Alexander Jablokov. The Days the Wires Came Down. (Asimovs April/May 2011)
A second consecutive story in Asimovs from Jablokov which didn’t do much for me. Actually, to be truthful, it did do something for me – it disappointed me.
Reviewing short SF since 2000
A second consecutive story in Asimovs from Jablokov which didn’t do much for me. Actually, to be truthful, it did do something for me – it disappointed me.
Cowdrey eschews his usual deep south setting, reaching into Russian and Jewish folklore, to delve into the dark secrets of an unfrocked Russian holy man..
Stories by John Kessel, Ian Creasey, Steve Bein, Robert Reed, Neal Barrett Jr., An Owomoyela, Nancy Fulda, Nick Wolven. A strong issue, with a good range of inventive stories.
A strange story – a blinded, maimed young man is one of a select few humans who are rescued from death by a greater force.
A disorientating world, where a fleeting memory can be a potentially valuable thing, something worth chasing down. Or not.
An elderly woman reflects on her robotic companions.
The dwarf, the narrator of the story, is a complex character in a story which poses more questions than it answers.
A New York cabbie finds something left behind in his cab by a fare, something that gives him all the time in the world.
An interesting perspective, that of a young child, happy in her own mind, her own world view, her own timeframes. But she doesn’t fit into the norm, and so her parents are seeking medical advice for ‘treatment’.
A short but effective/affecting story.
After Neal Barrett Jr’s ‘Where’, with a very strange setting, Creasey provides a rather more prosaic setting of Hebden Bridge in Yorkshire.
Stories by Douglas Lain, Michael R. Fletcher, Sarah L. Edwards, Sue Burke, James Bloomer, with Lain and Fletcher the pick of the bunch.
Winner of The James White Award short story competition for non professional writers.
A story which I found a bit of a struggle.
A society where beauty can be bought and sold, skimmed and applied.
Fletcher provides a clever multi-perspective story of espionage, and double-crossing.
Stories by Pat MacEwen, Kate Wilhelm, Albert E. Cowdrey, Matthew Corradi, Rick Norwood, Chris Lawson, James Stoddard, Jim Young, Bill Pronzini and Barry N. Malzberg, Richard A. Lupoff, Alan Dean Foster.
Fantasy novellete following Selestriian Dah’nok’s loss of the titular blade, and his involvement with wraiths, the water-witch of Sultantis, and the Obixx, which he reaches via Boroxis on the path to Erastiss, before he finds the Dinisistrii solution.
A neat, original little story from Barrett, very much the type of story he writes, and which, sadly, so few others appear to attempt.
A story featuring Mad Amos Malone and, I would guess, a wind of ghostly origin.
Back in Dec 1973, we are informed, Lupoff’s ’12:01 PM’ appeared in F&SF, subsequently turned into a tv movie.
Zombie lurve – proving that sex in the after life is not dead boring.
Chilling domestic horror.
Stuck in a simulation, with limited memory, Ben has to make sense of just what is happening – a whirlwind dispensing advice, and two companions – one very antagonistic male, and a woman.
A sequel to Kessel’s first Asimov story – ‘Hearts Do Not in Eyes Shine’, all the way back from October 1983.
A young boy finds out that there is a much, much darker side to Christmas Eve.
A beautiful little SF love story.