PREFACE
That there will probably always be war is a conclusion with which your editors have to reluctantly agree, although, unlike some others who seem almost to relish the prospect gloatingly, we take no pleasure in that predication. Still, a realistic appraisal of human nature and the often bitter lessons of history lead one almost inevitably to the conclusion that as long as human beings are still human beings as we understand them, war, of one sort or another, on one scale or another, in one arena or another, will probably be part of the human condition. (Some science fiction speculates that you could eliminate war by changing human nature itself, by, say, regimentation and control of the brain and the emotions by nanotechnology, or by eliminating human aggression through biological or chemical means; but, in almost every such scenario we know of, the cure seems almost worse than the disease.)
If war will probably always be part of the human condition, at least until war manages to wipe the human race out of existence, then the future will have war. And that’s the unsettling but all-too-probable scenario that we deal with in this anthology, which features stories that examine the ultra high-tech battlefields of the future—on Earth, in space, behind the front lines after the concept of “front line” itself has become meaningless and every place in the world is itself a battlefield. These stories give us a powerful, and sometimes harrowing look at what future war and future combat might really be like to those who live through it—and those (probably the more numerous) who do not.
Over the millennia, the human race has turned an enormous amount of its scientific ingenuity into inventing ever more effective and devastating ways for people to kill each other, to give one army a technological edge over another, to win wars at any price, even at the price of the destruction of life on Earth. And we’re pretty sure that you ain’t seen nothing yet. Just as people peering into the upcoming century from the end of the nineteenth century couldn’t possibly have imagined the horrors and complexities and sinister wonders of technological warfare that awaited humanity in the twentieth century, so we too lack the ability to see the as-yet-unimaginable weapons and technologies that lie ahead in the twenty-first century and beyond, things that would seem just as bizarre and impossible to us as the atomic bomb or a Stealth fighter or a cruise missile or a nuclear submarine (or a radar set, or a laser bombsight, or a computer, or a microchip) would have seemed to somebody back in 1899.
The ten science fiction writers in this book, daring and expert dreamers, take their best shot at it, coming up with some of the strangest, most imaginative, most mind-bending—and frightening—concepts of recent years, including some stuff that we sincerely hope doesn’t come to pass, for the sake of all those who will have to live in that new century . . .
So quickly, before one of those future wars comes along to interrupt you, while you still have the chance, open up this anthology and enjoy the vivid entertainment, slam-bang action, and sometimes-disturbing visions of the stories that wait within—and keep your fingers crossed that all of this stuff remains science fiction!