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

Surface Tension by James Blish - A Short Story Review

37/150/2016

The story begins with a crashed seed-ship on a new world that was meant to be a new human colony.

With the ship smashed and the cargo nearly destroyed the captain an crew come up with an inventive way of completing their mission.

The story then moves a pivotal moment in the history of these new life forms the human created.

I was, at first instantly bored by the story, it was just another "look how strange my aliens are" tale.  But then a very human adventure began and a familiar story of evolution repeated itself on this new world.

In the end I found the story to be very interesting indeed.

I kept reminding my self of what the influential editor, Gardner Dozois once said; "The nice thing about short stories, even the bad ones, is that they are short."  (Or something along those lines.)

This kept me reading and I am happy I did.

It awoke the sense of wonder of how incredibly big this story was.

Terrific.  A highlight of the collection.