Books: Best Of Elizabeth Bear

 (Drivebycuriosity) - Speculative fiction knows no rules and has no limits. Anything is possible. Elizabeth Bear belongs to the finest authors of the genre. I just finished the anthology "Best of Elizabeth Bear" ( amazon). The collections spreads over around 700 pages and contains about 30 short stories.

I have 2 favorites:

"Dolly" - a billionaire was found murdered in his home. Cops interrogate a female robot, called "Dolly", the only witness. This artificial intelligence has an almost human like brain but was used as an extremely expensive high-tech sex toy. The tale again touches a lot of questions. Does an AI have a self-interest and if, is it (she?) accountable for its (her) on doing, and more. The story is a glance into a possible near future.

"Okay, Glory" follows another billionaire, also set in a near term future. The man is trapped in his secluded high-tech mansion in the mountains. Some rogues had hacked the controlling house AI and demand ransom. 

 

There are more gems:

"In the House of Aryaman, a Lonely Signal Burns"  is another detective story (a "whodunit")  set in an alternate world near-future India and deals with some weird results of genetic engineering. 

"The Body of the Nation" is an alternate history story set in New Amsterdam in the year 1897 (the real New Amsterdam turned into Manhattan and became New York City in ). The "Body" is another whodunit story. A murdered woman was found on a steamboat on the Hudson River at the coast of New Amsterdam. Detective Crown Investigator Abigail Irene Garrett (a repesant of the English Crown) is inquiring the complicated case which includes diplomatic complication with the kingdoms of Bavaria & Prussia (today federal states of Germany)

"Boojum" follows  the crew of a space ship, called "Bojum", a huge semi-intelligent organic which can  live and travel in the vacuum of space.  

"The Bone War" focuses on Bijou, an artificer (a very skilled craftsperson) with some magical powers who is assigned by a museum to reconstruct a giant dinosaur. 

"The Depth of the Sky" follows an intelligent being who lives in the tropopause (the  layer of the atmosphere between the troposphere and the stratosphere) of a gas planet.

"The faster Gun" is another alternate history, set around the year 1880 in the American West.  Western legend Doc Holliday is hired by a group of people to guide them to a alien spaceship which is stranded in the desert.

"Convenant" focuses on a former serial killer who gets into dangerous situations because now he is restrained by pharmacies as a result of his resocialization.

The collection is a nice mixture of science fiction (based on plausible ideas and sciences) and modern fairy tales.