I still don't quite know how to review anthologies. Do I talk about each story individually? Do I talk about the ones I liked? Talking about stories I didn't like feels like singling them out in a way that talking about a novel I disliked doesn't. It's a weird thing.

A couple of days ago I read a story in Clarkesworld by Peter Watts called The Things which immediately became one of my favourite things I've read this year. I hadn't read any Watts and I decided to look into his work. In doing so I learned about his 'Sunflower Cycle', a series of linked short stories about the voyage of a ship designed to build jump gates. I decided to read them all, in chronological order rather than publication order, and that lead me to Reach For Infinity.

This anthology contains near-future hard SF stories about humanity's first attempts to extend beyond our solar system and colonise space. Here's the table of contents:

Break My Fall, Greg Egan
The Dust Queen, Aliette de Bodard
The Fifth Dragon, Ian McDonald
Kheldyu, Karl Schroeder
Report Concerning the Presence of Seahorses on Mars, Pat Cadigan
Hiraeth: A Tragedy in Four Acts, Karen Lord
Amicae Aeternum, Ellen Klages
Trademark Bugs: A Legal History, Adam Roberts
Attitude, Linda Nagata
Invisible Planets, Hannu Rajaniemi
Wilder Still, the Stars, Kathleen Ann Goonan
‘The Entire Immense Superstructure’: An Installation, Ken MacLeod
In Babelsberg, Alastair Reynolds
Hotshot, Peter Watts
14 stories is a good amount for an anthology. Any less and it feels a little empty (though you'd obviously hope they're all bangers); any more and you're often into quantity over quality territory. There's a good mixture of shorter pieces and longer here, too, with a couple of novelettes hidden among the shorts.

As with all anthologies this was a bit of a mixed bag for me, though I enjoyed it more than I didn't. I DNFd two of the stories because they just weren't for me. I also found myself a little disappointed by Alastair Reynolds' In Babelsberg. It wasn't bad but it was just a little silly for my tastes. I think it's the first Reynolds story I've read that I haven't enjoyed (though I haven't read much of his short fiction at all, being much more familiar with his novels) and that was a surprise. The Watts story - the reason I picked up the book in the first place - was good, though it's one of the 'harder' stories in the book and I struggled to follow it when it got into more technical aspects. His writing is strong, though, and even if I didn't always understand it I still enjoyed it.

I really enjoyed Aliette de Bodard's The Dust Queen and Ian McDonald's The Fifth Dragon, and I'm going to seek out more work by both of those authors. The Dust Queen isn't the only story here that explores the mental and emotional effect on humans of leaving earth behind, but it's the one that does it best. The Fifth Dragon is a really interesting take on the logistics of colonising the moon under capitalism, and the human impact of that.

Another story that stood out to me was Adam Roberts' Trademark Bugs: A Legal History'. It takes the form of an academic essay recounting the history of lab-grown pathogens and the way pharma companies reshaped global economies and society by releasing them, selling the cure, and wielding the legal system aggressively to pursue their interests. It's a fascinating piece of writing, and I suspect it hits differently now in a landscape where COVID has happened than it did in 2014. I tried to read Roberts' By Light Alone many years ago and bounced off it, but this story makes me think I should revisit him now that I'm older.

This was a good read. It seems that this anthology is the third in a thematically-linked series, and I may have to pick up the others at some point.