Sheila Williams tells us that all the iThings are from Asimov's I, Robot. I'm not so sure.
I didn't like a lot of the stories in this book, in fact, it's the last story, Paul McAuley's The Choice, that I really liked. In post-apocalypse, post-Flood, post-alien contact, two boys sail off to see one of the alien machines that's beached itself. Things change there and they both have to make a lot of choices that forever change their lives.
