Had a hard time getting into this one, and that's entirely the fault of my tiny pea brain that demands every short story collection have an audiobook so I can fall asleep listening to them like bedtime stories. Still, I enjoyed these short and smart stories penned by some of our best and smartest science-fantasy-nightmare minds.

This was a really enjoyable collection. Not every story was a hit, but overall I had a lot of fun. The wonderful thing about these stories is that they are all very short. So picking it up and reading a story is a very low commitment.

There was a good mix of authors. There were some more well known names alongside names I've never heard of. I was really excited to see Meg Elison, Jeff Vandermeer, and Sarah Gailey among the authors included. Some of my favorite stories were by authors unknown to me though!

I think the first section worked best for me overall. I enjoyed all the explorations of different kinds of technology and the impacts that tech could have on the nearish future. My favorite story was in this section and explored the possible benefits of surveillance being a part of Alexa-type tech. I enjoyed the humor and snark of the prose style in this one.

I didn't love every story, but there were only a couple stories out of the whole collection that I actually disliked. So on the whole, I'd say this is a very strong collection and great for discussing with friends!

Thank you to Netgalley for the advanced reader copy!

This collection was a delight to read and very consistent in quality for a short story anthology. Obviously like with any anthology there will be hits and misses but the fact that all of these short stories were less than 20 pages and I could easily read one a day for 10-15 minutes and have a well paced short story was a delight. My experience was also enhanced but reading a story a day with two of my friends for a month and half. Its always fun buddy reading short story collections cause you really see different experiences and perspectives even for stories that didn't land. Of the three parts my favorite was probably Watch since it focused on the relationship between new tech and society and I love exploring those questions but there were hits throughout this collection for me. Highly recommend if you want some bite-size sci-fi.

Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux /MCD x FSG Originals on August 16, 2022

Terraform is an anthology of science fiction stories that were published digitally on VICE’s “digital speculative story destination” of the same name. Corey Doctorow’s introduction to this collection suggests the value of Luddites, defined not as people who oppose technology but as people who oppose the use of technology to benefit owners at the expense of workers. He embarks on a riff about the gutting of antitrust law before he talks about the need for science fiction that imagines alternative technologies, or uses of technology, in ways that benefit people rather than capital.

In a preface, the editors of this anthology are less ambitious. Boiled down, they explain that Terraform publishes stories by new or unheralded sf writers. An unacknowledged risk of focusing on new writers is that prose will unpolished and ideas will be insufficiently developed. Many stories in the volume suffer from those flaws. When an anthology collects a large number of sf stories from newer writers, the quality will inevitably be uneven.

The stories in the first section focus on technology. An online service streams cute animals without disclosing the ways in which the animals (and the people who work for the service) are abused. Archived records of personal activity are deleted by drastic means. A kid explains to her school why she’s opting out of technology that enhances her sensory experiences. Letters smuggled across the border are the only way for deported migrants to keep in touch with relatives in the US because they are not allowed to communicate over wires or wirelessly. A male prostitute whose body is occupied by other men is asked to allow an artificial intelligence to use his body. A ghost who looks like Ernest Borgnine becomes a guest on Jimmy Kimmel’s show in an effort to obtain justice.

The best story in the first section is “The End of Big Data” by James Bridle. A data crash made all private information available for the taking. Governments responded by criminalizing the electronic storage of data. The UN monitors compliance with satellites that seek out evidence of server farms. The UN’s response to its discovery of illegal data storage is drastic.

The stories in the second section are set in the future. An archivist talks about maintaining biobots in the form of moths. A girl’s life is influenced by a talking head she finds floating down a stream after it was separated from its organically grown body. An artificial womb permits external gestation. Sentient drones enforcing agricultural rules that regulate all of society are offered a safe haven in a cooperative community that gives freedom to humans and drones. A dog that receives an intelligence enhancement yearns for a simpler time. The failure of technology portends a devolution of humanity that inspires philosophers to ask whether humanity really matters.

I have a couple of favorite stories in this section. Robin Sloan’s “The Counselor” addresses society’s response to the public expense of caring for the aging as medicine finds new ways to prolong life. The solution: assign an AI counselor whose job is to encourage older people to end their lives. In Lincoln Michel’s “Duchy of the Toe Adam,” all that is left of a religious colony has devolved into worshippers of the toe who are at war with worshippers of the nose (having defeated worshippers of other sacrilegious body parts).

The third section is devoted to dystopian stories. The rebooted dead are plotting a revolution. Revolutionary elephants have taken over Phuket. Space alien refugees are treated just as poorly as refugees from Earth’s nations. A school transport drone mistakenly returns a refugee to her original home in Mexico. A band member wakes up on the tour bus and discovers that everyone on the bus, and perhaps everyone in Texas or the world, has disappeared. Zombie capitalists. All green card holders are deported. A corporation has been gaming carbon credits by storing all its carbon emissions.

The first of my three favorites in this section is Russell Nichols’ “U Won’t Remember Dying.” A kid who was shot by the police texts his future self as he waits for his consciousness to be transferred to a cloned body. The story is a powerful and timely. The second is Bruce Sterling’s “The Brain Dump.” Oppressed Ukrainian hackers suddenly become moguls in Sterling’s 2014 commentary on the difficulty of maintaining anarchy in a pure form. My favorite story in the collection is Jeff VanderMeer’s “Always Home.” The New People were originally machines. Now they are everything. They oversee the planet’s restoration to a natural state. One of the few remaining Old People wonders why the New People brought back nature but not humans. A battle for the future ensues.

Sterling and VanderMeer are the only writers in this anthology whose work I am certain I’ve read, although I recognize the names of a few other contributors: Tobias Buckell, Meg Elison, Sam J. Miller, Tochi Onyebuchi, E. Lily Yu. Doctorow’s introduction is interesting but, sadly, he did not contribute a story to the collection. Too many of these stories are insubstantial, more ideas for stories than stories given flesh, but more than half are entertaining.

RECOMMENDED

A total blockbuster collection, full of urgent and incisive stories. Putting the pieces together in this progression -- WATCH / WORLDS / BURN -- brought neat context to some stories I'd read individually previously and the whole thing together makes a great snapshot of where SF is at right now, particularly as regards the urgent opportunities for changing the world's wicked ways. Your mileage may vary from story to story but isn't that always the way, and there's guaranteed to be another stunner coming along shortly even if you aren't feeling any particular tale.

What a wonderful anthology of gritty sci-fi from some really great authors! None of the stories are particularly long, which made this book a breeze to get through and an enjoyable one at that. My favorite stories in here are "The Binding of Isaac" by Tochi Onyebuchi and "Always Home" by Jeff VanderMeer (so very good!!). There's a diverse variety in this collection, and not a bad story in the bunch. Highly recommended!

Thanks to NetGalley and MCD x FSG Originals for an ARC of this title.

This is the type of sci-fi anthology I love - focused, snappy, and bursting with ideas. There's a murderer's row of contributors here, with both established names and new internet favorites (since these originally appeared as part of Vice's website), organized into three somewhat focused sub-collections (Watch, Worlds, and Burn), which provide a nice throughline from story to story. Like any anthology, there are going to be stories that just. don't. work. for you (sorry, story set in a mall in borderline indecipherable future-speak), but that's par for the course, and the length of these stories means that you don't feel too bad about bailing mid-story if something wasn't for you.

The editors have done a great job curating this collection, stating their viewpoint, and delivering a collection I didn't want to put down any time I picked it back up.

A pretty good set of stories with a nice amount of variety. It includes some big names, which is great. Recommended to sci-fi anthology fans.

I really appreciate the free ARC for review!!

I love sci-fi and short story collections so this was like a lil treat for me, especially considering it had stories from some of my favorite authors. It's a massive short story collection from a very diverse array of sci-fi authors, including bigger name ones like Jeff VanderMeer, Sarah Gailey, and Tochi Onyebuchi.

The stories themselves range from all sorts of topics, but follow the 3 overarching themes: Watch (surveillance), Worlds (alternate possibilities), and Burn (the world is on fire).
They're about things like capitalism, feminism, climate change, singing robot heads, gentrification of death, sleeping as a job, exploiting ghosts, beautiful aliens, new vs. old humans, cats, etc. I think the topics tended to lean a bit more humorous rather than hard sci-fi, but there was still a lot of serious or interesting concepts brought up. Also a lot of weird ones, loved all the weird and out there ones. The stories are pretty short, typically 5-15 minutes long each (but there's like 50-60 stories). The shortness of them I think is partially why I enjoyed this collection a lot, I think the length is perfect for getting the point across and just giving a taste of each world/subject and how each author writes.

I really enjoyed how diverse the authors and the stories were also! I definitely picked up some new names to check out through this, I think they were chosen very well and there's something for every sci-fi lover out there. There's also some that read more like poetry, and a comic as well.

Some of my faves:
-Ernest by Geoff Manaugh
-A Song For You by Jennifer Marie Brissett
-The Fog by Elvia Wilk
-Science Fiction Ideas by Tao Lin
-Mall School by Porpentine Charity Heartscape (this was absolutely nuts)
-The Binding of Isaac by Tochi Onyebuchi
-The Wretched and The Beautiful by E. Lily Yu
-Virtual Snapshots by Tlotlo Tsamaase
-One Thousand Cranes by Zora Mai Quynh
-Always Home by Jeff VanderMeer

Honestly there was way more I enjoyed but it'd be too long to list them all. Really enjoyed this, would def recommend it to others looking to branch out to new sci-fi authors or just to those who enjoy short stories. Only 4/5 stars since out of the 50-60 stories, there was bound to be some that just didn't grab my attention as much as the others.

Big thanks to Farrar, Straus and Giroux publishing and NetGalley for sending me an e-arc to review!