Joel Richards. Deep Diving. (Asimovs Oct/Nov 2013)
Political intrigue in space, but slightly heavy-handed, and three references to people esconcing themselves in seats that you would have thought the author/editor would have spotted!
Reviewing short SF since 2000
Political intrigue in space, but slightly heavy-handed, and three references to people esconcing themselves in seats that you would have thought the author/editor would have spotted!
A chilling horror set in the days of knickerbockers and wax cylinder phonographs, in which Frost builds a palpable sense of dread.
A few words from my review : bland, Readers Digest, utilitarian.
A Chinese perspective on dealing with rats who, thanks to human intervention, are posing quite a problem, in a story which didn’t unsettle as I had hoped!
The title explains all. Certainly by far the best xeno-gastropodic monologue that I’ve ever read.
When someone comes a-callin’ with a fistful of court papers and takes away your genmod mini-bison, well a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.
An author new to me, and it’s a powerful story featuring two powerful female characters. The story is intense – simply a conversation between the two, as stories are related, until the final denouement – not unexpected, but still powerful.
Most of the stories provide something just a little different, to engage the reader, with Johnson and Suggars the pick of the bunch for me.
A modern fairytale, in which greed and jealously lead to the frogination of a CEO, who must, ribbit, overcome his somewhat reduced circumstances, ribbit, to look after his interests.
A strong story from Kenyon, with a vivid setting (think Howl’s Moving Castle), action, heroism and sacrifice.
The final struggles of a couple trying to settle on an inhospitable alien planet are seen, as one finally achieves success in botanic research, but at the ultimate cost to herself
Excellent hard SF from an author new to me. What could have been average scientist fiction is much more.
An interesting protagonist – a regenerating cyborgised K9 combat troop, who drily relates some of this previous lives.
With a solid background of economic and political systems across a distant planetary system, a fuel trucker visits a client with his new apprentice.
Ekeing out a living on a remote beach, a woman and her son find the shards they have been collecting to sell to tourists have more to offer.