A Son of the Rock

My Father and the Martian Moon Maids by James van Pelt¹
When the unnamed narrator was younger his father, now in the last stages of dementia, built a UFO detector. While tacking backwards and forwards to the care centre he remembers how much of an influence his father was on his tastes and interests. A tale of filial affection and loss. Apart from anything else you can only warm to a story illustrated with a picture of a red Fokker Triplane.

Flytrap by Andrew Hook ²
A story about what it means to be human. Or alien. Which is perhaps what we are.

The Golden Nose by Neil Williamson³
Felix Kapel is an expert in aromas whose trade is in decline due to the innovation of Teleroma – transmission of smells via the internet – until he purchases the legendary (to olfactorists) Golden Nose of the Habsburgs. Its use has an unfortunate side effect.

Beside the Dammed River by D J Cockburn (James White Award Winner)
In a part of Thailand parched by Chinese damming of the Mekong River one of ex-Professor of Engineering Narong’s waning days is lightened by the breakdown of a truck carrying an off-target mined asteroid out of Thailand illegally.

Chasmata by E Catherine Tobbler⁴
A tale of human inhabitants of Valles Marineris on Mars, who have children there and encounter Martians, or the ghosts of Martians, and rain that floods that huge chasm, or doesn’t. The narration constantly undermines itself with asides. I liked the term “moonslight.”

The Bars of Orion by Caren Gussof⁵
When their world was destroyed a man called Blankenship and his daughter Tibbi were mysteriously transported to “our” Seattle where the counterpart of his wife is married to someone else. (In a particularly USian response he goes to therapy sessions.)

¹ Written in USian
² bought for brought; “she speculated her future” is surely missing a preposition; human’s as the plural of human.
³ George III of England. (Of nowhere else, then?) Struggled to “breath” in. We achieve the things are hearts wish for.
⁴ Written in USian
⁵ Written in USian in which pay back for seems to mean reimburse whereas in English it means get revenge. (On a stereo, “Blankenship found a knob hat made the sound louder.”) (Eyes) “seemed to be starting off into the distance.”