Future Visions: Original Science Fiction Inspired by Microsoft by Elizabeth Bear
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Despite its title, Future Visions: Original Science Fiction Inspired by Microsoft is mercifully not about people making the world a better place with their Xboxes, Windows 10 and the HoloLens.
Instead it’s a collection of stories about future tech that sometimes hints at Microsoft products without naming them–such as the augmented reality glasses used in the graphic novel story “A Cop’s Eye” that could be the follow-up to the HoloLens, to various extrapolations on AI. We’ve come a long way since Clippy. The stories shift in tone from playful (the Dr. Doolittle-inspired “Hello, Hello”) to weird (Greg Bear’s mind-bending take on what happens when a quantum computer starts to successfully do its job in “The Machine Starts”) but never veers entirely toward the dark. These visions are sometimes tales of caution, such as Ann Leckie’s take on culture clash and mistranslation in “Another Word for World” but there is usually some hint of hope or redemption, no matter how bleak the situation may seem.
This book is available as a free download from major ebook retailers so the only investment made here is with your time. Given the brevity of the collection and the generally high quality of the work (none of the writers have phoned it in–perhaps why there’s no Lumia product placement) it’s an easy recommendation.