Worlds Vast and Various - Softcover

Benford, Gregory

3.3

40 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0380790548 ISBN 13: 9780380790548

Publisher: HarperCollins, 2000

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SF readers have come to expect the universe from Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author Gregory Benford: fascinating multilayered characters, thrilling plots, and mind-bending scientific speculations firmly based in cutting-edge technological fact. When it comes to literate, human, unassailably possible science fiction, Benford is in a class by himself--as he proves once again in a stunning array of tales that have never been collected in one volume before.

A time-traveler on an illegal trip into the past learns a chilling truth about her own destiny... As a deadly Superflu runs rampant through a polluted, overpopulated Earth, a husband-and-wife scientific team races to salvage a livable future...On a planet where the laws of physics are strangely twisted, a brilliant scientist work undermines an ancient faith and leads to a shattering revelation...An ore-hauler on Mercury, desperate to save her endangered ship and career findsa remarkable way out: a wormhole trapped in the hellish flux of magnetic fieldsand fiery plasma generated by the nuclear furnace of the sun...

These are but a few of the various worlds the respected astrophysicist and SF luminary now transports us to in ships constructed of evocative words and ingenious ideas. Astonishing, provocative, and intellectually stimulating, each selection is a glittering star in the vast cosmos of Gregory Benford's unparalleled imagination.

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Review:

A collection of short fiction can be an excellent intro to a writer whom you're not familiar with. But--as any Gregory Benford fan would likely tell you--Worlds Vast and Various might not be the best way to get to know this enormously likable and talented author. Which is not to suggest that there aren't some great stories here--there are, like the Greg Bear-edited "A Calculus of Desperation" and the F. Scott Fitzgerald-inspired novella "As Big as the Ritz," to name just two. But like similar hodgepodge affairs, drawn from many sources and stages of a career, Worlds shouldn't be considered comprehensive or representative of Benford's best work. Benford himself admits to including the oldest story, 1969's "The Scarred Man," in part "to show how badly one can write and still get a start." (His other reason for including the short, though, turns out to be far more interesting.)

Caveats aside, these 12 stories do demonstrate what the Campbell- and Nebula-winning Benford does best: tight hard-SF that's plausible for both its science and its characterization. (Or, in the case of the dark "A Dance to Strange Music," the clever and deliberate omission of characterization.) Benford is inarguably one of the genre's big guns, alongside dons like Greg Bear and Paul J. McAuley, with whom Benford shares the distinction of being an accomplished scientist to boot (he teaches plasma physics and astrophysics at UC-Irvine).

Any way you cut it, a collection of Benford stories is going to be worth your time whether you're already familiar with his work or not. But if you're not, consider a longer piece--like Cosm or Timescape--to get properly acquainted. --Paul Hughes

About the Author:

Gregory Benford is a professor of physics at the University of California, Irvine. He is a Woodrow Wilson Fellow, and was Visiting Fellow at Cambridge University. and in 1995 received the Lord Prize for contributions to sciences. His research encompasses both theory and experiments in the fields of astrophysics and plasma physics. His fiction has won many awards, including the Nebula Award for his novel Timescape. Dr. Benford makes his home in Laguna Beach, California.

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