Tor have just identified three of their stories from 2010 which are appearing in next year’s Year’s Best Anthologies, so I thought I’d have a read of them.
Anders’ story was published in August 2010, and is of course still online on Tor.com, and worth a read.
It’s a light piece, providing, as you might expect, a solution to the Fermi Paradox – ironically, a solution pertinent to the current corporate greed blighting our planet. With a nod to Golden Age SF (I was minded of the Asimov short story where Earth is admitted to the register of intelligent life, once we have detonated a nuclear bomb, but have our membership rapidly withdrawn when it is realised we haven’t established a foothold on another planet yet) the story features a couple of cilia-encrusted aliens happening upon a planet with a civilisation that is anything but dead. Chosen by Rich Horton for his 2011 edition.
