Atsiliepimai ir komentarai

A better than average 70th anniversary issue of the magazine with an unusual fairy tale by Kelly Link, a tale of media destruction by Paolo Bacigalupi, a funny twist on eastern martial arts by Y.M. Pang and other interesting tales by Ken Liu, Esther Friesner and Gardner Dozois.

• “The White Cat’s Divorce” by Kelly Link: a contemporary setting for a fairy-tale like story of an elderly rich man who sets out three tasks for his three sons to see who would inherit his fortune. The youngest (it's always the youngest in fairy tales) encounters an unusual cat who helps him with the first two tasks. The third one, however, would involve the cat in an unusual situation with the old man himself.

• “American Gold Mine” by Paolo Bacigalupi: a tale of destruction and chaos that occurs when a newscaster deliberately whips up the outrage of mobs raging across a city. And all for higher ratings and money from advertisers. But it may all come crashing down at the end.

• “Little Inn on the Jianghu” by Y.M. Pang: a humorous twist to the usual 'wuxia' stories that feature martial artists, this one tells it from the point of view of an inn-keeper fed up with his inn being trashed by the warriors and goes on a quest to get rid of one of those warriors.

• “Kabul” by Michael Moorcock: a story set in a future full of implied conflict around the world. An army made up of many peoples (Americans, Russians, Ukranians, Afghans, etc.) is making its way to Kabul in Afghanistan. They encounter people fleeing Kabul and when they get they, they see the reason why. But one scout who enters Kabul makes an unexpected encounter that recalls old times that will never return in a world gone to war.

• “Under the Hill” by Maureen McHugh: a look at the life of an undergraduate at a college who discovers that it has an unusual side: a connection to the Fairy world. As her studies in the real and fairy worlds proceeds (unknown to the outside world), she has to decide which world she finally wishes to live in.

• “Madness Afoot” by Amanda Hollander: a humorous look at the fairy tale of a prince looking for his true love via a shoe. Only here, the point of view character is a cousin who decries the whole matter through letters to her husband. But it also reveals a cunning resolution to the story that made help the oppressed pheasants, usually not mentioned in such tales.

• “The Light on Eldoreth” by Nick Wolven: a tale of parents negotiating a marriage for their children, only here the parents are rich, own worlds and running interstellar alliances. But even here, crisis arise in the form of objecting children and a way out of the ever present fear of machines failing, in a form that makes past attempts at enslaving humans look tame by comparison.

• “Erase, Erase, Erase” by Elizabeth Bear: an unusual contemporary fantasy story of a girl who appears to be gradually vanishing; parts of her pass through things. Only the act of writing down her memories of a painful episode involving a college cult, with a fountain pen on notebooks, appears to keep her solid. But her memories of it are patchy, and she is desperate to get down the details, for it may involve a soon to occur terrorist act by the cultist.

• “Booksavr” by Ken Liu: an online site where people post their writings adds an AI feature, Booksavr, that rewrites the stories to suit the tastes of the reader. Controversy ensures as both readers and writers argue whether it is a good or bad thing.

• “The Wrong Badger” by Esther Friesner: a humorous story set in Englandland, an American theme park about 'authentic' England. A visitor comes to complain that the wrong kind of (robotic) badger is being featured. But that is just a front for the chaos that would occur, and the start of a friendship between a saboteur and an aid suddenly made aware of the underlying bias in the theme park.

• “Ghost Ships” by Michael Swanwick: a short story featuring some ghosts and a journey back to a college reunion that the author says is real, but with altered names. It's up to the reader to decide whether it really is true or not.

• “Homecoming” by Gardner Dozois: a short tale about an old man who enters a town and stays for a while. Keeping to himself, people presume he is a wizard. A young girl approaches him after he shows some fighting skill, in the hopes he is a wizard and can help her dying grandfather. But what he tells her, instead, is advice for those facing death.

A better than average issue, with interesting stories by Fiona Moore, David Cleden and Dustin Blair Steinacker.

• "The Winds and Persecutions of the Sky" by Robert Minto: two people with ambitions to move to the cleanest parts of their skyscraper habitat (the basement) decide to explore upwards instead, leading them to a world with dust, dirt and an entirely new world outside their building.

• "Of the Green Spires" by Lucy Harlow: an alien-like plant 'invades' Oxford, producing various fruits as it encircles the buildings. But one day, it withdraws from the city to form its own plant city elsewhere. And the people who come to live in it experience a whole new way of life.

• "Jolene" by Fiona Moore: a story involving a man and his intelligent truck. In this world, cars and trucks are sentient. A 'car psychologist' is tasked to bring a man and his truck back together, having separated due to an unknown reason. But as he investigates their background, items like abuse and cults are bought to light. A violent confrontation occurs, but as the dust settles, it is left to the reader to decide whom is the abuser and whom is the abused in their relationship.

• "The Palimpsest Trigger" by David Cleden: alien beings known as Palimps rule over their neighbourhood areas in an unnamed city, bringing death to those who disobey them via deathly triggers on patterns implanted in the victims. One man is tasked with delivering a blow on a neighbouring Palimp competitor, in return for being able to forget how he caused the death of his little sister. But memories and thoughts start to surface that lead him to a startling conclusion about what had actually happened to his sister.

• "Fix That House!" by John Kessel: a short short story about a couple fixing up a house in a historically accurate way; perhaps too accurate.

• "Two Worlds Apart" by Dustin Blair Steinacker: a James White award winning story, it tells an interesting tale of a group of human diplomats who are sent to an unusual isolated world drifting in the void (not orbiting a star) that somehow has a civilization on it. It is the task of the humans to get the aliens on the planet to join the Collective (a group of alien civilizations). But the task appears to flounder due to the way of living of the aliens and a different way of offering them to join would be needed.

A wonderful collection of speculative fiction from around the world. Ranging from Asia to Africa, Europe to the Americas, you will find much to like in many of the stories featured. My favourites include those by Vina Jie-Min Prasad, T.L. Huchu, Taiyo Fujii, Vandana Singh, Bo-young Kim, Chi Hui, Karla Schmidt and Giovanni De Feo.

• "A Series of Steaks" by Vina Jie-Min Prasad (Singapore): an entertaining story set in China where one person makes a living by printing out imitation meat to look like authentic meat. But then a big order comes in from an anonymous customer, with a threat to expose her past if she does not do the job. Forced to hire help, they then work to fulfil the order, while figuring out who the person is and how to get back at him.

• "Accursed Lineage" by Daína Chaviano (Cuba, translated by Matthew D. Goodwin): a short piece about a member of a family who is closely watching the suspicious activities of her neighbour. But it is her own behaviour and family activities which may be the strange ones in the story.

• "Nkásht íí" by Darcie Little Badger (USA/Lipan Apache): two girls of Native American heritage visit the scene of an accident that may be a crossing point between our world and the spirit world.

• "Ghostalker" by T.L. Huchu (Zimbabwe): a ghost story from Africa that initially threw me off due to the numerous Western pop culture references, but once it got going, the story was good. A girl with the 'gift' of seeing and being able to talk to ghosts passes on messages from them to the living. But she is being stalked by one ghost throughout the story and in the final confrontation, we learn why the ghost is stalking her and what it means for her future.

• "Violation of the TrueNet Security Act" by Taiyo Fujii (Japan, translated by Jim Hubbert): in a future where rogue software has taken over the internet and a parallel TrueNet has been set up, a former programmer finds his old internet server is still working. But to get it to work again properly, he may have to break the rules of the Security Act that forbid connections to former internet servers.

• "Ambiguity Machines: An Examination" by Vandana Singh (India): a story about three ambiguous apparent machines and their creators or users that span physical and mental space and are connected to each other in subtle ways.

• "Scenes from the Life of an Autocrat" by Basma Abdel Aziz (Egypt, translated by Elisabeth Jaquette): the story of an autocrat who issues decrees telling his citizens how to live their lives. As for the citizens, they follow the decrees with care and wait breathlessly for the next decrees to be issued. But then one day, an event occurs, and the autocrat finds himself at a loss as to why it could happen despite the decrees he had issued.

• "Our Dead World" by Liliana Colanzi (Bolivia, translated by Jessica Sequeira): on Mars, colonist try to survive while preparing for more people to come. The story follows one who now regrets going while seeing apparent hallucinations of life before coming to Mars.

• "An Evolutionary Myth" by Bo-young Kim (South Korea, translated by Jihyun Park & Gord Sellar): an interesting tale set in Korea in a time when the human form is fluid. The story follows a Prince who flees an attempted assassination by his uncle. As he lives in the wilderness, his body changes into a feline beast and then into a snake-like creature. But it is his final transformation that would avenge the people wronged by his uncle and help them to free themselves from his rule.

• "You Will See the Moon Rise" by Israel Alonso (Spain, translated by Steve Redwood): an initially disjointed story of a man fleeing a group of men in a war-torn city and experiences flash-backs of his lovely wife. But it is only when he meets a familiar man who may not be there that his memory slowly returns, and he recalls his previous life and achievements, and how he lost it all.

• "The Barrette Girls" by Sara Saab (Lebanon): a story of a woman who leads a group of young girls wearing barrettes (hair clips) to a secret location to perform a task. The young girls seem to be artificial and contain an unusual substance, but the story is too short to 'flesh' them out, so to speak.

• "The Calculations of Artificials" by Chi Hui (China, translated by John Chu): in a future rebuilt after nuclear wars, Actual humans live separate lives, surrounded by Artificial beings that act like real humans around the presence of Actuals, deceiving them. One Actual who is aware of the deception monitors the Artificials and tweaks their algorithms. But one day, he runs into another Actual teenager. He bends the rules and decides to keep him company. The decision would affect how the world is run, leading to violence as the world starts to break down; and perhaps to a new hope for living in the world.

• "El Cóndor del Machángara" by Ana Hurtado (Venezuela): a fantasy tale involving birds, a location overrun by the birds, some of the inhabitants desire to get rid of the birds, and the desire of some people to run away with the birds.

• "Alone, on the Wind" by Karla Schmidt (Germany, translated by Lara M. Harmon): an interesting tale set in a time and place where gravity and space don't seem to follow our rules. On one world, a flier gains her wings and joins a party hunting for water on another world. But disaster strikes, and she has to depend on the help of a grounded man to recover. They fall in love, are separated, and then meet to try to bring their worlds together again. The backstory of how the worlds came about is slowly revealed in the tale, and the reader can start to piece together what happened to separate their world in the first place.

• "The Seventh" by Eliza Victoria (Philippines): a story that starts out with a woman entering a house for the first time; only others say she hasn't. The discrepancy gets explained as the story develops into what turns into a horror tale involving a well, and feeling pain and denial to discover who she is.

• "Screamers" by Tochi Onyebuchi (Nigeria/USA): a story of a boy who occasionally follows his police father out to cases; until unusual cases of violent deaths with unknown explosive force starts to occur. As the cases continue throughout his father and then his own police career, a final case for him would see him decide whether to step away from all the violence or to accept it to see where it would lead him.

• "The Bois" by R.S.A. Garcia (Trinidad and Tobago): the story of a relationship between a girl and a man who is partially a machine (a cyborg). When the girl wanders off into a dangerous forest, the man will have to make a sacrifice in order to save what he can of her life.

• "Ugo" by Giovanni De Feo (Italy): an unusual and fascinating story of a girl who meets a boy who claims to be able to Leap into his future self and see the future that lay ahead of them: their relationship together, their ups and downs and their life together. But the tale leaves open whether the Leap means that what he knows will happen is fixed or if free will still exists for them: and what might happen if he does let her exercise her free.

A very entertaining book about how to solve 'common' problems in unusual ways that don't break the laws of physics. In a series of mostly short stand-alone chapters (which occasionally refer the reader to other chapters for related how-tos), you may learn:

• how to either solve common day problems in unusual ways (how to play a piano that can play notes from the sub-sonic to ultrasonic range, or charge your phone when there are no power outlets)
• how to logically think about common actions (how far you could actually throw various things, from coins to footballs)
• how to do absurd things (like landing a plane on a ski slope, or build a lava moat)

The chapters are mostly unconnected to each other, making it easy to read the book chapter by chapter, while allowing you to digest the humour and strangeness of each way to achieve a task. By the end of the book, you will definitely have learned to how to do tasks in the strangest ways physically possible.

As a disclaimer, the author does recommend at the start that you really shouldn't try to do what he suggests in the book, as they are supposed to be hypothetical exercises; or the author would like you to think that.

Throughout the book, the author's signature stick figures doing unusual things are featured, giving you an idea of what's in store if you actually did try to do what is suggested in the book.

An excellent stand-alone follow-up to her "Lady Trent" series, this book involves the granddaughter of the original Lady Trent and largely depends on information revealed in the original series. As such, it is best to read this only after reading the original series first.

The book is written mainly as a series of entries from the private dairies of Isabella Camherst (Lady Trent's granddaughter), along with written entries from other supporting characters and occasional newspaper snippets. As such, the narrative is not one of following the characters as they make discoveries, but rather of one where they reflect on matters at the time of making the entries. Depending on your taste, this may or may not irritate the reader.

The book is mainly about the discovery of ancient tablets of the Draconean race (a race of intelligent dragons that inhabit the world) by a collector, and Isabella's initial attempts to translate it, later aided by another scholar (Kudshayn) and the discoverer's niece. As the story progresses, we start to read the contents of the tablets, and it would be revealed as a long-lost origin tale (or myth) for the Draconeans.

But as the translation progresses, other events intrude and start to reveal that some things are not quite right, starting with an attempted attack on Kudshayn by a group of anti-Draconeans who are violently opposed to the idea that Draconeans deserved to be treated as more than 'just' animals. Hidden motives are implied, and becomes more explicit when an unwanted character from Isabella's past becomes involved.

As the climax approaches and the translation is near completion, Isabella and Kudshayn discover that the tablets reveal an episode from the past that may well confirm people's worst fears about what the Draconeans did to humans. Yet, it is only when an act of violence just as the contents of the tablets are to be revealed to the world does she realize what is at stake for her and the Draconeans as she must rush to discover and reveal the real truth about the story told in the tablets.

At certain points of the story, the author reveals some information to the reader just prior to Isabella finding it out, giving readers a (faint?) chance of deducing that something unexpected has happened that will change the flow of the story.

For those that enjoyed the Lady Trent series, this is a good follow-up that reveals more about the Draconeans' place in the world, and what they may have done in the distant past before their rule of the world fell, and they retreated from humanity before being revealed to the human world once again by Lady Trent.

A wonderful collection of stories by an author who does not produce many stories. But the ones he does write are finely crafted and raise questions about people and their reactions to situations that, but for the way the universe was created, could really exist outside the author's imagination.

• "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate": a tale of a merchant who encounters an alchemist who works magic with a gate that can bring one to the past or the present. Via a series of stories in the story, the nature of the gate is shown and the effect it has on the people who use it to travel to the past or the future and reveals the nature of time travel where the past and future are fixed by the choices already or yet to be made.

• "Exhalation": an exhilarating story about an unusual world where air itself drives the workings of a form of life. When unusual events occur, the protagonist is driven to examine his inner self and learns a universal truth; that entropy will be the cause of the death. Yet even then, he holds a faint hope that others will learn from his experiences.

• "What's Expected of Us": a short short story about a little 'toy' that reveals the truth about free will.

• "The Lifecycle of Software Objects": a thoughtful story about the nature of relationships, responsibility and growing up for a group of software objects that, for all practical purposes, are intelligent. Being 'born' by being expressed as instances of an initial software genetic model, they grow up under the watchful eye of people bought in to train them and get them ready to be sold as relationship objects by their company. But times change: companies goes bankrupt, and even the virtual world the software objects inhabit becomes obsolete. But some owners still keep them running, training, educating and keeping them company. Then comes an offer that may be the lifeline to keep them running for longer, but it comes with a price that all children that become adults have to do: making their own decisions.

• "Dacey's Patent Automatic Nanny": a tale set in Victorian times about a man who decides that mechanization is the key to raising a healthy child and proceeds to make a mechanized nanny for his son. The idea does not take off, but then the son, now an adult, attempts it again on another child. But he abandons the idea when the child does not apparently prosper, and gives him away to a home. But it is only when the home attempts to communicate with the child and raise him that is it revealed that the automatic nanny has succeeded, just not in the way its inventor expected.

• "The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling": a story about a new invention that will allow people who keep a video log to search through it quickly to find the required segment. The story is told from the viewpoint of a journalist concerned that such quick recall would lead to conflicts when people's memory and actual footage of events differ, which happens when the journalist searches for a recording of a previous argument with his daughter and is shocked to learn what actually happened. The story also interleaves another story of a young nomad who learns to read and write from a missionary, and also learns a lesson about the difference between the truth as told by writing and the truth as told by the elders of his clan.

• "The Great Silence": a look at the paradox of why there appears to be no other intelligent life in the universe, from the viewpoint of a species that shares the Earth with us, and it generally thought to be quite intelligent, if only we could realize it.

• "Omphalos": a fascinating story about an alternative Earth where a moment of creation of all living creatures has been found and accepted by scientists. Tracing the sale of stolen artefacts of the moment of creation from a museum leads one scientist on a journey that will end with the discovery that while god did create man, man may not be special to god. And now the scientist and the world will have to deal with the outcome.

• "Anxiety is the Dizziness of Freedom": a different take on the idea of 'multiple worlds' via quantum physics. Here, devices called Prisms cause a quantum 'split' in the universe when each Prism is first turned on, with both sides communicating with each other via the Prisms. As time passes, deviations built up between the universes (different weather, different people, different actions by people, different outcomes of accidents, etc.) and some people try to take advantage of it, like selling Prisms to people who loved ones have died but still survive in the alternate universe. But the Prisms also change people, making some feel inadequate when their other self appears to do much better. All of that is considered in a story with a cast that revolves around a person who starts off being selfish and, via interactions with people and their Prisms, resolves to be a much better person.

An interesting set of stories in the issue by Michael Libling, Matthew Hughes, Gregor Hartmann and Marie Vibbert.

• “How I Came to Write Fantasy” by Michael Libling: an interesting story that starts off as a conversation between two waiters that later turns fantastic as one is revealed to be an immortal looking for his true love through the ages, while the other has a revealing gift (or curse). It is only towards the end that the reason they got together is shown, but with a twist involving the women they love.

• “Rejoice, My Brothers and Sisters” by Benjamin Rosenbaum: in a strange future, a man enters a closed-off area, hoping to document the lives of its inhabitants. But things goes wrong: his contact with the outside is cut-off and his interactions with the people in the area reveal how closed off it is, and their struggle to get out into another different kind of world.

• “The Joy in Wounding” by Charlotte Ashley: a tale of three sisters chasing after a floating house, which is the former home of one of the sisters who was forced to marry a god. As the house settled over a farmhouse, numerous violent events caused by the house would take place that would change their lives as well as the lives of the farmer, whose own marriage to an unusual person would be one of the sources of violence.

• “A Geas of the Purple School” by Matthew Hughes: next in the series of tales of a wizard's henchmen, this one has him and his partner investigating the murder of the messenger for the daughter of the Duke of the city. As they dig further, they discover that the diary of the daughter may prove to be the key behind the whole matter, if they are brave enough to open it and face the consequences of exposure to the magic in the diary.

• “Evergreen” by M. Rickert: a variation of the usual tale of ghosts seen around Christmastime, this one has a woman who sees ghosts of people from her past and learning to find joy in the present despite the miseries of her life.

• “A Hand at the Service of Darkness” by Gregor Hartmann: on a frontier world, a police officer is assigned a job with a Secret Service agent she does not like. They are to look for and take out a revolutionary who has committed a terrorist act. Going into the heart of a lawless place would need all her skills, but it is only with the target in sight does her loyalties to her world kick in, and she would have to make decisions that could change her life.

• “Bird Thou Never Wert” by James Morrow: the story of a writers' meeting where people read and criticize manuscripts among themselves. But at this meeting, a magician makes a writing offer one cannot refuse, for the offer would make a writer write like a genius. But the price of the gift of genius would have to be paid in blood and in other old fashion ways, like when humanity is offered a gift from the gods.

• “It Never Snows in Snowtown” by Rebecca Zahabi: a story that starts off as a paid journey through a snowing town turns chilling when strange graffiti appears warning about the snow and the young child-like tour guide begins to exhibit un-childlike behaviour, and we learn that the young may have to pay a price for the town to remain as it is: forever snowing.

• “Knit Three, Save Four” by Marie Vibbert: an unusual story of a stowaway on a spaceship that turns out to be in danger of running out of air as a space station refuses to let it dock due to hull integrity issues. But it will turn out that a hobby by the stowaway might be a way to hold the ship together; that and lots of cable.

• “The Vicious World of Birds” by Andy Stewart: an uncomfortable family gathering during the holidays would turn into an unusual one when an unusual bird starts attacking the family. The story also includes the thoughts of one member, who compares his family members to various kinds of birds.

• “Shucked” by Sam J. Miller: a story of a young man and woman who are approached by another man who asks for the company of the man for an hour. When the man returns, the woman gradually starts to notice small changes in his behaviour. But it is only later that she comes to a startling conclusion that something unusual has happened to the man. But does the conclusion hold?

An okay issue of Interzone, with the more interesting stories by Joanna Berry, David Tallerman and Tim Chawaga.

• "The Kindest God is Light" by Joanna Berry: a story of alien contact about to be completed by 'scanning' the thoughts of a poet, in order to have a complete mental map of mankind's emotional makeup. But trouble looms when the scan does not complete, which is attributed to the poet's depression. But as time passes, the poet suspects a different source, and it would require the help of another alien being to make the poet see this.

• "She and I and We" by Timothy Mudie: a time travel story about a future self who travels back in time to save herself. But it is only towards the end do we really learn who she is trying to save herself from and the importance of being saved by the right person.

• "Dent-de-lion" by Natalia Theodoridou: on an alien planet, an explorer is searching for an alien plant with possible live saving properties. But what he finds is an improbable hybrid that would lead him on a search for the original source of the plant and the possible reason for it to be there.

• "Parasite Art" by David Tallerman: an artist's desire to produce excellent art leads him to a planet where a parasitic life form can be found that provide dreams that can be turned into art. But is the price of becoming tied to the parasite worth it to produce art that you may not care about?

• "The Duchess of Drinke Street" by Tim Chawaga: in a floating city, the owner of a small cupcake shop desperately needs a good review from a food blogger to drive up her business. But what she gets instead of a lesson in producing a kind of food that matches the place, rather than in producing good food.

• "Dream of the High Mountain" by Daniel Bennett: a story about living in a community in a future where life is slowly ending on the Earth as the seas continue to rise. A story that I did not find interesting.