Synthesis & Other Virtual Realities

Synthesis & Other Virtual Realities is a collection of science fiction stories by American writer Mary Rosenblum. It was released in 1996 and was the author's first collection of stories. It was published by Arkham House in an edition of 3,515 copies. The stories originally appeared in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine.

Synthesis & Other Virtual Realities

Dust-jacket illustration by Bob Eggleton.
Author	Mary Rosenblum
Illustrator	Elizabeth Lawhead Bourne
Cover artist	Bob Eggleton
Language	English
Genre	Science fiction
Publisher	Arkham House
Publication date	1996
Publication place	United States
Media type	Print (hardback)
Pages	280
ISBN	0-87054-170-6
OCLC	33360809
Dewey Decimal	813/.54 20
LC Class	PS3568.O793 S96 1996

Contents

Synthesis & Other Virtual Realities contains the following stories:

• "Water Bringer"
• "Entrada"
• "The Centaur Garden"
• "Second Chance"
• "Bordertown"
• "Synthesis"
• "Flood Tide"
• "The Rain Stone"
• "Stairway"

Reception

Gideon Kibblewhite reviewed Synthesis & Other Virtual Realities for Arcane magazine, rating it an 8 out of 10 overall, and stated that "Eerie, melancholy and convincing, it's hard to say exactly when this collection of short stories is set, but it's sometime near. Too near. But if more science fiction was written in this way, maybe we wouldn't be sliding towards this sad world that Rosenblum so beautifully describes."^[1]

Reviews

• Review by Gary K. Wolfe (1996) in Locus, #426 July 1996^[2]
• Review by Charles de Lint (1996) in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, September 1996
• Review by Paul J. McAuley (1996) in Interzone, October 1996
• Review by Darrell Schweitzer (1996) in Aboriginal Science Fiction, Fall 1996
• Review by Peter Heck (1997) in Asimov's Science Fiction, March 1997
• Review by Don D'Ammassa (1997) in Science Fiction Chronicle, April/May 1997
• Review by Paul Di Filippo (1997) in Asimov's Science Fiction, September 1997