Lawrence Watt-Evans' "Why I Left Harry's All-Night Hamburgers" (short story, parallel universe, free): Got a traveling itch?

This has what some Westerners describe as the "homey" feel of some of the Clifford D Simak's fiction. And nice language.

Story summary.

A diner somewhere at the edge of a small town often receives some very weird crowd late night - travelers from other parallel universes. Their talk overs the years has ignited a traveling itch in the narrator, a teenager employee of the place.

Fact sheet.

First published: Asimov's, July 1987.
Read online at Google cache.
Rating: A.
Winner of Hugo Award 1988.
Nominated for Nebula Award 1987.

Damon Knight's "Catch that Martian" (short story, detective, free): A "Martian" in New York is turning people into ghosts

This could be a satire, on people who don't behave well in public - like speaking loudly in a theater during performance, or eating in a restaurant in a certain way, ...

Whether there is a Martian in the story is a matter of conjecture. Story is told by a police officer. Based on available information, he believes a Martian recently arrived in New York city, is posing as a human, & is finicky about manners of people around him. When he doesn't like someone's behavior, he does something to move him to another dimension, so he won't be bothered anymore! The people moved become like ghosts - they can see us & we can see them, but their voice cannot reach us, they cannot touch any physical object
here, ...

Story is of the policeman working towards catching this suspected "Martian".

Fact sheet.

First published: Galaxy, March 1952.
Download full text from Internet Archive. [via Marooned]
Rating: B.
Related: Stories of Damon Knight.

James H Schmitz's "The Hub: Dangerous Territory" (ed Eric Flint) (collection, free): Annotated table of contents & review

Whole book is online at Baen Books. Includes one novel & nine short stories.

Table of contents (10 stories, best first).

1. [novel] "The Demon Breed" aka "The Tuvela" (A); download; Analog, September/October 1968: Humanity has secret super-human rulers!
2. [novelette] "Grandpa" (A); download; Analog, February 1955: A group of early explorers on a newly opened world is trapped by a local lifeform. Only the ingenuity of our teenage hero can save the group's life...
3. [novelette] "Trouble Tide" (A); download; Analog, May 1965: Detectives burst a smuggling operation.
4. [novella] "The Searcher" (B); download; Analog, February 1966: Human heroes fight off an evil alien.
5. [ss] "Balanced Ecology" (B); download; Analog, March 1965: A jungle world knows how to defend itself against greedy humans.
6. "The Other Likeness" (B); download; Analog, July 1962: A small band of humans thinks redesigned, human-looking, aliens have penetrated the human worlds - to destroy the human civilization. So they're doing what they can to catch the aliens...
7. "Attitudes" (B); download; F&SF, February 1969: Sole survivor of an accidentally destroyed human world has has come to civilization seeking help - he's carrying brain dumps of a lot of his dead compatriots. He wants Federation to supply him with many artificially created human bodies which he will animate with his dead friends. He also wants help colonizing a new world with this crowd. Federation helps, but someone is wondering...
8. "The Machmen" (B); download; Analog, September 1964: "Machmen" are machine-men, some medically-induced transformation that turns them into "Homo
   Superior". Only, it's illegal & unsafe. One of the would-be victims being chased for forcible transformation into machman turns out to be someone more capable than strongmen expected.
9. [novelette] "The Winds of Time" (B); download; Analog, September 1962: A man & a woman are trapped, kidnapped, & ... harassed ... by ... aliens.
10. [ss] "A Nice Day for Screaming" (B); download; Analog, January 1965: One of the early exploration ships in "pseudospace", a kind of parallel space, is chased by ... something.
    

Related: Stories of James H Schmitz.

Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle' "The Mote in God's Eye" (novel, space opera): Star-faring humans blockade "Moties" to their home star system

Fast moving story, & among the most famous novels of the genre. But way too long, consequently has occasional boring stretches.

Story summary.

A clearly alien probe is detected in a far-off human ruled star system. Trapping it yields a dead alien who obviously traveled 35 light years in a solar sail powered slower-than-light craft from a certain star system. So two human warships, one with a lot of civilian crew, go to investigate the system. System is "Mote" & natives are "Moties" to humans.

At the heart of the story is the complex FTL technology the humans use, the peculiar biology of Moties, & the peculiar nature of space near Moties' home world:

1. FTL travel is possible only between "Alderson Points", small regions of space near star systems. Some stars have no such point, others have more than one. Travel between points is instantaneous; elsewhere it slower than light.  Each point leads to a specific pre-determined point in another system.
2. Moties are specialized at birth: "Masters" give orders, "Engineers" are good at tinkering with gadgets, "Mediators" specialize in communications, ... And while two individuals of different sexes must mate to produce an offspring, each individual spends part of its life as female & part as male, periodically switching between the two. And while female, it must quickly become pregnant, or the internal hormonal imbalances will kill it. This means practically uncontrollable birth rate. Which leads to a cyclical civilization: rise, fall to primitive level, rise, ... Moties are close to the point where fall must soon occur when humans arrive.
3. Alderson point after the first jump from Moties home system lies in the corona of a star. Human ships can survive here because of a certain shield; unshielded, you get instantly cooked.

Contact is peaceful, with both sides apparently very open, & obviously hiding a lot. Lot of action. Humans will return with three alien ambassadors & still apparently friendly aliens, but only after violently losing one of the ships. Post return analysis will show Moties as a potential serious threat, so human warships will be placed to permanently guard the Anderson Point of first jump off Motie homeworld; if Moties ever discover FTL & don't get cooked in the star's corona where they'll emerge, human warships will destroy them.

Notes.

1. Some reviewers classify it as a first contact story. To me, it read more as space opera than first contact.
2. Moties of different castes - functions - have differently colored fur. I wonder if some of the colors reflect one of the author's personal prejudices: Whites on top, then White+Browns, then Browns.

See also.

1. L Sprague de Camp's "Finished" (download scans as part of a larger package): While Mote ends with a total blockade as the solution to alien threat lest they acquire human technology, Finished offers a glimpse of what can happen after a technology blockade is imposed.

Fact sheet.

First published: 1974.
Rating: A.
Related: Stories of Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle.

BSFA Awards 2011: Short fiction nominees

Official announcement came out a few days back. In my experience with recent year's nominees, BSFA nominees tend to be somewhat more interesting then Nebula nominees.

All nominees are online. All originally published in UK during 2011.

List below is in order of my preference - best first, unread last. Links on author or publisher fetch more matching fiction. My rating is in brackets. Where I have a separate post on a story, link on title goes there.

1. [ss] China Mieville's "Covehithe" (C); download; The Guardian, 22 April 2011: If the story has a head or tail, I cannot make it out.
   
   Oil rigs lost in the seas due to disasters are mysteriously coming alive, walking at ocean's surface, sometimes visiting coastal places & doing mindless destruction, laying "eggs" & having baby rigs, ...
2. Nina Allan's "The Silver Wind"; download; Interzone 233: Not read.
3. Paul Cornell's "The Copenhagen Interpretation"; download; Asimov's, July 2011: Not read.
4. Kameron Hurley's "Afterbirth"; download; author’s own website: Not read.
5. Al Robertson's "Of Dawn"; download; Interzone 235: Not read.

[via SF Signal]

Related.

1. Past nominees & winners.
2. My "Best of 2011" list.
3. Fiction originally published during 2011.

3 stories

None particularly strong. I liked "The Beautiful People" best among this lot.

1. Robert Bloch's "The Beautiful People" (B); download; Best-Seller Mystery Magazine, July 1960; non-genre: An "ugly" but rich woman with serious inferiority complex contrives to get a handsome playboy & childhood love in marriage. But the man cannot stop looking at other women, eventually bringing in the wife's wrath...
   
   A lot of story text is devoted to the beauty of a human face, & social advantage or disadvantage it brings.
   
   Among the stories in the classics section of Ellen Datlow's Sci Fiction.
2. [ss] L Sprague de Camp's "The Reluctant Shaman" (B); Thrilling Wonder Stories, April 1947; humor: Some "stone throwing" sprites normally found near some native American tribes are "helping" a businessman & his neighbors. Chaos reins.
   
   Collected in: "The Best of L Sprague de Camp".
3. [novelette] Seth Dickinson's "The Immaculate Conception of Private Ritter" (B); download; Asimov's web site (2012?): A human army unit, on a genocide mission to other human inhabited worlds, comprises of confused zombies. This is the story of one of the zombies, Private Keshaun Ritter, learning some of her personal history.

L Sprague de Camp's "Nothing in the Rules" (novelette, humor): What if mermaids were allowed in women's swimming competitions?

While a light story, I got a feeling it's dragging a bit near end.

Story summary.

Item: Merfolk exist. Particularly near Cyprus.

Item: Since they live in the ocean, their hairs get wet. So they need to sit on rocks for a while to dry them! Won't it be wonderful if they had human bathing caps, so their hair remains dry?

That's how, Miss Delfoiros, the mermaid charged with procuring 10,000 bathing caps for merfolk, ended up in the New York City. In exchange for helping her get the caps, Herbert Laird, a swimming coach, will secure her participation in a forthcoming women's swimming competition; he wants to put Louis Connaught, his arch rival competitor coach, down in his place.

Fun ensues. Later, a (female) sea lion will also get added to the melee!

Collected in.

1. "The Best of L Sprague de Camp".

Fact sheet.

First published: Unknown, July 1939.
Rating: B.
Related: Stories of L Sprague de Camp.