Ken Liu. The Countable. (Asimovs, December 2011)
An effective story, which gets into the head of a young autistic man, balancing the narrative with some very complicated pure mathematics…
Reviewing short SF since 2000
An effective story, which gets into the head of a young autistic man, balancing the narrative with some very complicated pure mathematics…
A short, cautionary tale, looking at an all-too-plausible (un/desirable?) future in which the whole wealth of human knowledge is at your fingertips/physical artefacts such as books and magazines are consigned to the dustbin of history.
Hawkins’ story takes up a lot of real estate in the issue in a story that didn’t engage, but the Tidhar/Lain stories very much did so.
Cambias and Gilman provide some strong SF.
Relatively routine horror from a master of the genre, set in the woods against a backdrop of climate change and rebuffed love.
Lengthy, staccato, fast-paced science thriller.
A bit of festive fun across one and a half pages, with one of my favourite pieces of closing dialogue in some time.
A story that zips along quickly, and doesn’t really go anywhere different than has been covered quite a lot.
A thriller (up to a point) in deep space, that starts with an Analog-y feel to it. Bari, a junior crewmember on an academic research mission studying some intriguing, migrating space creatures.
An 800-page Alastair Reynolds novel compressed into a couple of dozen (excellent) pages.
Ancient Greek linguistics and archaelogy are combined to throw light on a creature otherwise lost in the mists of time..
Published some 15 years after her death, a suitably dark and brooding story
Gentle and charming short, which starts off with the death from cancer of one of the main characters, but which nevertheless manages to be uplifting.
A story which shows promise in places.
Another strong fantasy from Lanagan with strong female characters.
Another excellent, complex piece of world-building from Gilman.
Matthew Hughes’ Luff Imbry makes a return to the pages of F&SF after some years’ absence.
Outstanding volume – both in quantity and quality : it felt like reading a Year’s Best SF/F/Horror volume!
A black hole appears very close to Earth.
Ryman takes us to Nigeria, gives us the texture and taste of that country, with a bit of intriguing science thrown in.
Needs to go a bit further in one direction or another to be more satisfying.
Dark magic in a rural setting, as a young girl in her mid-teens finds out more about herself, and the reasons for the nude dancing under the full moon in the pumpkin patch.
An alternate history from Stoddard, which looks at what would happen should ‘Project Orion’ have taken precedence over the Apollo programme.
The death of the younger son in a family, drowned on the beach whilst out swimming with his older brother, has an impact on his family.
Gritty, sensual contemporary speculative fiction – the spirit of JG Ballard lives on…