David L. Clements

I love hard (sciency) sci fi, and this author gives his work a very strong base in science... so I had a difficult time giving myself permission to be critical of the writing. But I did find myself being (perhaps overly) critical of most of these short stories. They certainly weren't bad, but didn’t always have oomph. With that said, this was overall a pretty good read.

Re-Creation
Two machines -- one built to destroy, one built to preserve -- come into conflict over the fate of a spherical asteroid. A fun and imaginative thought experiment, even if the ‘twist’ was predictable. (And an example of missing oomph; I would’ve ended this with Instructions for Thawing, not just a monument.)

Last of the Guerrilla Gardeners
A group of "guerrilla gardeners" face imprisonment for spreading non-bioengineered seeds. A short and somewhat pretentious thought experiment on Monsanto-style litigation.

Seed Dealer
A continuation of the previous story, Seed Dealer follows a group of guerrilla gardeners who fight against a 'privatized ecology,' where it's illegal to plant anything non-GMO. Interesting (topical!) ideas, spouted by cardboard cutout characters. Fun little Oceans 13 ending, though.

His Final Experiment
A quick, interesting little story about a detective and the physics of free will… which Clements chose to write in a clunky future tense. Maybe if it was more elaborately in future tense (instead of the repetitive "Inspector Willis will do a thing..." replacing "Inspector Willis did a thing") it would've added something to the story. Nevertheless, it was an interesting little mystery.

Brane Surgery
The classic time travel question -- killing Hitler -- applied to a multiverse.

A Bright Shiny Night
An ethereal, bite-sized piece on psychoactive drugs.

The Stars Made Right
A Lovecraftian spy thriller examining human hubris and the natural (or in this case, eldrich) order of things. Brings way too much morality to Lovecraftian horror, but the characters are interesting at least.

The Mauna Kea Experience
All science, no fiction. A window into life as an astrophysicist gathering data high above sea level. It was like an introduction to a really interesting story interesting... so where's that story?

Launch Day
Another all science, no fiction: a mid-level scientist ponders the launch of the satellite he’s working on.

Inquisition
A scientist working on some unnamed Experiment, run by some unexplained fascist Inquisition, breaks the rules of communication. He expects to be accused of breaking the rules intentionally, but his offense is accidental; this is supposed to be shocking?

Catching Rays
This one is the best of the bunch. Two moonbase scientists accidentally catch an exotic cosmic ray particle,

Foothills of Shackleton
Astronomers on the Moon stop their game of Space Cricket to help a pair of miners trapped in a Moon hole using their Space Cricket bowling skills.… (more)

This is an anthology of science-fiction and horror short stories by a professional physicist. I'm not a fan of horror, as it usually seems preposterous, overwrought, and trivial. This is true of the horror stories in this collection, so far. Not all the science fiction stories are about physics, which is good for me, because, although I read popular physics books pretty regularly, those books are not as contemporary as this author's physics based stories. I'm sure that some of the intended cleverness is lost on me. So far, the most interesting stories to me are the gardening based ones. They come across as more or less realistic, i.e., extrapolating from the current situation to a plausible future.… (more)

A collection of hard sf short stories written by an astro-physicist so at least most of the science is good. Perhaps the best of the bunch are the two non-fiction excerpts from his real life of attending radio-telescopes to probe the far reaches of the universe.

The opening couple of stories are Lovecraftian Cthullu attempts which is an odd topic for SF and doesn't really work. The last set of lightly interlinked deep space AI/uploaded conciousness tales are much better. Although uploaded works much better than generational ships from the physics point of view, it's a shame the author didn't contemplate the biology to the same level of detail. The questions of conciousness are not addressed. I was generally not convinced by the various attempts of imagining a universal enemy a la Reynolds. I suspect short stories are not the best medium for this.

They are generally very short stories, many are flash fiction at under 1000 words.… (more)