"Lightspeed", February 2012 (ed John Joseph Adams) (magazine, free): Annotated table of contents & review

Whole issue.

Has 4 science fiction stories, including 2 reprints. I didn't find any really interesting, though Vaughn's is action packed.

List below is in order of my preference - best first.

1. [reprint] [ss] Gregory Benford's "Dark Sanctuary" (B); download; Omni, May 1979: A lone asteroid miner is "attacked" & chased by an alien craft. Story is mostly deductions by miner based on very little information.
2. [ss] Carrie Vaughn's "Harry & Marlowe & the Talisman of the Cult of Egil" (B); download; steampunk: Two Britishers, a princess & a soldier, steal an alien artifact from a temple in Iceland. Then they cross a blockade of British isles by Germans in an airship. Set in late 19th century.
   
   While the language is modern, the sentiments are from a century ago; not sure if it's intentional. First half could have been from an Argosy issue - "civilized" white man vs barbaric savage natives.
3. [reprint] [ss] Kristine Kathryn Rusch's "Craters" (B); download; Future Weapons of War/Baen, March 2007: Two stories, actually, & dark - terrorists using bombs implanted in babies, & using engineered viruses to prevent wars.
4. [ss] Keith Brook's "War 3.01" (B); download: Description of a world where geolocation-sensing augmented reality is common. We already have some of it in phones; this one adds a version of it using spectacles or contact lenses' based mobile displays.

Ken Liu's "The Five Elements of the Heart Mind" (short story, free): What's better - technology assisted living or natural one?

Most of it is very good read. Bits of later parts somewhat spoiled it for me, though - evil colonists introduced into a great fantasy.

Story summary.

A spaceshipwreck survivor somehow manages to land on an unexplored world. And discovers it's not exactly unexplored...

Fact sheet.

First published: Lightspeed, January 2012.
Download full text from publisher's site.
Rating: B.
Related: Stories of Ken Liu.

Carol Emshwiller's "No Time Like the Present" (short story, butterfly effect, free)

A light general read about "we" vs "them" - a town has received a lot of racially different-looking & wealthy immigrants recently, & we see the reactions of natives to newcomers. In between, we keep seeing hints of a couple of much hashed genre themes - environmental dystopia & butterfly effect.

Collected in.

1. Rich Horton (ed)'s "The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2011 Edition".

See also.

1. Ray Bradbury's "A Sound of Thunder" (download text/MP3): Story that invented "butterfly effect". Or rather, had someone else coin the phrase based on events in the story. This Emshwiller story makes a specific reference to the Bradbury story ("It’s gotta be even worse than that butterfly back in the Jurassic era.")
2.  Murray Leinster's "Long Ago, Far Away" (download): Another story about immigrants from time, fleeing a disaster in their time.

Fact sheet.

First published: Lightspeed, July 2010.
Download full text from publisher's site.
Rating: B.

Adam-Troy Castro's "Arvies" (short story, horror, free): An extreme form of slavery

Caution: This is a very dark story, intended primarily to shock, with extreme cruelty - in line with Piers Anthony's "In the Barn" (download) & Arthur Clarke's "The Parasite" (Clarke's is a much milder variant but in the same spirit).

From the two or three other stories I've read of the author so far, I've been carrying the impression that his stories are too targeted to US readers, & will likely have a very different effect on readers from elsewhere - sometimes leaving them indifferent. This one doesn't use anything obviously US-specific, but from comments on the story elsewhere, I get a feeling it satirizes the subject matter of some current debate there.

Story summary.

Humanity is divided into two groups - masters will forever physically live as fetuses (who wants to go through the trauma of being born!), slaves are the hosts implanted with master fetuses! And we see extreme abuse of slaves.

Fact sheet.

First published: Lightspeed, #3 (August 2010).
Download full text from publisher's site.
[via Rich Horton]
Rating: B.
Related: Stories of Adam-Troy Castro.

Charles Yu's "Standard Loneliness Package" (short story, brain dump, free): Outsource your pain, for a price!

Old trope, reasonably well done, but not exactly a story to cheer you up. Mostly has sad mood.

Describes the life of a call center employee - an unusual call center. About to have root canal? For a fee, a call center employee will feel your pain (via a chip implant in brain!) Cheated on your spouse & want to confess? Let the call center guy feel the guilt. Grief of a loved one's death, boredom of a chore, guilt of a murder - it's all for sale, for a price.

Fact sheet.

First published: Lightspeed, #6 (November 2010).
Download full text from publisher's site.
[via Rich Horton]
Rating: B.

"Lightspeed", #1 (June 2010) (ed John Joseph Adams) (magazine, free): Annotated table of contents & review

Whole magazine is online - 4 stories + some other stuff. ToC below only includes fiction, & links online copies of individual stories.

Kirtley's story is pretty good. McDevitt's develops suspense well but has a dud ending. Vaughn's is a decent enough read, particularly later parts, if you like emotional stories. Last one is readable, but I would rather skip it.

Table of contents (4 stories, best first).

My rating is in brackets. Link on author yields more of author's fiction. Link on story title goes to my post on individual story, if there is one.

1. David Barr Kirtley's "Cats in Victory" (A); download: Religious crusaders spare world's last living "animals" lives.
2. Jack McDevitt's "The Cassandra Project" (B); download: Discovery of an alien artifact on moon.
3. Carrie Vaughn's "Amaryllis" (B); download: New kind of family arrangements in a scarcity society, & where bearing a child without permit is a very serious crime.
4. Vylar Kaftan's "I'm Alive, I Love You, I'll See You in Reno" (B); download: A love story that's a bit too science fictional for my taste.
   A man & a woman. Next door neighbors. Forever in love, never really meeting. A lot of cosmic & relativity adjectives thrown in in the descriptions.
   
   In some ways, it's just a review of many popular sf tropes - time dilation during near
   light speed travel, & what the traveler will find back on earth on return, hibernation to survive to medical treatment in far future, mind uploading, ...

Related: Fiction originally published in 2010; best of 2010.

David Barr Kirtley's "Cats in Victory" (short story, religion, free): Crusaders spare the lives of world's last living "animals"

Good read on religious fanaticism, though based on well used tropes.

Story summary.

Long ago, man had engineered animals into intelligent beings, to be used as soldiers - so we had catmen, dogmen, frogmen, ... Over the centuries, catmen came to dominate & decimated everything else, including men ("monkeymen"). They've a religion about it: "Cat", the creator, has decreed them to eliminate all other abominations.

This is the story of a couple of fanatic crusaders - Lion & Tiger, guided by young Lynx, hunting a couple of dogmen. On the way, they'll also end up awaking a "monkeyman" & his cat from hibernation; duo were apparently returning from the stars & their ship crashed. We will see the monkeyman engineer a situation, with Lynx' help, that will save his life & that of dogmen.

See also.

1. Saki's "Tobermory" (download): Probably the most famous story about speaking cats. And a funny one too.
2. Cordwainer Smith's "The Ballad of Lost C'Mell" is another well-known story featuring "catmen", I think.
3. Howard L Myers' "Questor" (download): Uplifted goats intend to inherit the earth, now that man has gone out to space.
   
   Unrelated to this post: For readers who have never read Myers before: Probably the best place to begin with him is "Out, Wit!" (download). It's not only among his best stories, it's among science fiction's best. But it's not very science fictional, & is a grim story.

Fact sheet.

First published: Lightspeed, #1 (June 2010).
Download full text from publisher's site.
Rating: A.

"Lightspeed": New online genre magazine edited by John Joseph Adams

Editor's announcement; magazine's website.

A free story every Tuesday, 4 times a month. Two new ones, two reprints. Plus other content. Or can buy whole month's material together for US $3.

One piece of fiction is currently live from maiden June 2010 issue: Vylar Kaftan's "I’m Alive, I Love You, I’ll See You in Reno" (download).