Reviewing short SF since 2000
A singleton story in this third and final volume in the trilogy, and it’s a story that would have worked well as an opening installment in a three part story which would explore the nature of the apocalypse.
A look at the nature of the writers’ muse – in the shape of strange, feline creatures making hats for writers in an unseen factory in Harare, from whence they are despatched daily to make several trips across the globe to furnish their unknowing customers with headgear to help with their writing.
Dale Bailey and Eric Schwitzgabel the pick of the bunch for me.
The conclusion to a bleak series of episodes in a planet-killer asteroid impact story.
A satisfactory ending to the story.
A near-future eco-thriller, in which a community which has fled to an ocean floor habitat is at risk from further dryland conflagration.
A collection of stories from a very wide range of sources, with only one from the Big 3 magazines (Asimovs, Analog, F&SF).
An interesting look at a father’s (non) relationship with his son.
An excellent story and piece of world-building, and up for the Best SF Short Story Award 2015.
Bill and Ted meets O Brother Where Art Thou? meets The Dukes of Hazzard as in a near-future dustbowl America, two young chancers turn up and try to run a con, but have the local sherrif and his daughter to factor into the equation.
A techie with empathy and emotional control deficits finds an immersive video game a perfect place to respond to the frustrations of everyday life..
Gamete Diploidy Syndrome aka Human Communicable Parthenogenesis aka Human Asexual Reproductive Syndrome has just been identified
I made several attempts to get into this story, but it’s not an easy read, with the language too complex for my liking.
A band is playing a residency in a bar by the waterside, and the music gets the locals a-calling, and then some….
A nice enough story, engagingly written.
A stoner dealer and her client get up close to a whale being used in an industrial complex, and get a different perspective on life from it.
The third of McIntosh’s ‘Land of Nod’ series, in which he created a memorable plague that leaves most of the population rigid, immobile, save for the nodding of their heads.
Suzanne Palmer starts the issue off with a strong story (overcoming the handicap of not having the first page of the story printed!)
A police-procedural/detective story set in space, which failed to grab in the first few pages and encourage me to invest an hour or so in reading the >35 remaining pages.
A story which whizzes along, covering ground that could have taken up a novel, or an entire TV mini-series!
Whilst a number of the stories in this series of three books have an installment in each volume, there are some solo stories, and this is one, although it has a feel for one story in a sequence.
Clever stories within stories from Bossert, who has a crew of miners in orbit around Europa passing some offduty time with two new crew members by a game that involves each member telling two stories, with the others needing to guess which one is true, which is a fiction.
Pierre, the first uplifted chimp to walk on the moon, has much to ponder.
Another retelling of a tale from the Arabian Nights.
Strange goings on in the Caribbean, with photographs which seem to capture the soul of the subject
A story that marks out Johanabas as someone who can handle both plot, science and character.