C L Moore's "Werewoman" (novelette, free)

Among the most boring of author's Northwest Smith series; I completed it only because it is C L Moore.

Northwest Smith, unarmed, hurt, & being chased by unnamed adversaries, walks into the cursed ruins of a long dead city, & will free it from its curse.

Fact sheet.

First published: Leaves #2, Winter 1938.
Download full text from AlfaLib.
Rating: C.
Nominated for Retro Hugo Awards 1939 in novelette category.
Related: Stories of C L Moore.

Martin Gardner's "Thang" (flash fiction, free): Big fish eats smaller one; & is food to bigger one

This is a very minor story, though apparently a well known one.

A giant, cosmic scale creature called Thang eats up earth for breakfast! And then gets eaten up by something even bigger.

Collected in.

1. Everett F Bleiler & T E Dikty (eds)' "The Best Science Fiction Stories: 1949".

Fact sheet.

First published: 1948. ("for his college literary magazine").
Download full text.
Rating: C.

Stories from Nature magazine, August 2013 issues

5 stories, all flash fiction length, all online. Only one that somewhat held my interest was Hecht's.

List below is in order of my preference, best first. Links on author fetch more fiction by author.

1. 29 August: Jeff Hecht's "The speed of dark energy" (B); download: A physicist has discovered that dark energy moves faster than light. And landed a job that promises faster execution of automated trades in the stock market. Only there is a minor glitch about its practicality...
2. 22 August: Marko Jankovic's "Alone" (B); download: Having perfected a robot that thinks it is human, the CEO of the company making it is getting the feeling he's the only human among his automaton-like colleagues.
3. 8 August: Milo James Fowler's "One meal a day" (B); download: There's a bit of "To Serve Man" (download as part of a larger package) here, though the story had a far lesser impact than that classic.
   
   A shapeshifting alien is on earth, looking for another of his species - a run away price who's believed to be hiding here.
4. 15 August: Grace Tang's "Time heals all wounds" (C); download: A man experiencing hallucinations is given a new brain surgery that results in an unexpected side effect - time seriously slows down for the patient whenever he is experiencing great emotion!
5. 1 August: Lee Hallison's "The best of us" (C); download: Human scavengers are hunting for usable stuff over an earth gone dead & dangerous, & with most people recently dead. No cause is given for the apocalypse; story appears to be about the toughness & human emotions among the survivors. 

Related: Stories from Nature magazine.

A E van Vogt & E Mayne Hull's "The Flight That Failed" aka "Rebirth: Earth" (as by E M Hull) (short story, weird, free): Making a future happen where Germany loses in WWII

This is a crazy story & I didn't really want to write this post, but have you ever heard of a "moon ray time reflector machine"?

Story summary.

Pilot of secret flight of a US military plane carrying some extremely valuable, but unspecified, cargo & some military, technical & diplomatic personnel, to London during WWII discovers a stowaway, presumed a German spy.

All attempts to arrest & confine him fail in a bizarre way. He claims to be an illusion, projected there by a "moon ray time reflector machine" from an alternate future in which Germany is defeated in this war. And nobody believes him when he tells them the success of this flight is crucial to the future where US wins, & this flight is doomed unless they let the stranger man one of the machine guns of the plane in a German attack to come in a few minutes...

Fact sheet.

First published: Astounding, December 1942.
Download full text as part of the scans of the magazine it originally appeared in.
Rating: C.
Among the stories from Astounding/Analog issues edited by John Campbell.
Related: Stories of A E van Vogt.

Stories from "Nature" magazine, June 2013 issues

Four stories, all flash fiction length, all online. While I really liked only the first one, each of the first 3 have curious ideas.

List below is in order of my preference - best first. If I have a separate post on a story, link on story title goes there.

1. 20 June: John Grant's "Buzz off" (A); download; humor: Helpful aliens are baffled by human hostility...
2. 27 June: Euan Nisbet's "Probability-1: termination" (B); download; alternate history: An unusual method to change the present...
   
   Story itself didn't really interest me - it's alternate history of the world, with a lot of famous name throwing - many of which I'm not familiar with. Only the method of changing now interested me.
3. 6 June: Tony Ballantyne's "Rondo code" (B); download: Programming computers via music rather than text...
4. 13 June: Jessica May Lin's "Mortar flowers" (C); download: A man in a war ravaged town is playing "Cement Florist", decorating the scars created by bombs at public places.

Related: Fiction from Nature; fiction originally published in 2013.

Stories from "Nature" magazine, August 2012 issues

5 stories of flash fiction length, all online. I didn't find anything really noteworthy here, though I liked the first two (Meikle's & Morris') better then the rest.

1. 30 August: William Meikle's "Growth" (B); download: When the sun dimmed suddenly, food rather than global warming was the problem. A man experimenting with a fast growing fungus that liked cold dark places suddenly was in high demand. Will he be a savior of the the world?
2. 23 August: Freya Morris' "The write rules" (B); download: Thought police in a world of universal connectivity via implants, where all thoughts are online, & are monitored & censored by government. And writing on paper - thoughts that cannot be monitored - is sedition.
3. 16 August: Sue Lange's "Tige is the man" (B); download: A party in a smart house of future. Where mind reading & mind-networking is the norm. Crowd at the party is playing a dare game where each person downs his "shield" so everybody can see what he really thinks of them.
4. 9 August: Luc Reid's "Ways to enjoy Nutrient Blend 14" (C); download: Description of a world where everyone uses augmented reality gadgets. I don't really understand how people go about safely in a world where there senses don't tell them about the environment - a small room looks bigger, so how come you don't bump into a wall? 
5. 2 August: Polenth Blake's "Dead meat" (C); download: Look it up only if you have a taste in gory stuff. A woman has been building art gallries out of meat, animal & human - animate & with real blood that keeps oozing out!

Related: Stories from Nature magazine.

Rudy Rucker & Bruce Sterling's "Loco" (short story, weird physics, free)

Look this up only if you're into the really weird - with a lot of jargon. The only redeeming part I saw here, & the reason I'm writing this post, is a kind of robot I've not seen in fiction before - "folded" out of special flexible sheet material, & capable of shape shifting (automatic re-folding) based on application.

Fact sheet.

First published: Tor.com, 20 June 2012.
Download full text from publisher's site.
Rating: C.
Related: Stories of Rudy Rucker, Bruce Sterling.

Eric Frank Russell's "Major Ingredients" (ed Rick Katze) (collection): Annotated table of contents & review

Where I have a separate post on a story, link on story title goes there. Where I am aware of an online copy, I include download links too. My rating appears in brackets.

Table of contents (30 stories, best first, unread last).

1. [ss] "Allamagoosa" (A); download; Astounding, May 1955; humor: Data fudging can have unforeseen consequences!
   
   Winner of Hugo award 1955 in short story category.
2. [novella] "The Ultimate Invader" (A); Planet Stories, January 1953; space opera: Mythical intergalactic super-cops are out to enforce new war-free rules for space lanes! 
3. [novelette] "Dear Devil" (A); download scans as part of a larger package; Other Worlds, May 1950; uplift: Humanity rises from post-nuclear-war apocalypse - with some external help.
4. [novella] "And Then There Were None" (A); download; Astounding, June 1951: A gang of imperialists is frustrated by a planetful of Gandhian natives.
   
   Later included as half of 1962 fix-up novel "The Great Explosion".
5. [novelette] "The Waitabits" (A); Astounding, July 1955: Different people run their lives at different pace. What happens when faster ones try to bring up the slower ones to their pace?
6. [novelette] "Late Night Final" (A); Astounding, December 1948: A variant of "And Then There Were None", but with a very different ending.
7. [novelette] "The Army Comes to Venus" (A); download as part of a larger package; Nebula Science Fiction, December 1953: Persistence pays. 
8. [ss] "Jay Score" (A); Astounding, May 1941; thriller: A passenger ship on earth to Venus voyage is hit by a meteor, & is now headed for Sun!
9. [novelette] "A Little Oil" (B); Galaxy, October 1952: Even precision machinery needs a bit of lubricating!
10. [ss] "U-Turn" [as by Duncan H Munro] (B); Astounding, April 1950: State helps a bored man commit "suicide"... 
11. [ss] "Diabologic" (B); Astounding, March 1955; humor: The art of driving other people nuts! And using it as a political strategy!
12. [novella] "Hobbyist" (B); Astounding, September 1947: A stranded spaceman on an alien planet hasn't realized he's actually met god!
13. [ss] "Top Secret" (B); Astounding, August 1956; science fiction, humor: Fun with data-corrupting communications channels!
14. [ss] "I Am Nothing" (B); Astounding, July 1952: A ruthless dictator has a change of heart...
15. [ss] "Tieline" [as by Duncan H Munro] (B); Astounding, July 1955; science fiction: Sole man on an entire planet that serves as a space lighthouse is very lonely.
16. [ss] "Into Your Tent I'll Creep" (C); Astounding, September 1957: Humans have long been slaves of a master race unknown to them. And now this master race has used humans to spawn itself as masters of an alien race too - aliens that are friendly to humans.
17. [novelette] "Basic Right"; Astounding, April 1958: Not read.
18. [ss] "Fast Falls the Eventide"; Astounding, May 1952: Not read.
19. [ss] "Homo Saps"; Astounding, December 1941: Not read.
20. [novelette] "Last Blast"; Astounding, November 1952: Not read.
21. [ss] "Meeting on Kangshan"; If, March 1965: Not read.
22. [novella] "Metamorphosite"; Astounding, December 1946: Not read.
23. [ss] "Minor Ingredients"; Astounding, March 1956: Not read.
24. [ss] "Now Inhale"; Astounding, April 1959: Not read.
25. [novella] "Nuisance Value"; Astounding, January 1957: Not read.
26. [ss] "Panic Button"; Astounding, November 1959: Not read.
27. [novelette] "Plus X"; Astounding, June 1956: Not read.
    
    I have, however, read its 1959 novelization - "Next of Kin"; very funny.
28. [novelette] "Study in Still Life"; Astounding, January 1959: Not read.
29. [ss] "The Timid Tiger"; Astounding, February 1947: Not read.
30. [novelette] "The Undecided": Astounding, April 1949: Not read.

Fact sheet.

First published: 2000.
Related: Stories of Eric Frank Russell (annotated list).

Lester del Rey (ed)'s "The Best of John W Campbell" (collection): Annotated table of contents & review

"Who Goes There?" has been filmed more than once & is among his best known stories. And I loved "Forgetfulness". "Twilight" is widely anthologized, but didn't work for me; to me it sounded like a bad imitation of some themes from H G Wells' "The Time Machine". "Cloak of Aesir" is also a well known story, but it works best when read after "Out of the Night"; the two actually form one complete story. "The Last Evolution" is the oldest story I've read on the idea of singularity. "Blindness" is now very dated. "The Invaders" & "Rebellion" also need to be read together & in sequence; they too together form a single complete story.

ToC below is in order of my preference, best first (4 commented stories at the end of list are where I need to refer to my notes; will come back on them later). My rating is in brackets. Links on publisher or year fetches more matching fiction. Where I'm aware of an online copy, I include that link too.

1. [novella] "Who Goes There?" (A); download; Astounding, August 1938: When the curious opened the bottle, & let the jinn out...
2. [novelette] "Forgetfulness" (as by Don A Stuart) (A); Astounding, June 1937: Technological progress involves forgetting old knowledge.
3. [ss] "The Machine" (as by Don A Stuart) (B); Astounding, February 1935: North is the best!
4. [ss] "Elimination" (B); Astounding, May 1936: Two men build a "chronoscope" that lets you see, on a TV screen, all places & times in future or past. The inventors begin looking at their own possible futures, & the view is very ugly...
5. [ss] "Blindness" (B); Astounding, March 1935: A great inventor spends substantial time in close proximity to sun, studying it to discover the secret of "atomic power" - an activity that succeeded but blinded him. Ironic ending as another of his earlier inventions, an alloy called "thermlectrium", has outdated the need for atomic power in the meantime.
6. [ss] "The Last Evolution" (C); download; Amazing Stories, August 1932: Probably among the earliest stories about singularity, decades before the term was coined.
7. [ss] "Twilight"; Astounding, November 1934: Description of the last days of human race, as narrated by a time traveler to future...
8. [ss] "The Invaders"; Astounding, June 1935.
9. [novelette] "Rebellion"; Astounding, August 1935.
10. [novelette] "Out of the Night"; Astounding, October 1937.
11. [novelette] "Cloak of Aesir"; Astounding, March 1939.

Fact sheet.

First published: 1976.
Related: Stories of John Campbell; Fiction from 1930s.

Fiction from "Nature" magazine, January 2012 issues

Four stories, all flash fiction length, all online. I found only one worthwhile - Locke's; I didn't even get the point of last two stories ("Rock 'n' roll aliens", & "The driver"). List below is in order of my preference, best first.

1. 19 January: Clayton Locke's "A game of self-deceit" (B); download: In a world where cloning, growing clone embyos fast in a lab, & imprinting the clone with master's braindump is common, a man nearly dies in accident but authorities resurrected his clone prematurely - clone that now has all legal rights to identity, including property, education & wife! But the master has a plan to take back his life...
2. 5 January: Ian Randal Strock's "1-9-4-blue-3-7-2-6-gamma-tetrahedron" (B); download; humor: A man has spent all his life hoping from a visit from his future self with tips so he can make a fortune! Title is a password he's memorized for quick identification of this future self.
3. 26 January: Ralph Greco Jr's "Rock 'n' roll aliens" (C); download: Aliens have handed the care of a "power orb" to someone in a music band, in return for certain worn cloths. What orb does or why the aliens are collecting old cloths is not known.
4. 12 January: Rahul Kanakia's "The driver" (C); download: Someone seems to have played bodyguards to Vlad since his young days, someone whom Vlad did a favor in future!

Related: Stories from Nature.

Fiction from Nature magazine, March 2012 issues

They publish a flash fiction piece a week. Most stories tend to be fairly ordinary, though occasionally there are quite good ones too. I liked two from this lot - "Knowledge" & "The pi that wasn't round".

1. 1 March: John Frizell's "Knowledge" (A); download: A giant squid discovers "writing"!
2. 15 March: Dan Erlanson's "The pi that wasn't round" (B); download; weird physics: Tale of "a hypothetical particle that could cause spatial distortions if it interacted with ordinary matter" & a circle whose pi is not pi!
3. 8 March: Eliza Blair's "Bread" (C); download: In a community of small private space habitats somewhere, a woman a baking a bread the ancient way, kneading it with her hands, etc. Not for eating, but as some sort of (religious?) offering.
4. 22 March: John Gilbey's "Visiting Bob" (C); download: An artificial consciousness, now dying, has a plan to extend its life...
5. 29 March: João Ramalho-Santos' "Invisible" (C); download: An academic's ultimate achievement...

Related: Stories from Nature.

"AntipodeanSF", January 2012 (magazine, free): Annotated table of contents & review

7 science fiction stories of flash fiction length. I liked one ("Bugsy!"), & found two at least readable ("The Lightning Gun", "When The Alphabet Vomits On A Birth Certificate").

1. Julie Wornan's "Bugsy!" (A); download: Little baby knows far more than her parents suspect...
2. Antoinette Rydyr's "The Lightning Gun" (B); download: A gun that hits the target 10 years after firing...
3. Jamie Richter's "When The Alphabet Vomits On A Birth Certificate" (B); download; humor: Crazy government requirements of would-be parents...
4. Christine Gladstone's "What If" (B); download: Lifecycle of life...
5. Des McNicholas' "The Candidate" (C); download: NASA is hell bent of keeping the fact secret that there is an impenetrable & invisible barrier around earth...
   See also: David Brin's "Crystal Spheres": Star travel is impossible because there is an invisible barrier around each star system that can only be breached from inside, not from outside...
6. Mark Webb's "Shipwrecked" (C); download: Elder aliens visiting earth some centuries ago cannot decide whether to destroy humanity seeing its cruelty, or help it mix with galactic culture in future...
7. David Scholes' "Trathh" (C); download: Adventures of some crash-landed aliens on earth. I didn't get the punchline, though.

"Clarkesworld", #60 (September 2011) (magazine, free): Annotated table of contents & review

Whole issue is online. This post is about fiction in the issue. Two stories, both minor - though Mellor's is at least readable if you have some experience reading science fiction.

Table of contents (only fiction, best first).

1. Greg Mellor's "Signals in the Deep" (B); download: Main thread is about a mother & her teenager son - their estrangement & then coming together. In the background of mysterious alien signal stations in outer Sol & a lot of techno-babble (designer babies, cyborgs, solar sail, ...).
2. Robert Reed's "Pack" (C); download text/audio: Cannot make out the head or tail of it. A pack of dogs seems to conning (hunting?) a man with the help of a woman (witch?).

Related: Fiction from Clarkesworld.

"AntipodeanSF", April 2011 (magazine, free): Annotated table of contents & review

10 pieces of flash fiction. I've only read the 4 labeled science fiction. Nothing really outstanding, but first two are at least readable. My rating is in brackets.

1. Gregor Macnamara's "What Was That?" (B); download: Someone at a freight yard has discovered a mysterious container, unaccounted for in any records - one that periodically makes a noise...
2. Marcelo Rinesi's "Love Is Not A Modal Logic" (B); download: The future of spam...
   
   
   Related: Kurt Vonnegut, Jr's "Confido" is a far more interesting story based on a similar idea. Another interesting variation of this theme occurs in Eric Frank Russell's "Postscript" (download).
   
3. Michael McDonald's "Galactonecronomicon" (C); download: Grave robber on an alien world meets Cthulhu!
4. Jeanie Laherty's "The Problem" (C); download: A chip implant for hardened criminals that is supposed to fix their behavior & make them fit for normal society. If only things were this simple...
   

Henry Kuttner's "What Hath Me" (novelette, adventure, free): Good & evil posthumans fight, using a man as tool

A cocktail of many much-hashed themes here, & while not entirely unreadable, I'll put it among the most meaningless pieces from Kuttner.

Story summary.

1000 years ago, evolution speeded up for 7 humans - a step that magically transformed them into posthumans millions of years in advance of normal humanity. They became the source of Norse legends - "Aesir", & "John Starr and Lorna". We also see a related legend of "Asgard" "where the Aesir lived and ruled the worlds of Man".

Two of these posthumans are "good" - John Starr & Lorna, collectively called "Protectors". Other 5 are evil; they're Aesir - a species of their own. Aesir live on an artificial world in Asteroid belt called Asgard, & frequently take sacrifices - humans, Venusians, Martians, ... - apart from ultimately ruling these worlds via puppet native rulers.

Protectors have been trying to destroy Aesir through centuries, without success. Now using Derek Stuart as a tool, they'll succeed in their mission.

See also.

1. E E "doc" Smith's "Lensman" series. Aesir & Protectors sounded a lot like Eddorians & Assyrians.
2. Henry Kuttner's "The Creature from Beyond Infinity": Another story where evolution suddenly speeds up greatly for some people.
3. Aesir "feed" on their victim's intangible "human warmth" - another trope that has been used in many stories. See, e.g., Eric Frank Russell's "Sinister Barrier", & C L Moore's "Shambleau" (download) & "Black Thirst" (in the last one, the evil aliens "eat" the "beauty" of victim girls!)
4. We meet some of the agents of Aesir, as well sometimes Aesir themselves, where their manifestation is as a luminosity or "star lights" - a not uncommon rendition for advanced aliens in fiction. One of the most famous story of this kind is Abraham Merritt's "The Moon Pool" (download); less well known are Eric Frank Russell's "Hobbyist" & Kono Tensei's "Hikari" (included in this collection).

Fact sheet.

First published: Planet Stories, Spring 1946.
Download full text from Internet Archive or this unnamed site.
Rating: C.
Related: Stories of Henry Kuttner.

Malcolm Jameson's "When is When?" (short story, time travel, free)

This must be among the most illogical stories I've seen from Campbell-edited Astounding/Analog. The only redeeming part is the quote below. Someone familiar with history of Europe & Americas in 16th century may enjoy it a little more, but basic premise remains illogical.

Story summary.

Pope Gregory III decreed that the date following 4 October 1582 would be 15 October, with intervening dates gone in a time hole. OK - Pope had some arcane reasons to change the calender.

Different countries accept this date change at different times, sometimes two factions in a country accept this at different times.

These human-administered dates, & conflicts within the countries, change the behavior of mother nature's Time itself!! So time travelers to missing dates vanish in the void of no time, depending on target country! And a smart alec figures this out & gets it fixed by traveling to past & influencing Pope to restore the calender - hence rescuing the stranded.

Quotes.

1. "Company rules, like the army regulations, covered every conceivable thing in the minutest detail. If a fellow learned them all & took care to never break a one - well, he never got in trouble, but likewise he never got far. Smash a rule & one of two things invariably happens. You either get kicked out, or somebody pins a medal on you."

Fact sheet.

First published: Astounding, August 1943.
Download full text as part of the scans of Astounding issue where it originally appeared.
Rating: C.
Among the stories from John Campbell's Astounding/Analog.
Related: Time travel in fiction; fiction from 1940s.

John Barnes' "Things Undone" (novelette, time travel, free)

I would not have posted this had this not come with high recommendation both from Rich Horton & from Gardner Dozois. I gave up a quarter of the way through - too much jargon put me off in the first few paras, & too much info-dumping about pseudo-Physics & pseudo-sociology of time travel & too many tired cliches of the genre made me finally give up.

Story seems to be about time cops trying to catch an illegal time jumper. Don't know if remaining 3 quarters of the text changes this theme in some way.

Collected in.

1. Gardner Dozois (Ed)'s "The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Seventh Annual Collection" (2010).
   

Fact sheet.

First published: Jim Baen's Universe, Vol 4 No 4 (December 2009).
Download full text from Webscription.
Rating: C.

Christopher Green's "A Hundredth Name" (short story, love story, free): A man is grieving for his dead wife

A man is grieving for his wife who committed suicide for reasons I couldn't figure out - probably society's pressure to bear children & her refusal to do so for some arcane religious reasons.

All this in the backdrop of supposedly colorful background that didn't really cut for me: set in a "station" on some world other than earth, a group of deeply religious muslims are doing some kind of (religious?) experiment.

Fact sheet.

First published: Abyss & Apex, #31 (Q3 2009).
Download full text from publisher's site.
Rating: C.
Nominated for Aurealis Award 2009 in short science fiction category.

Greg Mellor's "Defense of the Realm" (short story, post-humanism, free): Human software avatars fighting their alien counterparts

Actually not my kind of story - am posting this only because it features in an award list. Someone with a taste for "uploaded consciousnesses fighting in cyberspace" kind of stories might respond more positively.

Story summary.

Humans fought a war with aliens some decades back. Intruders were destroyed - at great cost to humanity. But they've left behind hardware nodes spread throughout Sol that are running a cyberspace that the alien software artifacts inhabit.

And it's now fashionable among the newer generation of humanity to let your body go & live rest of your life in cyberspace as an uploaded consciousness - an upload that can manifest in physical world via a kind of physical effigy.

This is the story of war between this new breed of humans in their cyberspace & the alien software entities in theirs. And each side's attempt to penetrate the other. A parallel story is of the emotional conflict between a dad who's still physical & his son who's uploaded consciousness - dad doesn't think well of uploaded existence.

Fact sheet.

First published: Cosmos, #25 (February/March (2009).
Download full text from publisher's site.
Rating: C.
Nominated for Aurealis Award 2009 in short science fiction category.

C M Kornbluth's "The Last Man Left in the Bar" (short story)

Cannot make out the head or tail of it.

An ordinary man & two mysterious individuals; the two seem to have some sort of magical powers & aren't from our world or universe or ... something.

The man had stolen "the Seal" that the two visitors want. They eventually get it, & "The Century of Flame" (whatever the heck that is) begins!

Through most of the story, we see the man getting drunk in a bar & watching trivia going on around the place.

Collected in.

1. Isaac Asimov & Martin H Greenberg (Eds)' "Isaac Asimov Presents the Great SF Stories 19 (1957)".
   

Fact sheet.

First published: Infinity Science Fiction, October 1957.
Rating: C.
Related: Stories of C M Kornbluth.

John W Campbell, Jr's "The Last Evolution" (short story, singularity, free)

While the story itself is unremarkable, there is one thing here that makes it noteworthy: it's probably among the earliest stories about singularity, decades before the term was coined. At least it's the earliest I've read.

Story summary.

Story is narrated by a ... robot or AI or something. Humans have built machines that can build better versions of themselves. But they still serve man.

That's when earth gets attacked by a huge alien armada - but aliens without self-improving machines. So these machines go into superfast evolution as defense. In the end, all humans will be dead before the machines can build something way beyond aliens' capability & throw them out.

So now these machines have inherited earth.

Fact sheet.

First published: Amazing Stories, August 1932.
Rating: C.
Download full text from Project Gutenberg or Manybooks; or MP3 from LibriVox. [via QuasarDragon]
Related: Stories of John Campbell.

Gwyneth Jones' "Cheats" (as by Ann Halam) (short story, computer games)

A cocktail of many themes, some of them the kind I avoid: description of a multi-player online game played via an immersive virtual reality interface, probably with direct plug into brain; mind dump; rebuilding a body out of this mind dump; & instantaneous "real" star travel while in this digital state! Sort of, combine Poul Anderson's "Call Me Joe", Clifford D Simak's "Desertion" with Gibson's "Neuromancer" & probably Algis Budrys' "Rogue Moon", & plus other stories.
Note: I've not read "Rogue Moon" but its descriptions talk of duplicating a human body, with a copy on moon.

Two kids playing the game get digitized by already digitized volunteers, end up traveling with them to a far off world, & getting duplicate bodies on this far off world!

Collected in.

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

Fact sheet.

First published: Jonathan Strahan (Ed)'s The Starry Rift (2008).
Rating: C.

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.

M Rickert's "Traitor" (short story)

Could not really make sense of it.

A girl was the sole survivor of a disaster that killed a lot of people, including her dad & brother, & has lived with the stigma of survivor - hence the title.

She gets recruited by ... what? Military? Or may be some kind of terrorist organization. Where she sends innocent unknowing little girls on suicide bombing missions... or something.

Collected in.

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

Fact sheet.

First published: F&SF, May 2008.
Rating: C.

J G Ballard's "The Autobiography of J.G.B." aka "The Secret Autobiography of J. G. B******" (short story, apocalypse, free)

It didn't really make sense to me, but well ... it's Ballard.

Story summary.

One fine morning, "B" woke up to strange quiet. Much of the story is of his discovery that the population of at least England & France (& perhaps the world) has mysteriously vanished without a trace (save himself)!

Fact sheet.

First published: First published: "in French in Etoile Mecanique, July 1981-March 1982" (under what title?) First English appearance in "Ambit, #96, Spring 1984".
This post is based on the English reprint that appeared online in The New Yorker, 11 May 2009, under the title "The Autobiography of J.G.B." This form of title seems to have been used for the first time by The New Yorker, which also doesn't acknowledge any previous publication.
Rating: C.
Download full text from The New Yorker.
Related: Stories of J G Ballard; doomsday fiction.

Unusual media: Nnedi Okorafor's "From the Lost Diary of TreeFrog7"

While the story itself (from Clarkesworld, May 2009) is unremarkable (a jungle adventure with strange creatures & "CPU plants"), it's noteworthy because of unusual presentation - a story clearly meant for online world rather than for paper world: it has embedded links with additional text behind them. While a paper version could conceivably put this text in footnotes, they would be far too long - it works only because of online "hidden behind hyperlink" layout.

Italo Calvino's "The Daughters of the Moon" (short story, fantasy, consumerism, free)

Reason for this post is the source: genre fiction is not too common at The New Yorker; I would not have posted it otherwise. This story didn't work for me - but then most fantasy fiction doesn't work for me. Your take will likely vary if you like fantasy.

Story summary.

On a parallel earth that is too similar to ours, consumerism is rampant: people discarding used products too quickly & going for new ones.

Now the moon of this world has withered too. It has lost mass, orbit, & is on its way down to earth. But likely holocaust is not the issue - issue is the ugly sight in the skies!

On a certain day, when moon is hanging low in the skies, it seems to have a group of naked girl worshipers in New York City who seem to be guiding it to gently land somewhere. But "authorities" have other ideas. They pick it up out of skies with a huge crane & dump it in a garbage yard to rot!

Various things happen next day, resulting in both moon & earth magically reinventing themselves as a new green worlds. In an instant, earth's cities die & are taken over by vegetation, & moon becomes habitable & rises up in the skies to occupy it normal perch!

Fact sheet.

First published: 1968 (where?). Translation from original Italian by Martin McLaughlin, & this English translation reprinted in The New Yorker, 23 February 2009.
Rating: C.
Download full text of English translation.
Related: Fiction about environment, consumerism, or moon.

Gardner Dozois' "Flash Point" (short story, non-genre, free): Enumeration of violent incidents in a town

Surprising part was finding it listed in SciFiction's Classics section. At least I cannot see anything that justifies its tagging as a classic. It's a very ordinary story, & told in a language non-Americans will find a bit hard.

Ben Jacobs is a handyman in some small town. Story tells us of a day in his life - comprising of a lot of random violent incidents including road rage & sacrifice of a baby by some cultists, plus his random socializing.

Fact sheet.

First published: Damon Knight (Ed)'s "Orbit 13", 1974.
Rating: C
Download full text from Internet Archive.
Included in Ellen Datlow's Sci Fiction classics.

Ron Carlson's "In Old Moab" (short story, non-genre): Description of a robbery that never happened

Playboy stories tend to be generally better than this one! There is no sanity in its ending.

Story summary.

A man enters a bar called "The Canyan Club" alone late evening in a town called Moab somewhere in the US, with a pistol & with the intention to rob. As his bad luck would have it, instead of finding the bar deserted, some 50 women choose to enter it then - foiling his plans.

Story is narrated by a bystander who meets the would be robber in bar. In a bizarre ending, after telling the narrator about his failed plan, the would be robber shoots himself dead!

Fact sheet.

First published: Playboy (US), May 2008.
Rating: C

Shaun A Saunders' "Global Consumables" (flash fiction, non-genre, free)

Global Consumables is the last manufacturing company left on earth, functioning with just 3 employees! Because of market downturn, they've just fired one of the 3, & now next in line is worried!

Fact sheet.

First published: Antipodean SF, #120 (May/June 2008).
Rating: C
Download full text.

END.

Paul Ryan's "Lake" (flash fiction, non-genre, free)

Cannot really figure out the point of this story. Two friends are out fishing at the lake & gossiping.

Fact sheet.

First published: Antipodean SF, #120 (May/June 2008).
Rating: C
Download full text.

END.

Cheyenne Warlock's "The Witches Hammer Voyages" (flash fiction, free)

I missed the punchline here.

"The Witches Hammer" is a sea-going vessel stopping by at some port for repairs. Harbourmaster cannot quite figure out the ship's log, & the sailor Boston Gantry (probably ship's Captain) is explaining. I completely missed most of their conversation - lot of jargan, place names that don't mean anything to me, ...

Captain will give a gift to Harbourmaster that is supposed to do some magic, but I completely missed the point & ending - apparently something magical.

Fact sheet.

First published: Antipodean SF, #120 (May/June 2008).
Rating: C
Download full text.

END.

Daniel S S Santos' "Apocalypse, Now There's A Good Idea" (flash fiction, non-genre, free)

A group called Writers Against Unoriginality have acquired & actually use a weapon to kill off most humanity at the click of the button, because "Originality is dead. Everything's done. Any time we try to create something new, it's just a variation of someone else's idea. A perversion of something original." Resetting humanity by saving only some babies & a few adults to care for them will hopefully make originally return!

Fact sheet.

First published: Antipodean SF, #120 (May/June 2008).
Rating: C
Download full text.

END.

Christopher Elston's "Wired For Sound" (flash fiction, horror, free)

Cannot exactly know whether the old man featured in this story is free or thrown to dungeons by his grandsons for unspecified reasons along with others who are tortured.

What is clear is: the old man's idea of relaxation is to hear sounds of agony from victims of torture!

Fact sheet.

First published: Antipodean SF, #120 (May/June 2008).
Rating: C
Download full text.

END.

Marvin Minsky & David Gerrold's "Why There Are No Type-C Civilizations" (flash fiction, science fiction): These aliens have an unusual appetite

I didn't know Prof Minsky wrote fiction too! I won't call this story entertaining, but it may be an interesting curio collectible for admirers of Dr Minsky.

Story summary.

Two phenomena at "hypergalactic scale", called Fred & Ethel for convenience, are traveling through spacetime.

In "this particular intersection of temporality and location, ... their passage ... occurs near an unimportant, mostly inconsequential, small galactic object of oblate spiral conformation." Detection of "Coherent radio spectrum" there means a tasty meal!

Fact sheet.

First published: Jim Baen's Universe, #13 (June 2008).
Rating: C

END.

C L Moore's "Tryst in Time" (novelette, science fiction): A romance spanning multiple lifetimes!

While Moore throws in some unconventional ideas on how to build a time machine & a short discourse on philosophical implications of time travel here, overall it's among the least entertaining stories from her.

It might have been non-boring at flash fiction length; at current length, it's so draggy author herself has to tell us near end (via protagonist's loud thinking) that story end is near & we should not yet throw it out!

Story summary.

Eric Rosner is a restless man of 30 whom the circumstances have handed out a time machine (via Walter Dow, a friend inventor). The machine doesn't have very good controls - in fact, you have no clue to where you will end up - in past or future, or how far away.

This machine also works on a different principle than H G Wells' (as also the legions inspired by that): in Wells' machine, you are traveling as in just another vehicle - only the dimension across which you are moving is time & you can control speed. In Moore's version, you "anchor to that bedrock of essential, underlying inertia which is the base upon which matter builds & ... allow time itself to whirl by! ... & 'up-anchor' in another age". This anchoring is done by increasing "your inertia sufficiently to make you immune to time & space & matter. You will be inert mentally & physically. You'll sink down, so to speak, to the bedrock, while time flows past you." You throw a switch to begin this anchoring process. Machine will travel "until one small part, insulated from the inertia in a tiny time space of its own, trips the switches again & up-anchors."

So during travel, you yourself are effectively in some kind of stasis field. Machine is shoulder-worn via a harness.

Similar putting accepted wisdom on its head is also seen in Henry Kuttner's - "The Big Night" (I don't know if she contributed to that story). Here, hyperspace travel is by physically throwing your spaceship into the faster-than-light moving "currents" of hyperspace, & let these currents carry you to destination!

When discussing time travel, we also get a dose of philosophy: "I can transport you into the past, & you can create events there which never took place in the past we know - but the events are not new. They were ordained from the beginning, if you took that particular path. You are simply embarking upon a different path into a different future, a fixed & preordained future, yet one which will be strange to you because it lies outside your own layer of experience. So you have infinite freedom in all your actions, yet everything you can possibly do is already fixed in time."

Anyway, the current story is not really of time machine; that's just an aid. Once the time travel adventure starts, story is really a collection of lots of tiny stories. Time traveler ends up somewhere - always amidst people, though in different civilizations. Most of the time, he meets or sees a woman who seems to unconsciously recognize him & always looks the same; in many cases, she's about to die a horrible death. Slowly, he will realize the object of his travels - to fall in love with this woman.

Only it didn't quite come across as love. I mean - she's so completely dispensable! She exists in all time & he has a time machine; so if the version he's seeing now is about to die or cannot be had for some reason, he will meet her in a different avatar at a different time!

Of course, in the last episode we will see the happy union of this timeless romance.

At least one episode of his adventures is set in the mythological Cyclopean civilization (something from Greek mythology?).

There are parts near end that sound like from one of the schools of ancient Indian philosophy!

See also.

1. Paul J Nahin's "Time Machines: Time Travel in Physics, Metaphysics, & Science Fiction" makes a short reference to this story.

Collected in.

1. "The Best of C L Moore".

Fact sheet.

First published: Astounding Stories, December 1936.
Rating: C
Related: All stories of C L Moore.

END.

Bill West's "On The Edge" (flash fiction, religion, free): Random & senseless mumbo-jumbo

A bunch of monks are torturing Brahmid, apparently their guru who feels no pain - in fact, he is ecstatic as earth is nearing its end, & he will have better opportunity in other world (I suppose he means after death).

In the last para, we are not clear if it was really happening, or is he just an ordinary man dreaming!

Fact sheet.

First published: AntipodeanSF, #109 (June/July 2007).
Rating: C
Download full text.

END.

Peter Watts' "Repeating the Past" (flash fiction, science fiction, free): Teaching the young irreverent the meaning of fear!!!

Two interesting observations, both for the better, about author's writing style - when I compare this story to better known "Blindsight":

1. This story uses clean language; no profanity. So if I liked the subject matter, I could have referred it to younger crowd.
2. While there is some jargon here, it's only to aid the story. Focus is on story telling. Compared to Blindsight, it's very clean writing.
   

Story summary.

Story is narrated by a survivor of Nazi concentration camps. The year is 2017. The old man is a retired doctor; so is his daughter - both specialists in brain editing, though daughter is more skillful!

Story concerns the daughter's son - an adolescent who has all but forgotten the concentration camps, & is rather irreverent towards its victims.

To teach him proper respect for the times, grandpa surgically modifies his brain - so he is "Jumping at shadows. Not sleeping at night." Basically behaving like a victim himself!!!

Collected in.

1. David Hartwell & Kathryn Cramer (Ed)'s "Year's Best SF 13" (2008).
   

Fact sheet.

First published: Nature, 29 November 2007.
Rating: C
Download full text.

Marc Laidlaw's "An Evening's Honest Peril" (novelette, fantasy, free)

Having seen his "Ascent of Wonder", I'm generally a fan of David Hartwell's editorial choice. Finding this piece of trash listed in the ToC of his forthcoming 2008 edition of "Year's Best SF 13" was, therefore, very disappointing.

It's completely senseless babble about honest peril seekers. A young man has enlisted the help of a woman sorceress for a night's swards-and-magic adventure in a Tomb full of a variety of magical creatures - ready to be slayed by our adventurers.

Collected in.

1. David Hartwell & Kathryn Cramer (Ed)'s "Year's Best SF 13" (2008).
   

Fact sheet.

First published: Flurb #3 (Spring/Summer, 2007).
Rating: C
Download full text.

Chris Pavey's "Assassin's Sorrow" (flash fiction, non-genre, free, minor post)

Kara is sad but not regretful after killing her lover (?) Lukid because he is "a murderer, an abuser, my peoples' rapist."

Fact sheet.

First published: AntipodeanSF, #110 (July/August 2007).
Rating: C
Download full text.

Charles Richard Laing's "Yum Yum" (flash fiction, non-genre, free, minor post)

A cannibal of tenant, on the third day of renting the house, is contemplating eating his lady landlord!

Fact sheet.

First published: AntipodeanSF, #110 (July/August 2007).
Rating: C
Download full text.

Deven Kivioja's "Sweat" (flash fiction, non-genre, free, minor post)

Not sure I got the punchline. Looks like it's about a sex affair between mother & son!

Fact sheet.

First published: AntipodeanSF, #110 (July/August 2007).
Rating: C
Download full text.

Hannah Steenbock's "Something New Under The Sun" (flash fiction, non-genre, free, minor post)

A woman who cares about sick birds has been brought a new one of a kind she hasn't seen before.

Fact sheet.

First published: AntipodeanSF, #119 (April/May 2008).
Rating: C
Download full text.

João Ventura's "Bad Manners" (flash fiction, science fiction, free, minor post)

Mumbo-jumbo about practically unlimited information storage capacity of a black hole, a technique to retrieve it via "ultrastrings and infrastrings" by physically sitting on something called a "white hole", discovery of FTL travel so people can go to white hole for data archival, & wrecking of entire experiment because one of black/white holes is a sentient creature that had a blast due to indigestion!

Fact sheet.

First published: AntipodeanSF, #119 (April/May 2008).
Rating: C
Download full text.

Luke Kepreotis' "Finite Horror, Infinite Hope" (flash fiction, fantasy, free, minor post)

It appears to be mix of two stories I'm familiar with - Jack Williamson's "Born of the Sun"; & a kids' story I studied in probably primary school where a little kid faces the ravaging Taimur Lane - the Central Asian raider of India sometime in history. Williamson's is hopeless, boys' story is good motivational one for little kids. But I found this Kepreotis' mix rather uninteresting.

A winged alien creature called Cosmic Holocaust has flown through space & landed on earth. To destroy earth because humans are irresponsible. A little girl faces him, arguing if she is brave enough to face him, isn't there hope for humanity. And he sees the light! Earth is saved.

Fact sheet.

First published: AntipodeanSF, #119 (April/May 2008).
Rating: C
Download full text.

Leslie Blake's "The Bowl Of Stew" (flash fiction, non-genre, free, minor post)

I didn't really get this story - if there is a story here. A man wakes up to find him in a dungeon - he doesn't remember anything, & is afraid of a bowl of stew in the cell.

Fact sheet.

First published: AntipodeanSF, #119 (April/May 2008).
Rating: C
Download full text.

Rachael Ryan's "Saint" (flash fiction, fantasy, free, minor post)

You really need a taste in blood-sucking & human-eating demons to like this story. "Saint" hunts "demons" with the aid of his crew, & drinks the victims blood! At the end of the story, I wasn't really clear if the Saint himself was the demon.

Fact sheet.

First published: AntipodeanSF, #119 (April/May 2008).
Rating: C
Download full text.

* Alfred Bester's "Star Light, Star Bright" (short story, fantasy)

An innocent young boy whose wishes come true - in ways adults would find horrible.

E.g., hey - I've not done home work, let that teacher looking for me go! Teacher gets parceled off to some place no human has business going.

I guess you need the right kind of taste to like it.

Fact sheet.

First published: ...
Rating: C
Download full text from Internet Archive.
Included in Ellen Datlow's Sci Fiction classics.

Note: Why is this post so short?

* Robert Reed's "Weapons of Discretion" (short story, science fiction)

"First Born" - first sentients of early universe & now with god-like powers - exploit & create disasters all over to perform computations using explosions as their hot high-energy computers!

In this story, we will see one blast a bus full of human passengers to create such a computer to write a poem!

Fact sheet.

First published: Helix, #8 (Spring 2008).
Rating: C
Download full text.

Note: Why is this post so short?