The Best of Brin's Worlds

David Brin has thrilled readers in almost thirty languages by presenting vastly imaginative - and well-grounded - challenges set in times that might yet come... along with a sometimes razor-thin hope we'll persevere. In this major retrospective collection of shorter work, gathered from across an extraordinary career spanning decades, you'll find wonder via David Brin's unparalleled talent at imagination, extrapolation, hard headed optimism, and plain old fun.

Here, you will find "The Crystal Spheres," the Hugo Award winning short story that first brought Brin wide acclaim, posing one more - colorfully strange - answer to: "Are we alone in the universe?" Other tales explore a universe of possibilities ... such as when a hero climbs an impossible mountain to confront Fate itself, in "The Loom of Thessaly," or when world powers battle over a Vegas magician's knack for prediction, in "The Tell." Or uncovering ancient terrors long-buried under an urban landfill ("Detritus Affected"), or when a mother in labor fights to save her child from an invention gone-wrong ("Dr. Pak's Preschool").

Before The Postman won awards as a novel and became a major motion picture, that tale of a storyteller reviving dreams of a better world originated in the Hugo-nominated novella that's included here. Confronting one of the oldest challenges in modern SF - "What if the Nazis won?" - Brin presents an unexpected answer in "Thor Meets Captain America." And his penchant for offering I-hadn't-thought-of-that! answers, as well as questions, erupts in "Stones of Significance," a post-Singularity world where human identity can and will survive technological evolution.