Dell Magazines

Sheila Williams’s Editorial hails Asimov’s 40^th year of publication, Robert Silverberg’s Reflections solicits two cheers for Piltdown Man, James Patrick Kelly’s On the Net: Ask Me Anything compares various digital assistants, in On Books¹ Paul di Filippo reviews eight books (including one I have reviewed for Interzone.) I was under the impression that Lavie Tidhar’s Central Station was a fix-up novel. di Filippo writes about it as if unaware of this.
As to the fiction. In Crimson Birds of Small Miracles² by Sean Monaghan the father of a daughter with a terminal brain disease takes her and her sister to see Shilinka Switalla’s artwork, a flock of robot birds doing murmurations, as these excursions seem to help her. This story had an illustration of a strange attitude to wealth. The father has a good business, can afford increasingly complex prosthetics for his sick daughter, can take his children to various different planets but reckons he could never be rich in the monetary sense. Yet he quite clearly is.
Tagging Bruno³ by Allen Steele. On Coyote, a moon in the system 47-Uma, a former soldier is roped in to act as guide on a project to tag an indigenous bird-like species (boids) dangerous to humans but under threat of extinction due to human hunting activity. It goes quite well till the expedition encounters a flock which turns the tables on them.
Still Life with Abyss by Jim Grimsley is set in a project researching the only individual in all the multiple universes who has never caused a fork in time.
In Fatherbond by Tom Purdow, new arrivals on a colony planet begin to work against the entity which seeks to restrict their actions. (It’s tempting to read this as a metaphor for the pre-Revolutionary government of North America which forbade expansion westwards, the desire to overthrow which ban -rather than the confected protest about taxation – being the true reason for the War of Independence.)
Winter Timeshare⁴ by Ray Nayler shows us the annual meeting of two people who inhabit bodies (dubbed blanks) for their one holiday each year which is always in Istanbul, whose surrounding hills are the location for sending volunteers on a one-way trip to space. Despite their purchasing power blanks are resented by the “normal” locals. For a reason not particularly obvious the job of one of our protagonists involves simulating the Peloponnesian War.
Two young girls in the LA area in Lisa Goldstein’s The Catastrophe of Cities investigate strange houses wherein they glimpse oddly shaped people and passageways lead elsewhere. They drift apart on puberty, one seemingly dropping out of existence. In much later life the other seeks her out.
Robert R Chase’s Pieces of Ourselves⁵ is the tale of a survivor of a terrorist attack on a moon base who may have assimilated character traits as a result of her experience.
Jack Skillingstead’s Destination⁶ features a man who has not been outside the confines of his gated work community since being plucked from his childhood home after displaying high aptitude being told by his bosses to take part in the game Destination, essentially a mystery tour by taxi. Outside is not what he thought.
The Meiosis of Cells and Exile by Octavia Cade is structured around the life of Soviet biochemist and neuroscientist Lina Stern. On a train to exile in Dzhambul her body buds sequentially (or else she hallucinates) three of her former selves, the Academician, the Child, and the Scientist. Each is equated with a function of the blood-brain barrier.
Starphone by Stephen Baxter is set in a post ocean-rise world where flood refugees are kept inside domes. Some teenagers plan a short escape to test the Fermi Paradox by making an Allen Array with their mobile phones.
In Blow Winds, and Crack Your Cheeks⁷ by John Alfred Taylor a couple celebrates the last time it will be safe to witness a storm at their island home. The damage it causes is still substantial even though the hurricane’s eye passes thirty miles out from shore.
Robert Reed’s The Speed of Belief⁸ is a tale of three entities, two immortals with bioceramic brains, one normal human, on their way to a planet where the rivers are sentient. I really couldn’t make much of this. Perhaps I was too tired when I read it.

Pedant’s corner:- ¹ again di Filippo uses stefnal for science-fictional – it still looks odd to me, “compare that man to somewhat callow fellow” (to the somewhat callow fellow.) ²a dark red button-front jumper (a dark red cardigan, then?) base reliefs (bas-reliefs, I think,) ³78.2 inches (how can you decimalise a non-metric unit?) “a small red crosshairs” (a implies singular, crosshairs is surely plural; there was “a green crosshairs” later,) “Carbon testing of boid skeletons had shown they could live as long as thirty-five years” (leaving aside the question of whether ¹⁴C would exist on this world at all, unless the carbon testing is somewhat different from on Earth it could do no such thing; ¹⁴C dating only yields the time elapsed since death,) a missing end quote mark, sole causality (casualty.) ⁴Bosporus (I only ever saw Bosphorus when I was young,) causal (casual was intended.) ⁵ “started at her intently” (stared.) ⁶ “an approved media” (it was one of the social media; so medium.) ⁷grille (grill, used earlier in the story.) ⁸ “with every sort of creatures” (creature.) “But the dense native air was heavily oxygenated, and the bedrock had been scorched clean of its forests and soil.” (This is stated to have been done by wildfires. The oxygen would have to be remnant then as there will be nothing to replenish it,) “carefully tailored frame: The long body” (no capital at “the”.) “Mere notice what was different” (noticed,) forbad (the usual form is forbade.)

Dell Magazines

Sarah Pinsker’s Guest Editorial That’s Far Out, So You Read it Too? muses on the connections, and the similarities, between SF and music. Robert Silverberg’s Reflections examines the possibility and desirability of resurrecting the Dodo genetically. Peter Heck’s On Books¹ discusses novels by Lois McMaster Bujold, Charles Stross, Pierce Brown, Tim Powers, Indra Das and Lavie Tidhar.
In the fiction:-
They All Have One Breath² by Alexander Jablokov explicitly references E M Forster’s The Machine Stops in a tale of a world taken over by AIs, where all acts of violence have been made impossible.
Empty Shoes by the Lake by Octavia Cade is the tale of two people from a backwoods town; Rafi who gets out, makes pottery and sends his first bowl (cracked) to the other, Becca, who sees visions in the puddles left by the water that seeps out of it.
In HigherWorks³ by Gregory Norman Bossert a black refugee from a US turned to fascism to an almost equally fascistic UK has the knowledge to allow nanotechnology to connect minds together.
The extremely short How the Damned Live On by James Sallis is set on an unspecified island which contains a giant speaking spider which experiences time differently from our human narrator.
The island in The Cold Side of the Island⁴ by Kali Wallace is somewhere off the north east coast of the US. One day three youngsters find a set of unidentifiable bones in the woods, bones which bind then even though they’ve drifted apart.
Where There is Nothing: There Is God⁵ by David Erik Nelson features a jobbing actor travelling back in time to 1770 Massachusetts to ply the locals with crystal meth in return for silverware stamped with the mark of Paul Revere.

Pedant’s corner: ¹ have showed (shown,) “a team who’s assessing” (a team which is assessing,) “there are a number” (there is a number,) Stross’s (√) yet also Powers’ (be consistent at least.) ²Polykleitos’ (Polykleitos’s.) ³”The couple are” (the couple is,) “a gaggle of girls… stumble” (a gaggle stumbles,) Blue tats’ (Blue tats is a nickname, so is singular; hence Blue tats’s,) “‘a economic refugee’” (even in dialogue that ought to be an economic refugee,) “an photographic print” (a,) “A flock of microdrones spiral” (a flock spirals,) “like a hole in the dancers hair” (dancer’s,) “as she looses the thread” (loses.) ⁴”Each phalanges” (each phalange, or phalanx,) “a knobby knitted hit” (Hurrah for knitted but the hit should have been a hat.) ⁵Charles’ (Charles’s,) largess (largesse. Is largess a USian spelling?) James’ (James’s,) maw (it’s a stomach, not a mouth,) “asking ‘Well…’” (no comma preceding the direct speech) “none were drawn” (none was drawn,) Means’ (Means’s.)

Special Slightly Spooky Issue. Dell Magazines.

Editorial: Our Slightly Spooky Issue Asimov’s¹ by Sheila Williams reminisces about all the issues of Asimov’s tinged with the uncanny which she has published around Halloween time.
Reflections: Magical Thinking by Robert Silverberg considers Lynn Thorndike’s “magisterial” A History of Magic and Experimental Science “an extraordinary treasurehouse of human thought in all its folly and grandeur.”
On the NET: Welcome Our Robot Overlords!² by James Patrick Kelly examines the state of AI development.
In an excellent On Books:³ Norman Spinrad, for the first time in his reviewing career at Asimov’s dealing with short story collections/anthologies, notes the tendency for works of fantasy to dominate SF awards (and outlets,) in effect the colonisation of SF by “literary” craftspeople looking for a market (all but the only market,) and the necessity for story and style to be combined to make any fictional work outstanding. He decries the necessity for an author to have a “voice” as the style a tale is told in ought to serve the story, not the ego of its author.

In the fiction, Alexander Jablokov’s The Forgotten Taste of Honey⁴ sees viewpoint character Tromvi have to take a corpse back to the land it came from in order to please the gods. A transfer of memories from the corpse to Tromvi via the honey from a hive inside the body thwarts the man who tries to prevent him.
In Eating Science with Ghosts by Octavia Cade our unnamed narrator goes about eating and drinking with the ghosts of scientists and explorers, ghosts only she can see.
The People in the Building⁵ by Sandra McDonald describes the occupants of said building – including the interplanetary rescue service on the third floor which has unwisely as it turns out revived an ancient god from a nearby swamp.
Wretched the Romantic by Michael Libling is narrated by Richard, a loser who takes up scattering ashes as a scam once he discovers he has taken on the attributes of the deceased after accidentally inhaling them.
Water Scorpions⁶ by Rich Larson is set in the aftermath of the crash of an alien spaceship in the Sahara. One of their offspring, genetically modified to make them more human-like, is taken into the family of an ethnobiologist.
In The Leaning Lincoln⁷ by Will Ludwigstein, said figure is a toy made from a lead ingot salvaged from the shore. It has baleful properties.
Lucite⁸ by Susan Palwick sees a visitor to an attraction based on Dante’s Inferno take home a dead person’s soul in a lucite box.
Project Entropy⁹ by Dominica Phetteplace is another in the author’s series on AIs in San Francisco. My heart has begun to sink when I see her name on Asimov’s cover.
When Grandfather Returns¹⁰ by S N Dyer is a tale of the appearance among the Navaho of Cabeza De Vaca and his followers and their displacement to the present day.
In Choose Poison, Choose Life¹¹ by Michael Blumlein a woman who has an unfortunate taste in men is variously, and in various guises, saved from, or saves herself from, suicide.

Pedant’s corner:- ¹Joel Richards’ (Richards’s.) ²easily your best source the very latest news (of the latest news,) ³Henry James’ (James’s,) a epiphany climax (an,) Gunther Grass’ (Grass’s,) “what the differences between the two, are and stronger “ (between the two are, and stronger.) ⁴an ewer (I suppose since ewer starts with a vowel this is technically correct, but… It is sounded as a consonant so “a ewer” would be fine by me,) “maw” used for part of a ruminant’s stomach (hurray!) ⁵new emotions arrives (arrive.) ⁶sked (seems to be a USian abbreviation for schedule. I was of course thoroughly confused as I pronounce schedule as “shed-yule”.) ⁷Tutankhamen, (Tutankhamun.) ⁸McManus’ (McManus’s.) ⁹negress (we’re back to using n-words now?) ¹⁰Thunder Cries’ (Thunder Cries’s,) Rabbit Smile’s (name was previously Rabbit Smiles: the later Rabbit Smiles’ should be Rabbit Smiles’s,) ¹¹to portage the water (“portage”? What on Earth is wrong with “carry”?)

Dell Magazines

Sheila Williams’s Editorial¹ remembers her introduction to SF via the women superheroes found in comic books and the inspiration she took from them; inspiration she hopes her own daughters will also find. Robert Silverberg’s Reflections² discusses the software of magic (spells) with regard to ancient Egyptian papyri. Paul Di Filippo’s On Books³ is complimentary about all the books reviewed but especially a reprint of Judith Merril’s critical essays on SF and China Miéville’s This Census Taker (which I reviewed here.)
In the fiction:-
Wakers⁴ by Sean Monaghan is set on a colonisation starship which has suffered damage to its operating AI and veered off course. Only one crew member at a time is woken to keep things going, passing on the duty at the end of their stint. The latest waker has an idea to change the ship’s fate.
In Toppers⁵ by Jason Sandford New York has been separated from the rest of the world. Only the tallest skyscrapers provide secure refuges above the mists. Our (unnamed) female protagonist has to walk through the mists to get supplies.
The title of The Mutants Men Don’t See by James Alan Garner of course refers to a celebrated SF story by James Tiptree Jr (Alice Sheldon.) Here a repressed Flash Gene may be activated by some kind of shock during puberty and changes its carrier into a superhero. Menopausal Ellie Lee fears her son will try to force such a change by endangering his life and sets put to protect him. It becomes obvious very early on where this is going. I’m afraid it doesn’t hold a candle to Tiptree.
The “Kit” in Kit: Some Assembly Required⁶ by Kathe Koja & Carter Scholz is Christopher Marlowe or, rather, a simulacrum of Marlowe in a computer network. Kit achieves sentience. The slightly clichéd identity of his human “creator” is all that lets this tale down. The best story I’ve read in Asimov’s so far.
Patience Lake⁷ by Matthew Claxton sees a former cyborg soldier, damaged in an attack and surplus to requirements, hitch-hiking to Saskatchewan and taking odd jobs to try to meet his maintenance costs. But his spare parts could make him valuable himself.
In Kairos⁸ by Sieren Damsgaard Ernst, a research project has come up with a way to stop telomeres unravelling and hence halt ageing. Our narrator is married to the technology’s discoverer and suffers a crisis of conscience, apparently due to the legacy of her previous marriage. The story depicts scientists as blinkered and philistine. Well, not all of them are ignorant of the humanities.
The title of Sandra McDonald’s President John F Kennedy, Astronaut⁹ is a trifle misleading as the story is more about the search in an ice-cap melted, flooded future world for an obelisk found by said astronaut but whose existence was subsequently concealed.

Pedant’s corner:- ¹(she) learned marital arts (that would be a good thing I suppose but I think martial arts was what was meant,) no pinic (no picnic,) ² H G Wells’ (H G Wells’s,) ³Karel apek (for some reason misses the capital letter of his surname, Čapek,) ⁴ “A Masters from .. but on the next line her master’s thesis (if one Masters is capitalised I would think the other ought to be,) ⁵ lays (lies,) ⁶loathe (loth or loath; loathe is something else entirely,) ⁷thirty clicks outside (four lines later; “the last few dozen klicks”,) augur (auger –used previously,) ⁸“none of them know, none of them have any idea” (none knows, none has any idea,) “so he did he” (has one “he” too many,) ⁹ blond hair (blonde,) gravitation distortion (gravitational,) “where whales still roamed and tropical reefs covered with dazzling life” (were covered?) “to imagine what must have been like” (what it must have been like,) “great-great-great forbearer” (forebear.)

Dell Magazines

Sheila Williams’s editorial¹ discusses past and present winners of the Dell Magazines Award for Undergraduate Excellence in Science Fiction and Fantasy Writing. Robert Silverberg’s Reflections² muses on Persons from Porlock and how he always took great care to allow no distractions when he was working but that Coleridge’s experience did provide him with the inspiration for his first ever sale (for $5) at the age of fifteen. Paul di Filippo’s “On Books” reviews retrospective collections from Nancy Kress and Gregory Benford, a contemporary one from Finnish writer Leena Krohn and novels by Christopher Fowler and Gene Wolfe.
In the fiction we have Suzanne Palmer’s Ten Poems for the Mossums, One for the Man³ which is narrated by a poet set down alone on an alien planet where he discovers the nature of some of its alien life.
Both Filtered⁴ by Leah Cypess andMasked⁵ by Rich Larson are typical ‘push current trends to their logical conclusion’ SF stories. In the former a journalist tries to get his story about the manipulation of everyone’s communication feeds by filter programmes through the filters. The latter has teenagers constantly surrounded by a cloud of appearance created to enhance their real selves. One of them, Vera, has been affected by a virus which turned the “cover” off.
Project Entropy⁵, the latest of the series of stories in Asimov’s by Dominica Phetteplace, explores the ramifications of Angelina having had her Watcher chip removed and the implications of such AIs. Curiously flat in execution.
In Jack Skillingstead’s The Savior Virus⁶ a biologist who lost his legs in a terrorist bombing engineers a virus to remove the notion of God from people’s minds.
In Nobody Like Josh⁷ by Robert Thurston Josh is a town’s secret alien whose spaceship crashed before the narrator was born. This story is curiously similar in premise to I married a Monster from Outer Space which appeared in Asimov’s March 2016 issue, but isn’t anything like as affective or effective.
Webs by Mary Anne Mohanraj is set around the prejudice of ordinary humans on a colony world towards those with adaptations.
In Lost: Mind by Will McIntosh a man has to search for the missing parts of his wife’s downloaded mind after they are stolen. The story is marred by a continuity error in the last quarter page which totally undermines verisimilitude.

¹ graduating with a duel major (dual,) Joan Sloncewski (the correct spelling, Slonczewski, is used later in the piece.) ² Samuel Purchas’ (Purchas’s,) ³ beside (besides,) to not spend (not to spend,) “how good he has always been about putting off things” (about putting things off.) ⁴matrixes (matrices.) ⁵Lawless’ (Lawless’s.) ⁵ canvasses (canvases.) ⁶ symptoms would manifest in mild cold-like symptoms. ⁷ crashed-landed (crash-landed.)

Dell Magazines, 192 p.

The third issue of the year’s subscription to the magazine my younger son gave me as a Christmas present. In the guest editorial Charlie Jane Anders takes issue with the myth that novels and short stories can’t be written equally well by the same author. In his column Robert Silverberg muses on the possibility that there was not one Trojan War but several, not one Homer but many, writing down their accounts over centuries before it was all drawn into one after Greek script evolved from Phœnician. In the fiction:-
Matilda by Kristine Kathryn Rusch.¹ Matilda is a single ship. She likes being piloted by Devi. The feeling is not mutual. Yet in conflict against the CeaWayLaVi they must act in concert.
Three Paintings by James van Pelt. An artist worried about going stale conceives a plan to be backed up, cut himself off from the world, paint and then kill himself, be restored, paint again, kill his new self, and repeat the cycle once more. His commercial partner gets greedy.
In The Days of Hamelin by Robert Reed² children between the ages of five and eighteen start to die of ruptured arteries. For obvious reasons the virus responsible comes to be known as Hamelin. The few child survivors evolve a mordant philosophy.
The Return of Black Murray by Alexander Jablokov³ sees three former high school friends return to the scene of an incident from their senior year. Black Murray is a giant moray eel; or its simulation. The payoff here does not justify the story’s length.
Starless Night by Robert R Chase is a tale of the response of Earth colonies to invasion from Sagittarius.
Project Synergy by Dominica Phetteplace⁴ is another of the author’s stories featuring Watcher chips. Here the chip wants to acquire a body of its own, which is highly illegal.
Flame Trees by T R Napper.⁵ The titular trees are a nostalgic trigger for a war veteran whose memories are about to be wiped for committing an act of violence.
A Flight From the Ages by Derek Künsken⁶ spans the lifetime of the universe. In 3113 AD a weapon starts to dissolve space-time. Over succeeding multi-millennia efforts are made to escape its expanding wave-front and make the universe into a Klein bottle – all mediated through the experiences of AIs. Very dry indeed.
Of the Beast in the Belly by C W Johnson.⁷ The belly is that of an arcthant. Nawiz and, Janum, the man she is chasing for revenge purposes, have been swallowed by the huge sea creature. Inside its array of increasingly acidic stomachs exist a number of different societies, scraping a living from the (part) digested contents.
In Woman in the Reeds by Esther M Friesner⁸ the woman has been feigning madness to avoid the attentions of Pharaoh’s slave overseers and collecting the bones of dead children from the Nile in order to gain the power to restore her own dead son. She refuses the demands of the god Set to hand over a baby she finds floating in a bulrush basket.
Lazy Dog Out by Suzanne Palmer.⁹ The Lazy Dog is Khifi’s salvage ship. Khifi gets implicated in a plot to take over her habitat and uses the ship to frustrate it. There is an incident here of summary justice (which in my view is never acceptable – even for the supposed good guys. When you think clearly about it, summary justice is no justice at all.)

Pedant’s corner:- ¹overlaying (overlying,) ²US spelling of practice and practicing for the verb practise (plus points though for “hanged himself”,) ³vortexes (vortices,) according the Pete (according to Pete,) “The girls squealed satisfyingly and moved closer to me and Myron” (? This would have been difficult. They were in separate boats,) ⁴terrariums (terraria,) “The long skirt of her skirt grazes the floor” (how about “her long skirt grazes the floor”??) “Often times” (oftentimes is USian I know but isn’t it usually one word?) ⁵bowls green (USian? we would say bowling green,) ⁶Poluphemos’ (Poluphemos’s,) Ulixes’ (Ulixes’s,) even less processing sources (even fewer,) ⁷a pack of sea-jackals were attacking (a pack was,) “with out of his large hands” (with one of his large hands,) Nawiz laid down (lay down,) maw was used here several times: fine; the story takes place inside stomachs, ⁸Osiris’ (Osiris’s,) maw (it’s a stomach, not a mouth,) ⁹locii (loci, or even locuses,) Candles’ (x 3; Candles is one if the characters, so Candles’s – which was used once!) “cut the freighter’s main engines, flipped on the brakers.” (Space-ships have brakes? Which can work when the main engines have shut off?) maw (it’s a stomach; not a mouth,) “behind them in a semicircle was Redrum, Jonjon and Inchbug” (behind them were.)

Dell Magazines, 112 p.

The second issue of the year’s subscription to the magazine my younger son gave me as a Christmas present. Robert Silverberg describes how Walter de la Mare’s story The Three Mulla-Mulgars, read in his youth and many times since, inspired him and fed into his fiction. James Patrick Kelly’s internet overview discusses the pros and cons of reading and writing a series of books.¹ In the fiction:-
The Bewilderness of Lions by Ted Kosmatka.² A data cruncher who can predict scandals goes to work for a politician. Then she is contacted by the people who really run things. Another story which panders to the secret-conspiracy-that-rules-the-world tendency.
The Ship Whisperer by Julie Novakova. An expedition to a black dwarf (which shouldn’t exist) discovers a device that can alter the rate of change of time. The titular character can “talk” to quantum computers, enabling the story’s resolution.
A Partial List of Lists I Have Lost Over Time by Sunil Patel is a series of listicles. I believe it is supposed to be humorous. The author seems to have a particular thing about kale.
Project Empathy by Dominica Phetteplace is about trends, moving elsewhere then finding the norms are different, plus there are Watcher chips inside people’s heads.
Do Not Forget Me by Ray Nayler³ is a story in the Eastern tradition, of tales within the tale – four embedded narratives here – the central one being about a man who doesn’t age. There is nothing really noteworthy here though.
A Little Bigotry by R Neube.⁴ An ex-soldier down on her uppers is reduced to accepting a contract to be an escort to a former enemy. A fine enough story but reminiscent of Barry B Longyear’s Enemy Mine. Then again, I suppose the point about enemies being worthy of understanding always bears repeating.
New Earth by James Gunn.⁵ A colony ship from a more-or-less destroyed Erath has reached a new planetary home. Choices and dangers must be faced.
I Married a Monster from Outer Space by Dale Bailey⁶ is narrated by a woman who takes home an alien who came into the Walmart she works in. This at first unpromising – clichéd even – scenario is, though, only scaffolding over what eventually becomes an affecting tale of love, loss and redemption. I note the references by Bailey – via the narrator’s surname (Sheldon,) her dead daughter Alice and her comment on her status as an invisible woman – to the career of James Tiptree Jr.

Pedant’s corner:- In the editorial; definine (define,) chose (choose,) Lawrence Watt Evans tale (Evans’s,) ¹ ambiance (ambience,) ² she could feel it siding in her fingers (sliding makes more sense,) lobyists (lobbyists,) ³ lay about (lie about.) ⁴ license (licence,) maw used for mouth (maw means stomach,) accurst (accursed,) ⁵mentions trees that are not-quite-trees but one of the characters says multi-cellular life hasn’t evolved there. Trees are multi-cellular; the fern-like structures subsequently described would be also. ⁶Bug-Eyes’ (it’s singular; so Bug-Eyes’s,) Hastings’ (Hastings’s,) laying (lying; plus lay for lie,) breath in (breathe in.) In Paul di Filippo’s book reviews; stefnal to mean science-fictional, a usage I had not come across before, whereas sfnal I was familiar with.

Dell Magazines.

This magazine is more weighted to fiction than Analog though there are non-fiction pieces. Kathleen Ann Goonan’s guest editorial describes SF as a literature that asks Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going? – thus adding two additional questions to the one most literature addresses – Robert Silverberg’s Reflections goes over the history of predictions of the end of the world and of apocalyptic SF while James Patrick Kelly’s On The Net: an Optimist’s Tale argues that modern day SF is not as pessimistic as some in Project Hieroglyph present.
As to the fiction, there is less cleaving of the paper light years in Asimov’s than there was in Analog, notwithstanding the first story The End of the War by Django Wexler, wherein two remnants of humanity called Minoans and Circeans fight a proxy war on derelict spaceships left over from the main battles by means of pilot-controlled salvage/manufactory devices. The opposing pilots have conversations as they fight over the remains.¹ Henry Lien’s The Ladies’ Aquatic Gardening Society has two society ladies in what seems the nineteenth century trying to find the favour of Mrs Ava Vanderbilt by means of elaborate gardens. They take it too far.² Mutability by Ray Nayler sees a couple meet for the first time in a café – four hundred years after being photographed together. Indrapramit Das’s The Muses of Shuyedan-18 features two human women who are witnessed having sex by the huge alien of the title which reproduces them in a carving on its back.³ The titular characters in M Bennardo’s Ghosts of the Savannah are two prehistoric women hunters who don’t want to settle to a life of domesticity and child-bearing. Our Lady of the Open Road by Sarah Pinsker is the tour bus for the band Cassis Fire, who are rare hold-outs still playing real gigs in a world where entertainment has been cornered by the corporate might of StageHolo.⁴

Pedant’s corner:-
¹ the compute power (twice!! “computing power” is so much less ugly,) to go to particular place (a particular place,) “slingshot” as the preterite of the verb (slungshot? slingshotted? But then I suppose USians use fit as a past tense,) the maze of room and corridors (this ship had corridors but only one room?)
² hostess’ (hostess’s,) the USianism “dove” for “dived”, plus the story jumps from Chapter VII to IX with no sign of VIII.
³ chord (cord,) in a way the human brain will remind of our own architectures (will be reminded of.)
⁴ in the cards (on the cards.)

Over the past few weeks I have read the short stories nominated for this year’€™s BSFA Awards. I am assuming that, as in the past couple of years, the BSFA will be producing a booklet containing them but since each has been posted on the internet (there is a link from the BSFA’s Awards page to the online versions which is how I managed to read them – though I found off a screen is not the most comfortable of ways to do so) perhaps that might not happen.

The Silver Wind by Nina Allan, from Interzone issue 233, is a kind of time-travel story mixed with parallel worlds. It tells of the encounter of a man from a fascistic future Britain with a genius who makes clocks (which he refers to as time machines.) To begin with there is too much info dumping and throughout a lot is told rather than shown. Perhaps the story needed more space to breathe but I felt the sureness of touch of an accomplished story teller was missing. There is a use of words that is not quite precise -€“ eg ‘hoping one soldier would not see me’ rather than ‘€œhoping none of the soldiers would see me’€ – and twice we are treated to the peculiar phrase, ‘€œIt was growing dusk,’€ but at least Allan knows the use of ‘€œnor’ as in, ‘€œnot for love nor money nor any of these new-fangled gadgets.’

The Copenhagen Interpretation by Paul Cornell, from Asimov’s, July2011, is set in an altered future where European monarchies strive to keep the balance of power throughout the Solar System, souls have weight that is aligned to dark matter and Newton came up with a kind of relativity theory which allows space to be folded – all amenable to a tale of espionage and derring-do admixed with betrayals of various sorts. This stretches suspension of disbelief at times but overflows with ideas and is excellently written.

Afterbirth by Kameron Hurley, from Kameron Hurley’€™s website, is about a woman in a backward-leaning religious society which is engaged in a never-ending war, whose rulers have deliberately cut it off from the stars – originally as an escape from whatever’€™s out there but now to prosecute the war better. In her forbidden astronomical observations she finds God in a torn filter laid across the night sky. Again there is a fair bit of info dumping -€“ perhaps inevitable in stories of short length.

Covehithe by China Miéville, from The Guardian, 20/4/11, features sunken oil-rigs returning to land to drill into the earth and lay – eggs? seeds? – from which smaller rigs later emerge. Atmospheric, but again info-dumpy. The human involvement in Covehithe – a father and his daughter observing one such landing -€“ doesn’€™t really overlap with the SF background. Another scenario where society has suffered extreme breakdown and the military has a strong presence.

Of Dawn by Al Robertson, from Interzone 235, has a woman whose soldier brother has been killed being inspired by his poetry, the music of a long neglected composer, an all but forgotten TV documentary and a figure from Greek myth to produce a synthesis of poetry and music by bringing all those strands together. The final part of the jigsaw is provided by a shadowy figure in a village commandeered by the army long ago, but which had inspired both poet and musician. The story contains echoes of the Green Man myth and illustrates that English fascination with the pastoral. The info dumping here is well embedded.

The futures shown by the five stories are all bleak, having in common repressive regimes of either military or religious stamp. SF is never about the future, though. These stories tell us a lot about where we are now.

As stories though, rounded works of fiction, I found most of them unsatisfying. The only truly successful one was Paul Cornell’s. If these represent the best of last year the SF short story is in a bad way.

Harper Collins, 1996, 390p.

This collection of short fiction by my favourite writer of Science Fiction (of fiction full stop) comprises 18 stories first published in the pages of, among others, The New Yorker, Harper’s, Ms., Playboy and Omni, plus some otherwise uncredited. They range in length from 3 to 37 pages. I read quite a few of these on a trip away but was not taking notes and so have not commented in depth. Despite the mainly non-genre organs where they first appeared all have an air of otherness about them, of things not quite explicable.

The most Science-Fictional, Ether, OR, appeared in Asimov’s. It is narrated sequentially by the various inhabitants of a town that can shift its location.

The title story, Unlocking the Air, is one of Le Guin’s Orsinian Tales and relates the story of a revolution in that fantasy middle European country. Daddy’s Big Girl is a near fairy tale about a girl who keeps growing. The Poacher takes as its subject matter a well-known fairy tale but approaches it, in characteristic Le Guin fashion, at a considerable tangent.

Le Guin’s typical compassion and sympathy for her characters are evident throughout.