100 Futures from Nature: 100 short-short sf stories from Nature Magazine

Futures From Nature: 100 Speculative Fictions is an anthology of 100 short-short science fiction stories originally published on the back page of the prestigious weekly science journal Nature. The stories come from all matter of writers -- science fiction professionals, working scientists, science writers (there's even one -- rather good -- story written by a scientist's 12-year-old daughter!), and take all manner of approaches to the challenge.

As is inherent in the short-short story form, the pieces are often comic and conceptual, rather than fleshed out narratives -- it's quite a trick to cram a full-blown story with realized characters into a mere 700 words. Many of these stories are flat-out brilliant, and not all of those come from professional writers (though sf pros like Bruce Sterling, Ben Rosenbaum, Joan Vinge, Kathryn Cramer, Robert Charles Wilson and Toby Buckell all have superb little gems here). Clearly, many scientists have a frustrated sf writer lurking within them.

100 short-short stories make for a very strong cup of tea indeed. The opening paragraphs alone are something of a masterclass in the rapid establishment of a story: setting, person and problem all nailed up within a few words. Plunging into -- and emerging out of -- 10 worlds in a day's reading can be a genuinely disorienting experience.

But it's a good kind of disorientation. These stories take on the big and small problems of science, from grant-writing to debunking pseudoscience, from Frankensteinian techno-apocalypses to the brightest utopias. Considered purely as an exercising in finding out what sort of thing captures the imagination of a working scientist, this is a fantastic little journey.

And of course, it doesn't hurt that many of these are just plain great stories. Link

(Disclosure: I have a story in this collection)

• [etherius]

  Very cool! I’ve never been able to afford a personal subscription to Nature, but when I was in grad school I always appreciated the fact that this most august of scientific journals was not above having a little fun. This collection will be a great way for the layman to get access to those stories without having to pay an arm and a leg for the privilege.

  Oh, and Jennee: As a scientist myself (albeit not currently working in the field), I can confirm that we do write genres other than hard SF. My own current project is a mixture of cyberpunk and epic fantasy, and an increasing number of “hard” SF writers seem to be focusing more on things like character and plot. Besides, in 700 words I doubt you have much room for technical explanations. :)

• [sayeth]

  Shouldn’t you have some sort of full disclosure stating that you’re giving a positive review to a book in which you contributed a story?

• [Jeff]

  I see Stross has a piece in this collection. Good news. I’m not sure I like the very fast, drop the reader into an unknown universe method of shorts, though.

• [Cory Doctorow]

  Good point, Sayeth. Done.

• [stack]

  You know you’ve spent too much time on the internet when you your first thought is, “Isn’t that an iStockPhoto work?”

• [jennee]

  I like shorts, if they’re well done. I love trying to fill in the pieces. My favourite author (Roger Zelazny, in case anyone’s wondering) has awesome shorts with basically no background, but great nonetheless.

  I’m curious about this anthology, though I’m not sure whether I’d like stories written by scientists, since hard SF is not my cup of tea at all.

• [A New Challenger]

  Ah, so it’s not pure coincidence that I immediately thought of “Printcrime” when I saw this post.

• [Certhas]

  What gives you the idea that working scientists would exclusively/predominantly write hard SF?