Sunday, July 13, 2014

Review | Metatropolis by Karl Schroeder

Title: Metatropolis
Author: Karl Schroeder
Length: 288 Pages
Released: February 2010

Blurb

Five original tales set in a shared urban future—from some of the hottest young writers in modern SF

A strange man comes to an even stranger encampment...a bouncer becomes the linchpin of an unexpected urban movement...a courier on the run has to decide who to trust in a dangerous city...a slacker in a "zero-footprint" town gets a most unusual new job...and a weapons investigator uses his skills to discover a metropolis hidden right in front of his eyes.

Welcome to the future of cities. Welcome to Metatropolis.

More than an anthology, Metatropolis is the brainchild of five of science fiction's hottest writers—Elizabeth Bear, Tobias Buckell, Jay Lake, Karl Schroeder, and project editor John Scalzi—-who combined their talents to build a new urban future, and then wrote their own stories in this collectively-constructed world. The results are individual glimpses of a shared vision, and a reading experience unlike any you've had before.


This is definitely worth a second listen through. I didn't much care for the first story in the anthology, but the others got increasingly better. The 4th and 5th especially appealed to me in different ways. The 4th appealed because the character seemed the most "down to earth" and easy to relate to sort. The 5th appealed to me because the concept of worlds within worlds and RPGs on a whole new level was neat.

If you're a science fiction fan, this is one collection that you'll find something that appeals to you. That said, know that becuase of the very nature of the work not everything will be completely to your liking. 5 different authors, 5 different readers = one mixed bag of stories.

What a bleak look most science fiction writers take of the future. The first three focus a lot on the hard-knock sort of life it is. The 4th struck me as a whimsical, happy-go-lucky sort of tale and the 5th was mainly a description of a cool idea, not really much in the way of action to the story.

If you don't want to spring for the $20 yourself, at least make your local library consider buying it.

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