Tom Godwin's "The Cold Equations & Other Stories" (ed Eric Flint) (collection, free): Annotated table of contents & review

Entire collection is online at Baen CD. One story in this online version, "The Gulf Between", has been extensively edited by Eric Flint because it "was very dated". I personally prefer originals, even if dated; download link for this story below, therefore, goes to an unedited copy elsewhere.

Table of contents (9 stories, best first, unread last).

If I have a separate post on a story, link on title goes there. Links on publisher or year fetch more matching fiction. My rating is in brackets.

1. [novelette] "The Cold Equations" (A); download; Astounding, August 1954: An innocent girl is to be executed due to apathy of administration (according to author, due to nature's laws, but that's now how it comes across in the story). Intensely emotional.
2. [novel] "The Survivors" aka "Space Prison" (A); download; 1958; survival: Never give up hope.
3. [novelette] "--And Devious the Line of Duty" (A); download; Analog, December 1962; diplomacy: A young man gets his heart broken as part of his work!
4. [novelette] "No Species Alone" (A); download; Universe Science Fiction, November 1954: Snakes are afraid of cats!
5. [novelette] "Empathy" (A); download; Fantastic Science Fiction Stories, October 1959: Actions speak louder than words.
6. [novella] "Mother of Invention" (B); download; Astounding, December 1953; problem solving: Marooned space explorers find a way to end their predicament.
7. [ss] "Brain Teaser" (B); download; If, October 1956: Solving an impossible physics problem!
8. [novella] "The Gulf Between" (B); download; Astounding, October 1953: Man & machine (AI) will forever think differently.
9. [ss] "The Harvest" (C); download; Venture Science Fiction, July 1957: Something I cannot make out head or tail of.
   
   Biblical(?) "angels" are carnivorous energy beings living outside earth's atmosphere, & they feed of "fralings" - (probably) souls of people who've died on surface? Something.

Fact sheet.

First published: 2003.
Related: Stories of Tom Godwin.

* Cory Doctorow's "Truncat" (short story)

Sequel to novel "Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom". Jargon filled utopia of a future world where people live very long; can go to sleep for long in a kind of stasis; can backup the contents of their brain so even in the worst accident, the old backup can be downloaded into their clone to ensure continued existence. And most importantly, young people share these brain backups over a kind of file sharing network (usually without owner's consent), & get a kind of psychological boost out of it! This sharing is supposed to be fun & hep.

Fact sheet.

First published: salon.com, August 2003.
Rating: C
Download full text.

Note: Why is this post so short?

Kage Baker's "The Empress of Mars": A woman of grit refuses to be cowed down by powerful establishment

If it were not set on Mars, I would have called this novella length story non-genre.

I found the first quarter a bit tedious (took me nearly a week); rest was single sitting thing. But there is nothing really outstanding about it; it's one of those "ok while you read it" stories.

Full text of this story is available online.

Story summary.

British Empire is the dominant colonizer of Mars - through the "British Arean Company" (BAC); people from Celtic Federation are low cost labor imported when needed by BAC, & dumped when their job is done. Heroine comes from the later group.

Mary Griffith, with a "doctorate in xenobotany", is a woman with many kids. She is hired by BAC for work on Mars - "to discover about useful lichens on Mars". She runs out of her usefulness in 5 years, & is fired - with no money to buy a passage back to earth. As part of severance package, she receives a small patch of land in Celtic areas - kind of slums of the colony. This Mars appears to have a lot of fertile land; only she has got the worst of it.

To make a living, she begins brewing beer & sets up a restaurant. "Empress" of title is the name of this restaurant.

When going through a particularly bad patch, she happens to dig out a big & very rare "red diamond" from her land! This will make her very rich.

As the news spreads, she has gold diggers raiding her land & ruining things. And finally the lawyer of BAC visits, claiming small print of her land bequeathal contract that lets BAC take back the land when it pleases, & that she is now under notice to vacate in 30 days!

End is sort of indeterminate where she has decided to fight off the claim of BAC in courts.

Fact sheet.

"The Empress of Mars", short story, review
First published: Asimov's Science Fiction, July 2003.
Rating: B
Nominated for Hugo Award 2004 in novella category.
Nominated for Nebula Award 2003 in novella category.

David Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer (Ed)'s "Year's Best SF 8": Volume 8 of annual anthology series, 23 stories

Stories are ordered by quality, best first. Where I have read the story, my rating follows title, in brackets, followed by a very brief summary. Where I have posted a proper review of story, link on title takes you there.

Some of the stories have been made available online for free by publishers or authors. Where I am aware of this, I provide a link either here or in review article.

Stories collected were each published during the year 2002.

1. Bruce Sterling's "In Paradise"; F&SF: Not read.
   
2. * Michael Swanwick's "Slow Life"; Analog, online: Not read.
3. * Eleanor Arnason's "Knapsack Poems"; Asimov's, online: Not read.
4. Geoffrey A Landis' "At Dorado"; Asimov's: Not read.
5. Robert Reed's "Coelacanths"; F&SF: Not read.
6. Ken Wharton's "Flight Correction"; Analog: Not read.
7. Robert Sheckley's "Shoes"; F&SF: Not read.
8. Charles Sheffield's "The Diamond Drill"; Analog: Not read.
9. * Ursula K Le Guin's "The Seasons of the Ansarac"; The Infinite Matrix, online: Not read.
10. Richard Chwedyk's "A Few Kind Words for A E Van Vogt"; Tales of the Unanticipated: This is poetry, not a story. Not read.
11. * Charles Stross's "Halo"; Asimov's, online: Not read.
12. * Terry Bisson's "I Saw the Light"; scifi.com, online: Not read.
13. A M Dellamonica's "A Slow Day at the Gallery"; Asimov's: Not read.
14. Paul Di Filippo's "Ailoura": Not read.
15. * J R Dunn's "The Names of All the Spirits"; scifi.com, online: Not read.
16. Carol Emshwiller's "Grandma"; F&SF: Not read.
17. Neal Asher's "Snow in the Desert": Not read.
18. * Greg Egan's "Singleton"; Interzone, online: Not read.
19. Robert Onopa's "Geropods"; F&SF: Not read.
20. Jack Williamson's "Afterlife"; F&SF: Not read.
21. Gene Wolfe's "Shields of Mars": Not read.
22. Nancy Kress's "Patent Infringement"; Asimov's: Not read.
23. Michael Moorcock's "Lost Sorceress of the Silent Citadel": Not read.

First published: 2003
See also: Entire anthology series.

Gardner Dozois (Ed)'s "The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twentieth Annual Collection" (2003): anthology with 25 stories

Note: 2008 edition (Vol 25) annotated ToC - in case you mistakenly landed at this page.
--

Contents.
In brackets, following story title, are my ratings.

1. "Breathmoss" (C) by Ian R MacLeod. I had read it a long time back. A rather long, contrived, & unremarkable tale on some planet with mostly women, very few men. An a young puberty age girl learning the ways of the world. She eventually meets her own old self from future, I think.
   
2. "The Most Famous Little Girl in the World" by Nancy Kress.
   
3. "The Passenger" (B) by Paul McAuley. I remember having read it a long time back. Some space farers "rescue" a little girl from an apparently abandoned ship with all dead, & she turns out to be something else (an alien or something, I don't quite recall).
   
4. "The Political Officer" (B) by Charles Coleman Finley. Read it long back. Some kind of intrigue aboard a spaceship.
   
5. "Lambing Season" by Molly Gloss.
   
6. "Coelacanths" by Robert Reed.
   
7. "Presence" by Maureen F McHugh.
   
8. "Halo" by Charles Stress.
   
9. "In Paradise" by Bruce Sterling.
   
10. "The Old Cosmonaut and the Construction Worker Dream of Mars" by Ian McDonald.
    
11. "Stories for Men" by John Kessel.
    
12. "To Become a Warrior" by Chris Beckett.
    
13. "The Clear Blue Seas of Luna" by Gregory Benford.
    
14. "VAO" (A) by Geoff Ryman. I read this recently, & might write a proper review a few days down. A harassed computer programmer writes a zombie terrorist creation virus. Well written in a rather light vein. Set in an old age home, with much sympathetic talk about caring for the old.
    
15. "Winters are Hard" by Steven Popkes.
    
16. "At the Money" by Richard Wadholm.
    
17. "Agent Provocateur" by Alexander Irvine.
    
18. "Singleton" by Greg Egan.
    
19. "Slow Life" by Michael Swanwick.
    
20. "A Flock of Birds" by James Van Pelt.
    
21. "The Potter of Bones" by Eleanor Arnason.
    
22. "The Whisper of Disks" (B) by John Meaney. Story of a prodigious girl that grows to be a very old woman, invents many things - among them moving via other dimensions to other stars, & gets rich by companies she founds. A second parallel thread of her ancestors runs in 18th or 19th century England, & has palace intrigue I could not quite relate to; may be those familiar with recent history of England will be able to be happy with this tangent thread.
    
23. "The Hotel at Harlan's Landing" (A) by Kage Baker. A women talks of good old days in early 19th century in a small town on Pacific coast of US, & her memories of town's modernization. Great prose, but not much sf.
    
24. "The Millennium Party" (C) by Walter Jon Williams. The really short story is of a happy world where you live very long, meet your spouse once a year for dinner & don't give full attention even then, & can change your brains to shut off irrelevant memories! Reminded me of Issac Asimov's Solarians.
    
25. "Turquoise Days" (B) by Alastair Reynolds. A rather complex & long cocktail of Asimov's "Nemesis", Clarke's "The Songs of Distant Earth", & Yann Martel's "Life of Pi".
    

Fact sheet.
Editor: Gardner Dozois
First published: 2003
Publication history & other information.
See also: Gardner Dozois's "Year's Best" & "Best of Best" anthology series.