Building communication networks with distributed objects Book

There are 4 long stories in here, by 4 different authors. It's interesting because by the time you get to the last one (John M. Ford), you realize how much more adept he is as a writer than everyone else who contributed to this book. The others stories had interesting premises and keep you reading, but the dialog and character development is just worlds apart in his story. I can't remember why I picked this up in the first place, though...