Alan Smale. The Mongolian Book of the Dead.

A Chinese invasion of Mongolia leads to an epic journey for an itinerant American travel. Both across the Gobi in geographical terms, and far further in spiritual and personal terms. The story has a great sense of place, although it did drag a bit for me,as repeated daytime journeys across the barren desert and night-time communion with Mongolian spirituality had a draining affect on me (although not as much as on the protagonist).

Jay Lake. The Stars Do Not Lie.

A story that is nominated for both a Hugo and a Nebula, and it’s currently online on the Asimovs site, so I would suggest you read the PDF.

Lake frequently covers religion and faith in his excellent blog in which he identifies himself as a “low church atheist” (‘not of that mindset that seeks to deconvert others or discredit religion’), in which I (for the record) identified myself as a ‘high church atheist’ (‘advocates strongly against religion in all its forms’).

That said, let’s get on talking about Lake’s story. It’s the second time in two years that an SF story majoring on religion and faith has been doubly nominated, with Eric James Stone’s ‘That Leviathan, Whom Thou Hast Made’ winning the Nebula. That Analog story left me unmoved when I initially read it (review here), and bemused when I re-read it as a Nebula winner, on account of it’s being some way short of what I believe you would need in terms of literary merit and storytelling to win that award.

Anyhoo, Lake’s story is some way stronger than Stone’s. Lake’s story has a veneer of steampunk about it, a Victorian setting with electricks making some changes to society. He places some intriguing characters in each camp – the opening sentence introducing “Morgan Abutti; B.Sc. Bio.; M.Sc.Arch.; Ph.D.Astr.& Nat, Sci.; 4th degree Thalassocrete;Member, Planetary Society; and Association Fellow of the New Garaden Institute…..”

Abutti has found something in the stars that entirely debunks the creation myth in his society, and somewhat naively, his plan to reveal all in front of his scientific colleagues leads him into big trouble. The story progresses through multiple perspectives of the protagonists (perhaps a slight failing in the story, as it crams a lot into a little space).

There’s more than a touch of Paul Di Filippo about the story (a good thing), with descriptions and settings similar to the excellent Linear City stories by PDF. There’s a dramatic ending – perhaps too dramatic if you were to quibble to the nth degree, as things happen very quickly. It’s a story that you’d want to see Lake being able to turn into a full length novel. We’d very, very much like to see Lake being able to turn it into a full length novel…

Gray Rinehart. The Second Engineer.

“On a treacherous interstellar journey where not everything is as it appears, a young crewmember will have to rely on her own resourcefulness if she is to survive her stint as … The Second Engineer”. The story introduction sums it up succinctly, and the story doesn’t quite make the step up from relatively routine adventure on a spaceship, and a female lead who gets knocked out as regularly as Frodo in LoTR.

Will Ludwigsen. The Ghost Factory.

Well handled story, about a now-empty ex-mental institution – empty save for the ghosts, the echoes of who lived there. Ludwigsen’s narrator is a believable, flawed character, reflecting on his time as a staff member there, his motivations, and his relationship with one inmate, and the reader really engages with him.

Paul McAuley. Antartica Starts Here.

Near-future post-icecap-melt story, that looks at some of the risks to the previously inaccessible wilderness of the Antartic. Telepresence is opening up the region to tourists, and somebody has to take action to prevent the despoiling of the continent. The narrator is one-removed from this action, with the really interesting characters being those who do take action, but for the reader this is indirectly relayed via the narrator/observer.

Kit Reed. Results Guaranteed.

The teen years at school can be bad enough, but when you’re enrolled in the kind of school Reed posits, it can be much worse. I’m not the biggest fan of stories with school-age protagonists (my own school years are happily long, long ago). The moreso with a story that follows the current fad of werewolves and vampires and bears oh my as being normalised (up to a point) in society.

Vylar Kaftan. Lion Dance.

Nicely told story set against a backdrop of a US being hammered by a flu pandemic – San Francisco has survived better than many cities, but there are curfews, power and medicine shortages, and civil unrest. A group of young men decide that Halloween is a good night to celebrate the Chinese New Year that was missed earlier in the year, and take to the street in three lion costumes, dancing their way through the streets until they come to a group celebrating Halloween in a more traditional manner. Inside the hospital we see some of the human cost of the pandemic, and the protagonist realises that it is time to do something positive.

Eugene Mirabelli. This Hologram World.

A beautiful story from Mirabelli, that blends hard SF, theoretical (and historical) mathematics and physics, with a story of painfully heartbreaking humanity. Mind you, I am a bit of a sentimental old fool – but I defy you to read about Richard Feynman’s letter to his dead wife without tears forming!

(You can read the full text of the letter here. Kleenex at the ready!

Ekaterina Sedia. A Handsome Fellow.

In Leningrad, under siege, there is something even more horrible than the starvation and the shelling…

A well-handled story from Sedia, drawing the reader into the besieged city and creating a palpable sense of horror and inevitable doom…

John Alfred Taylor. Cromaphotores.

A few years hence, but teenage girls are still teenage girls. Young Janice and her friends lead a recognisable life to contemporary teens, with some high tech improvements, including a skin-colour changing capability, to combat the threat of melanoma.

However, Janice is suddenly confronted with an intimation of mortality, that causes her to reflect.

Steven Utley. Shattering.
Classy, classy, classy psychological SF set in the deep dark of space, exploring the deep dark spaces of the mind.

Conclusion

Wowza – a double issue that’s an issue and a half – enough excellent SF to keep everyone happy.

Neal Asher. The Other Gun.

Joel Richards. Writing in the Margins.

Colin P. Davies. Julian of Earth.

Alan Wall. Spider God and the Periodic Table.

Tom Purdom. Warlord.

Linda Nagata. Through Your Eyes.

Karl Bunker. Gray Wings.

Naomi Kritzer. The Wall.

Leah Cypess. Distant Like The Stars.

Ken Liu. The Oracle.

Lavie Tidhar. The Book Seller.

Another installment in Tidhar’s excellent ‘Central Station’ story sequence. Truth be told I read it a couple of months ago and enjoyed it, but somehow didn’t review it, and was faced with the option of rereading it in order to provide more than just a sentence, or providing just a sentence. So, the story features Carmel, the strigoi, and Achimwene, a bookseller, as links between characters from previous stories are drawn together.

Guy Haley. iRobot.

The artwork for this story is a two-page spread in which Jim Burns paints a picture of wind-blown desert with a dessicated human corpse and a humanoid robot buried in the sand, leaving the viewer to imagine the events that led to this scene. Taking less space than the artwork, Haley paints a picture, with words, of a wind-blown desert with a dessicated human corpse and a humanoid robot buried in the sand, leaving the reader to imagine the events that led to this scene.

Helen Jackson. Build Guide.

The first line of the story fazed me : “The new apprentice was a slight, childish figure, maybe 150cm tall and massing about 50kilos.” Whilst the latter measurement was easy for me to work out (half my size!) the former had me struggling converting cm to feet and inches. Surely the sentence could have done without the stats, as it works quite happily without it and avoids a percentage of the reading audience doing the math rather than engaging with the story!

But that’s the only quibble, as it is a neat story that starts with a skinny teenager joining a tight-knit, orbit-hardened and cynical work crew. She’s feisty, and this orbit-hardened and cynical reader thought he knew the trajectory of the story, but nyer nyer nyer on me, Jackson takes the story on a slightly different path.

George Zebrowski. The Genoa Passage.

Almost 30 years since Zebrowski’s ‘The Eichmann Variations’ was a Nebula Finalist, Zebrowski provides another variation on the theme, against postulating multiple Eichmanns – this time with each being gunned down by victims or relatives of victims of the Holocaust. The physics of this are not addressed, as it is again the moral aspect – does the protagonist, somewhat removed from a direct connection to the Holocaust, feel it morally acceptable to pull a trigger?

It’s a cold, clinical, dispassionate consideration of the issue.

Jim Hawkins. Sky Leap – Earth Flame.

Hawkins’ ‘Digital Rites’ from Interzone #237 was chosen by no less than Gardner Dozois for his Year’s Best for 2011, which was a surprise to me as it didn’t engage me – “The filmic writing style didn’t really work for me – I’d much rather read a narrative than a form of screenplay” I said in my review.

And my response to this story was very much the same. Hawkins’ leaps straight into the plot, with no attempt to get the ready to engage or empathise the protagonists, there’s some wooden dialogue and very two-dimensional characters. And, as with the earlier story, it just reads like a quickly written novelisation of an average TV drama. Plenty of description of what things look like, how they move – and at one point the reader is invited to imaging a spaceship : “Take a beer can and add a cone to one end a half a transparent ball to the other…” etc.

Suffice to say, after a few pages I decided that enough was enough.

A couple of years ago, a previous story by Hawkins I praised as “One of the strongest stories in IZ over recent issues, and one I can see being atop the Readers’ Poll for 2010″, with some ‘vibrant characters’ – review here – which is a bit of a conundrum!

Tracie Welser. A Flag Still Flies Over Sabor City.

Short vignette from a new author to me. In a repressive, totalitarian regime, a group of young people whose opportunity for revolt during the day is limited to a turned up collar, or slightly longer hair, gather during the night to party, and to plot.

As with her previous story in Interzone (review here) Welser doesn’t provide any depth to her characters, and we find out something major about protagonist Mikhail towards the end of the story, but whilst the setting is described well, there isn’t any real depth in the story. Hopefully this will come as Welser gains more experience.

Alex Irvine. Watching the Cow.

Chris Piccinetti provides a wonderfully literal cover image to go with this story title. Fortunately the story doesn’t feature beachball-sized floating eyeballs staring at an unbothered bovine. The story looks at the impact that an accidental rewiring of the brains of children whilst playing a computer game has – they lose their sight (or in fact choose so to do) but they are able to communicate on a much broader scale.

It’s an interesting conceit but doesn’t go quite as far as I’d have liked. What with The Midwich Cuckoos and Childhood’s End published around half a century ago, and myself having read them about 30 years ago, I’d have liked just that little more from the story.

David Gerrold. Night Train to Paris.

A traveller on a night train hears a story, as one does in such stories, from a fellow passenger. Can the story be true. Nicely told, although the tribble with the story is that it’s a fairly well excavated piece of horror landscape, with little to be turned up through further excavation.

Ken Liu. A Brief History of the Trans-Pacific Tunnel.

Liu moots an alternate 20th century with gargantuan engineering undertaking that links the continents. Charlie, a Formosan, has spent most of his life either working on the tunnel build, or subsequently living in one of the city waystations under the tunnel. Liu subtly explores some of the politics necessary for the build to happen, and the sacrifices made (some necessary and chosen, others less so).

Matthew Hughes. Devil or Angel.

An afterlife that features berobed angels, and devils in skintight red outfits with little horns, comes as a surprise to the protagonist, the more so when he finds himself finding himself in the queue for a red outfit.

Dale Bailey. This Is How You Disappear.

Deceptively disturbing story which starts with a bit of domestic disharmony, a touch of mild depression, and gradually slides into darker, albeit more transparent, territory.

Albert E. Cowdrey. A Haunting in Love City.

In which F&SF regulars Morrie and Jimmy carry out some spooky sleuthing in Texas.

Desmond Warzel. The Blue Celeb.

Two wisecracking Harlem barbers find a car left outside their barbershop is a most righteous automobile.

Robert Reed. Among Us.

A clever, understated story from Reed, that looks at those in our society who aren’t quite what they seem. The Neighbors are difficult to spot, and the agency charged with identifying and engaging with them will go to many lengths to engage with them. One investigator has some perceptions challenged in the case in hand. Just who is the alien amongst us? And who is to decide?

Judith Moffett. The Lights and Darks.

You would think that with a 12-week old cocker spaniel puppy sitting on a rug quietly at my feet as I write this I’d be as receptive as I would ever be to a story about dogs.

Nah.

A reporter is tasked to write a story about which he is less than happy with – communicating with domestic pets. He’s cynical at first, but by the end is just the opposite.

‘Nuff said. Move along now. I’m gonna read me some SF.

Conclusion

From bovine to canine, and issue that spans the genres.

Indrapramit Das. Weep for Day.

Das is a new author to me, and this story is an impressive introduction. He posits a world that has one hemisphere permanently turned to face the sun, one turned away. I’m sure the more scientifically minded would post huge objections as to why this would be impossible for intelligent life to develop, but as a social scientist I’m more interested in the society he portrays.

The society is in effect that of Victorian England, with a steampunky vibe about it. The narrator is a woman looking back on a childhood train journey that she took when she was eight. The journey was with her older brother and parents – her father a captain of industry and very much a Knight of the Realm, in that in this society, as a young men he was part of forays into the inhospitable night-side of the planet, where he slew one of the ‘Nightmares’ that live there, and threaten them.

Or, rather, one of the creatures that live in the night-side and whom they feel threatened by, as the story looks at how the society chooses to destroy that which it does not understand and thus fears. It’s a nicely different conceit, and handled well.

Jason Sanford. Heaven’s Touch.

Attempting a mission to save humanity from destruction from a comet on a collision course with Earth, Dusty finds the mission, his own future, and that of Earth, compromised by his erstwhile fellow astronaut. Really compromised. With his co-pilot having crashed their ship in the comet, preventing them subtly nudging it off onto another route, things are bleak, with only the proxy AI of his religiously motivated ex-colleague to keep him company in his final days. It’s an enjoyable page-turner.

Theodora Goss. Beautiful Boys.

Charming short in which a scientist reflects on her personal experience of a scientific study into an alien invasion of a very subtle, and intimate nature.

Ian Creasey. Joining the High Flyers.

A sequel to ‘The Prize Beyond Gold’ from Asimovs December 2010, which I was singularly unmoved by : “Fairly leaden rumination on issues around sporting achievement in the future” I noted.

This time around Creasey looks at extreme body modification which enables humans to fly.

So, does this story soar higher than the previous story, like an eagle effortlessly gliding on an updraft? Nah. Truth be told it’s more of a turkey, equally cumbersome as the earlier story, in terms of being quite prosaic and spelling out the issues for the reader every step (or wingbeat) of the way.

Ted Reynolds. View through the Window.

Reynolds is welcomed back to Asimovs after a gap of some 31 years. I had to admit a slight frisson of apprehension when I read this in the story introduction, as that often does not augur well. And, indeed, the story reads like one written some 50 years ago. The protagonist had good reason to swear, having had three of her four limbs squished in an accident in space, but her oaths – ‘..the dratted spin..’ and ‘..the blessed window..’ and ‘..the damned arm..’ do jar as being quite outdated.

The story itself has a touch of Hitchcock’s ‘Rear Window’, but whereas that conceit worked with a wheelchair bound man in a house, an astronaut in space would have any number of ways to communicate with others. There’s a twist in the tale, but the last sentence left me nonplussed as the perspective suddenly swings entirely round with a character who has just appeared expresses her feelings about how the protagonist, whom she has just met, will cope with her crisis, which just comes across as a non-sequiter.

Aliette de Bodard. Starsong.

Part of AdB’s ongoing ‘Xuya’ sequence (a chronology of which is on her website here), in which we take a peek into the mind of a ship, as echoes and dreams from the past show us steps made on its journey in a previous life. Nicely structured and handled.

Bruce McAllister. Stamps.

An Arcturian living amongst us finds a passion for philately, as his kind help the human race from destroying itself, and in the simple act of writing letters to seek used postage stamps, a lot about humanity can be learnt.

Gord Sellar. The Bernoulli War.

Far future warfare carried out by post-human entities, in a clever, complex SF short story like Charles Stross used to write.

Here’s the opening sentence : “As the Bernouilliae troop carrier detached from the kilotransport, stuffed full of death to be rained down on the newly established Devaka hivespire, !pHEnteRMinE3H4n%jmAGic lurched forward a few microns – that was all there was room for, in the gunning tube where ve waited”.

Wowza. A non-gender specific uploaded post-human instance, created for a single task, with multiple regression/self-replications/instantiations (think ‘Source Code’). It took me two goes to get into the story. The first time I was put off by the long character name, which played havoc with the line formatting on my iPad! The story has nods to human backhistory and politics, the Bernoulli scientist/mathematician family.

I’m sure a lot of readers will be put off, never to return. Here’s a corker of a sentence, that you will have engage with to get through to the end : “Number of the sort evident in the subscripts was of course overtly hierarchic and thus permitted only for temporary, sandboxed instantiations of oneself until such point as they developed sufficient divergence in identity and motivation to relabel themselves with a new secondary provisional forkmaker”.

Conclusion

Some strong stories in the issue, some good ones, and a couple of weaker ones.

Edward M. Lerner. Dark Secret part II of IV

Patty Jansen. Geospermia.

Neal Asher. The Other Gun.

Ken Liu. The Oracle.