Infinity Wars is the sixth collection of short stories in Jonathan Strahan’s ‘Infinity’ series. I’ve read several of the others, and found they contained some good stories, so I was quite hopeful going into this one. There was a decent mix of authors who I was aware of and those I’d never read before, which always helps.

Infinity Wars is about the future of war. The scope ranges from alien invasions at interstellar distances, down to the human cost of pulling the trigger. In some ways the environs can be familiar – people wading through muck and blood, or in the cold darkness of outer space. In others though, they can be strange or alien – soldiers driven by their subconscious, or government agencies weaponising a climate grown more ferocious after global warming. The stories in this collection look at war across the scale – and provide an imaginative, inventive window into one of humanities oldest pursuits.

It’s not all explosions and space battles. There’s some great character work going on as well. Nancy Kress gives us “Dear Sarah”, a letter sent home by a soldier now part of an unpopular military – which also touches on the issues of personal and cultural identity, on prejudice, and on the feeling of what is right. There’s a unique voice there, and a sense of personality which grips you as the pages keep turning. Or Indrapramit Das’s “The Moon is not a Battlefield”, which gives us a woman who was once a soldier on the moon, reliving the grace and beauty of her youth, and the dreams which shaped her as she returns to an earth which is less than forgiving. There’s soldiers as heroes, and as bureaucrats. Elizabeth Bear’s “The Perfect Gun” gives us a richly cynical mercenary, someone accustomed to making the amoral choices, whilst working within a ship powered by an AI. The latter becomes perhaps more personable as the tale unfolds. The former is charmingly unlikable, but entirely believable – a person out for themselves, unashamed and unafraid. If you’re looking for characters to shape these stories, then you’re in the right place. Warfare has always had the capacity to break or shape humanity – and the characters here have been exposed to the kind of pressure that moves them, shifts their centre, and lets us explore a raw humanity beneath.

That isn’t to say there aren’t some storming plots as well. I absolutely love Garth Nix’s “Conversations with an Armory”, where several tired, scarred and wounded men try and talk their way past an Armory AI, in a putative effort to stop an alien invasion. It’s a delicate piece on the costs of war and what happens to those who remain – and also carries an urgency, a sense of the kinetic, a high-stakes story. There’s a race against time, and the consequences for failure are dire. It’s an absolute page turner, and also one with a serious emotional punch. Then there’s the creeping horror of Caroline M. Yoachim’s “Faceless Soldiers, Patchwork Ship”. Here our protagonist is asked to pay the cost to infiltrate an enemy craft and bring it down before it can cause incalculable harm. The risk, though, is assimilation into the collective of the enemy. It hits all the right beats – there’s an organic tension, the smell of something dead or alive in the air, and a growing awareness from the reader that our narrator could become what she’s set out to oppose. It’s a story about loyalty and hard choices – and that kept me turning the pages.

In the end, this is another solid entry in Strahan’s “Infinity” series. It looks at the lies and truths of war, the mental and physical joys and costs. There’s plenty of humanity on display here – the darker, stranger parts, and the virtues we cling to when everything else is lost. There’s also the strange, the weird, the wonderful and horrifically alien. So if you’re looking to explore some new authors, or want to think about humanity and its conflicts of the future, then this collection is worth your time.

This is essentially a collection of short stories imagining what war might look like in the future. There's an amazing bunch of contributors from all sorts of backgrounds included and, as a result, the stories are all hugely different.

If you remember, earlier in the year I reviewed The New Voices of Fantasy which was a similar length anthology. I remember feeling myself heading towards a bit of a reading slump as I read it and I was a little concerned that this collection would have a similar effect. While it did take me longer to read than just reading a book might, I found this collection much more engaging and it was a lot easier to keep reading.

It's always hard to review collections like this because how do you go about reviewing fourteen different stories? Instead I'm going to pick out my three favourite stories so you know what to look out for when you're reading.

The Moon is Not a Battlefield, Indrapramit Das

This is a phenomenal story written from the perspective of an Indian veteran of the war on the Moon. Not only is it a wonderful look at how war might work in such an unusual environment, but it also makes an important point about how we treat veterans today and the myth that joining a war effort might save your life.

Weather Girl, E.J. Swift

This is another great story, this time written from the perspective of a woman who has the job of disguising or revealing typhoons, the destruction they wield being used to the benefit of the war effort. It's a bit of a reality check as to how far governments will go in war and how we could be manipulated by the news receive. It's simultaneously the story of one woman's struggle against her own conscience.

Conversations with an Armory, Garth Nix

Garth Nix is an amazing writer, this short story is no exception. Much like Illuminae Nix explores how humans might interact with a slightly morally dubious AI in a crisis situation. This is a sometimes amusing story that was a welcome break (some of the stories get a little dark).

I think that these stories of war in the future are a great way of exploring and engaging with this issues of war in the present. Not only was this a way to discover new authors, it was far more of a thought provoking read than I was anticipating.

My rating: 5/5 stars

Infinity Wars is being published by Solaris on the 12 of September if you want to grab yourself a copy.

By the way, I received a free digital advanced review copy of this book from the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

A waste of several days of my life!

The alarm bells really should have started ringing during the far too pretentious introduction by Jonathan Strahan, but I persisted with this compilation of short stories that promised to take me to the “furthest extremes of military science fiction” (even though the first two offerings were not complete stories – just two seemingly random chapters from what could have been really engrossing novels.

THE MOON IS NOT A BATTLEFIELD did have some slight resonance in its’ depiction of the problems being faced by Indian soldiers on their return to Earth after extended posting on the Lunar surface – this echoed some of the struggles face by current veterans on their return from active duty.

And THE ORACLE seemed to feature a Trump’esque-POTUS far too realistically, but overall, I found little connection with the contents of this book, and any military science fiction currently available – or even as the introduction mentions, some of the ‘classics’ of Mil-SF such as ‘The Forever War’ or even ‘Starship Troopers’.

I tried so very hard to finish this anthology, but sadly life is too short to waste on this load of drivel, and I gave up at 49%.