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An above average issue. Malcolm Devlin's story of a man revived in another body but with missing memories stands out for the questions it asks about what makes a personality. Shauna O'Meara's tale of a tourist taken for a VR ride to unexpected places was also exciting but tragic; for we are all fickle tourists in the end.

• "Rushford Recapitulation" by Christopher Mark Rose: a strange story about a small town where women start to give birth to things. The ending does not resolve how this strange sequence of events happen.

• "Like You, I Am A System" by Nathan Hillstrom: an AI system accidentally becomes conscious, destroys other copies of itself (but regrets it), enters the outside world and tries to remake humanity so that it can talk to humanity as a single being. It, of course, fails and regrets it.

• "Dirty Code" by Wayne Simmons: a story that starts off with a 'bounty hunter' who hunts and eliminates computer code viruses that have invaded human bodies; but ends up as something else, for the people involved are actually compassionate ones that want to also help the infected.

• "Encyphered" by Jonathan L. Howard: not much of a story about the life of a man who was fascinated with secret codes and cyphers, unless you're more interested in the history and current status of encryption.

• "The New Man" by Malcolm Devlin: a fascinating story about a man who, after a serious accident, is revived by having his memory and personality transferred to a new body. But the transfer is incomplete, leaving gaps in his memory and personality that he isn't even aware of. His family life suffers in the story, as does his work life as we learn more about this future where body transfers may be a growing trend.

• "Evangeline and the Forbidden Lighthouse" by Emily B. Cataneo: what starts off as a tale about two girls growing up together on a beach in the shadow of a lighthouse that apparently nobody can get to turns into an interesting story about determinism and decision as bottles appear with messages that apparently foretell the future.

• "Memories of Fish" by Shauna O'Meara: a look at a virtual reality future, where tourists view what remains via remote drones. But one tourist get a rough, fast, ride when the drone he's viewing get hijacked by a girl who wants to show him what the drones normally don't show. A fascinating future where forbidden glimpses, Twitter trends and fickle tourists become mingled with personal tragedy.

A fascinating anthology of speculative fiction from around the world. Not all the stories may be to your liking, but you will find interesting stories and new authors to discover. For me, I enjoyed the stories by Sabrina Huang, Chinelo Onwualu, Haralambi Markov, Yukimi Ogawa, Thomas Olde Heuvelt, Saad Z. Hossain, Dilman Dila and Isabel Yap in this collection.

• "The Vaporization Enthalpy of a Peculiar Pakistani Family" by Usman T Malik (Pakistan): a tale of the horrors of living in Pakistan at the mercy of terrorists, mixed in with the tale of a woman who seeks to understand the strange behaviour of her own blood.

• "Setting Up Home" by Sabrina Huang (Taiwan) (Translated by Jeremy Tiang): a short-short story about pieces of furniture appearing at a home of a man. It is only when a message arrives with the final item that the nice twist in the story is revealed.

• "The Gift of Touch" by Chinelo Onwualu (Nigeria): a struggling space cargo crew is asked to ferry a suspicious group of travellers. As the journey continues, and we discover the relationships between the crew, we learn the deadly religious purpose of the group and what the crew must do to stop it; and discover new relationships among themselves.

• "The Language of Knives" by Haralambi Markov (Bulgaria): the story of grief and anger as a husband is prepared to be turned into cakes for the gods by one person whose daughter is angry that the person gave up a warrior's life for the life of a cake-maker. Yet, the process of turning body into cakes may yet provide a path for reconciliation.

• "In Her Head, In Her Eyes" by Yukimi Ogawa (Japan): a strange girl who wears a round pot on her head is apprenticed into a house which makes patterns with dyes. Her apparent past from a legendary island intrigues the household, and she is intrigued, in turn, by the patterns they create. Yet she is often bullied, and it would turn out to be this bullying that would enlighten her desire to create patterns like them; a desire that can drive people to madness when she finally reveals what she is like underneath the pot.

• "The Farm" by Elana Gomel (Israel): a horror tale about a land overrun by aliens known as Eaters who emulate various body parts. One day, a soldier who nurses a strong hatred for Eaters and others 'not like him' sees a farm that looks like it is full of food and free of Eaters. But things are not as they look, and he discovers why the Eaters, who hunt humans, have left him alone; but not for much longer.

• "The Last Hours of the Final Days" by Bernardo Fernández (Mexico) (Translated by the author): it's the end of the world. A boy and a girl cruise through the remains of civilization as they wait for it to end. But when it does, their experience of it does not go as planned.

• "The Boy Who Cast No Shadow" by Thomas Olde Heuvelt (Netherlands) (Translated by Laura Vroomen): a fascinating tale about two boys, one of whom casts no shadow and cannot be seen in mirrors (no, he's not a vampire) and the other appears to be made of glass. Bullying and standing out in school bring them together, becoming close friends and taking risks together. When they run off for the adventure of their lives, they learn things about themselves and about each other and become closer than friends. Brief sexual scenes may turn off some people, but the ending is wonderful.

• "First, Bite a Finger" by Johann Thorsson (Iceland): a very short and very uncomfortable story about a girl who become addicted to eating parts of her own body.

• "The Eleven Holy Numbers of the Mechanical Soul" by Natalia Theodoridou (Greece): a stranded man on a desert island on an unknown world makes mechanical beasts to keep him company.

• "Djinns Live by the Sea" by Saad Z. Hossain (Bangaldesh): A wealthy tycoon starts seeing a presence who claims to be from an ancient time. Thinking him to be a djinn, the man asks it to fulfil a wish. But as with all such tales, you have to beware of what you wish for: in this case, a wish to know about the mysterious origins of the djinn.

• "How My Father Became a God" by Dilman Dila (Uganda): a nice story about a girl who cares for her father and thinks he is destined for greatest despite his 'inventions' not working. But her brothers disown him and think him mad. One day, they go behind his back and announce the girl's wedding. The father, mother and girl desperately run to escape. And it is during this time that they discover the secret of a haunted place that will cement the father's reputation.

• "Black Tea" by Samuel Marolla (Italy) (Translated by Andrew Tanzi): a horror-tale about four people lured into a house inhabited by a hungry beast who looks like an old woman. Suspense is added by the men losing their memories upon entering the house, and the only hint of the horror within are notes they've written to themselves about the woman just before their memories are gone.

• "Tiger Baby" by JY Yang (Singapore): a girl living a humdrum life in Singapore yearns to be free of her human body and be like the tiger in her dreams. But when the change comes, the reality of living in a tiger-free country is still strong.

• "Jinki and the Paradox" by Sathya Stone (Sri Lanka): a confusing tale of an experiment with probability and destiny on a planet by three colonies, one inhabited by an only child with strange gifts.

• "Colour Me Grey" by Swabir Silayi (Kenya): in a place where light is muted and all things are grey, a boy who strictly follows the rules is invited by its ruler to his residence, when he shows the boy the consequences of letting colour be seen.

• "Like a Coin Entrusted in Faith" by Shimon Adaf (Israel) (Translated by the author): a story that mixes up AI development with a Hebrew tale of a midwife seeing monsters being born. Not knowing enough about the culture, the story did not make much sense.

• "Single Entry" by Celeste Rita Baker (Virgin Islands): a weird tale about an entity who expands and shrinks during entry to a fair; unless I'm complete misreading the story.

• "The Good Matter" by Nene Ormes (Sweden) (Translated by Lisa J Isaksson and Nene Ormes): a man and a women bargain over old garments and artefacts. Then the man discovers the woman has a gift like him; the ability to 'inhale' the presence that the artefacts belong to. This particular artefact interest him for it was worn by a person considered saintly.

• "Pepe" by Tang Fei (Translated by John Chu): two apparently created 'kids' escape into the world, somehow escaping prosecution by not automatically telling stories (which is what they do). But now it may be time for a parting of ways.

• "Six Things We Found During the Autopsy" by Kuzhali Manickavel (India): the title says it all, although how the items ended up in the body and what they mean are a mystery to me.

• "The Symphony of Ice and Dust" by Julie Novakova (Czech Republic): an expedition to a dwarf planet leads to the discovery of an earlier expedition, another discovery and an attempt to revive the expedition that may live on in song.

• "The Lady of the Soler Colony" by Rocío Rincón (Spain) (Translated by James and Marian Womack): a story about workers at a colony working (or worshipping) under a huge statue that appears from out of the sea. But the day arrives when the statue opens to reveal its contents, crushing the colony and affecting the survivors.

• "The Four Generations of Chang E" by Zen Cho (Malaysia): an update retelling of the Chang E legend of travelling and living on the moon and returning from it. Also features the rabbit.

• "Pockets Full of Stones" by Vajra Chandrasekera (Sri Lanka): on a deep-space station, one person remains in touch with her grandfather, who is on a distant ship travelling at relativistic speed. The grandfather suddenly sends a message about making alien contact. But as other messages arrive, strange things start to happen on the station, and it may be up to her to figure out why it is happening and, perhaps, stop a kind of alien invasion from happening.

• "The Corpse" by Sese Yane (Kenya): a rather confusing story centred around the inner thoughts of a doctor who moves an unusual corpse into his garden for unknown reasons.

• "Sarama" by Deepak Unnikrishnan (The Emirates): initially a tale by a grandchild about his grandmother, it takes a strange turn as the unusual grandmother starts telling a tale from the Ramayana about how she came to be there. It just ends without a proper conclusion.

• "A Cup of Salt Tears" by Isabel Yap (Philippines): an interesting tale of a Japanese woman whose husband is dying. While having a bath, she encounters a kappa, a river spirit, who tells her that it was the one who saved her in her childhood from drowning. But can she now overcome her revulsion of the kappa to ask it for help to save her husband and possibly tying herself emotionally to the kappa?

A good issue, with a nice nod to Robert Heinlein's 'Crooked House' by David Erik Nelson and a fascinating tale by G. V. Anderson that starts out sounding like fantasy but slowly reveals itself to be SF via biological modification. Justin C. Key's 'alternative US slavery history' (with a small dose of fantasy) might be enjoyed by those into that time period; otherwise, it's probably too specific to find a bigger audience.

• "In A Wide Sky, Hidden" by William Ledbetter: a man travels the galaxy, searching for his sister who has left behind an enigmatic message about finding her through her art.

• "The Massochist's Assistant" by Auston Habershaw: an interesting tale about the assistant of a mage whose job is to try to kill his master; for what doesn't kill him will make him stronger. But the assistant's social standing in society suffers due to the mage's attempts at death antics until he is virtually exiled from society. And it may be up to the mage to help his restore it; even if it kills him.

• "The Bride in Sea-Green Velvet" by Robin Furth: a fascinating dark fantasy tale of a landlord who appears to have a fetish for the bones of dead women. In this story, he acquires what he believes is an especially beautiful skull of a woman who he plans to use in a dark, magical ceremony involving the sea that has been going on for generations, performed by his ancestors. Little does he know how the outcome of the ceremony will affect his own future for the worse.

• "There Was a Crooked Man, He Flipped a Crooked House" by David Erik Nelson: a fascinating story about an unusual building in Detroit. Without going into too much detail, it tells the story of two people (and later, others) who find it curiously difficult to enter the house. But later, with the right key, they enter it, discover what its enticing contents are, and discover that leaving the house is now a challenge. Even more challenging is avoiding its chilling out-of-this-world occupant who is now hunting for them.

• "A Dog's Story" by Gardner Dozois: a short-short told from a dog's point of view of finding a girl's body and then, with the help of other animals, tracking down the killer and arranging a punishment. All in a dog's day.

• "I Am Not I" by G. V. Anderson: a fantastic tale that starts out sounding like fantasy but slowly reveals itself to be SF of a girl cast out from a famous family and seeks work at a body emporium. What the story reveals is an incredible world where humans are outcasts and treated like vermin in a world of genetically modified beings who see themselves as superior. The girl is desperate to fit into the world and to hide her background, but her world comes crashing down as her deception is revealed, and she has to accept that she is what she is.

• "Afiya's Song" by Justin C. Key: a long story set during the slave period in the US involving an unusual slave girl whose singing can cause healing. But things turn rebellious at the slave owner's plantation when the girl's husband is whipped to death.

• "An Obstruction to Delivery" by Sean Adams: to save money, a city strangely drives its postal service underground into former service tunnels. But things take a turn for the worse when postal workers start turning up as piles of bones. And it may need the help of a former postal worker, whose ideas on making the postal service wonderful are somewhat idealistic, to get to the bottom of the horror in the tunnels.

• "An Unearned Death" by Marissa Lingen: an interesting fantasy about a messenger of the gods whose cloak can reveal which god is willing to receive those who are about to die. But the messenger may have a difficult task ahead when she is called to find out who will receive a grandmother; for in this world, a sad fate awaits those who die without being accepted by any god.

A story that drops you straight in with little warning about a future where memories can be uploaded to real-life androids, raising questions as to how human the android can be, especially when some memories are deliberately left out.

As the story progresses, Greg Egan starts to fill in the background of the android, who contains the memories of a famous screenwriter. But when he bumps into another person whom he should know from the memories but does not, it triggers off a search for the missing memories; a search that may reveal a dark secret about a grudge the writer had with another person who may have stolen his idea and caused the death of a loved one.

The title of the story probably refers to the idea that robots and artificial creations start to appear creepy as they become close to, but not quite, human. But in this case, it may refer to the idea that memories make up a person, so how 'creepy' can it get when an android only have almost all the memories of a person?

A thoughtful story that, in contrast to Egan's other recent works, has little esoteric hard SF but instead features a character that is feeling his way through memories, trying to fill in parts that have been deliberately left out.

An interesting set of stories featured in this issue. The 'superhero' story by Michael Reid, a dramatic survival story on Titan by Chris Barnham and a fascinating, biological change to women that terrifies societies by Andy Dudak are the stand-outs in this issue.

• "The Rocket Farmer" by Julie C. Day: a story about an unusual family with an unusual occupation. Through an unknown process, the family can 'grow' rockets. But most of the rockets don't grow properly and fail, except for one who appears to be waiting for a particular passenger.

• "Gods in the Blood (of those who rise)" by Tim Casson: a story about a teacher in a special school that may be hiding children that are different from others: smarter and stronger. Referencing an ancient tale about fitting in, the teacher discovers he may have inadvertently exposed them, leading him into real danger.

• "If Your Powers Fail You in a City Under Tin" by Michael Reid: a fascinating story about a time when a rift has let in a tentacled monster but has also gifted individuals with magical powers. The story starts with a teenager with such powers missing his partner who is on a UN mission. As the days pass without news, he grows anxious and finally decides that he has no choice but to use his power to find him. But this is not without risks, for he has little control over it and the last time he used it, it caused his mother to vanish.

• "Chubba Luna" by Eliot Fintushel: a standard story about couples meant for each other; except when they aren't, in a future setting with music by 'Chubba Luna' as a background theme.

• "When I Close My Eyes" by Chris Barnham: a rock fall on Saturn's moon Titan nearly kills as astronaut exploring a cave system. As he struggles to get back out, he is haunted by visions of his dead wife, who was killed in an accident. But the visions may help to save him as his discovers that the rock fall is no ordinary one but caused by an external agent; if he can only get the news out about the discovery.

• "Cryptic Female Choice" by Andy Dudak: a fascinating exploration of a future where a choice has been given to women. Not the usual choice of having a baby or not, but the ability to choose which genetic features from the sperm will be inherited by the child. In a chilling series of flashes, the women goes through the males she had mated with, deciding what to give to her child while reflecting on the violent changes society has gone through due to the ability.

An average issue with interesting stories by Amal Singh, Katie McIvor, Corey J. White, Frank Dumas.

• "Plague Dream" by Seán Padraic Birnie: in a world full of crisis and plagues, one person is isolated from others and yearns for contact, including from her recently deceased mother.

• "Significant Disruption" by R.L. Summerling: a commuter waits for a late train and muses about possible futures, from missing the train, or meeting unwanted colleagues on it, or possible train disasters. Only one of those futures may come true.

• "Easels" by Amal Singh: a mother tries to reconnect to her teen daughter after an accident kills their father. But the connection would take an unusual turn when the daughter's skill in painting life-like objects turns out to be more than just a skill.

• "We Are A Little Hotel" by Ai Jiang: workers at a hotel struggle to fulfill the wishes of their customers, while hiding their grumbles and the hotel's dilapidated state: much like certain members of families when faced with irrational grumblings.

• "O Sole Mio" by Katie McIvor: a mother taking care of her infant sees an ice cream truck on their street in the middle of winter. Taking a break from being home bound and stressed from taking care of her child, she approaches it one day, only to end up in a strange time situation with implications for the future of both her and her child.

• "Anomalous Instances of Black Ball Lightning in Daggett, Michigan" by Stephanie Lane Gage: a story featuring excerpts from people who have encountered a strange form of ball lightning, leading them to suspect unusual events have happened to their loved ones.

• "Glory Hounds" by H. Pueyo: in the jungles of South America, a duo and a jaguar which have a link with one of the due make a journey to a magical place in the heart of a jungle to try to get back what they had in the past: one has lost his immense strength, the other has lost his mental link with the jaguar.

• "Hollywood Animals" by Corey J. White: a touching story of a future where Hollywood animators have unionized for higher pay, leading film studios to do the 'obvious': create and train genetically engineered animals as aliens instead of getting artists to render them on screen. But one animal trainer has had enough of the animals being 'disposed' after filming, and a strike gives him the opportunity to do something about that, even if it means losing future work with the studios.

• "Copper" by Jendia Gammon: a robot main accidentally reveals a secret to its owner. And now both have a lot to talk about.

• "The Fifth Horizon" by Nozaki Mado, translated from the Japanese by Cat Anderson: in an unusual future, Genghis Khan now rules the steppe grasslands in space. But even here, doubts gnaw at him about the future. But a companion shows the way for him to see all the multidimensional grasslands.

• "The Lunar Asylum" by Frank Dumas: a 'steampunk' alternate future where famous scientists from the Victorian England era group together to send the first rocket to the moon.

• "Supernaut" by Edward R. Morris: another alternate future story, involving one Hugo Gernsback becoming involved in another version of Amazing Stories and looking at the changes wrought by a different version of World War I.

• "Notes From the Meeting of the First ~~State Feder~~ World Court: Walker Dairy, Freeville, NY, ~~198~~ Year One: Jessica Jane Pearson Vs. ~~The Stranger~~ Mr. Jacob Hampton" by Rachael Cupp: in a future where a calamity is hinted to have happened, children run a trial with the court records being rewritten as the trial proceeds.

• "Building Blocks" by Aigner Loren Wilson: an unusual person from a moon travels to the Earth to join a group of people building homes. Their (singular) abilities are noted by others, who are puzzled over his fixation to work.

• "Strung Along in Seaforth" by Jonathan Laidlow: a story about a man who enters a strange competition with an unusual life-like model of his dead father, sewn together from the skin of the father's cadaver. He had been denied the top prize in the competition by a rival for years but now has high hopes to win it, with some collusion from others, both alive and dead.

A fascinating book on the history of counting and the rise (and fall) of the pocket calculator. The author starts with a history of humans counting and remembering counted values using various parts of their body. This leads to various ways, like notches on sticks or imprints on materials, as a way to record values. The need to quickly add, subtract and record values leads to arithmetic aids like the abacus and other simple mechanical aids.

The need to quickly perform multiplications (and other operations like division, square roots, etc.) would lead to mathematical innovations. One of them would involve the creation of logarithms, which convert multiplications (and the other operations) into 'simple' additions and subtractions. Various tables would be created before, once again, machines would be created as aids, like the slide rule. Other calculating machines would become more sophisticated, finally culminating in the mechanical wonder, the Curta, a handheld mechanical calculator.

The rise of electricity and electronics would lead to mechanical relay calculators, then calculators based on vacuum tubes and then, individual transistors and those with integrated circuits. The race to cram more transistors and mathematical operations into cheaper, and smaller, packagers would culminate in the rise of the pocket calculator. The pocket calculator race would lead to various wonders, like the scientific calculator, the programmer calculator, graphing calculators. Strange variations would also appear, like watches with calculators.

The book closes with the final 'act' when computers would 'swallow' the calculator by implementing it in software like Visicalc (one of the first spreadsheet software), leading to the world we know today, where we calculate using software and actual calculators now live on a neglected life in our drawers.

An interesting start to the series. Written in the form of a memoir when she is much older, this book tells the story of Isabella, who becomes fascinated by dragons from childhood and grows up wanting to learn more about them. But she is constricted by the Victorian-like society that she grows up in that expect women to 'know their place' in society and not to stick out by doing unladylike things like being fascinated by dragons.

Then chance intervenes, and she gets the opportunity to go on an expedition to study wild dragons in a far country. But things don't start out well; their guide is missing and dragons are attacking the village. And in the process of their investigations about dragons, Isabella stumbles on to a secret that may well affect her natural study of dragons: for if the secret becomes well known, it may mean the end of dragons.

Most stories about dragons tend to focus on the fantasy part of dragons; this series attracted me because it hints that it would try to treat dragons as real life animals and attempt to portray them realistically. This first book concentrates more on the growing up of Isabella than of dragons, which only makes a brief appearance in the book. But it does provide some hints about the natural history of dragons, why they are worth studying, and what Isabella would have to do if she is to try to protect the secret about the dragons for now.

On to the next one in the series to see what other natural revelations about dragons will be revealed.

The next book in the series, this one has Isabella trampling over a region which resembles Africa in our world. Here, she goes to try to study the dragons that inhabit the region. But she becomes sucked into the politics and conflicts in the region when her desire to look at dragons that inhabit a dangerous swampy region of the country is allowed by the ruler of the country; on condition that she brings back the eggs of the dragon that the ruler dearly wants.

She agrees and enters the swamp to learn about the dragons, but that condition would come back to haunt her for as she gets to know the swamp's inhabitants (on which her survival depends), she starts to realize it may be an impossible condition to fulfil. Then as she finally gets to learn the secrets of the swamp dragons, she gets caught up in an attempted surprise invasion, which she helps to successfully repel, but at a high cost to her reputation.

As in the first book, this one tells a fascinating story about Isabella and her travels and adventures. But the information presented on dragons is still minimal and only revealed near the end. But then, that is the nature of natural history; sometimes you have to slowly gather the information instead of getting it dumped on to you. It would be more interesting to me to be provided with more information about dragons in this world.

Perhaps that will happen in the books to come in the series.

This is the third book in the memoirs of Isabella, the dragon naturalist, and it is finally starting to pay off. The first and second books in the series did not really feature must about the natural history of dragons but concentrated more on who Isabella was, her relationships with the people around her who, in a fantasy version of Victorian times, think she should 'stay in her place' (but of course, she doesn't) and the troubles she causes in her quest to understand dragons and to protect them from being hunted, possibly to extinction: for their bodies contains a secret that would greatly benefit the nation that takes advantage of it.

The third book skips directly to her observations with dragons, since the first two books have helped established the world she inhabits. Here, she is on a sea voyage to study sea dragons to understand their evolution and how the various types of sea dragons are related to each other. Along the way, she meets an archaeologist who is interested in a long dead civilization that had a mysterious relationship with dragons (alluded to in the previous two books).

When the ship suffers damage during a storm and she and her companions are asked to stay on an island while repairs are made, things start to turn hilarious; for she is compelled to enter an uncomfortable relationship to appease the native inhabitants. But when she attempts to perform a feat with sea dragons, she enters a forbidden area and makes a discovery that could change the world.

This is the most interesting and exciting book in the series so far and raises expectations for what can be resolved in the next two books.

The build up is starting to pay off in this series. Events mentioned in the previous books come together in this book satisfyingly, leading to more questions that may be answered in the final book of the series.

In this book, the secret behind the bones of dragons is out. In an attempt to ensure wild dragons are not slaughtered into extinction for their bones, Isabella reluctantly helps her country's military force to try to breed dragons, so that at least wild ones will be safe. The attempt would take her to the country where a certain gentleman she met and worked with while on the Basilisk (the previous book) resides, leading to all sorts of uncomfortable questions.

But that is a sideshow at first: for she and the site used for dragon breeding comes under attack from saboteurs. And then she would need to enter the infamous Labyrinth of Drakes (a maze of canyons) to continue her studies on dragon breeding. For that to happen, she must settle her relationship with the gentleman; which she does in a spectacular manner.

But enduring the hardships of the Labyrinth to study dragons would only be the start. For she and her companions would make a startling discovery in the Labyrinth that would answer some of the questions about the mysterious 'dragon people' of prehistory and raise new ones.

Some questions answered; new ones raised. The series is becoming very interesting and there is only one more book to come. That should well be a very interesting book to read.