Far Futures
- Author various authors
- Narrator various
- Publish Date 27 May 2014
- Run Time 16 hours and 53 minutes
- Format Audio
- Genre Anthologies: general, Science fiction.
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What to expect
Five novellas of hard science fiction by five modern masters of the form
From Nebula Award winner Gregory Benford comes this ambitious hard SF anthology that collects five original novellas. Each one takes the very long view—all are set at least ten thousand years in the future. The authors take a rigorously scientific view of such grand panoramas, confronting the largest issues of cosmology, astronomy, evolution, and biology.
The last moments of a universe beseiged occupy Greg Bear's Judgment Engine. Can something human matter at the very end of creation, as contorted matter ceases to have meaning and time itself stutters to an eerie halt?
Genesis by Poul Anderson is set a billion years ahead, when humanity has become extinct. Earth is threatened by the slowly warming sun, and vast machine intelligences decide to recreate humans.
Donald Kingsbury contributes Historical Crisis, a starting work on the prediction of the human future that challenges the foundations of psychohistory, as developed in Isaac Asimov's famous Foundation Trilogy.
Joe Haldeman's For White Hill confronts humanity with hostile aliens who remorselessly grind down every defense against them. A lone artist struggles to find a place in this distant, wondrous future when humanity seems doomed.
In At the Eschaton by Charles Sheffield, a man tries to rescue his dying wife from oblivion by hurling himself forward, in both space and time, to the very end of the universe itself.
Critics Review
“Far Futures is the kind of science fiction that got me reading SF in the first place. These stories have all the dazzling sweep of Golden Age SF, combined with the sensitive characterizations and complex moralities of a genre finally grown up. Not to be missed.”
“Most notable about all of these oft-apocalyptic novellas—excluding their common acceptance that organic life is destined to be superseded—is their essential vivacity. This volume presents five glorious adventures bound to delight anyone with an abiding curiosity about the distant future.”
“Five
novellas by veteran authors of hard SF focus on imaginary far futures and
explore the death of the universe, the end of time, and the evolution of human
consciousness….These selections challenge the boundaries of the imagination. A
strong addition for most libraries’ SF collections.”
“Fictional scenarios of the remotely distant
future, such as Stapledon’s classic Last and First Men,
are rare in sf, perhaps because humans, at least in their current form, aren’t
expected to last that long. To fill this void, editor Benford offers five
novellas by leading hard-sf veterans that safeguard the human perspective while
reaching ten thousand years and more into the future…A superb collection that
stretches sf to its imaginative limits.”
“Excellent…A must for any fan of hard SF or good storytelling of any genre.”
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