Reviews
“Hard SF is represented here from its origins with the likes of Hawthorne’s ‘Rappacchini’s Daughter’ to J. G. Ballard’s dour ‘Prima Belladona,’ a recasting of the original tale. Hartwell and Cramer shrewdly place each story; Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘Descent into the Maelstrom,’ for instance, is the field’s ‘founding document,’ and Hal Clement’s ‘Proof’ is proof that carefully worked out science, linked to the imaginative exploration of a single what-if, is what the field is all about. Even so, with writers such as Clement and Robert Heinlein at its philosophical heart, this anthology casts its net wide enough to include the best of the cyberpunkers, writers such as William Gibson and Bruce Sterling, as well as mavericks, such as Philip K. Dick, represented here with a mathematical tease called the ‘The Indefatigable Frog.’ A focused, disciplined collection brilliantly introduced by the editors and Gregory Benford; readers will be treated to the progression of the field and vastly entertained, too.” —Booklist
