Rick Wilber. Scouting Report. (Asimovs September 2014)
A baseball scout has a hot prospect for the Major League, until, over several mojitos, a young woman points out a fatal flaw in the young man’s game.
Kelly Sandoval. Everyone Will Want One. (Asimovs September 2014)
A look at how peer-envy and pressure to be part of the in-crowd for young girls -might- be mitigated by an electronic helper.
Tochi Onyebuchi. Place of Worship. (Asimovs September 2014)
An author new to me. He has a way with words that is rare in SF, with more classier writing in most of his paragraphs than many SF writers manage in a whole story.
James Gunn. Patterns. (Asimovs September 2014)
Veteran James Gunn (90 and counting!) provides a short story which references Asimov’s Hari Seldon as a precursor to today’s Big Data
Andrew Hook. Flytrap. (Interzone #253 July/August 2014)
The linkages between Venus flytraps, the planet Venus, and The Bodysnatchers are revealed.
Asimovs August 2014
Pinsker and O’Connell leave the best of the issue to last.
Benjanun Sriduangkaew. When We Harvested the Nacre-Rice. (Solaris Rising 3)
Sriduangkaew gets the anthology off to a strong start, with a story focussing on two women and the relationship between them during an ‘unwar’ which attacks civilians’ neural networks.
The End is Nigh – The Apocalypse Triptych 1. (ed John Joseph Adams and Hugh Howey, 2014)
An excellent opening volume of a trilogy with each volume looking at a different stage of the forthcoming apocalypse.
Sarah Langan. Love Perverts. (The End is Nigh)
Langan closes an excellent anthology with a strong, albeit dark and bleak (although ultimately human) story.
Paolo Bacigalupi. Shooting the Apocalypse. (The End is Nigh)
Socio-economic apocalypse being the order of the day, with borders in the USA closed and states wary of their neighbours.
Matthew Maher. Enlightenment. (The End is Nigh)
A story that gets increasingly macabre as it unfolds…
Jay O’Connell. Of All Possible Worlds. (Asimovs August 2014)
A really strong story from O’Connell that will appear in some Year’s Best volumes next year, and which I’m putting into the pot for consideration for the Best SF Short Story Award 2014
Sarah Pinsker. The Low Hum of Her. (Asimovs August 2014)
An excellent story that packs a lot into four pages.
Doug C. Souza. Mountain Screamers. (Asimovs 2014)
Fairly routine story about a young boy and his grandma coming up against an, ahem, Bad Dude who would have got away with it if it wasn’t for the pesky did
Nancy Kress. Writer’s Block. (Asimovs August 2014)
A neat story that starts with ‘It was a dark and stormy night’…
Reach for Infinity. (ed Jonathan Strahan, Solaris 2014)
Another strong volume in an excellent series.
Peter Watts. Hotshot. (Reach for Infinity)
Watts closes this excellent anthology with another top notch story, a dense, hard SF story..
Alastair Reynolds. In Babelsberg. (Reach for Infinity)
A second story from Reynolds featuring an intelligent Tyrannosaurus Rex in recent years..
David Wellington. Agent Unknown. (The End is Nigh)
A zombie story that is well, well short of the high standard set by other stories in the anthology.
Ken MacLeod. ‘The Entire Immense Superstructure : an Installation’. (Reach for Infinity)
An excellent, quirky piece from MacLeod, slightly out of kilter with the fairly standard narrative structure of most the anthology.
Kathleen Ann Goonan. Wilder Still, The Stars. (Reach for Infinity)
A lovely story from Goonan, which perfectly captures the theme of the anthology in looking at the long life of woman whose love for space starts in 1954.
Jonathan Maberry. She’s Got a Ticket to Ride. (The End is Nigh)
A short but chilling look at the Nibiru Cataclysm, and what happens when the debunkers have to reconsider their viewpoint.
Seanan McGuire. Spores. (The End is Nigh)
A strong story due to the protagonist (her OCD) and her wife, which make her a more rounded and interesting character, as Pandora’s box is well and truly opened.
Nancy Kress. Pretty Soon the Four Horsemen are Going to Come Riding Through. (The End is Nigh)
Another classy Kress story, with getting the voice of the working class single mom protagonist spot on.