Federations

By John Joseph Adams
Prime Books, $14.95, 379 pages

For this anthology of twenty-four stories, editor John Joseph Adams tasked some of the brightest luminaries of speculative fiction to write stories of vast, galaxy-spanning empires and the people that live in them. From a rare Lois McMaster Bujold short story about the professions that arise in the aftermath of war, to a special Robert Silverberg tale of love and honor, to Anne McCaffrey’s famous ship who sang, to a humorous tongue-in-cheek tale by Harry Turtledove, each of these stories are of the highest quality. All of them do what SF has always done best, and make the reader think and question while still being entertained. Even the relative newcomers like Jeremiah Tolbert, S. L. Gilbow and Georgina Li present tales that are thoroughly polished and pleasingly inventive. By mixing writers with great experience in with newer authors, Adams captures both the feel of the old pulp magazines and the practical elements of the ever-changing science of astronomy and space travel. Though some of the stories are reprints by such authors as Robert J. Sawyer or Orson Scott Card, there is also a goodly mix of brand new fiction by L. E. Modesitt, Jr. and Alan Dean Foster. Editor Adams has collected both the finest writers and their finest tales in the definitive volume of vast, epic, interstellar Federations.

Reviewed by John Ottinger III