At Least Partially on Target

Title: Infinity Wars
Editor: Johnathan Strahan
Publisher: Solaris

Of the three military scifi anthologies I've read recently (this one, Total Conflict and War Stories), this is probably the best of the bunch, in that there are at least a few stories which take a shot at depicting the future of war, rather than surrendering to their writers' fevered imaginations.

Ostensibly, the objective of this collection is to "take on the question of what war as we now know it might look like in fifty years, in a hundred, here on Earth and in the distant corners of the galaxy." Mission accomplished, more or less, though there are still an awful lot of stories whose wordy warheads fall pretty wide of that mark. Still, I'll give this one full marks for the few hits it does manage to land.

You're either going to buy these stories as a set or not at all, so it seems kind of pointless to review each story in the anthology separately. So that's exactly what I'll do.

"In the Evening of Their Span of Days" (Carrie Vaughn): Bland. War in the future ... will involve a shipyard engineer grousing about the lack of resources.

"The Last Broadcasts" (An Owomoyela): Very bland. War in the future ... is fought by an obsessive-compulsive data analyst who frets for a bit. Mostly about their OCD. An ongoing alien invasion, not so much.

"Faceless Soldiers, Patchwork Ships" (Caroline M Yoachim): Odd. War in the future ... will, ah, let's see, well, there're these aliens who are kinda like an organic version of the Borg, see, but then there are people who are also part-animal too, and then there are these teleporting cats and. (Shrug). Yeah so, war in the future will be like that, I guess.

"Dear Sarah" (Nancy Kress): Good. War in the future ... will start when aliens visit the Earth and (ominous tone) share all their super-advanced technology with us, thereby immediately throwing out of work everyone in manufacturing, energy, software, medicine... you get the picture. Massive economic upheaval triggers unrest and anti-alien sentiment, which is put down by the national army. Appreciate the realistic take on the impact of first contact, although I could do without the first-person account being by a sort of stereotypical white trash recruit (she says "warn't" a lot).

"The Moon is Not a Battlefield" (Indrapramit Das): Very good. War in the future ... will be fought on the moon between the Indians and the Chinese, in the cold and silent vacuum of space. One of the few supposedly military scifi stories I've read that considers what a future war might actually be like.

"Perfect Gun" (Elizabeth Bear): Okayish. War in the future ... features an amoral mercenary who gallivants across the galaxy in a semi-sentient war machine, which acquires the conscience its owner so pointedly lacks. Might have been more interesting if told from the machine's perspective, as the mercenary is just kind of a dick and remains so throughout.

"The Oracle" (Dominca Phetteplace): Bad, bad ... No wait, actually Good. War in the future ... will be fought by a generation raised on Facebook and Instagram, via popularity polls and selfies, and with all the hardened determination of a hashtag. Seems far too shallow and trite at first, until you realize it's satire, and the shallow idiocy of the main character is the point.

"In Everlasting Wisdom" (Aliette de Bodard): Odd. War in the future ... will be fought by loyalty officers who have been implanted with emotion-broadcasting symbionts / parasites that keep the populace in line. Sure, why not.

"Command and Control" (David D Levine): Okayish. War in the future ... will be fought between the Indians and the Chinese (again?!), using teleported munitions to circumvent conventional defences. Feels oddly jingoistic pro-Indian/anti-Chinese. The writer made the odd choice of focusing on a main character only tangentially connected to the teleporting hijinks.

"Conversations with an Armory" (Garth Nix): Fun. War in the future ... will be fought by a grumpy AI that at first refuses to help until it finds out just how badly it has been abandoned by its former masters, discarded like just another machine.

"Heavies" (Rich Larson): Forgettable. War in the future ... will be fought by cops who can remotely control electronics with implanted emitters, against genetically altered humans on a low-gravity colony who've been conditioned to love their occupiers but, like, too much man. They love them to death, geddit? No, me neither. 

"Overburden" (Genevieve Valentine): Not very good. War in the future ... will be deliberately prolonged by a commander angling for a promotion, in a pointless revolt over control of an exhausted copper mine and tainted water. As muddled as the waters in the story, the only memorable and slightly creepy bit being a soldier who is forced to shovel dead fish out of the poisoned waters every day.

"Weather Girl" (E. J. Swift): A bit predictable. War in the future ... will be fought by weaponizing climate change and extreme weather. Titular girl is in charge of hacking other nations' weather channels so they don't realize when a storm is about to strike. Because, apparently, people in this world can't use their eyes and see that there's a storm coming. Neat idea, but it seems an incredibly inefficient way of fighting, since there's no actual control over where the storms go. Anyway the story is much more interested in the relationship between said girl and her ex-husband, who gets caught in a storm, of course.

"Mines" (Eleanor Arnason): Drearily earnest. War in the future ... will involve a woman with a mine-sweeping telepathic rat who has a fling with another woman, who pilots a giant war robot. Not even 1% as wacky as it should have been.

"ZeroS" (Peter Watts): Not bad. War in the future ... will be fought by zombie-like reanimated dead, thanks to the wondrous advances of science and medicine.