Yes, another retro review.

This one from May 19, 2001 and obviously before someone suggested I might want to limit those online paragraphs to four or five lines.

Review: Far Frontiers, eds. Martin H. Greenberg and Larry Segriff, 2000.

Built around a liberal definition of frontiers, this anthology of original stories not only has stories about space exploration and life on harsh colony worlds but also stories about death and dreams and transformation. None of the stories break new ground, but most keep you entertained as they roam around old plots.

Two stories hold little interest. “The Cutting Edge” by Janet Pack handles the details of its technology plausibly and realistically, but, at this point in time, a story about using nanotechnology just to remove a brain tumor seems stale. “Home World” by Marc Bilgrey features the old story of a frontier couple threatened with the encroachment of the civilization they originally fled.

The vast bulk of the stories are entertaining examples of old ideas well done. It was nice to see geology, a little used science in science fiction, providing the clues to an alien artifact in Kathleen M. Massie-Ferch’s “Traces”. Continue reading →