Interzone #248 (Sep-Oct 2013)
Stories by Carole Johnstone, James Van Pelt, Sean McMullen, Greg Kurzawa, Ken Altabef, with Johnstone the pick of the bunch sf-wise.
Sean McMullen. Technarion. (Interzone #248 Sep-Oct 2013)
McMullen captures the tone nicely, the story reading like a Conan Doyle story, as a young man who sees the future as being with electricity and not steam, finds his future quite, quite changed.
Asimovs. December 2013.
After a couple of weak opening stories, the issue gathers momentum to become an excellent final issue for 2013. Shame about the cover.
Ian R. MacLeod. Entangled. (Asimovs December 2013)
A clever, layered story that mixes technology and sociology and economics and human behaviour.
Ken Liu. Before and After. (Apex Magazine #55 December 2013)
Take a deep breath and read it now. If you don’t read it now, you’ll be able to pick it up in one of the Year’s Best anthologies next year.
David Brin. Insistence of Vision. (Twelve Tomorrows)
Brin gets the Twelve Tomorrows anthology off to a good start – packing a lot into a short story that has augmented reality and societal changes they bring about as a key element.
Year’s Best SF #18. (ed David G. Hartwell. Tor, 2013)
A new publisher (Tor), a new size (Trade Paperback), and Hartwell is the solo editor (no Kathryn Cramer).
Oliver Buckram. Un Opera nello Spazio (A Space Opera). (Fantasy and Science Fiction, Sept/Oct 2013)
A plot summary of a three Act space opera opera. I’m thinking that someone should write the libretto properly, maybe as something like Britten’s ‘Billy Budd’, but for heaven’s sake not a D’Oyle Carte Gilbert and Sullivan ‘opera’.
Rachel Pollack. The Queen of Eyes. (Fantasy & Science Fiction, Sept/Oct 2013)
Further adventures of Jack Shade, who is reluctant to take on a client, until he finds out who the client’s mom is.
Nancy Kress. Frog Watch. (Asimovs December 2013)
A classy story from Kress, as is often the case. It’s a story that could have been written by James Tiptree Jr., and there’s no finer praise I can give.
Robert Grossbach. myPhone20. (Fantasy & Science Fiction, Sept/Oct 2013)
Grossbach spells out the dangers of increasing reliability on technology, and spending too much time staring at a small screen rather than engaging with others directly.
Hhasalin. Susan Palwick. (Fantasy & Science Fiction, Sept/Oct 2013)
Palwick provides an alien perspective to human colonisation, through Llhosi, a protagonist with a somewhat unctious, Harry Potter Dobbie-esque, narrative style.
R. Neube. Grainers. (Asimovs, December 2013)
An SF story for those of you who like your SF in deep space, dirty, sweaty, corrupt and cynical, and with a clever story structure. Hold on a minute. That’s me!
Solaris Rising 2. (ed Ian Whates, Solaris 2013)
Another excellent collection from Whates and from Solaris, with only a couple of weaker stories. May this editor/publisher combo live long and prosper.
Vandana Singh. With Fate Conspire. (Solaris Rising 2)
A story that is mostly internal to the protagonist : her thoughts, dreams, nightmares, hopes. Not a story with a simple storyline, and it’s ambiguous, and all the better for it.
Mike Allen. Still Live With Skull. (Solaris Rising 2)
With all manner of things possible with body modification, and I mean all things, this is a complex, dense story of flight, with layers within layers, of who is what, or why, or when.
Ken Altabef. Il Teatro Oscuro. (Interzone #248, Sep-Oct 2013)
Just a couple of pages long, and after the story is set up we quickly come to a conclusion that has no surprises for the regular genre reader.