I don't think this is even a book review, strictly speaking, as Cyberdreams is just a compilation of short stories from the 80's and early 90's (it was published in 1994) that were all originally published in Asimov's Science Fiction magazine (which I totally wish I could say that I read all the time, but I don't think I've ever actually seen an issue of it in real life) and all fit into the "cyberdreams" theme. So basically, stories have have to do with either virtual reality or dreams. Preferably both? I don't know.
As anthologies go...
...Wait. Is this even an anthology? What's the proper term for this sort of thing? Compilation? Collection? I have no idea.
Anyway, as these sorts of books go, this one isn't too impressive. Maybe my perspective is skewed because much of the science fiction I'd read prior to this one was so good (and it had actually been a while since I'd read any, so perhaps I was looking forward to it more than I should have been). I was surprised at how quickly it went by though. Around 200 pages, but I finished it in a week or so, even though I only read it in breaks while at school and work.
Because these stories are all by different authors and all, I'll just comment on them individually, rather than lumping them all together as one decent, but disappointing (to me, anyway) volume.
-Nearly Departed, by Pat Cadigan. I was amused that the main character in this is named Deadpan Allie (and is apparently a recurring character that this author uses in other stories). Her profession, as described by the introductory text the editors wrote is a "sort of high-tech psychoanalyst of the future, who can hook directly into another person's mind to seek out the root causes of their psychological troubles." But this time, it's a dead person (and an artist, whose manager is paying for any artistic fragments remaining in the brain to be recovered). Ooh, spooky. But seriously, mediocre story.
-A Hand in the Mirror, by Sonia Orin Lyris. Grad student comes to her advisor with proposal for a project on creating a new kind of virtual reality that simulates everything perfectly. Advisor tears her idea apart, explaining that it's unoriginal, prohibitively expensive, makes a number of unwarranted assumptions, etc. He tries to convince her to work on find something else to work on. Turns out that he and his team are on the verge of finishing exactly the sort of project the student had in mind. The team completes their new virtual reality, publishes, and enjoy the fruits of their labor. Backlash against him when people find out how mean he was to the poor grad student who had the same idea as him, only years later and missing all the important details. It's actually quite well-written and rather clever.
-Computer Friendly, by Eileen Gunn. A dystopian story in which children are tested for desirable traits and euthanized if they are deemed unacceptable. Not bad. The previous story was better, but this one is actually kind of fun and interesting.
Chip Runner, by Robert Silverburg. Eh, it's about anorexia. It's the only story in the book with a psychiatrist sort of main character who doesn't use some mystery technology to hook into someone's mind and walk around in a simulated landscape that is analogous to the patient's mental landscape or whatever. It's not even, strictly speaking, a science fiction story. The boy in this story believes that he can journey at the nanoscale through computer chips and such. His ability/delusion is linked to starving himself and he hopes to disappear completely so that he can visit things on the subatomic scale. Bland.
-A Coney Island of the Mind, by Maureen F. McHugh. This is exactly the sort of story that I had in mind when I bought this book, and not because it's good. It's of middling quality. It has a sort of blast-from-the-past quality. It was published in 1993 and one might say that it hasn't aged well. I love reading that kind of stuff. It's one of my favorite things about science fiction. This story is, by today's standards, very silly (and unintentionally so).
-Dreamwood, by Cherry Wilder. Crap. And way too long.
-Realm of the Senses, by Geoffrey A. Landis. Something I don't like about science fiction is when authors try to write about superhuman entities that, somehow or another, experience humanity (usually something painful and in this case it's a Nazi concentration camp but I'm pretty sure this isn't even the only story to do this exact idea) and marvel at the strangeness of it. I can't recall ever being impressed by a story that focused on this concept. And no, Stranger in a Strange Land doesn't count.
-Night Win, by Nancy Kress. Yet another story in this book with characters who have a profession that involves going inside other people's minds. This time, it's to keep dying people in hospitals alive. And of course, this is done by having the characters manifest as themselves in some sort of landscape, with the features of the world around them somehow corresponding to the person's mind that they are in. It seems very Jungian to me, but I also infer from this a lack of imagination on the part of the authors that do this. Can't they think of some other way to represent poking around in someone else's mind? Whatever the experience would be like, it almost certainly wouldn't be like walking around all normal-like with fields and rocks and trees and rivers or whatever. Boring.
-"Forever," Said the Duck, by Jonathan Lethem. This one's cool. It's a big virtual reality party where the guests are downloaded copies of people, existing only in cyberspace, but aware that they are copies and that their real-world cognates might be years older and completely different or maybe even dead. The hosts of the party are the two real people who decided to do this. The guests are copies of all the people the hosts have had sex with. Some of the guests are content to enjoy themselves while others are unhappy about their situation and want to rebel against the hosts, which is difficult to do because the hosts programmed the world of the party to behave in certain ways and know all the tricks to it. Unfortunately, an otherwise great story is spoiled by an abrupt and nonsensical ending. Still a good read, but it's as though the author cut things short to meet a deadline or a space requirement.
-Synthesis, by Mary Rosenblum. This one seems to be a lot longer than the others, and it's possibly the best of the bunch. Save the best for last, I guess. Unlike some of the others, this one doesn't even seem dated, really. It could as easily have been written now, rather than in 1992. In a way, it might be more impressive for that. The whole plot revolves around biotech companies, which were only barely even a thing back when this story was written and actually are powerful forces in the world now. And this story even seems to have a version of the world wide web, but with virtual reality (web 4.0?) and lots of it. The notion of people getting in-utero operations to give their children subdural nets that can manipulate cyberspace stuff seems a bit farfetched though. I mean, I think by the time we're doing that sort of thing, it won't be as clumsy as a giant, full-body net (that has to be installed before you're even born). Anyway, this is a very good story.
So yeah, that was Cyberdreams.
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