David Brin's "Bubbles" (short story, weird physics, free)

Caution: This is not a story for novice genre readers. You need to have some experience reading science fiction.

In Hindu mythology, our universe is cyclical & is run by a trinity of gods: Brahma creates the universe, Vishnu runs it, & Shiva eventually destroys it - so the cycle can repeat. Here we see science fictional treatment given to an intelligent entity that might be a simpler form of Brahma.

We also get an explanation of where all the dark matter of the universe might be hidden.

Story summary.

Serena, a planet sized living entity that carries "gifts" between galaxies, has had a traveling accident that moved her close to location of her universe's Big Bang (in the story, universe comprises of many "bubbles" with their own Big Bangs)! She's stranded for eternity; there is no way she can go back to civilization.

Here she'll meet an entity that might be instrumental in creating next iteration of the universe, & discover that she's not the first one who's accidentally wandered here.

Fact sheet.

First published: Byron Preiss (ed)' "The Universe" (anthology, 1987).
Download full text from Lightspeed. [via QuasarDragon]
Rating: B.
Related: Stories of David Brin; weird physics.

Free fiction: 4 stories from JBU, #19 (June 2009)

At Webscription:

1. [scifi] David Brin's "Gorilla My Dreams"; download.
2. [scifi] Jay Lake's "Leopard"; download.
3. [scifi] Bud Sparhawk's "Winds of Mars"; download.
4. [fantasy] Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff's "The Resident"; download.

Free fiction: Two stories from my "best of 2008" list are now online

Ben Bova's "Moon Race" (download) & David Brin's "The Smartest Mob" (download).

Hmmm...I didn't know JBU was putting up some of the fiction from back issues (as well as the current issue) is online at Webscription. This page lists them all; open an issue, then look for "Sample Chapters".
PS: When I find some time, I might make reprints feed automatically pick up new entries. For the moment, try it manually.

[via Speculative Fiction Online]

Related: My "best of the year 2008" picks.

David Brin's "The Crystal Spheres" (short story, first contact, free): An answer to Fermi's Paradox

This story is high on imagination & low on logic. Didn't really work for me, but it's a Hugo winner.

Story has a lot of irrelevant invented compound words that may irritate or appear exotic, depending on taste. I got irritated.

Story summary.

If the universe is teeming with intelligent life, why haven't we met aliens? Brin's answer is close to intelligent design of the universe, but leaves the possibility open of a remote physical explanation.

You see - each solar system is enclosed in a kind of physical container - a crystal sphere. I guess that would make the container may be a light year in radius & centered at the star. This is some sort of invisible barrier with special properties.

Crossing the sphere requires breaking it. And it cannot be broken from outside, but can be from inside provided the impact is powerful enough. Like if a local world develops life, that life gets intelligent, & sets out to stars - their first ship will eventually get destroyed by hitting this invisible barrier, but will also break the barrier for later ships! Ditto for signals - local signals can get out, but external signals cannot get in till the barrier is broken. It's a kind of cocoon protecting any local life of each star from outside interference till locals are ready.

An anomaly I couldn't resolve: a ship hits the sphere from inside & breaks it. The sensible thing will be some sort of local break in the sphere - not the whole sphere shattered! Means subsequent ships from inside should find it extremely tough to locate the break; odds of anyone from outside locating the break ought to be near zero!

There is more in the story.

1. Comets etc are but Shards of the broken sphere, or absorbed material from external attempts to enter the sphere!
2. When we reach a broken sphere & investigate its solar system, what we find is signs of abandoned civilization - their world is ours for the taking. You see - the intelligent aliens looking for other intelligent life eventually get so desperate they abandon their own worlds to "sleep at the edge of their timestretched black hole", waiting for other aliens to come join them later!

Fact sheet.

First published: Analog, January 1984.
Rating: B.
Download full text. [via Best Science Fiction Stories]
Winner of 1985 Hugo Award in short story category.
Related: Stories of David Brin.

Free fiction: David Brin's "Shoresteading"

Available in 2 parts at JBU site: part 1 & part 2.

* David Brin's "What Continues, What Fails..." (short story, science fiction)

Rather muddled story with a lot of jargon about black holes. A pair of women researchers of far future have figured a way of looking inside a black hole, & have seen a separate universe there! Plus a parallel track of one of the pair bearing a child (clone in her own womb) - highly wanted because her "tenaciousness" genes are in high demand. Plus description of the many wonders of this far future.

Collected in.

1. David Hartwell & Kathryn Cramer (Ed)'s "The Ascent of Wonder: The Evolution of Hard SF".
   

Fact sheet.

First published: Interzone, December 1991.
Rating: C

Note: Why is this post so short?

David Brin's "The Smartest Mob" (novella, hard sf, free): A terrorist attack is foiled, by electronically summoning a helping mob

I've probably read less than a dozen cyberpunk stories, & this one clearly is the most entertaining I've seen yet. According to a short note, currently on the main page of Brin's site & without its own URL, this story is in the process of becoming a novel (no likely publication date mentioned).

It does suffer from common cyberpunk fault - enumerating too many gadgets, irrespective of whether the story needs them or not - something that always puts me off. Actually, it needs many of them, but has its share of frivolous mentions. It also mentions some tangent stuff irrelevant to plot.

But all that is forgiven, because it's a brilliant & very entertaining story - at least the main part. It starts slowly, & for a while I wondered why I picked it up - just too many enumerations of gadgets. And end is longer than necessary. But the main part covers up all faults.

Story summary.

Story is set in the US. It's some kind of a post-apocalypse world - not the medieval feudal typical of such stories, but different from now.

This world has a new kind of long distance transport - a train of airships floating not far above ground, & connected to a big truck by a strong rope & pulled by that truck!! I suppose something to do with oil gone & nuclear energy is unpopular - I don't recall if the reason are mentioned.

Tor Pleiades is a journalist, on board such a train. She has traveled all the way from west coast to Washington DC. They are nearing destination when a casual query about expected time of arrival results in her smelling something wrong. Robot steward taking the query told her the train has reduced speed but "No cause for alarm"!

Since this world is full of wearable computing gadgets, she sniffs out info. Lot of fishy things. She eventually concludes her ship is a terrorist target - they've tinkered with the ship's hydrogen gas system to make it explode.

She will quickly assemble an online mob of amateurs & hangers ons, & they will eventually prevent the disaster. This is the main story - from the moment the realization comes, assembling & coordinating with the mob, fending off uncooperative authorities, etc.

Fact sheet.

"The Smartest Mob", short story, review
First published: Jim Baen's Universe magazine, #11 (February 2008).
Rating: A
Download full text from Webscription.
Added to my best of the year 2008 list.
Related: All stories by David Brin.

David Brin's "Reality Check": Reason we have never met aliens

Actually I didn't quite understand this story. Something related to virtual reality (VR), or "human consciousness uploaded to a computer" kind.

As far as I could understand, it makes the argument that at a rather early stage during their development, most intelligent races develops the device of virtual realism of pleasures - kind of always in pleasant dreams! And it pretty much marks the end of development of the race - hence we have never met aliens!

Full text of this story is available online.

Fact sheet.
Reality Check, short story, review
First published: Nature magazine, 16 March 2000
Rating: C

This story is included in following anthologies.

1. David Hartwell's "Year's Best SF 6"