her grand-daughter: "It was the removal of mind-blindness. Literacy enhanced empathy, because it makes people able to experience what being someone else might feel like and stretches the range of emotions."

I liked the story itself, and I really really appreciated those parts that I quoted above, because I feel the same way and I feel more and more alone in this, as popular opinion shifts in the opposite direction. It was good to hear a sympathetic voice, to know that I'm not alone.
I also really liked the story notes for this one: hieroglyph.asu.edu/grokking

By the Time We Get to Arizona 3.5/5
Great story, well written, but I think it doesn't fit the theme of "better futures" as well as the others. Apart from "surveillance is everywhere" and a brief mention of self-driving cars, all the technology is off-screen, and it's not a positive future.

The Man Who Sold the Moon 2.5/5
The writing is excellent, the science very interesting, but a plot revolving around sex and drugs and burner culture is not my cup of tea. Also a bit preachy in places. And the story kind of dragged on and on. I really enjoyed the science and tech parts of it, but I had to slog through the personal lives of the characters. Which is a pity because the writing was really excellent.

Johnny Appledrone vs. the FAA 2/5
The writing was pretty good overall, but there were some awkward sentences where it was hard to figure out what the author was trying to say. The technology is believable, and the story is okay, but it was pretty depressing. It does end on a hopeful note, that "maybe things will change if people fight for change," but the entire story up to that point was too depressing. I just don't enjoy stories like that, especially given how easily our current world could turn into that future, where people's lives are ruled by social media which is run by corporations who only care about profit.

Degrees of Freedom 3/5
Humanity's biggest problem isn't how to imagine or design solutions for our economic, environmental, and social woes; our problem is that we can't agree to implement them. That's true. Unfortunately, the thesis kept getting in the way of the story. The narration felt clunky, as well as a bit preachy.

On the plus side, I appreciated that the main character had a different point of view, so we could see the interplay between the two sides. I know he's supposed to be the antagonist, but he makes a good point that the only reason it's possible for some to live by hunting and fishing is because a large portion of the population lives in more developed settings; if we ALL tried to live off the land, the land couldn't support us; unless you eliminate a large percentage of the world's population, we need to keep our agriculture and industries and all the rest of it. Also, who manufactures the high-tech clothing that allow these hunter-gatherers to sense the presence of animals and live in harmony with nature? And they still use cars and computers... I'm annoyed by people who revile the modern world while still expecting stores to stock all the manufactured goods they want. That's as bad as people who buy meat at the grocery store without knowing where it comes from.

Two Scenarios for the Future of Solar Energy 2/5
Here we get two brief scenes in a possible future, followed by an explanation of how we might get from here to there. My low rating is mainly due to the fact that it sounded a lot like a homework paper. Despite the explanation showing how this could be possible, I find it implausible. And I really didn't like future number two.

A Hotel in Antarctica 4/5
I liked the ending. Good point about using an inhospitable place on Earth as a blueprint and trial run for a lunar or mars colony.

Periapsis 5/5
I liked the science & tech, as well as the personal story of the young people outwitting the organization that was trying to manipulate them. It had a very satisfying ending.

The Man Who Sold the Stars 5/5
Lots of very interesting research and development happening, each new development a rung on the ladder to reach the stars. I also liked that it shows the interconnectedness of everything, how new technology from one sector can benefit other areas of life. I also like how it shows the interaction between R&D and governments.

Oh and thanks for acknowledging the existence of workaholics and people who are driven to keep pushing limits. :) On carbon-restricted Earth, such work cut back on wasteful, inefficient, and polluting processes to mine and smelt. There was much less digging, grinding, and greenhouse gas emission. Social benefits rebounded, wealth spread through largesse, and the workweek fell. Workaholics immigrated into space, where opportunity and hundred-hour weeks abounded. I think our world is too fast-paced and needs to slow down, but it's good to remember that 'slow' is not for everyone.

Entanglement 5/5
The world she loved was woven into being every moment through complex dynamic webs of interaction.
How can we help each other survive the terrible times that are upon us? In the village, people take turns being lookouts when there is a bad weather forecast, and they help each other more, and they've got a teacher to come twice a week to teach them how to read and write.
I realized that although friends and family are crucial, sometimes the kindness of a stranger can change our lives.
These snippets don't have the same impact out of context; this story is very much a case of "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts"...which also happens to be the theme of the story.

Elephant Angels 3/5
The story was well written. Not particularly engaging, but that could just be me. The tech was believable and well used. I liked that the author also talked about the theme of the Commons. I think that's a topic that doesn't get enough attention.

Covenant 5/5
This had a very interesting premise, taking a very thoughtful look at the possibilities resulting from hacking the human mind, but the science never got in the way of the story. The writing was superb; the suspense arising from the main character's dilemma was a thing of beauty. I think this is the first story I've read by Elizabeth Bear, and I am very impressed with her writing.
hieroglyph.asu.edu/covenant

Quantum Telepathy 1/5 - Pretty big spoiler in this one.
The science was not believable, not even a little, and the story seemed pointless to me. Sure, let's chemically induce telepathy and spread it through fluid exchange like a disease, and then watch the majority of people go crazy because they can't handle it. And the ones who managed to stay sane? Their lives are not better, just different. So a small percentage of people go through a harrowing experience to be no better off than before, while the majority are a LOT worse off, or dead. How is that "a better future"?

Transition Generation 2/5
I liked that it ended on a hopeful note for the protagonist, but I did not like the story itself; the idea of human flight was not believable (I could accept the mental component, but humans are not aerodynamic!) and the idea of each new generation supplanting the old just didn't work in this context. Just because we've gone from horse and carriage to automobiles to airplanes, doesn't mean that future humans will be able to fly with only the power of their minds, and that the ones after them will come equipped with warp drive, as the protagonist muses. The next logical step after airplanes should be space travel, if anything. Human flight is just ridiculous.

The Day It All Ended 2.5/5
The premise was creative, and could have made for a good story, but it just wasn't well-executed. The characters were all flat, and none of them were likeable. I also found it annoying that the author used slightly-different names for existing words, like "buzzsaws" instead of "buzzwords", and "snaggletooth" instead of "bluetooth" - basically taking something familiar and making it sound needlessly alien. It kept jarring me out of the story, and there was no reason for it. I'd give it a 4/5 for the idea and the science, but only 1/5 for the story. It was very short too; it might have done better if it had been longer and had had more time for character development.

Tall Tower 3.5/5
I immediately liked the main character, and really enjoyed the narrative voice. The story was bizarre, but fascinating. Also rather silly (in a good way). Unfortunately, the ending was a letdown. It basically said "this situation can't last forever" and left it at that. Yes, I know it can't last forever; I want to know what happens after that.

Also I lost my suspension of disbelief when the people who caught a trespasser, instead of immediately throwing him out like they clearly wanted to, they suddenly did a 180 from calling for his blood to being inexplicably fine with him staying in their territory indefinitely. For more detail: (actual spoiler here)He indicated that he wanted to be thrown UP, so apparently they all just let him move in while they collected funds and resources and spent years building a catapult that will ONE DAY be able to throw him out of their territory in the manner the interloper would prefer. Um, WHAT? I'm willing to accept a lot in my fiction, but THAT makes no sense.

The writing was really excellent; if not for the illogical ending and lack of conclusion, I would have rated it higher, but as it is, I feel like I didn't really get a story, just some interesting writing that led nowhere. I think Tall Tower is a Tall Tale; very tongue-in-cheek and weird for the sake of being weird. That would have been fine, but I still need characters to act according to some internal logic.

That gives me an average rating of 3.4 for the anthology. Pretty good overall.

[Shhhhh Ahhhhh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some of the best science fiction I've ever read. No swashbuckling space pirates. No space merchants. No space marines. No quantum time jumps.

Regular people that exist right now (regular in terms of lifestyle, body modification, etc) facing the extraordinary implications of near-future technology.

Some especially interesting ideas there was the story about the social and political technologies, plus the predictive power of big data and conveying the information via Dorians. I know for a fact all of that tech exists right now, today. It may not be quite as sophisticated but it's there and, as a solution to a fermi problem, would work in the majority of all cases the majority of the time. So, you have a technology that is used to match people up based upon how their particular minds manipulate and convey specific ideas and which ideas they have in common; who speaks the same language. You have technology for rapid group root cause analysis and decision making. You have technology for rapid and efficient complex pattern information to humans (really brill) to help them make better decisions faster. That was one of the stories where I unequivocally believe that everything in it should exist today, right now.

Read the anthology if you're interested in what's next. Most of it isn't here. There is a lot of stuff on a grand scale for people to pursue, which I admire. I especially admire all of the scientists collaborating with the authors. I admire the point of the project. However, I think that the people behind this book sorely underestimate the amount of scaffolding needed at this point in our development. We don't need big dreams like that. Right now, at this moment, we can't do anything with them. The social and intellectual landscape has changed in such a way that, largely, most people will not be inspired in the ways the authors intended. Maybe Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk will if he ever reads about the tall tower or the man that sold the stars. The rest of us are most likely to be inspired by things that are within our grasp today, especially the things that require a minimum of teamwork and discipline-specific information. We don't know how many tomorrows we have ass a society or what those tomorrows are going to look like, and nowadays it's looking more and more like we're going to end up in Mad Max rather than Star Trek, so long term planning is largely out of the question. Get them to write those stories about what we can do right now with what we have right now and the implications thereof and I promise you'll see a change in the world.

[Peter · Rating 2 out of 5]

A set of science fiction short stories trying to harken back to optimistic 'big idea' fiction of the past, but using fresh stories of authors working today. The stories also contain some response--or links to such--from scientists or other thinkers.

It's a short story collection, and as such, there's usually a mixed bag. I liked the idea of the big, optimistic stories, copnceptually, but unfortunately in practice they didn't entirely work out for me... a few hit the right buttons, but most left me a little cold, a few outright bored. While not boring, per se, Rudy Rucker's story felt the most out of place in the collection, it's kind of his usual math hippie stuff that might be fine on its own but neither seemed optimistic or realistic enough to fit with any of the other stories. A few others seemed to intentionally verge more to dystopia than optimistic, and although it seemed to be against the stated aim, they still seemed to fit better than that one. Conversely, Benford's also jarred, seemingly glorifying hyper-capitalism and selfishness and (aside from a few points in the story where the world is struggling) seems to view it as a good.

I probably liked the stories by Madeline Ashby, Elizabeth Bear, and Karl Shroeder the most (in no particular order, except alphabetically). But in the end, I didn't feel like there were many, if any, GREAT stories, and thus, the whole book came out being a bit of a slog.

I think that means I have to give it 2 stars, which doesn't necessarily mean it's not worth checking out. People always have different views on which short stories in a collection are good or bad or dull. But in cases like this I rate the book as a whole in comparison to other collections, with the default being three stars, and this one, for all its big talk and noble aims, was noticeably less good than the average short story collection I read, so, two stars.

[Ian Holden · Rating 2 out of 5]

Billionaires don’t just have the right to use their resources to crush those less fortunate, but the obligation. This is the underlying thought of most stories in this book. The “moonshot ideas” that the foreword brags about vary from vanity projects that serve very little purpose to humanity, to dystopias sold as utopias. If you enjoy defending Elon Musk from reasonable criticism on twitter, you’ll love this book.

The concept of this book is pitched as creating utopian scenes, or ideas that could lead us to a better future. They should have told the authors. Each story shows off some piece of technology with the passion of an auto manual and places it in society. Usually, the author only demonstrates how this innovation can help the wealthy without regard to the rest of us.

So many problems of the book shine bright in the very first story, like a brightly colored snake warning about its venom. A man with more money than most states has an idea. Although he could pay off social security single-handedly, he uses his wealth to build a tower to space. He hires his grade school crush to work out the logistics despite her having no relevant experience other than a connection to the wealthiest man on the planet. After dragging yourself through pages of description of steel transport logistics and ignoring the desert ecosystem this tower bulldozes, you reach the great services the skyscraper brings to humanity: base jumping, casinos, and the first bar in space. Rather than criticizing the hubris of the second Tower of Babel, the story rewards the builder by revering him and treating him as a great innovator. His only innovation is hiring other people to serve his childish idea of the future. The rest of the stories follow similar themes of “God wouldn’t give them a boot if He didn’t mean for them to step on us to reach higher”

My favorite story was “By the Time I Get to Arizona” because it acknowledges and criticizes the flaws in its universe and uses them to point attention at problems in our own world.

For ironic enjoyment, read “The Man Who Sold The Moon”. It’s mostly an unimaginative celebration of Silicon Valley, but there’s one part that makes it worthwhile. A 40 year old man, upset by his close encounter with cancer, describes burning man with “sounds totally amazeballs”

The best part of reading this book is now, knowing I never need to think about it again

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

Okay, I got this book because I wanted to read Neal Stephenson's short story "Atmosphaera Incognita", which was, of course, brilliant as always. But the rest of these stories were pretty amazing - about not-so-scary futures for our sometimes very scary world. So glad I got it.