author : Gardner Dozois

A superior bunch of nanotech stories: not a dud in the whole collection. They show just how different life could be, both heavenly and hellish (although a lot do also rely on rather substantial advances in computing). Several have already been collected elsewhere, but I'd not seen the brilliant "We Were Out of Our Minds with Joy" before.

Contents

• Greg Bear. Blood Music. 1983

(The original short story which grew into the novel of the same name.) What if nanotech has made the individual cells of your body intelligent, and they wanted to be in charge?

• Greg Egan. Axiomatic. 1990

Do you have inconvenient little scruples or hang-ups? Like thinking murder is wrong getting in the way of vengeance? Let nanotechnology rewire your brain. But beware, once you've changed, you might not want to change back.

• Stephen Baxter. The Logic Pool. 1994

Godel's incompleteness theorem shows we will always be able to add new axioms to our mathematical systems: but which ones should we add?

• Nancy Kress. Margin of Error. 1994

Be careful whose work you steal, for even a boiling frog might jump.

• Michael Flynn. Remember'd Kisses. 1988

The bag lady reminds him so of his dead wife.

• Ian McDonald. Recording Angel. 1996

Something alien is eating Africa, watched by movie stars and the media.

• Kathleen Ann Goonan. Sunflowers. 1995

The nano-terrorist infected his wife and child; he just wants to understand why they died.

• Paul Di Filippo. Any Major Dude. 1991

An engineer takes a one-way ticket to the north African nano-state of Maxwell's land, in search of his runaway wife.

• David Marusek. We Were Out of Our Minds with Joy. 1995

In a world where people can live forever thanks to their nano-maintenance systems, only 1200 babies are permitted to be born each year. Anyone who gets a permit is out of their minds with joy.

• Geoffrey A. Landis. Willy in the Nano-Lab. 1998

A "ruthless rhyme" of grey goo.