Metatropolis »

JOHN SCALZI won the 2006 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, and his debut novel Old Man’s War was a finalist for the Hugo Award. His other novels include The Ghost Brigades, The Last Colony, The Android’s Dream, and Zoe’s Tale. His popular blog is at whatever.scalzi.com; a collection of essays from it, Your Hate Mail Will be Graded, won the 2009 Hugo Award for Best Related Book. In the same year, the audio version of Metatropolis was a finalist for the Hugo for Best Dramatic Presentation. John Scalzi lives in southern Ohio with his wife and daughter.

Five original tales set in a shared urban future—from some of the hottest young writers in modern SF

A strange man comes to an even stranger encampment...a bouncer becomes the linchpin of an unexpected urban movement...a courier on the run has to decide who to trust in a dangerous city...a slacker in a "zero-footprint" town gets a most unusual new job...and a weapons investigator uses his skills to discover a metropolis hidden right in front of his eyes.

Welcome to the future of cities. Welcome to Metatropolis.

More than an anthology, Metatropolis is the brainchild of five of science fiction's hottest writers—Elizabeth Bear, Tobias Buckell, Jay Lake, Karl Schroeder, and project editor John Scalzi—-who combined their talents to build a new urban future, and then wrote their own stories in this collectively-constructed world. The results are individual glimpses of a shared vision, and a reading experience unlike any you've had before.

Publishers Weekly

Editor Scalzi (Zoe's Tale) and four well-known writers thoughtfully postulate the evolution of cities, transcending postapocalyptic clichés to envision genuinely new communities and relationships. Self-sustaining walled cities struggle with their responsibilities to dying suburbs in Scalzi's "Utere Nihil Non Extra Quiritationem Suis"; goods are exchanged through multiple microtransactions in Tobias S. Buckell's "Stochasti-City" and a reputation economy in Elizabeth Bear's "The Red in the Sky Is Our Blood." A lone man attempts to overthrow an early enclave in Jay Lake's "In the Forests of the Night," while Karl Schroeder's "To Hie from Far Celenia" brilliantly combines steampunk, urban sociology and network theory as entire subcultures go "off the grid." Each story shines on its own; as a group they reinforce one another, building a multifaceted view of a realistic and hopeful urban future. (Aug.)

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