Among the Wild Cybers
Tales Beyond the Superhuman
-
- $3.99
-
- $3.99
Publisher Description
When the line between life and technology blurs, humanity must adjust its understanding of the universe. From bestselling author Christopher L. Bennett comes Among the Wild Cybers, eight tales portraying a future of challenge and conflict, but also of hope born from the courage and idealism of those heroes willing to stand up for what is right.
An intrepid naturalist risks her future to save a new form of life that few consider worth saving.
An apprentice superhero must stand alone against an insane superintelligence to earn her name.
A cybernetic slave fights to save her kind from a liberation not of their choosing.
A seasoned diplomat and mother must out-negotiate fearsome alien traders to save a colony’s children.
A homicide detective serves in a world where curing death has only made murder more baffling.
These and other heroes strive to make their corners of the universe better—no matter how much the odds are stacked against them.
Includes the brand-new tale, Aspiring to Be Angels, prequel to the novel Only Superhuman.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Bennett expands upon the universe introduced in Only Superhuman with a collection of eight short science fiction stories that offer tantalizing but underdeveloped glimpses into a world where humans face the consequences of exceeding the bounds of biology, morality, and known space. In "Aspiring to Be Angels," space peacekeepers battle a laboratory-born super intelligence that's been enslaving ordinary human minds in pursuit of godhood. In "No Dominion," detectives investigate a mysterious homicide in an age where death is neither inevitable nor always permanent. In the star of the collection, "The Caress of a Butterfly Wing," a human crewman of a spaceship and a posthuman merged with a biological solar sail bridge the divide driven between their species by war and evolution to find love amid the perils of deep space. Though these stories feature a wealth of commendable lessons, tender love stories, and thought-provoking concepts, all are regrettably undercut by uneven character development, inelegant prose, and unnatural dialogue. Even fans of big ideas will have a hard time enjoying the way they're presented here.