I have this problem with science fiction anthologies where I can't read them all at once, or even from front to back. I like to take my time with them, bat them around for a few months, soak in the theme. This is a perfectly acceptable way to read a collection of short stories...unless you're a book reviewer, in which case you're shunning your responsibilities. And so I admit with no small amount of shame that I haven't yet read all of Hieroglyph: Stories & Visions for a Better Future. This isn't an argument against the book. It's a testament to the fact that I want to enjoy it over a long period of time. Edited by Ed Finn and Kathryn Cramer and inspired by a talk by local author Neal Stephenson, Hieroglyph is intended to shake off the darkness of the dystopian, post-apocalyptic rut that science fiction has gotten into and inspire a new generation of scientists to aspire to making the world a better, more adventurous place. Stephenson will be reading with novelist Cory Doctorow at Town Hall this Sunday in support of the book—it's sold out, although Town Hall does usually have a standby ticket policy—and it looks to be a great, fun reading.

I have read Stephenson's contribution to the volume, and it's good stuff. "Atmosphaera Incognita" is a space-race story, a good old-fashioned science fiction adventure about a group of people who try to build a tower that stands twenty kilometers high, to facilitate easier space travel. Stephenson's story mostly deals with the logistics of building such a tower—how many supports would it need? Where is the best spot in the world to build the tower? How far away is that ideal spot from the place where the steel to build the tower needs to be manufactured? What does that mean for the construction efforts? It's a fascinating piece of problem-solving and theorizing in fiction. I think the piece could be more optimistic. I hate, for instance, that funding for the tower comes from the private sector and not the government. (If we're going to be optimistic, can't we aim for a reinvigorated NASA that enjoys public support?) But Stephenson does try to make the story as realistic as possible, and this is the world we live in, and Stephenson thanks Jeff Bezos in the notes for the story for solving one of the major logistical problems with his fictional tower, suggesting that he's writing what he knows. Quibbles aside, the story is a great start to a volume that I'm enjoying very slowly, piece by piece.

Doctorow is doing another reading in town this weekend—tomorrow, he reads at Kane Hall as part of the Surveillance & Privacy: Art, Law, and Social Practice symposium. In addition to his story in Hieroglyph and his upcoming McSweeney's essay collection Information Doesn't Want to Be Free: Laws for the Internet Age, Doctorow has also just published a book-length comic book illustrated by Jen Wang titled In Real Life.

This is a case where a book that must've been in production for at least two years happened to be published at exactly the right moment in time: Now that the self-victimizing baby-men of Gamergate are consuming so much bandwidth, we need a whole new wave of books extolling the gamer girl. IRL tells the story of Anda, a teenage girl who feels more at home in her online roleplaying game than in her school. Her parents love her, but she just doesn't fit in. But when Anda encounters and befriends gold farmers within the game, she realizes that global injustice isn't just some faceless terror you hear about on the evening news—these are real people being exploited. Wang's artwork is clear and friendly, with plenty of large figures, emotive close-ups, and lively body language. Together, Doctorow and Wang have created a modern myth about a whole new kind of internet-age labor action. It's an all-ages comic that perfectly conforms to Hieroglyph's mission statement, offering an optimistic road map for an improved world. These are artists committed to leading the way.