Future War

edited by Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois
Reviewed date: 2006 Mar 9
261 pages
cover art

  • Second Variety, by Philip K. Dick - To fight the third world war, the Americans develop self-sufficient, self-replicating killing machines. The machines inevitably grow in intelligence and sophistication, all the while dedicated to the extermination of life.
  • Salvador, by Lucius Shepherd - An American soldier in central America pops pills that send him into violent rampages, and during one pill-popping session he has a spiritual encounter with some kind of central American bird god.
  • Floating Dogs, by Ian McDonald - Peeg, Ceefer, Porcospino, papavator, Bir-dee and Coon-ass are sentient animals created to fight a war for humans, whom they worship as Angels.
  • The Private War of Private Jacob, by Joe Haldeman - A Catch-22-esque war story about Private Jacob, who hates the war, and Sergeant Melford, who always laughs and smiles.
  • Spirey and the Queen, by Alastair Reynolds - In the Swirl (a gaseous not-quite-formed solar system) the Standardists fight the Royalists through the use of robot drones called wasps. Unknown to the people, the wasps evolve into sentient beings.
  • A Dry, Quiet War, by Tony Daniel - A marine returns home from a war in the future, but he can't tell anyone whether they won the war without changing the timeline permanently.
  • Rorvik's War, by Geoffrey A. Landis - When the second Cold War turns hot, David Rorvik is drafted and sent off to fight the Russians, where he meets a variety of gruesome fates, all the while trying to retain his humanity and hoping to be reunited with his family.
  • Second Skin, by Paul J. McAuley - A spy is sent to Proteus (moon of Neptune) to rescue/kidnap a scientist. The spy comes out of cold sleep and struggles to remember his life as he carries out the job he has been programmed to perform.
  • The War Memorial, by Allen Steele - A dead man in a damaged combat armor suit is left standing in Mare Tranquillitatis as a memorial to the deadliest battle on the moon.
  • A Special Kind of Morning, by Gardner Dozois - An old soldier tells a young man about the war, about how he watched billions of people killed when the city of D'Kotta was destroyed by a discontinuity projector, how he killed people (*gasp*) with his own hands, and how he came to understand that everyone is human.


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