In alien flesh Book

SF short stories. I see that I started reading "in-between" in 2009, but this somehow got put away. Starting over again in 2012.

>>>>>>SPOILERS<<<<<<
It's hard to notate a short story w/o, so just beware. Or don't read the story until after you've forgotten this review.... :o)

Note: The stories are each accompanied by an "afterword". Rather than finding these to be explanations with are required for the reader to understand the too-cryptic stories, I'm finding them to be rather interesting anecdotes about what prompted the story or why Bendford chose a specific approach.

In Alien Flesh - ***
Team explores an intelligent life-form - from the inside. Creepy.
Read 7 Apr 09, read again Oct 2012, still good, still creepy.

Time Shards - ***
A recorded voice in a 1280 pottery piece leads Smithsonian workers to question the value of the historical information they are planning to leave to future millenia. Good ending.
Read 8 Apr 09. Read again Oct 2012. Still good, still enjoy the ending!

All the following were read Oct 2012.

Redeemer - ***
Advances in the speed of space travel result in the possibility of an encounter between a man to and his great grandmother. Unfortunately they have conflicting needs...

Snatching the Bot ***
Using "cheat codes", a couple acquires two robots, and one of them "snatches" a third. Enjoyable quick read, although somewhat unsatisfying ending.

Relativistic Effects - no rating
I just couldn't hang with this one. I'm taking the fault as my own, though... I think I didn't want to think that hard.

Nooncoming **
Somewhat flat story of some-time bedmates who are taking different directions - one embracing the new emerging culture, one stuck looking for the rewards of the past.

To the Storming Gulf **
Character interactions in the aftermath of a nuclear war. This somewhat longer story started out great. The characters were engaging, and I was very interested in the action primarily because of the characters, even the character of a cut-off-from-almost-all-inputs defense industry supercomputer. But the ending - in the form of an epilogue was too abrupt and too big a style change, appeared to be mostly serving the purpose of the author almost directly explaining his thoughts/hypothesis rather than continuing to follow the characters. Oh, it's clear the author is trying to stay engaged with the characters, but it just doesn't flow properly. Disappointing end to a creative and interesting tale.

White Creatures **1/2
Gaining fuzzy consciousness, a man tries to reconstruct his memory, trying to determine how he ended up here with aliens doing experiments on him. His memories take him through his relationship with a woman who saved her whole life to have herself frozen before death, so she could be revived in a time when - hopefully - antiaging technology is available. A great twist at the end concerning the identity of the alien "white creatures".

Me/Days ****
A factory computer becomes self aware, leading to conflicts with programmers and factory workers. Told from the computer's POV.

Of Space/Time and the River **
Aliens visitors to Earth appear not to create much of a disruption. There interest seems to be mainly in ancient Egypt, with whose government they've made a deal. A visiting tourist and his wife find out though, that instead of preserving artifacts, the aliens plan to preserve (by removing from the planet) the entire Nile valley, and the pharoanic society of old.

Exposures - no rating
Okay, nothing against Benford, and nothing against me. Apparently now was not the time for me with this book. A lot of technical astronomical detail in this story. I would normally want to wrap my head around it in my sad layman's way, but I just didn't have the patience for it. Maybe this would be a really good one for someone who has a good grasp of the technical details, so those details just flow through them and enhance the story to be told. I just needed a dumbed down version of this one.... I started skimming, and then skipping. You just can't do that with a short story, so I gave up.

Time's Rub - no rating
Okay, here I go again. Didn't get "grabbed" by the beginning because I didn't want to think that hard. So I am not reading it. In this one its not technical terms that required the extra thinking, it's the vastly different reality being presented.

Doing Lennon - no rating
And once I again, I just couldn't stick with it. It hooked me, after all, what's not interesting about a person who gets plastic surgery and freezes themselves in the hopes of impersonating John Lennon sometime in the far future? But then I got lost by the speculative part of this speculative fiction - computer personalities playing different impersonation scenarios to warn the "real" personality of possible pitfalls - think the movie War Games individualized and on steroids. Meh.

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So, as a whole - too techy, too speculative, some of them, or at least for my pea brain. Maybe a person with more tech education themselves would love. If most sci fi seems too dumbed-down, then this is probably for you. For me, its back to "easy" stuff like Foundation etc.