A collection of short fiction can be an excellent intro to a writer whom you're not familiar with. But--as any Gregory Benford fan would likely tell you--Worlds Vast and Various might not be the best way to get to know this enormously likable and talented author. Which is not to suggest that there aren't some great stories here--there are, like the Greg Bear-edited "A Calculus of Desperation" and the F. Scott Fitzgerald-inspired novella "As Big as the Ritz," to name just two. But like similar hodgepodge affairs, drawn from many sources and stages of a career, Worlds shouldn't be considered comprehensive or representative of Benford's best work. Benford himself admits to including the oldest story, 1969's "The Scarred Man," in part "to show how badly one can write and still get a start." (His other reason for including the short, though, turns out to be far more interesting.)

Caveats aside, these 12 stories do demonstrate what the Campbell- and Nebula-winning Benford does best: tight hard-SF that's plausible for both its science and its characterization. (Or, in the case of the dark "A Dance to Strange Music," the clever and deliberate omission of characterization.) Benford is inarguably one of the genre's big guns, alongside dons like Greg Bear and Paul J. McAuley, with whom Benford shares the distinction of being an accomplished scientist to boot (he teaches plasma physics and astrophysics at UC-Irvine).

Any way you cut it, a collection of Benford stories is going to be worth your time whether you're already familiar with his work or not. But if you're not, consider a longer piece--like Cosm or Timescape--to get properly acquainted. --Paul Hughes

From Publishers Weekly
For readers more familiar with this acclaimed hard-SF author's illuminating and genre-stretching novels (Eater; Cosm; etc.), this story collection is an excellent chance to discover his equally adept shorter work. The 10 stories and two novellas here offer a neat cross-section of Benford's writing career. The gripping "A Calculus of Desperation" demonstrates the brutal lengths to which truly dedicated environmentalists could go to keep humanity from devastating Earth. "Doing Aliens" and "World Vast, World Various" present some of the possible relationshipsAor lack thereofAbetween humans and aliens. For readers who treasure scientifically rigorous settings, "High Abyss" and "A Dance to Strange Musics" offer a fine blend of the exotic and surprising. "A Worm in the Well" is old-fashioned high adventure in space, while "The Voice" keeps its traditional heart closer to home, with riffs from Golden Age writers like Asimov and Bradbury. "As Big As the Ritz" takes F. Scott Fitzgerald out for an SF spin, and "In the Dark Backward" is a lighthearted time-travel story with a nifty twist ending. In a short afterword, Benford writes, "All short stories are strategies. Working in a confined space, one must render the essentials and get off the stage with a minimum of fuss." While faithfully following that advice, Benford (who is also a working physicist) ably demonstrates the falseness of the old literary saw that scientists don't make good fiction writersAor popular ones: Benford always sells well, and this book will, too, though not as well as his novels. (Oct.) Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.


"In the rapidly shrinking world of 'hard' SF, Benford is just about the best now at work."

From Booklist
Although Benford is equally adept at long and short fiction, his short stories, like those of other sf authors, tend to disappear into a bibliographical black hole. That makes this collection showing off his continuing mastery at combining scientific rigor and high-quality writing most welcome. The details vary from story to story, but the general theme is people or, at least, minds confronted by that which is alien--not necessarily alien as in from outer space, but alien in that it comes from a new perspective and calls into question everything previously known. Now for examples: "Calculus of Desperation" is a compressed biotech thriller that doesn't require much extrapolation from existing capabilities. "The Scarred Man" appears to be among the first stories on computer viruses. "Doing Alien" puts real outer-space visitors into Benford's old hometown. The title story is a solid extrapolation of anthropology onto distant worlds. The eight other, equally distinctive stories don't all represent Benford at his best, but none is less than readable. And there is an informative afterword. Roland Green
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Book Description
SF readers have come to expect the universe from Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author Gregory Benford: fascinating multilayered characters, thrilling plots, and mind-bending scientific speculations firmly based in cutting-edge technological fact. When it comes to literate, human, unassailably possible science fiction, Benford is in a class by himself--as he proves once again in a stunning array of tales that have never been collected in one volume before.A time-traveler on an illegal trip into the past learns a chilling truth about her own destiny... As a deadly Superflu runs rampant through a polluted, overpopulated Earth, a husband-and-wife scientific team races to salvage a livable future...On a planet where the laws of physics are strangely twisted, a brilliant scientist work undermines an ancient faith and leads to a shattering revelation...An ore-hauler on Mercury, desperate to save her endangered ship and career findsa remarkable way out: a wormhole trapped in the hellish flux of magnetic fieldsand fiery plasma generated by the nuclear furnace of the sun...These are but a few of the various worlds the respected astrophysicist and SF luminary now transports us to in ships constructed of evocative words and ingenious ideas. Astonishing, provocative, and intellectually stimulating, each selection is a glittering star in the vast cosmos of Gregory Benford's unparalleled imagination.

About the Author
Gregory Benford is a professor of physics at the University of California, Irvine.He is a Woodrow Wilson Fellow, and was Visiting Fellow at Cambridge University.and in 1995 received the Lord Prize for contributions to sciences. His research encompasses both theory and experiments in the fields of astrophysics and plasma physics.His fiction has won many awards, including the Nebula Award for his novel Timescape.Dr. Benford makes his home in Laguna Beach, California.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

SF readers have come to expect the universe from Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author Gregory Benford: fascinating multilayered characters, thrilling plots, and mind-bending scientific speculations firmly based in cutting-edge technological fact. When it comes to literate, human, unassailably possible science fiction, Benford is in a class by himself—as he proves once again in a stunning array of tales that have never been collected in one volume before.

A time-traveler on an illegal trip into the past learns a chilling truth about her own destiny... As a deadly Superflu runs rampant through a polluted, overpopulated Earth, a husband-and-wife scientific team races to salvage a livable future...On a planet where the laws of physics are strangely twisted, a brilliant scientist work undermines an ancient faith and leads to a shattering revelation...An ore-hauler on Mercury, desperate to save her endangered ship and career findsa remarkable way out: a wormhole trapped in the hellish flux of magnetic fieldsand fiery plasma generated by the nuclear furnace of the sun...

These are but a few of the various worlds the respected astrophysicist and SF luminary now transports us to in ships constructed of evocative words and ingenious ideas. Astonishing, provocative, and intellectually stimulating, each selection is a glittering star in the vast cosmos of Gregory Benford's unparalleled imagination.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly