Future on Ice

March 1, 1999
YA-A popular YA novelist and sci-fi writer has put together a second anthology of 18 short stories by important SF writers of the 1980s. It is just as powerful as Future on Fire (Tor, 1991). Set in places uncannily familiar or disturbingly bizarre, the selections tell of family love, robot ambitions, language and loneliness, misguided political negotiations, and, of course, an assortment of very strange creatures. Card's notes tell in a particularly humorous and anecdotal tone about his encounters with the authors. The book is also worth having just for Card's introductory essay in which he takes an intriguing look at the way religious "ideas" can be and are often explored at some depth in this genre. Thought-provoking and illuminating reading, but best of all, entertaining.-Cynthia J. Rieben, W. T. Woodson High School, Fairfax, VA

September 15, 1998
This companion to "Future on Fire" (1989) presents short stories from the 1980s by some of the finest sf authors. Editor Card has chosen each story not only for its superior quality but also for the intriguing moral dilemma inherent to its theme. In "Robot Dreams" by Isaac Asimov, judgment is made on the evolution of a self-aware robot, and in "Dinosaurs" by Walter Jon Williams, the human race has evolved to consider genocide a part of its manifest destiny. Every author is a famous name in the genre; they include, besides Asimov and Williams, such powerhouses as Greg Bear, Octavia Butler, C. J. Cherryh, and John Kessel. Card's lengthy preface on the theme of "the Force" in sf is both interesting and curious in that it becomes a polemic on morality that decries the victimization of Clarence Thomas. Although that preface is questionable, the quality of Card's choices is above reproach. ((Reviewed September 15, 1998))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 1998, American Library Association.)