The three star rating really has less to do with the quality of work present in this anthology than it does with personal satisfaction.
I love Brin's Uplift work, and as a completionist wanted to read the piece in here that it turns out essentially functions as the 'origin' so to speak of the events on earth in that universe. I'm not sure this was a point in the human history of that universe that needed to be explicitly shown, but it was still a fun short story.
However, while a very talented author, I've never been as big a fan of Brin's short-fiction work as I have been of his novels. So, while generally event/action focused like any good short story, a lot of the rest of the stories here left me feeling a bit flat.
Also, the structure of the book as a whole isn't really what I was looking for. It alternated between short stories and an essay covering similar themes. While Brin is a *brilliant* essayist and futurist, if I would rather have seen a volume comprised solely of his essays and a separate volume solely of his fictional work. Or even better, just read his extensive blog posts here on goodreads for social and technological commentary from so informed a source.
Don't get me wrong, there's plenty to like here, just not exactly what *I* wanted out of the volume. Probably something for extreme completionists that just want to read everything he has in print. ( )

I have #499 of an edition of 1500 numbered hardcover books.

FOR REFERENCE:

Table of Contents: -- Introduction by Vernor Vinge -- Aficionado (fiction) -- Probing the Near Future (essay) -- Stones of Significance (fiction) -- Go Ahead, Stand on My Shoulders! (essay) -- Reality Check (fiction) -- The Future Keeps Surprising Us (essay) -- Paris Conquers All (with Gregory Benford) (fiction) -- The Self-Preventing Prophecy (essay) -- Fortitude (fiction) -- Do We Really Want Immortality? (essay) -- The Diplomacy Guild (fiction) -- Goodbye, Mir! (Sniff!) (essay) -- The Open-Ended Science Fiction Story (essay + fiction) -- News from 2025 (fiction) -- Seeking a New Fulcrum (essay) -- A Professor at Harvard (fiction) -- The Robots and Foundation Universe (essay) -- An Ever-Reddening Glow (fiction) -- We Hobbits Are a Merry Folk (essay) -- The Other Side of the Hill (fiction) ( )

The non-fiction section should be required reading for teenagers. ( )

Short story/essay collection, including an Uplift story as well as two chapters of an abandoned novel that I would have read. There are paired essays/stories engaging with Verne/Wells, Asimov, and Tolkien, the latter of which is the most interesting—it’s about the racism etc. of Tolkien’s setup, though he argues that Tolkien himself was more conscious of that than many readers have been. Completists only. ( )