Now Reading: Magic Kingdom For Sale– Sold!, by Terry Brooks.

Just Finished: Silicon Dreams, by Greenberg and Segriff.

When in doubt about what to read next, I try to reach for an anthology of short stories. The less interesting stories can be endured briefly or even skipped entirely without fear of missing a detail that may be important later in the book. Although it is possible that a good editor may be selecting and arranging the stories with an eye toward comparing and contrasting, or to elaborate upon a running theme, I like to think that such an editor would not choose stories so excruciatingly dull (or poorly written) that I would skip any of them. Of the stories in this volume, the most memorable to me were "Freddy Nearby," in which a man purchases a robot hairdresser that is programmed to kill; "Keepers of Earth," which was sort of a darker version of Wall-E; and "Take Two," which takes the idea of automated production to an extreme. While the collection was thought provoking, it was not remarkably so, but it did keep me entertained at the laundromat and on the airplane.

Now Reading: Silicon Dreams, by Greenberg and Segriff.

Just Finished: Circuit of Heaven, by Dennis Danvers.

I liked this book, with some reservations, which I’ll get to later. It was a story of what happens when humanity gets the choice to live forever as data in a simulation of a perfect world, or to live and die in an empty, post-apocalyptic wasteland. In this way, it reminded me of But What Of Earth, though in that book, humanity was leaving Earth to colonize the galaxy, not to live in a dream world. It also reminded me of Diaspora, though in that book, humanity went on to explore the universe and beyond, despite having been digitized.

As for the reservations? Well, I figured out fairly early on the true nature of the heroine. I also had a pretty good idea of exactly where the story was going to go. While this didn’t ruin the story for me, it did make me a bit impatient with the author for dragging it out for so long. Let me put it another way. I lent a friend of mine my copy of Corum: The Coming Of Chaos, a book I’d read back in high school. While my friend enjoyed the book, he had an interesting observation about it. It seemed to him that storytelling styles had changed over the past thirty years, that in one chapter, Corum would talk to a king, then sail a boat, then kill a monster, then kill the king. A more modern series would take quite a bit longer than one chapter to tell the same story. Now, it’s possible that all my friend really noticed was the difference in storytelling styles between Michael Moorcock and, oh, I don’t know, Terry Goodkind. But I think that Circuit of Heaven is an excellent example of someone taking a long time to tell a short story.

Now Reading: Circuit of Heaven, by Dennis Danvers.

Just Finished: Star Trek Vanguard: Harbinger, by David Mack.

Rebooting a series by introducing new characters is something that we occasionally see in series fiction. Sometimes an author loses interest in his original characters, but has a contractual obligation to grind out a total of ten books. Sometimes the original characters’ story is told and done, and not all of them survived, but the fans cry for more and more. Sometimes it’s easier for an author to build off an established foundation. And sometimes it’s all three.

Vanguard is a Star Trek series set at the beginning of Kirk’s captaincy of the Enterprise, though the familiar captain and ship only make brief appearances. Instead, most of the action focuses on Starbase 47, aka Vanguard Station, which was hastily built on the border of a mysterious and supposedly empty sector of space bordered by the Tholians, the Klingons, and the Federation. Complete with alien ambassadors, smugglers, crime lords, and nosy journalists, the setting was rather reminiscent of Babylon 5, though Vanguard managed to be reminiscent without presenting itself as an obvious knockoff. On the other hand, there was a scene at the end that seemed rather familiar, though I suppose I’d have to read the next book in the series in order to decide whether it was a "borrow" or just a nod and wink.

On the whole, not bad.