The Mammoth Book of Mindblowing SF

I enjoyed most of these stories. There are many of my favorite authors including Baxter, Reed and Silverberg. Highly recommended! * 1 * Out of the Sun * (1958) * shortstory by Arthur C. Clarke * 9 * The Pevatron Rats * (2009) * novelette by Stephen Baxter * 30 * The Edge of the Map * (2006) * shortstory by Ian Creasey * 47 * Cascade Point * (1983) * novella by Timothy Zahn * 105 * A Dance to Strange Musics * (1998) * novelette by Gregory Benford * 131 * Palindromic * (1997) * novelette by Peter Crowther * 156 * Castle in the Sky * (2009) * novelette by Robert Reed * 191 * The Hole in the Hole * [Wilson Wu and Irving] * (1994) * novelette by Terry Bisson * 224 * Hotrider * (1991) * shortstory by Keith Brooke * 237 * Mother Grasshopper * (1997) * shortstory by Michael Swanwick * 255 * Waves and Smart Magma * novelette by Paul Di Filippo * 282 * The Black Hole Passes * [Eight Worlds] * (1975) * novelette by John Varley * 309 * The Peacock King * (1965) * shortstory by Larry McCombs and Ted White * 325 * Bridge * (1952) * novelette by James Blish * 355 * Anhedonia * (2009) * novelette by Adam Roberts * 380 * Tiger, Burning * (2006) * novelette by Alastair Reynolds * 407 * The Width of the World * (1983) * shortstory by Ian Watson * 421 * Our Lady of the Sauropods * (1980) * shortstory by Robert Silverberg * 438 * Into the Miranda Rift * (1993) * novella by G. David Nordley * 504 * The Rest is Speculation * shortstory by Eric Brown * 524 * Vacuum States * (1988) * shortstory by Geoffrey A. Landis

MindBlowing SF is a mix of hard-to-find reprints and 5 brand-new stories. There's a definite emphasis on long out-of-print stories that have been supposedly overlooked. The book is definitely mammoth and tends toward hard science fiction. This means that the stories generally focus on science (or pseudo-science) and ideas, and it is the ideas that will blow your mind, not love-triangles or feelings. Most of the stories are very good and worth reading though some of the older stories don't seem to have aged well in my opinion. Calling them mindblowing is a bit of marketing exaggeration obviously, these are not the best 21 science fiction short stories ever written, just very good SF short stories that are hard to find anywhere else. Some of the more mind-blowing stories: Our Lady of the Sauropods / Robert Silverberg - Dino SF, and my favorite story in the book. It's Jurassic Park in space with a better ending. The Rest is Speculation / Eric Brown - A visit to Earth when the sun is in its dying stages. It will make you consider what a short run humans have had compared to the age of our planet. Vaccum States / Geoffrey A. Landis - An enjoyable story written in the rare 2nd person perspective. It may or may not be about the end of the universe.

An earlier reviewer has given this book a one star rating based on a dubious argument. I have not yet read this book, but I do intend to purchase it. I cannot let the one star rating stand unchallenged so I am giving the book five stars to sort of balance things out. I do not think that the stories in the book were selected based on the race of the writers. That idea is perverse.