Seeds Of Change - John Joseph Adams

Says the editor: "I asked the contributors to this anthology to write about paradigm shifts—technological, scientific, political, or cultural—and how individuals and societies deal with such changes. The idea is to challenge our current paradigms and speculate on how they might evolve in the future, either for better or for worse."

The authors each contribute a brief introduction or scene-setting for each story.

There is also a website at http://www.seedsanthology.com/. This has all the information you could want. Actually probably a textbook example of how to do such a thing, in fact, story info, author info, excerpts, samples, reviews, where to get it, etc. The level of information and care that went into this makes some of the large corporate publishers in a lot of cases look like illiterate five year olds who wouldn't know what to do with a website if someone beat hem over the head with textbooks on the subject.

A short book, so pretty much all short stories as opposed to anything longer, but rather good for an original anthology, at 3.67. Although no particular standout, there are several good stories to be found here, basically at the start, and at the end of the anthology.

I'd basically call this a 4.25. Adams has done well producing a theme anthology where all stories are actually relevant to the mission statement, if you like. He is doing a very nice job as an editor so far.

Also nice to see electronic versions of this are available, as well.

Seeds Of Change : N-Words - Ted Kosmatka
Seeds Of Change : The Future by Degrees - Jay Lake
Seeds Of Change : Drinking Problem - K. D. Wentworth
Seeds Of Change : Endosymbiont - Blake Charlton
Seeds Of Change : A Dance Called Armageddon - Ken MacLeod
Seeds Of Change : Arties Aren't Stupid - Jeremiah Tolbert
Seeds Of Change : Faceless in Gethsemane - Mark Budz
Seeds Of Change : Spider the Artist - Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu
Seeds Of Change : Resistance - Tobias S. Buckell


Another good story by Kosmatka. I suppose the writer he reminds me of the most with the recent handful of stories is Robert Reed. Certainly good company.

The future issue he is taking a look at is cloning. The US has banned certain lines of research on religious grounds, so all the best cutting edge work happens elsewhere.

First with dogs, then the extinct Tasmanian Tiger, prehistoric mammoths, and, of course, finally making it to the Homo genus.

A leading scientist gets a Neanderthal skull. The results surprise, and a new minority becomes a target for racism.

A bit of flashforward and flashback here that seems to work ok.

Hopefully he can continue to come up with regular work given the recent quality.

4 out of 5


A small company comes up with a device that can take waste heat and reuse and/or store it for later, at over 90% efficiency.

Lake makes explicit reference to the Silkwood case, and again, here, people are willing to indulge in violence to protect their energy industry profits. He does have one authority figure on his side, an FBI agent who lost some of her family in a fire in cheap housing.

A lot more straightforward sort of story than some of the Weird work he has done in the past.

4 out of 5


In a book like this looking at future issues, you could certainly have a problem with the whole thing being decidedly downbeat.

This is certainly not the case with Wentworth's story. Here, a new reusable bottle proves to be on a par with The Talkie Toaster in Red Dwarf, except smarter and with more uses - although the two devices likely would get along well.

The story told via a hapless husband who buys one to drink with at his local bar without knowing what he is getting into.

4 out of 5


A young cancer patient in the future starts to question her reality in the hospital she is currently living in. This leads to a story on human anti-AI fears and posthuman ethical transfer research with a choice of whether or not an Ouroborous situation, termination, or something lesser is appropriate.

3.5 out of 5


In the intro MacLeod says he couldn't think of much until he got all pessimistic. He wasn't kidding.

Maybe you could call this a Scottish loser story, as a man watches a world war on the tv at the pub "The scene is apocalyptic: US, UK, Israeli, and Jordanian units in continuous engagements with much larger armies of Syrians, Russians, and Iranians. Tank battles, artillery duels, airstrikes, naval bombardments. Every minute or so one of the live-action screens goes white as a tactical nuke explodes."

Black jokes and Culloden references are the order of the day here, as things are not going well.

3 out of 5


A youth subculture's rebellion style is interwoven into their art, and a new twist is that with the particular instantiation technologies available, they can make stuff live. If they get a bit of technical advice and don't get arrested.

Told in a style that reflects their lingua franca. A little Dark Angel, even.

3.5 out of 5


Budz's introduction says this story idea grew out of a real condition, that of not being able to recognise faces. Here, a group of people alter themselves so they cannot identify people by race when seeing them: "..any of the people you look at gain by you being faceblind?” “Well for one thing I don’t prejudge people the way I used to. I don’t automatically assign a whole bunch of cultural baggage to someone based on a bunch of misconceptions, preconceptions, or stereotypes.” “Not everyone has that problem,” Fran said. “I’m not saying they do. All I’m saying is that I did, and I took steps to correct it. I didn’t want to see the world the way I used to. Before the surgery, I’d look at a person sometimes and misread them, see things that weren’t there. Now, there aren’t any facial miscues. I see people for who they really are.”

This, of course, weirds people out, or makes them angry. A slightly creepy story that build.

3 out of 5


"Some of these pipelines carry diesel fuel, others carry crude oil. Millions of liters of it a day. Nigeria supplies twenty-five percent of United States oil. And we get virtually nothing in return. Nothing but death by Zombie attack. We can all tell you stories."

The Zombies in this case are security robots that guard the pipeline from being broken into and tapped for the use of the exploited locals. In this atmosphere of local oppression a woman discovers a strange relationship with one of the robots, thanks to a bit of Bob Marley music, among others. Some robots have better taste than others?

Still, lots of petroleum products and killer attack robots is always going to be an exposive situation.

A good story, and the editor has managed to get a fine example of work set in other than your usual locations, here.

4 out of 5


A story set in the author's Ragamuffin universe, again featuring, Pepper, whose superhuman talents would appear to lend themselves to being his favorite agent of change.

A society has handed over their voting to emulation of how AIs model predictions of how they would and/or should vote. Not everyone agrees this is such a great idea, some going so far as to disagree in a 'let's blow this the hell up' fashion.

A more overt in the middle of the action tale.

4 out of 5





4 out of 5