Scan barcode
A review by brucemri
Help Fund my Robot Army!!! & Other Improbable Crowdfunding Projects by John Joseph Adams
4.0
This is a collection of short stories about people trying to get others to help them with a variety of science-fictional projects, from the titular robot army to the first writ of habeus corpus for a synthetic being to sending Mary Robinette Kowal and David Tennant into space long enough that they can perform _Romeo and Juliet_ with puppets. The gimmick here is that each of these stories is written in the form of a Kickstarter pitch. In his introduction, Adams says that the title piece came his way as a magazine submission, and he realized how much could be done with the format. So he bought the story for the magazine, then promptly put the anthology idea together.
In recent years, Adams has become one of my favorite sf editors. He's prolific enough that I keep worrying if maybe he's stooped to shoveling together any ol' junk lying around, and the answer keeps being, no, this is another really good collection. No change this time around. Most of the stories are humorous, and made me smile, snort, laugh, and otherwise have a good time. But there are some serious pieces in here, too - that habeus corpus story is one of several that I found genuinely moving. There's also a good dosage of acidic satire, which makes a nice leaven in the mix. Given the format, of course, none of these is terribly long, either, so it's a great browse-and-read-for-a-few-minutes kind of volume.
In recent years, Adams has become one of my favorite sf editors. He's prolific enough that I keep worrying if maybe he's stooped to shoveling together any ol' junk lying around, and the answer keeps being, no, this is another really good collection. No change this time around. Most of the stories are humorous, and made me smile, snort, laugh, and otherwise have a good time. But there are some serious pieces in here, too - that habeus corpus story is one of several that I found genuinely moving. There's also a good dosage of acidic satire, which makes a nice leaven in the mix. Given the format, of course, none of these is terribly long, either, so it's a great browse-and-read-for-a-few-minutes kind of volume.