/lit/ - Literature

>>19605546
Future Weapons of War - Edited by Joe Haldeman and Martin H. Greenberg (2007)

So this is the power of a Baen anthology. I thought I knew what I getting into, but I was wrong. I wanted to see through what would happen in each story, all of which I found to be varying degrees of "Did I just read what I think I read?" By the end I realized I should've just cut my losses after the first story. I've read and liked stories by some of these authors, but I didn't like these at all. None of them. It's a mystery even to me why I end up reading what I do. I have read and enjoyed books from Baen, but they weren't like this. Maybe this was an outlier for the time, or maybe it's just me, but I have my doubts.

Craters - Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Children in 120 countries are microchipped at birth. Terrorists hijack this process and insert major explosives instead. Any child could be a suicide bomber. In a refugee camp in an unnamed probably Middle Eastern country that the US is at war with, an American undercover war reporter who is dead inside seeks out the truth. The "truth"(?) is that the parents are making their children into suicide bombers.

David in the Lion's Den - Geoffrey A. Landis
Saudi Arabia and Israel are on the brink of all-out war. It's up to a lone American to save the day with bioterrorism.

Rocket Boy - Paul J. McAuley
A homeless teenage orphan of a persecuted people on a backwater planet is given a gun with an AI. The AI tells him that violence solves everything. Thus began his improbable reign of terror. It really seems like this is about Israel, but I could be wrong.

Jade Angel - Dena Bain Taylor
Earth is doomed. Mars is all that's left. The United States of America on Mars will never give in to the Chimese [sic] threat. Time alteration silliness ensues.

Broken Bits - Mark L. Van Name
A human/nano-machine hybrid kills.

The First Cup of Coffee War - James H. Cobb
After several decades of fighting The Global War On Terror, America thought it had won. That Islam was no longer a threat. BUT THEY WERE WRONG!

The Soldier Within - Michael A. Burstein
MARINE'S RIFLE CREED: THE STORY...BUT SUBVERTED!

Spec-Ops - L. E. Modesitt, Jr.
Remote spec-ops biowarfare for the US, but at what cost to your humanity?

The Weapon - William H. Keith, Jr.
Billions of years from now The Metacivilization creates The Weapon, which can destroy galaxies.

The Looking Glass War - Brendan DuBois
The United States has fallen. The Chinese are victorious. All because Americans won't stop playing videogames! The Chinese hacked all computers to where if you play a game, it mindwipes you!

The Humans Call it Duty - Michael Z. Williamson
Alien kills the invasive pests known as humans.

Casualty - Brian Stableford
The newest advancement in biowarfare, genetically engineered fetuses that will be able to turn off and on being bioweapons. The unsuspecting mother is displeased.