Incredible world building, narration combined

I can’t believe I just discovered this in 2014. Produced by Audible in 2008, it’s an anthology based on a future world built by five of today’s best scifi authors. When I realized one of the world-builders was Karl Schroeder I knew I had to get this immediately. This anthology did not disappoint, and the audio version features several well-known scifi television actors whose voices, if not their names, will be immediately recognizable to any scifi fans.



The audio begins with John Scalzi giving a general overview of the project, and Scalzi also introduces each story. The first story is by Jay Lake and read by Michael Hogan. I must admit that I didn’t recognize the name, but as soon as the voice started coming out of my phone, I knew it was Colonel Tigh from the Battlestar Galactica reboot. He has a really recognizable, earthy cadence that suited this story perfectly. I would love to hear him read more audio books. Oh, and the story was fantastic, too. It did a great job of setting the scene for all the stories that follow (particularly all the stories in the follow-up volume, METAtropolis: Cascadia). Both the setting—the rainforests of the American/Canadian Northwest—and the characters—a group of ecology fanatics living in secrecy—were completely different from anything I have ever read before. I definitely want more of this!!



The second story is by Tobias Buckell and narrated by the always fabulous Scott Brick. This story is set in a future Detroit that is a model for the reclamation of all the other cities in North America, all of which have been decimated by a “slow apocalypse.” This is another term I have never heard before, but as the concept is rolled out in each story, it becomes clearer. The basic idea is that capitalism went into a slow decline, and now in the latter half of the 21st century, civilization has broken down into autonomous city-states, each one with a different mechanism for survival. Detroit is being reclaimed through re-use, such as urban farming inside skyscrapers, that allows the residents to produce more food than they need. The story also introduced me to the concept of “turking,” which was like crowdsourcing combined with Craig’s List and extrapolated. Many functions that were formerly taken care of by government, including mail delivery, are randomly distributed to regular citizens, who pick up small jobs to earn small change, and thus the city continues to function. Detroit is a shining beacon of hope for humanity, a sentiment which I found refreshingly positive.



The third story is by Elizabeth Bear and is read by Kandyse McClure is also set in Detroit. Like the previous story, most people get around on bicycles, and people share resources, equipment and living space. Collective living, including child rearing and food production, is now the norm, enabling local communities to produce what they need now that the global marketplace and distribution system has failed.



The fourth story, by John Scalzi, was funny and inventive, describing in more detail how localized food production works in this brave new world. Alessandro Juliani, who played Lt. Gaeta on the new Battlestar Galactica, gave it a great reading. Wil Wheaton, who has performed most if not all of Scalzi’s audiobooks, may have lost his gig.



The last story, by Karl Schroeder, was the best of all. The reader, Stefan Rudnicki, sounds just like Michael Ansara, his deep bass perfectly portraying the Russian protagonist’s phlegmatic reaction to the James Bond-like situations in which he finds himself in this thriller of a tale. In between the harrowing escapes and dangerous dilemnas, Schroeder introduces more new future city concepts than all the previous authors combined. Much of the action takes place in a virtual world, where people use avatars to produce real wealth. This was somewhat reminiscent of the plot of Reamde, but with much more detail about the virtual world and how it works. The concepts put forth by Schroeder are so new and interesting, I think I have to listen to this story again to fully grasp what he is describing.

This collection was so great that I immediately downloaded the next two books in the series: METAtropolis: Cacadia and METAtropolis: Green Space.

