Ted Reynolds. View through the Window. (Asimovs August 2013)
When I read that Reynolds was being welcomed back to Asimovs after a gap of some 31 years, I had a slight frisson of apprehension …
Dale Bailey. This Is How You Disappear. (Fantasy & Science Fiction, Jan/Feb 2013)
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.
Ian Creasey. Joining the High Flyers. (Asimovs August 2012)
A sequel to a story which I rated as a ‘fairly leaden rumination’. This story takes to the skies in terms of the narrative – but what of the story itself?
Theodora Goss. Beautiful Boys. (Asimovs August 2012)
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.
George Zebrowski. The Genoa Passage. (Interzone #244, Jan-Feb 2013)
Almost 30 years since Zebrowski’s ‘The Eichmann Variations’ was a Nebula Finalist, Zebrowski provides another variation on the theme, against postulating multiple Eichmanns
Jason Sanford. Heaven’s Touch. (Asimovs, August 2012)
An enjoyable page-turner, with the future of humanity, and the protagonist resting on assitance from a potentially compromised proxy AI.
Matthew Hughes. Devil or Angel. (Fantasy & Science Fiction, Jan/Feb 2013)
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.
Peter M. Ball. On the Arrival of the Paddle-Steamer on the Docks of V–. (Eclipse Online).
“Our tiny hotel room is boiling, even now, but heat doesn’t bother Patrick and he sleeps, shirtless, with the thin sheet coiled round him like a loving serpent…”
Indrapramit Das. Weep for Day. (Asimovs August 2012)
Das is a new author to me, and this story is an impressive introduction, in which he posits a world that has one hemisphere permanently turned to face the sun, one turned away.
Ken Liu. A Brief History of the Trans-Pacific Tunnel. (Fantasy & Science Fiction, Jan/Feb 2013)
A subtle look at an alternate 20th century with gargantuan engineering undertaking that links the continents.
David Gerrold. Night Train to Paris. (Fantasy & Science Fiction Jan/Feb 2013)
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.
Alex Irvine. Watching the Cow. (Fantasy and Science Fiction Jan/Feb 2013)
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.
Edge of Infinity. (ed Jonathan Strahan, Solaris Books 2012).
Stories sent in a humanity constrained to the solar system, but the stories are (perhaps because of that) almost all really good stories about humans, their desires, wishes and challenges. Buy the book!
Susan Palwick. Sanctuary. (Eclipse Online).
“I’d just finished putting new eyebolts in the St. Andrew’s cross in the Red Room — I hadn’t installed the old ones, and they’d turned into pipe cleaners — when the angels came fluttering in, mewling and bumping into things….”
Solaris Rising 1.5 (ed Ian Whates, Solaris 2012)
An excellent collection, more than whetting the appetite for Solaris Rising 2, due Spring 2013.
Bruce Sterling. The Peak of Eternal Light. (Edge of Infinity)
Sterling looks at modernity and futurity in an altogether smart way.
An Owomoyela. Water Rights. (Edge of Infinity)
Excellent short, but taut thriller.