Future on Ice

by Orson Scott Card (Editor)

Overview

Orson Scott Card's companion anthology to Future on Fire, a compendium of exciting stories by the hottest writers of the 1980s and 1990s.

"To my mind, fiction that tastes like medicine is no damn good. If it isn't a wonderful story first, who cares how 'important' it is?" - Orson Scott Card

Future on Ice is an anthology of stories that will freeze you in your tracks—-and change the way you think. Here are early stories from widely varied and immensely talented authors who have since shattered the face of science fiction: George R. R. Martin, Octavia E. Butler, Isaac Asimov, Nancy Kress, Lisa Goldstein, Greg Bear, Gregory Benford, David Zindell, John Crowley, Andrew Weiner, C. J. Cherryh, John Varley, Walter Jon Williams, Karen Joy Fowler, Lewis Siner, Rockabye Baby, and John Kessel.

A widely varied, immensely enjoyable, and historically important anthology, Future on Ice is a showcase for the hottest stories by the coolest SF writers of the 1980s. Complete with a preface, introduction, and story notes by Card himself, here are early stories from eighteen incredibly talented authors who have since shattered the face of science fiction.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780312872960
Publisher:	Tor Publishing Group
Publication date:	01/01/2000
Series:	Future on Fire , #2
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	432
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.97(d)

About the Author

Orson Scott Card is best known for his science fiction novel Ender's Game and its many sequels that expand the Ender Universe into the far future and the near past. Those books are organized into the Ender Saga, which chronicles the life of Ender Wiggin; the Shadow Series, which follows on the novel Ender's Shadow and is set on Earth; and the Formic Wars series, written with co-author Aaron Johnston, which tells of the terrible first contact between humans and the alien "Buggers." Card has been a working writer since the 1970s. Beginning with dozens of plays and musical comedies produced in the 1960s and 70s, Card's first published fiction appeared in 1977—the short story "Gert Fram" in the July issue of The Ensign, and the novelette version of "Ender's Game" in the August issue of Analog. The novel-length version of Ender's Game, published in 1984 and continuously in print since then, became the basis of the 2013 film, starring Asa Butterfield, Harrison Ford, Ben Kingsley, Hailee Steinfeld, Viola Davis, and Abigail Breslin.

Card was born in Washington state, and grew up in California, Arizona, and Utah. He served a mission for the LDS Church in Brazil in the early 1970s. Besides his writing, he runs occasional writers' workshops and directs plays. He frequently teaches writing and literature courses at Southern Virginia University.

He is the author many science fiction and fantasy novels, including the American frontier fantasy series "The Tales of Alvin Maker" (beginning with Seventh Son), and stand-alone novels like Pastwatch and Hart's Hope. He has collaborated with his daughter Emily Card on a manga series, Laddertop. He has also written contemporary thrillers like Empire and historical novels like the monumental Saints and the religious novels Sarah and Rachel and Leah. Card's work also includes the Mithermages books (Lost Gate, Gate Thief), contemporary magical fantasy for readers both young and old.

Card lives in Greensboro, North Carolina, with his wife, Kristine Allen Card. He and Kristine are the parents of five children and several grandchildren.

Hometown:

Greensboro, North Carolina

Date of Birth:

August 24, 1951

Place of Birth:

Richland, Washington

Education:

B.A. in theater, Brigham Young University, 1975; M.A. in English, University of Utah, 1981

Website:

http://www.hatrack.com

Read an Excerpt

FUTURE ON ICECopyright (Introduction to "Robot Dreams")

by Isaac Asimov

I've already written a lot about Isaac Asimov: how I think him the supreme practitioner of the American tradition of plain style. How I find his work, though he was an avowed atheist, some of the most deeply religious writing I've read. How, unlike many other writers, he seemed only to get better (and wiser) as he got older. Those essays were printed elsewhere; they're still true, in my opinion.

Asimov is dead now; his string of great science fiction writing has ended. A few books are being written in his name, continuing some of his stories, but those aren't Asimov novels anymore. None of us can match the brilliant clarity of his writing, and none of us will ever be able to approach issues and stories from his viewpoint, with his insights and wisdom.

Nowhere is Asimov more clearly revealed than in the story you're about to read. "Robot Dreams" is a morally recursive dilemma, forcing us to face the limits of tolerance and liberality even as we yearn to erase those limits. Asimov was often accused of not creating characters (a charge he tacitly accepted in an essay he wrote called "The Little Tin God of Characterization") but the charge was never true. There are characters here, powerful ones; great heroes, in fact, carrying the futures of species within them in their majesty. It's just that, like his style, Asimov's characterizations are so subtle that you aren't aware of them. He slips them into our memories unnoticed. But that's when they have the power to change us.

I met Asimov only twice, once merely to shake hands and say hi, the second time for a little longer. It was the Nebula banquet where he was given his Grandmaster Award and I received something or other—and I honestly don't remember what—but we stood side by side as they snapped pictures of us. With his typical modesty (the boasting was a public persona) he pointed to my Nebula and said, "That's the real award. This one"—his Grandmaster Award—"they gave me for not being dead yet."

I couldn't let that statement go unchallenged. I tried to tell him how wrong he was, what a giant he was, how we all learned from him, how—but he didn't want to hear it. I was embarrassing him. I stopped talking. It didn't matter: He either knew what he had accomplished, or he never would, certainly not from my babbling.

And later, I was invited to contribute a story to a Festschrift anthology in Asimov's honor. He had opened his fictional worlds to us. I was able to write a Foundation story. So I wrote about a brilliant old man who doubted the worth of his contribution to humanity, and received valediction when he least expected it. I wrote my judgment of Asimov, and my feelings about him, and set the story within his Foundation universe, at the very center, in the library on Trantor. I took one of Asimov's favorite themes, the need for scientists and scholars to break down boundaries between disciplines, and made it the heart of how the library worked. Every word was written to him.

And he never read it. I should have known. Word came back to me that Asimov simply wasn't reading any of the stories. Why? Because, with typical modesty, he was sure that we would have written Foundation and Robot stories that were better than his, and having read our work, he wouldn't be able to find the heart to continue with his own.

So...he never got my letter.

I can only hope he's not too stubborn to read it now.

FUTURE ON ICECopyright 1998 by Orson Scott Card

Table of Contents

Orson Scott Card / Introduction: Science Fiction and "The Force"

Isaac Asimov / Robot Dreams

George R. R. Martin / Portraits of His Children

Lisa Goldstein / Tourists

Greg Bear / Blood Music

Gregory Benford / Time's Rub

David Zindell / Shanidar

Octavia E. Butler / Speech Sounds

John Crowley / Snow

Andrew Weiner / Klein's Machine

C. J. Cherryh / Pots

John Varley / Press Enter

Walter Jon Williams / Dinosaurs

Karen Joy Fowler / Cabracan

Lewis Siner / Rockabye Baby

John Kessel / The Pure Product

Nancy Kress / Out of All Them Bright Stars

Orson Scott Card / The Fringe

Editorial Reviews

An excellent anthology.” —Denver Post

From the Publisher

YA-A popular YA novelist and sci-fi writer has put together a second anthology of 18 short stories by important SF writers of the 1980s. It is just as powerful as Future on Fire (Tor, 1991). Set in places uncannily familiar or disturbingly bizarre, the selections tell of family love, robot ambitions, language and loneliness, misguided political negotiations, and, of course, an assortment of very strange creatures. Card's notes tell in a particularly humorous and anecdotal tone about his encounters with the authors. The book is also worth having just for Card's introductory essay in which he takes an intriguing look at the way religious "ideas" can be and are often explored at some depth in this genre. Thought-provoking and illuminating reading, but best of all, entertaining.-Cynthia J. Rieben, W. T. Woodson High School, Fairfax, VA

School Library Journal

A collection originally intended as a companion to the 1989 volume Future on Fire (not seen), a showcase of 1980s science fiction stories; editor Card remarks on the hiatus but offers no explanation. He does, however, supply a hefty introduction that ties in such diverse topics as Star Wars, religion, science, and moral philosophy. Of these 18 pieces, 1983-87, several have gone on to fame and fortune: John Varley's computer paranoia, "Press Enter"; "Robot Dream," Isaac Asimov's metal Moses; George R. R. Martin's "Portraits of His Children" (which literally come alive); Lisa Goldstein's "Tourists" turned into a novel; Greg Bear's microscopic, intelligent computers that play "Blood Music"; John Kessel's "The Pure Product," which deals in corrupt futures; and "Out of All Them Bright Stars," where Nancy Kress's blue aliens choose Earth to visit. Other tales are less famous but almost as good. Quality material, if a dollar over and a decade late.

Kirkus Reviews