Spirey and the Queen by Alastair Reynolds

I really don't know about this one.

Part of it was interesting in how war is fought in space but then there was this existential exploration of machines developing sentience.

I don't know it's as if Reynolds did not know what to do with this story and it tried to be two things at once.

Who knows.  Maybe it's brilliant.  Maybe I am not.

Alastair Reynolds website - http://www.alastairreynolds.com/

Alastair Reynolds

Minla's Flowers by Alastair Reynolds

The protagonist, Merlin and his AI equipped ship are thrown from their flight path and have to land on a planet to make repairs.

There they discover a society on the cusp of an industrial and technological revolution.  Merlin also discovers that the entire system is threatened by a coming natural disaster and takes it upon himself to help these people.

It was an interesting story that, if you are a Star Trek fan, takes on the implication of a "prime directive."  How far should you go to help nurture progress to help a society?  What are the consequences if you succeed?

I enjoyed this story because, as the anthology suggests, this is just one small corner of a much larger universe that Merlin is part of.

Reynolds has used this character in other books so it's inclusion in this anthology does its job of whetting an appetite to discover what else he's written.

As a stand alone story it worked very well and hinted at the larger universe that is out there in the author's imagination.

Alastair Reynolds' website - http://www.alastairreynolds.com/

Alastair Reynolds

At Budokan by Alastair Reynolds

What happens when you cross the band Metallica with robots?  Or giant robots?

What if you could bio-engineer a rock band?

When does it become too much?

Could you lose control?

At first the story is just a fun little thing.  Whimsical and harmless.  But after you read it you start to think in terms of "What if?"  You just know that this kind of thinking is going on right now, maybe in a more mundane setting, but bio-engineering has the powerful ability to scare anybody who wonders what is going on in the worlds' labs.


Information on Alastair Reynolds can be found HERE, HERE and HERE.

Information on Metallica can be found HERE.