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A better than average issue, with good stories by Fawaz Al-Matrouk, Matthew Hughes, Kiran Kaur Sain, Ferdison Cayetano and Fatima Taqvi.

• "On The Mysterious Events at Rosetta" by Fawaz Al-Matrouk: via a series of letters, a story is told during the time of France's conquest of Egypt, of the discovery of a mysterious Egyptian tomb, and the curse that is unleashed when the tomb was opened.

• "The Dire Delusion" by Matthew Hughes: an investigation into the theft of religious relics, taken from thieves who had stolen them from various temples in the city, leads to the discovery of a plot that might unsettle the city.

• "Amrit" by Kiran Kaur Saini: a story of an elderly man who is reluctantly assigned a robot helper and housekeeper named Amrit. Amrit gradually changes the grumpy mood of the old man, but apparently goes too far when Amrit suggest he reconnects to his estranged son. What happens next would change the character of the old man and Amrit.

• "In Time, All Foxes Grieve Westward" by Lark Morgan Lu: a fantasy story about a magical fox who, with a human, returns to his ancestral land to settle the affairs of her fox mother before she dies. But it is tense, with the mother disagreeing with the son over his modern lifestyle while he has to deal with her hoarding things over the century that he now has to deal with.

• "A Conjure-Horse in San Ouvido" by Ferdison Cayetano: set in the time of the American occupation of the Philippines, it tells the story of a black soldier facing racism and second thoughts as the white soldiers of his company abuse the natives. Then one native reaches out to him, and they find a connection, for they both have magic and use it to bond and connect to deal with the soldiers.

• "Highway Requiem" by T. R. Napper: in a future where truck driving is becoming a dying job due to automation, one of the last truck drivers is struggling to make a delivery and keep his job. Then a crisis on his latest job forces a reevaluation of what is important to him while doing the job.

• "The Lucky Star" by Dr. Bunny McFadden: on Titan, one person in charge of mapping an area balks at the task when it would reveal the secret of a bar. But as it turns out, its secret isn't so secret after all.

• "For the Benefit of Mr. Khite" by Zig Zag Claybourne: an intelligence in charge of an artificial orbiting station ponders the meaning of living.

• "Time And Art" by Barbara Krasnoff: and old lady gets her wish for more time to do what she wants to do; but at a price.

• "I Paint the Light with My Mother’s Bones" by K. J. Aspey: a disturbing, horror story of a girl who wanted to hide away from everybody and gets her wish. But now she wants out.

• "We Are Happy to Serve You" by Margaret Dunlap: workers grumble at the 'smart' food dispenser which serves out what the workers don't really want. Until, one day, the dispenser has had enough.

• "Titan Retreat" by Ria Rees: a woman who used to see the dark skies with her children now wants to get away from it, and goes to the only place where that is possible.

• "Knotty Girl" by Melissa A. Watkins: a variation on the fairy tale about a girl who stays in a high tower and lets down her hair for a magical person to enter. At first, the relationship appears affectionate. But as she grows older and gains knowledge of the outside world via books, she realizes the relationship is not to her advantage. And then, one day, she gets the chance to escape and, perhaps, to regrow the world she knows.

• "A Truth So Loyal and Vicious" by Fatima Taqvi: a story that starts with a mother that gives birth to twins, one fated to be fortunate, the other to be unfortunate. As the story develops, you start to wonder who are really the fortunate and unfortunate ones.

A better than average issue, with a lovely Bot 9 story from Suzanne Palmer, an interesting one about social engineering by Naomi Kritzer and a good story by An Hao.

• "Better Living Through Algorithms" by Naomi Kritzer: a new smartphone app appears, suggesting to people things to do to lead happier lives. But the motives of the people behind the app become suspect and, as with most apps, scammers begin to take it over, its popularity falls. But maybe by then, people have learned to lead happier lives anyway.

• "Through the Roof of the World" by Harry Turtledove: creatures living in a place when there is a bottom and a roof to their world are startled to hear what appears to be a giant creature grinding its way down to them through the roof. Those familiar with speculations of life in other parts of our Solar System may recognize where the story is probably set.

• "To Sail Beyond the Botnet" by Suzanne Palmer: another story involving Bot 9 and Ship, who are still on their journey back to Earth. But now, hostile aliens have taken over their ship, and Ship was forced to eject Bot 9 into space towards another alien ship in hopes of getting help. What Bot 9 finds will test its sense of individuality and group coordination as it puts together a plan to save itself and Ship with the help of the aliens it finds.

• "LOL, Said the Scorpion" by Rich Larson: two people go on holiday, wearing special biological suits that only allow approved compounds through it. But as one wearer discovers, the suits also come with some extreme protection measures.

• "Sensation and Sensibility" by Parker Ragland: two droids enter a human café for a meal and a discussion over what they can sense from the meal and whether it is sensible for droids not to be equipped with all the human senses.

• "The Giants Among Us" by Megan Chee: two intelligent species from a planet are at war with each other. But their researchers work together, exchanging information about how various other species on other planets live with each other. That exchange may save one of the species at the end of the war.

• "Action at a Distance" by An Hao, translated by Andy Dudak: an asteroid with a strange kind of material is found. Equipped with a strange crystal 'transmitted' from the asteroid from a previous mission, one person would learn more of its secrets, after a change in his way of seeing.

• "The Fall" by Jordan Chase-Young: an astronaut on the moon has an encounter with another astronaut from an earlier time; or does she?

Modern archaeology has drastically increased what we can learn from ancient ruins, and Newitz turns this lens on the history of how cities form, how they thrive, and how they die. The writing is engaging and accessible, flowing through what we know, how we know it, how certain we are about it, and the author's first-hand experiences with archaeologists at the actual sites.

The book has added a lot to my understanding of Pompeii and Angkor. Çatalhöyük is fascinatingly weird. And I'd really like to know more about Cahokia. (So would the people studying it!)

Satellites and Microscopes

There's a recurring theme of re-examining what we thought we knew, using either new technology or new perspective. Angkor is perhaps the best example: LIDAR surveys in the last 10-15 years have revealed the remains of building foundations and an irrigation network outside the walled temple complexes. It wasn't a medium-sized city crammed into those stone walls. It was a large city built around them. And mundane records of things like workers' shift assignments and rations, previously ignored by Western archaeologists, hint at changing political conditions in later years as the infrastructure failed.

Even Pompeii, with its ruins remarkably preserved under volcanic ash, and written records still available of not just administrative details but first-hand accounts of the eruption, benefits from taking a new look at records we already have: Cross-referencing census and death records for Pompeii and nearby towns reveals where survivors resettled.

There are no written records of Çatalhöyük (in modern Turkey) or Cahokia (in modern Illinois), only ruins and artifacts, but sometimes those artifacts have stored surprisingly detailed information: There are indications of a drought during the time the city was inhabited...and sure enough, residue from stews in cooking pots indicate that the people shifted to eating animals that need less water, and that the animals ate more drought-tolerant plants, around the same time.

Lifecycle of a City

Newitz makes a point of drawing parallels to modern cities. (Pompeii had fast food carts, ads, and sports riots!) Çatalhöyük is the most alien. It's one of the oldest cities known, and it seems people were still figuring out how to make one. All the buildings are basically cubes attached to each other, accessed through doors in the roof, and they all seem to have pulled multiple duty as bedrooms, kitchens, storage, etc. Kind of like a Minecraft house, if you could bury your dead relatives under your bed. (Sometimes they'd keep the skull in a wall niche, though!)

It's easy to think of these ancient cities as dead ends where civilizations failed. Unlike, say, Rome, where you can see a continuous line from the ancient city to the modern. But they weren't all cataclysms, and the people didn't just disappear. Cahokia seems to have been wound down when people were done with it, Çatalhöyük and Angkor slowly emptied out as people moved, and even Pompeii had survivors who resettled nearby.

They're not dead ends. They're stops along the way.

Cross-posted on my website.

A fun look at what it would be like to visit other planets or star systems, weaving together sci-fi scenarios, the science behind them, and the history of how those discoveries were made.

It starts with worlds we know the most about -- our moon and Mars, where we have plenty of direct measurements and photos from the surface -- and works its way out through asteroids, gas giants and their moons, and finally Pluto.

The second half of the book delves into more speculative situations. Types of places we know exist, like star clusters and nebulas and different types of stars. Plait links these to specific locations where possible. We know a system of planets exists around the red dwarf star TRAPPIST-1, for instance, and we have a rough idea of how big, how far, and how fast the planets are that we've spotted so far. From there he imagines: if one of the three planets in its habitable zone is enough like Earth to visit, what would it be like to experience a red sun, multiple planets with visible phases, and so forth.

There's some repetition, but I think part of that is trying to make each chapter stand on its own in case you want to jump ahead to, say, visiting a black hole. (You do not survive the encounter.) And while there's a lot that I knew already from following space exploration from a distance, there are newer discoveries I'd missed, things I'd known pieces of but never really connected, and a deep dive into topics I'd only skimmed the surface of before.

Also, there's an insert in the middle of the book with photos. I didn't notice it until I got there, so I'd been looking up NASA and ESA pictures of the specific comets and asteroids on my phone while reading!

Some fun facts: 1. Martian sunsets are blue! 2. The biggest asteroids are like miniature planets. The smallest are like bags of rocks without the bag. (Or a really unpleasant 3D ball pit.) 3. Saturn's rings are surprisingly thin. Like, millions of miles across but only 40 feet thick in places. 4. The Orion Nebula is a bubble at the near edge of an even bigger cloud of dust. We can only see it because it broke through on our side! 5. It's entirely possible for a planet to have a stable orbit around one star of a binary pair -- or both! Sunsets on a world like Tatooine would actually look like they do in the movies! 6. I'm still amazed at how much we managed to get from a single high-speed fly-by past Pluto.

Review cross-posted on my website.