Frederik Pohl's "The Kindly Isle" (short story, biological weapons, free)

A government agency in cold war era US is building biological weapons for possible use against Russians. One of its researchers has developed a virus that affects a part of the brain that's supposed to drive the infected person nuts, only the effect is a bit different - it makes the infected person irritable & nasty. On the day of his triumph, the scientist vanishes with all the data - so the government no longer has the weapon.

Years later, a colleague sights the scientist on an idle isle, & suspects he has been testing the virus for selling to highest bidder. But subsequent investigation with throw up a completely different direction of his research...

Fact sheet.

First published: Asimov's, November 1984.
Download full text from Baen eBooks.
Rating: A.
Related: Stories of Frederik Pohl.

John Varley's "Air Raid" (short story, doomsday, free)

I found it mostly uninteresting to wade through, & you will notice that author has consciously made it difficult for you to comprehend what is going on. But nice positive ending.

Story summary.

In a future where a deadly airborne virus has made earth uninhabitable & the few survivors immune to it have a highly withered body. But a group of these men of the future, with advanced technology including time travel, seem to be up to something nasty.

Much of the story appears to be body snatching raid of an airplane in the past, an airplane about to crash. But their intentions are honorable, as we'll discover in the end...

Fact sheet.

First published: Asimov's, Spring 1977.

Download full text from Baen eBooks.

This story was later expanded into a novel, a screenplay, & a movie, all titled "Millenium".

This story has also been published under the pseudonym Herb Boehm.
Rating: B.

Nominated for Hugo Award 1978 in short story category.
Nominated for Nebula Award 1978 (or was it 1977) in short story category.

Related: : Stories of John Varley.

Barry B Longyear's "Enemy Mine" (novella): They're only different, not evil!

This often well regarded & widely anthologized story didn't work as well for me. It does have its moments, however.

Story is of two fighter pilots from a space war between humans & Dracs - one of each crash on a harsh uninhabited world, & are thus stranded. Initial hate soon gives way to friendship that will outlast even the death of one of them, even after their rescue at the end of war & the continuing mutual antagonism of two societies even in peacetime...

Notes.

* This story "seems likely to have a source from a late 1960s screenplay, this time the 1968 John Boorman film Hell in the Pacific, which starred Lee Marvin and Toshirô Mifune as two WW2 pilots, one American and one Japanese, crashed on a Pacific island, who have to co-operate to survive."

Fact sheet.

First published: Asimov's, September 1979.
[via Bill Garthright @ClassicScienceFiction]
Rating: B. 
Winner of Hugo award 1980 in novella category.
Winner of Nebula award 1979 in novella category.
Movie of the same titled, directed by Wolfgang Petersen, is based on this story.

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.

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.

Terry Bisson's "Bears Discover Fire" (short story, non-genre, free)

I don't really get what makes this story so famous. May be it touches some US specific cord, & has local appeal there.

It's not a bad story, though. A non-genre story about the life of a family with dying mother, with some interesting observations.

There is an attempt to make the clearly non-genre story genre that didn't really work for me. We're told in parts of US countryside, bears have discovered the secret of fire, & make campfires at night.

Fact sheet.

First published: Asimov's, August 1990.
Read full text at Scribd.
Rating: B.
Winner of 1991 Hugo Award in short story category.
Winner of 1990 Nebula Award in short story category.
Related: Stories of Terry Bisson.

Dominica Phetteplace's "The Cult of Whale Worship" (short story, genetic engg, free): Engineering a bug to help conserves whales

A Japaneses genetics researcher gangs up with two whale conservationists to design a very unusual parasite...

Fact sheet.

First published: Asimov's, October/November 2011.
Download full text from publisher's site. [via SF Signal]
Rating: A.
Added to my "best of 2011" list.

Allen M Steele's "The Emperor of Mars" (novelette, free): A man copes with tragedy by escaping into fantasy

It's occasionally humorous & generally quite readable story of young man on a Martian colony who's had to face extreme loss back on earth. He will escape into Martian science fiction & get hallucinations where he's the Emperor of a declining martian empire...

Fact sheet.

First published: Asimov's, June 2010.
Download full text from author's site.
Rating: B.
Nominated for Hugo Award 2011 in novelette category.

Geoffrey A Landis' "The Sultan of the Clouds" (novella, adventure, free): Ordinary man foils genocide conspiracy

Actually, you've probably read this story before; it's just umpteenth retelling of the same story. Interesting thing is: it's one of the few Nebula nominees this year in novella category that I could actually finish. There is constant action, so no boredom.

Story summary.

Dr Leah Hamakawa & David Tinkerman, because of their experience studying Martian ecology, are invited by Carlos Fernando, the heir who will own practically all of the 1000s of orbiting human habitats of Venus. Only, several habitats don't owe him allegiance, & he's hatching a genocide conspiracy that David will foil.

Fact sheet.

First published: Asimov's, September 2010.
Download full text from author's site.
Rating: B.
Nominated for Nebula Award 2010 in novella category.

Felicity Shoulders' "Conditional Love" (short story, genetic engineering, free)

This one is for readers who like emotional stories.

It's set in a hospital that cares for abandoned children. Abandoned by their parents because of their physical deformities. Physical deformities introduced in the first place by parents themselves, by genetic modifications of the unborn to create "perfect" kids - an illegal process that sometimes has horrific side effects.

Fact sheet.

First published: Asimov's, January 2010.
Download full text/audio from author's site.
Rating: B.
Nominated for Nebula Award 2010 in short story category.

Asimov's & Analog Readers' Poll winners for fiction originally published during 2009

SF Signal has the list, plus links to older winners at Locus: Asimov's, Analog.

Related: Fiction from Asimov's, Analog/Astounding, 2009, my "best of 2009" list.

RIP: George H Scithers (1929-2010) - Founding editor of Asimov's

Link.

Related: Fiction from Asimov's.

Mike Resnick's "The Bride of Frankenstein" (short story, fanfic, free): Retelling Mary Shelly's "Frankenstein" from an alternate perspective

What if Victor Frankenstein created his "creature"

1. only a few decades back (at a time when "Gone With the Wind ... is making so much money in the bookstores" - would that be early- or, may be, mid-twentieth century?),
   
2. after returning from his college,
   
3. after getting married,

& if Victor himself wasn't totally irresponsible, as in the original?

A funny retelling from the perspective of Victor's wife. And the creature here is about to actually get a mate.

Fact sheet.

First published: Asimov's, December 2009.
Download full text from publisher's site.
Rating: B.
Nominated for Hugo Award 2010 in short story category.
Related: Stories of Mike Resnick, Mary Shelley.

Tony Daniel's "A Dry, Quiet War" (novelette, time travel, free)

Basically a simple story. Some war deserters are terrorizing a town. A real war hero, originally from the town, returns. He watches their terror quietly, disinterestedly ... till they go after his girl. Of course, the goons stand no chance against the hero.

But the story is told in an utterly contrived way. Enormous amount of meaningless jargon. Town in question is a human colony in some world away from Sol. War in question is the one fought at the end of time billions of years hence, & the actors involved were not only from different galaxies but from different dimensions as well!

Collected in.

1. Gardner Dozois (Ed)'s "Best of the Best: 20 Years of the Year's Best Science Fiction".
   

Fact sheet.

First published: Asimov's, June 1996.
Download full text from Infinity Plus.
Rating: B.

Free fiction: Asimov's Nebula Award 2009 nominees

Links near top right of their home page. For most stories, text as well as MP3 audio is online.

Related: Fiction from Asimov's.

Nancy Kress' "Exegesis" (flash fiction, humor, free): How language evolves...

Best single piece I've seen from author so far.

Story summary.

A harmless sentence - "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn.", from Margaret
Mitchell's novel Gone With the Wind, looked at every 100 years from 1950 to 2850.

Collected in.

1. David Hartwell & Kathryn Cramer (eds)' "Year's Best SF 15" (2010).

Fact sheet.

First published: Asimov's, April/May 2009.
Download full text.
Rating: A.
Added to my "best of 2009" list.
Related: Stories of Nancy Kress; fiction about language & communications.

Mary Rosenblum's "The Egg Man" (novelette, dystopia)

This will likely make more sense to readers from US & Mexico than elsewhere; it's at least partially about their countries' relations, particularly as they relate to immigration.

A future US that is no longer a big power, with parts of the country in anarchy & outside of national administration. A Mexican charity is providing medical help to some of these anarchies. Story is of such a medical help trip of a man named Zipakna, a representative of charity, to one of these anarchies - a trip that later turns into a horrific adventure.

Collected in.

1. David Hartwell & Kathryn Cramer (Ed)'s "Year's Best SF 14" (2009).

Fact sheet.

First published: Asimov's, February 2008.
Rating: B.

Kathleen Ann Goonan's "Memory Dog" (novelette)

A cocktail of a story of a personal loss combined with rebellion against a repressive government. With a very large dose of jargon & magical inventions.

Title comes from the transplantation of a man's brain into a female dog, so he can stay close to his wife who no longer wants him - it was his carelessness as babysitter that let their toddler walk out the door & get killed. Since dog's brain cage doesn't have space enough, man's brain is distributed throughout the cells of the body of the dog!

In addition, there is a "removable by operation" device grafted into the body of this dog that contains memories of his personal loss after the death of the child. It's a magical memory device used elsewhere in the story too - break open the bubble containing it, & the memory spreads through the world & is automatically (almost telepathically) received by everyone!

Collected in.

1. David Hartwell & Kathryn Cramer (Ed)'s "Year's Best SF 14" (2009).

Fact sheet.

First published: Asimov's, April/May 2008.
Rating: C.

Average age of Analog & Asimov's subscribers = 59 years!

As on 25 June 2009, according to Direct Media, Inc. [via James Nicoll]

John Varley's "Press Enter _" (novella, AI): Lifestyle of a computer hacker & criminal

Varley seems to specialize in horror that is accessible to people who don't have a taste for the gory! How many other authors can write almost fun stories that are clearly horror?

Caution: This story has some sex scenes.

Story summary.

Charles Kluge, a recluse, appears to have committed suicide & left his property to Victor Apfel, a neighbor (& the narrator) he barely knew. Forensic investigation of the vast computer installations at his home will reveal the lifestyle of a super-programmer & a super-criminal.

Through the investigation, we'll see two more apparent suicides: of Detective Osborne, the cop investigating the case, & Lisa Foo, the woman doing the forensic investigation of Charles' machines & software. And Victor will be left an absolutely frightened & broken man.

You see, while having his hacking fun, Charles had stumbled upon a piece of software running on NSA's computers. We never learn the true nature of this software beast, but get enough indications that it's an AI run amok, that it exists without the knowledge of NSA, & that it is the real murderer of the 3!

Fact sheet.

First published: Asimov's, May 1984.
Rating: A.
Winner of Hugo Award 1985 in novella category.
Nominated for Nebula Award 1984 in novella category.
Related: Stories of John Varley.