Paul Di Filippo is one of the most wackily inventive of contemporary science fiction authors; his latest short story collection, Babylon Sisters and Other Posthumans, envisions scenarios ranging from human beings genetically reengineered to be parasites living within the bodies of enormous spacefaring organisms, to designer drugs that filter your perceptions so that you seem to be living within the paintings of great artists, to living books which are genetically spliced and selectively bred to generate new texts (and thereby, new ideas). The collection is a bit uneven. Some of the stories are little more than throwaways, or the short-story equivalent of standup comedy one-liners; but even these are quite amusing as they ring changes on standard SF tropes. At his best, however, as several times in this volume, Di Filippo is what I can only call a comic visionary, as he proposes radical transformations of (most interestingly) biotech to outrageous and hilarious effect. When it comes to imagining the possible transformations that new technologies offer us, Di Filippo gives us a welcome alternative to the grandiloquent, self-aggrandizing fantasies of the Transhumanists.
Babylon Sisters
Paul Di Filippo is one of the most wackily inventive of contemporary science fiction authors; his latest short story collection, Babylon Sisters and Other Posthumans, envisions scenarios ranging from human beings genetically reengineered to be parasites living within the bodies of enormous spacefaring organisms, to designer drugs that filter your perceptions so that you seem to be living within the paintings of great artists, to living books which are genetically spliced and selectively bred to generate new texts, and thereby, new ideas. The collection is a bit uneven. Some of the stories are little more than throwaways, or the short-story equivalent of standup comedy one-liners; but even these are quite amusing as they ring changes on standard SF tropes. At his best, however, as several times in this volume, Di Filippo is what I can only call a comic visionary, as he proposes radical transformations of (most interestingly) biotech to outrageous and hilarious effect. When it comes to imagining the possible transformations that new technologies offer us, Di Filippo gives us a welcome alternative to the grandiloquent, self-aggrandizing fantasies of the Transhumanists.