The Seafarer by Tobias S. Buckell
Painted Birds and Shivered Bones by Kat Howard
A Stranger Comes to Kalimpura by Jay Lake
The Indelible Dark by William Browning Spencer
The Prayer of Ninety Cats by Caitlín R. Kiernan
The Syndrome by Brian Francis Slattery

Online : here.

The Weight of History, the Lightness of the Future by Jay Lake
Sic Him, Hellhound! Kill! Kill! by Hal Duncan
Random Thoughts before a Fatal Crash by Caitlín R. Kiernan
HERE and THERE by Neal Barrett, Jr.
A Holy War, A Lucifer Jones Story by Mike Resnick
Angel of Europa by Allen Steele

Online here

Fiction: Water Can’t Be Nervous by Jonathan Carroll
Fiction: The Least of the Deathly Arts by Kat Howard
Fiction: Treasure Island: A Lucifer Jones Story by Mike Resnick
Fiction: Three Lilies And Three Leopards (And A Participation Ribbon In Science) by Tad Williams
Fiction: The Drunken Moon by Joe R. Lansdale
Fiction: Seeräuber by Maria Dahvana Headley
Fiction: The Way the Red Clown Hunts You by Terry Dowling
Fiction: The Last Song You Hear by David J. Schow
Fiction: Chicago Bang Bang by C. E. Murphy

Online : here

Fiction: White Lines on a Green Field by Catherynne M. Valente
Fiction: SHAKA II by Mike Resnick
Fiction: Antiquities and Tangibles by Tim Pratt
Review: The Tragedy of Arthur by Arthur Phillips
Review: The Iron Thorn by Caitlin Kittredge
Fiction: Balfour and Meriwether in The Vampire of Kabul by Daniel Abraham

Online : here

If you haz not read the story yet, follow the link above.

It’s a complex story, as you’d expect (and demand) from Broderick, that starts off feeling like one kind of story – a sort of mix of JGB and ERB, with Blackett mourning the Venus that he has lost, to which almost all humanity have been instantly, unexplainedly, transported, along with our moon. Has that happened, or is he delusional?

There is interesting character-driven interplay between himself, a female neighbour who is offering psychological support (or not), and a bed-ridden neighbour, but then some science starts to creep in, and there is math to support a very strange explanation….

Excellent.

This appeared in a special Alexander Irvine issue of Subterranean 18 months ago – click the link above to read it.

I do like a good post-apocalyptic story, and this is a good post-apocalyptic story. It tells the story of Varner, and old man spending his life seeking out any old books left after the Seventh Fall. We find out why there aren’t many books left, and why owning them can be injurious to your health, and we find out about his path to becoming a travelling story-teller as he reflects on his youth, when the Seventh Fall contributed to the end of his childhood. There’s some good imagery in the book, and the characters who Varner reflects on during his journey are skillfully sketched. The beauty of the story is in the intelligent way Irvine uses Varner’s additional quest to find a full version of Hamlet, and his childhood acting in Shakespearean plays. It’s an effective story, and this soppy old sod was quite affected by the ending.

Excellent hard SF from McAuley, in a narrative that gradually reveals more as it progresses. It’s set in his ‘Jackaroo’ series, where aliens have contacted us, and humanity is using their tech, and tech from elder species to expand our horizons.

Some potentially very, very risky alien tech is discovered, and there’s a chase to hunt down the people with it, and to work out just who is behind it. The detective in it is determined to bring the miscreants to justice, but whose justice?

Living in the arctic wilderness of Finland, with only a talking bear to keep him company, is a young man who forsake the option to upload. When visited by a digital, partial substantiation of his ex-wife, some ghosts of the past are awakened, and in taking up a request to help those who are no longer earthbound, he enters a strange city, under the thrall of the plague gods, and there is a reunion.

Well written, lyrical and elegaic in its own right. My only beef with Rajaniemi is that he’s gone to writing successful novels way too quickly, and we’ll likely see less short SF from him than we would selfishly like to see!