After Ytine’s husband, Irris, has been gone for more than a year, her neighbour becomes intent on marrying her to take hold of their fishing rights. Armed with a couple of frogs, Voud, Irris’ kid sister, does her best to convince the village’s gods to intervene after she overheard their neighbour talking about his succesful murder plot against her brother. But then Irris returns. Who is he really?
Ann Leckie manages to pack a lot of plot in a short story without losing track of her characters or setting. Voud’s matter-of-fact acceptance of what happened to her brother feels at once fresh and reminiscent of old folk tales. I had to reread the ending a few times to figure out what had exactly happened but otherwise it’s a well-told tale in an interesting setting and I’ll definitely seek out the other stories Leckie has written about this world.
After a plague has wiped out most of humanity, Jimmy opens up a roadside cafe on the median of I-95, just north of the Fallston exit. There he sits in his lawn chair, surrounded by dead cars, waiting to welcome any survivors or those who haven’t quite succumbed to the plague yet.
This is a quiet, thoughtful story full of humanity. Shehadeh remains vague about the plague, never going into much detail. Instead he focuses on the interactions of a few survivors, showing how people deal with disaster, each other and being alone.
When a genie grants you three wishes, you have to be careful to ask for exactly the right things or they’ll interpret your wishes against you. But when you try to trick the genie, then you’re in real trouble!
This is a very short story, but it’s quite fun. It’s essentially a meta-story about wishing stories where there’s always a hidden price to be paid. Besides the meta-commentary, Prodromou’s depiction of genies as genuine preditors is pretty interesting and he even throws in some references to Hofstadter.
A young lady is kidnapped by a mad scientist and his henchman but events take a turn for the unexpected when she turns out to be anything but the stereotypical damsel in distress.
This story just didn’t click with me at all. The subversion of a pulp story cliché has potential but Gwynne Garfinkle doesn’t really do anything of interest to me with it. The only thing of note is a strong feminist message but it’s delivered with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer blow to the face.
When Joe is thrown out of his 3-way marriage by his wife and husband, he loses his visa and instantly becomes an unemployed, undesirable element on the space station. There’s a shuttle leaving in twelve days but unless he spends them in a coma, his air rations will run out before then.
This story explores a lot of issues in a short timespan: polygamy, the rights of divorced parents, vagrancy, prostitution, life on a space station where the very air you breathe is a commodity, … It does so in a succesful manner and ties everything together with a very effective ticking clock plot. And maybe it’s just my imagination but the story also reads to me as an interesting commentary on some of Heinlein’s work.
Bill works in a cyborg manufacturing plant. He helps the cyborgs gain consciousness. Some immediately ‘transcend’ while others do so in fits and starts. It’s not the most popular job as the creepiness of the whole process puts a great psychological strain on Bill. But he copes better than most. However, he’s getting frustrated with one of the cyborgs who’s refusing to transcend.
Besides a bit of American Gladiator style corporate conflict resolution which just felt off to me, this is a great story which actually kept me guessing until the end. The transcension of the robots is a cool idea and its creepiness is explored fully. With the meditations on robot and human consciousness, I definitely got a bit of a Philip K. Dick vibe from the story, which is always a good thing.
When two superpowered Japanese girls tear up his office building in search of the Chessmaster, Ron’s day goes from bad to worse. He might work in Customer Serivce these days, but before that, Ron was none other than AcroCop, a superhero without superpowers. Will he be able to make sure this day ends without too much casualties or property damage?
As I’ve said before, I usually don’t like prose stories about superheroes and this is a good examply why. There’s just nothing interesting about this story which explores a theme that’s already been thoroughly scrutinized in comic books (man vs superman). It adds nothing new or remarkable to the proceedings and doesn’t take advantage of the fact that it’s a prose story for deeper characterization or style. This would’ve made for a rather lackluster comic book which might’ve been saved by some great art, but as just a collection of words, there’s no such crutch to fall back on here.
After breaking up with his girlfriend a few months ago, a guy starts getting special messages on his ATM receipts. Some are prophetic, some plain gibberish and some just good advice. But will he take the advice if it means going up against months of frozen momentum?
I feel like I’ve seen the idea of people receiving special messages from an ATM or other ticketing machine before, but I can’t remember where. Maybe it’s just one of those ideas which are so nifty they instantly seem familiar, like a catchy pop song. Anyway, this is a moving story about the end and possible rebirth of a relationship, about how easy it is to let something slip away and how hard it can be to get it back.
Two kids are playing in the woods when an alien spacecraft suddenly makes a crash landing. But not to worry, one of the kids has satellite TV at home and knows all about Klingons and Predators.
This is a fun, touching story. A lot of the comedy comes from the matter-of-fact way in which all the characters refer to science fiction series (mostly Star Trek) and movies for real-world knowledge about the alien. But there’s also a lot of heart beneath the humour. Unfortunately part of the charm was spoiled for me by all the Scottish dialect in the dialogues. But that’s a matter of personal preference.
