In Alien Flesh

Thirteen tales spanning the last ten years, plus one new poem, displaying Benford's remarkable talent for scientific extrapolation and his ability to convincingly portray humans in realistic future settings. His afterwords, too, are always interesting and sometimes illuminating. The longer entries here are generally the best: an alien mentality that "thinks" in higher mathematical symbols (the title piece); the commander of a sublight-speed colony ship headed out to the stars defeats an arrogant raider arriving in a newly invented, faster-than-light ship; and the crew of another ship, hurtling out of control at relativistic speeds because their drive cannot be shut down, observe (via time-dilation effects) the universe expanding and growing old about them. There's also a grand novella about some Gulf Coast survivors of a limited nuclear war - limited because Star Wars orbital defenses, coupled with deep cuts in offensive-nuclear inventories, prevailed. Also, less successfully, there are stories about: some aliens who steal Egypt in order to re-create Pharaonic times (the travelogue here is pretty good, the plot rather daft); intelligent computers; robots; aliens signaling with black holes; far-future games theory; conversations recorded on ancient pottery; and a John Lennon impersonator. Welcome, intelligent stories, eclectic and satisfying in the main. The one drawback is that Benford is so much better at novel length - principally because his best ideas are too big, with too many implications, to suit the shorter format. (Kirkus Reviews)