Simone Heller. When We Were Starless. (Clarkesworld Magazine, October 2018)
Heller is an author new to me, but a name I would be looking out for now if I was still in the habit of reading a lot of short SF in it’s original appearance.
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Lavie Tidhar. New Atlantis. (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, May/June 2019).
Another masterful piece of writing from Tidhar.
Read moreRobert Bloch. I Do Not Love Thee, Doctor Fell. (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction 1955)
Sitting down at the computer in a brief interlude from a day gardening in the sunshine I did have the option to re-read the story. but..
Read moreIvan Janvier. Thing. (Fantastic Universe, March 1955)
Written some 18 or more years after John W. Campbell’s ‘The Thing’, but with a similar underpinning idea.
Read moreTom Godwin. You Created Us. (Fantastic Universe, October 1955)
I started this story with high hopes – one from no less an author than Tom ‘The Cold Equations’ Godwin, but found that this story doesn’t quite live up to his most famous work.
Read moreFrank M. Robinson. Dream Street. (Imaginative Tales, March 1955.)
I may be late to the party, but a Best SF Huzzah! for the late Robinson.
Read moreAlgis Budrys. The Man Who Always Knew. (Astounding Science Fiction, April 1956).
A story that doesn’t go much beyond the principal conceit : a man has the uncanny knack of knowing just where and when someone is going to have a brainwave or invent something – and therefore be on hand to licence and exploit it.
Read moreCordwainer Smith. The Game of Rat and Dragon. (Galaxy Science Fiction, October 1955.)
The story has many excellent turns of phrase, and leads the reader through the story introducing background concepts and technology, with the odd clever ‘reveal’.
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