This science fiction anthology contains a variety of the latest tales. In 'Tom' by Paul Cornell, marine aliens arrive and make themselves pleasantly at home, much like dolphins that can live on land too, and we feel embarrassed by pollution and quietly go and clean up the seas.

A less cheerful envisioned future tells of gated communities living expensively in domes while poor people and terrorists gather outside and plot vengeance. As a lighter note in a further story, we see people studying Lincoln via time travel and adding the data to Wikipedia.

Norman Spinrad is perhaps the best-known contributor, and other writers include an Indian woman with a PhD in physics and a woman who runs a witchcrafting store in England. Allen Steele we are told in 2001, testified before the U.S. House of Representatives in hearings regarding the future of space exploration. SF has always tried to imagine and address challenges for us, and SOLARIS RISING, edited by Ian Whates, is good dip-into reading with a wide variety of worlds.