5.0
Among the Wild Cybers
ByPublisher Description
When the line between life and technology blurs, humanity must adjust its understanding of the universe. From bestselling author Christopher L. Bennett comes Among the Wild Cybers, eight tales portraying a future of challenge and conflict, but also of hope born from the courage and idealism of those heroes willing to stand up for what is right.
- An intrepid naturalist risks her future to save a new form of life that few consider worth saving.
- An apprentice superhero must stand alone against an insane superintelligence to earn her name.
- A cybernetic slave fights to save her kind from a liberation not of their choosing.
- A seasoned diplomat and mother must out-negotiate fearsome alien traders to save a colony’s children.
- A homicide detective serves in a world where curing death has only made murder more baffling.
These and other heroes strive to make their corners of the universe better—no matter how much the odds are stacked against them.
Includes the brand-new tale, Aspiring to Be Angels, prequel to the novel Only Superhuman.
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communitiesAmong the Wild Cybers Reviews
5.0
“In the not-so-distant future, humanity's exploration of the cosmos has begun in earnest -- driven in part by the plight of Earth, with collapsing ecosystems forcing outward movement. Among the Wild Cybers is a collection of previously published short stories, set in various phases of a sparefacing race's evolution -- from pioneering lunar colonies to faster than light travel in the 24th century. Evolution is the word to use, because not only are new kinds of societies being constructed, with unique cultures on colony worlds and space habs, but humans are changing themselves directly, through both genetic modification and cybernetics. Readers are dropped into the middle of things for each tale, with backstory information filtering in as the story (typically mysteries, with some dramas and a touch of action) unfolds. This approach works well most of the time, although there is a helpful historical overview in the back for the reader who still feels left in the dark.
I know Christopher L. Bennett as a Star Trek author, and the only one I know of that puts real scientific consideration into the worlds, species, and technical dilemmas that he creates. That and the prospect of reading about genetic supermen made this an easy sell for me. If you're at all interested in artificial intelligence or transhumanism, there's plenty of interest here, in part because Bennett doesn't go for easy answers. While there are cyber intelligences present in the stories, Bennett's characters indicate these are rare. Most attempts at creating a genuine metamind fail, as the creation either goes insane or sinks into silence. Even the machine intelligences which do exist can't simply be downloaded and transferred at whim. Bennett's premises succeed in some very intriguing tales, especially in the title story "Among the Wild Cybers of Cybele", about cybernetic creatures with the ability to evolve. There's also beauty here, particularly in the story, "Caress of a Butterfly's Wings".
Some of the tales:
[*]"Among the Wild Cybers of Cybele": a scientist on a colony world fights to defend a variety of cybernetic lifeforms which evolved from human probes
[*]"Aspiring to be Angels": a troubleshooting-trainee and her boss investigate an incident where an attempt at creating a superhuman machine intelligence has somehow rendered the human developers insane.
[*]"No Dominion": which is the only story not to share a history with the rest, death has been defeated. This makes murder investigations a little more complicated.
[*]"The Weight of Silence": , a woman who is rendered blind and deaf by an explosion aboard her ship must, groping along with her similarly disabled shipmate, find a way to communicate with one another and somehow put themselves into a position to be rescued.
[*]"Aggravated Vehicular Genocide": the human crew of the ship Arachne is pulled from stasis by furious aliens, who want to know why they murdered 88,000 of their people.
[*]"Caress of a Butterfly's Wings" witnesses an act of sacrificial love toward a perceived enemy by an augmented woman sailing through the stars.
As is usual for Bennett, there are https://christopherlbennett.wordpress.com/home-page/original-fiction/original-short-fiction/the-caress-of-a-butterflys-wing-annotations/ at his website .(Look under Original Fiction / Original Short Fiction for the rest.) You can also read a version of the historical overview there.”
About Christopher L. Bennett
Christopher L. Bennett is a lifelong resident of Cincinnati, Ohio, with a B.S. in Physics and a B.A. in History from the University of Cincinnati. A fan of science and science fiction since age five, he has spent the past two decades selling original short fiction to magazines such as Analog Science Fiction and Fact and BuzzyMag. For the past dozen years, he has been one of Pocket Books' most prolific and popular authors of Star Trek tie-in fiction, including the epic Next Generation prequel The Buried Age, the Star Trek: Department of Temporal Investigations series, and the ongoing Star Trek: Enterprise-Rise of the Federation series. His original novel Only Superhuman, perhaps the first hard science fiction superhero novel, was voted Library Journal's SF/Fantasy Debut of the Month for October 2012. His short story collection Hub Space: Tales from the Greater Galaxy is available in e-book and print formats from Mystique Press.
Christopher's homepage, fiction annotations, and blog can be found at christopherlbennett.wordpress.com, and his Facebook author page is at www.facebook.com/ChristopherLBennettAuthor.
Other books by Christopher L. Bennett
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