Short Fiction Friday: Robot Uprisings ed by Daniel H. Wilson and John Joseph Adams

I have a whole anthology for you today!

I am firmly in the paranoia camp when it comes to robots. I kind of think technology hates me already so it's not at all a stretch for me to believe that robots will attack one day. And I'm not alone, even Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking say AI is dangerous! Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking, folks.

In Robot Uprisings Daniel H. Wilson and John Joseph Adams have compiled a collection packed with tales of technology gone wrong. From nanobots and rips in space and time to a war with smart toys, these stories cover just about every worst case scenario you can think of and probably a few you haven't.

Scott Sigler kicks things off with a short that brings fans back to Siglerverse Detroit in "Complex God," one of many nano technology focused tales in this anthology. Anna North's "Lullaby" is another and may just be my favorite in the entire collection - depending on the mood I'm in.

A few more personal highlights were Genevieve Valentine's "Eighty Miles an Hour All the Way to Paradise" and Nnedi Okrafor's "Spider the Artist." This was actually my first time reading both of these authors but definitely won't be my last. Seanan McGuire's "We Are All Misfit Toys in the Aftermath of the Velveteen War" and Alastair Reynolds "Sleepover" round out my top six (because it was too painful to narrow down to five!), but really the whole anthology is amazing.

Here's the full list of contributors and their stories:

"Complex God" by Scott Sigler
"Cycles" by Charles Yu
"Lullaby" by Anna North
"Eighty Miles an Hour All the Way to Paradise" by Genevieve Valentine
"Executable" by Hugh Howey
"The Omnibot Incident" by Ernest Cline
"Epoch" by Cory Doctorow
"Human Intelligence" by Jeff Abbott
"The Golden Hour" by Julianna Baggott
"Sleepover" by Alastair Reynolds
"Seasoning" by Alan Dean Foster
"Nanonauts! In Battle With Tiny Death Subs!" By Ian McDonald
"Of Dying Heroes and Deathless Deeds" by Robin Wasserman
"The Robot and the Baby" by John McCarthy
"We Are All Misfit Toys in the Aftermath of the Velveteen War" by Seanan McGuire
"Spider the Artist" by Nnedi Okrafor
"Small Things" by Daniel H. Wilson

Rating: 5/5