Reviews and Comments

A long novel length story from a writer known for writing fascinating, occasionally surreal short fiction, this one involves a group of people suddenly trust back into the world with magic and now have to live with the consequences, some of which are revealed as world changing near the end. This book is not for everyone, as it takes it time with the characters' interactions and situations. But probably a rewarding experience for those who are patient with the author's pacing and revelations.

At the start, three dead teenagers, presumed missing, suddenly reappear in the world and are given form by their music teacher, who turns out to have magic. They are then given the task of finding out how they died, and to eventually learn to control magic, which comes with their reappearance. Things get complicated when another 'spirit' joins them in reappearing in the world, and may have a role in their tasks.

Struggling to re-integrate themselves back into the lives of their families, the author now takes her time showing the interactions that occur, especially with the sister of one of the formerly dead teens. Things take a dark turn when yet another being with magical powers appears, apparently drawn by the reappearance of the teens. She is looking for a missing magical object, and the reappearance of the teens is a sign that it has been found.

Now things take a turn of the worst, as the teens struggle with their new lives, mastering their new magical powers, finding out how they died, and having to deal with a magical being to whom living things are just pawns to be sacrificed once she recovers her lost object.

If the reader pays attention, some of the revelations in the story may not come as a surprise. But the slow pace of the story and the amount of detail the author puts into the interactions between the characters may not sit well with some readers. But those who patiently go through the book may find the conclusion satisfying.

The next instalment involving Roz the Wild Robot, this one shows more of the world that Roz inhabits. The story itself, while exciting, is not quite as interesting as the previous two, as Roz is more of a spectator in the climax of the story, but the ending is nicely done.

In this story, Roz's island is engulfed in a 'poison tide' that forces the inhabitants inland, and fight for their survival. Roz discovers that her new body has abilities the previous one did not, and sets out to find the source of the poison and stop it. To do that, she will first have to journey to the far north to find the Ancient Shark and get its advice.

The long journey reveals a world already in the grip of climate change, with scenes of flooded towns that Roz journeys through. As before, the journey will also find Roz making new friends with animals. After she finds the Ancient Shark and the source of the poison, Roz will try to stop it in her own way. But in the end, she discovers the way to stop the poison tide may be out of her hands.

Following the events in the first Wild Robot book, Roz, the wild robot, has been taken back to civilization, interrogated, repaired and is now tasked as a robot on a farm. Roz has been able to hide her 'wild side' during her repairs and on the farm. But she continues using her ability to talk to animals to find out information, especially on whether they have seen her adopted gosling son.

Word gets around, and eventually her son finds her on the farm. Roz's secret wild side is also discovered by the farmer's children, and they decide to help her escape the farm. That, she does, but now she has the difficult task to getting back to her island home. Getting there would involve her evading detection by other robots, travelling through farms and wild areas and eventually through a city. Dangers happen along the way, but Roz also makes new friends among the animals, who all try to help her. But it may not be enough, unless she can convince one important person in charge of robots, that she deserves to live and not be destroyed.

In this book, more of the world that Roz lives in is revealed. Robots are a part of daily life, but there is always the fear of a robot going rogue, hence Roz's efforts to evade detection. As with the previous book, this one is aimed at early readers but doesn't sidestep violence. It also gives the reader time to pause to consider what to do if faced with whether to allow Roz to live or be destroyed as a rogue robot, dangerous to civilization.

A robot gets washed up on the shore of an isolated island and get activated. The robot, known as Roz, is designed to learn and serve humans. But on an island with no humans to serve, Roz does the only thing she can do, learn about the animals, communicate with them and serve them.

It doesn't go well at first, as the animals all avoid Roz. But then an accident lands Roz in the role of a mother to an orphan gosling. Now, Roz asks for advice on how to become a mother, and the animals are more forthcoming and helpful. The gosling thrives and grows up to love Roz.

Roz, in return, has turned into an asset for the island, especially during a very cold winter, where she helps some of the animals survive. But with the return of spring, Roz is finally discovered by humans, and there will be conflict between humans who want their robot back, and the animals who now consider Roz one of them. In the end, Roz has to decide what to do. And thus begins a new adventure for the Roz.

Written in a simplified manner for young children, the book is no 'Disney' version of the wilderness: there is some violence and death on the island. But the heart of the story is Roz's development from a robot built to serve humans into one that serves and help animals instead, and even develops a loving relationship as a mother to a gosling.

Looking forward to reading the further adventures of Roz.

An average issue with interesting stories by Fiona Jones, Ben Berman Ghan, Malena Salazar Maciá and F.E. Choe.

• "Hello! Hello! Hello!" by Fiona Jones: an insubstantial alien being who can live in space discovers a solid object with a substantial living being inside. Its initial attempts to communicate don't go well, but over time, they begin to communicate. But a crisis develops when the substantial being stops moving, and the insubstantial alien has to find help in its own way.

• "Phosphorescence" by Ben Berman Ghan: two people, a Machinist and a Botanist, work together to shape the future of a world deep in a climate crisis. While others dream of uploading themselves or migrating to another planet until the crisis is over, they have other plans.

• "Nine Beauties and the Entangled Threads" by D.A. Xiaolin Spires: a researcher taking care of a forest gets a feeling that there is something happening to it, as the weather changes.

• "A Brief Oral History of the El Zopilote Dock" by Alaya Dawn Johnson: a chronicle of two coloured women in a future where Texas and other states have become independent and reintroduced slavery. Caught and sent to prison, the two women plan an escape via their version of the underground railroad.

• "One Flew Over the Songhua River" by Qi Ran, translated by Andy Dudak: the narrator tells the story of a paternal aunt and how she fell in love, and later divorced a man who would go on to lead a mission to outer space, but who then makes a sacrifice when the mission attracts some strange unwanted attraction.

• "Her Body, The Ship" by Z. K. Abraham: the engine of a colony spaceship travelling through space is lovingly taken care of by an engineer. But then rumours start to spread, which she tries to ignore until they are finally confirmed: their destination planet is in sight. She is devastated by the news, unless she can do something about it.

• "Geminoid" -by Malena Salazar Maciá: in a future where androids hold body parts until they are ready for transplant, one android is being housed with the owner of the heart it keeps. Then the owner discovers he can use deception to make the android take over his work. But it may lead to an unexpected development when the deception gets taken too far after an event.

• "Swarm X1048 - Ethological Field Report: Canis Lupus Familiaris, “6”" by F.E. Choe: a swarm of alien intelligence is fascinated and attracted to a puppy at birth. Tasked with trying to document life on an Earth that is dying, the alien chooses to document the life of the dog as it grows up until the end.

An above average issue with interesting stories by Moustapha Mbacké Diop, Bonnie Elizabeth, Clara Madrigano, J. A. Prentice, Dane Kuttler and Will McMahon.

• "What Kills The Stars" by Alex Bisker: a person goes to interview a physicist, and get infatuated by her. He reminisces about his ex-wife during the interview, where the physicist talks about the possible ways the universe may end. By the next day, they will discover it is a lot closer than expected.

• "The Ndayaan Sea" by Moustapha Mbacké Diop: an African witch goes on a journey after her sister, who has usurped her power. When they meet, monsters also approach, and what happens next determines their fate.

• "The Icy Wasteland At Her Feet" by Deborah L. Davitt: a lone survivor of an expedition to the moon, Enceladus, struggles to keep the place working and herself alive. But she suffers from survivors morose over the decisions she, and the others, could have taken to avoid the situation she is now in.

• "Guilt Can Wilt The Sweetest Flower" by Veronica Henry: the caretaker of a library lets an apparent homeless person into the library, against the rules. Then strange things begin to happen as the person is revealed to be not who he thinks she is. But then his life in the library is upturned, and he now has to decide whether to follow her back to her home, which may not be on our world.

• "Mackson’s Mardi Gras Moon Race" by David DeGraff: featuring a long-distance race on the moon, one person bets his chances on winning it on taking an unexpected route. But the route is filled with dangers, including an unsporting opponent.

• "The Wizzzer" by Scott Nicolay: a young boy gathers his gang of followers and tells them of a strange 'Wizzzer' that had eaten his family, and it is now up to them to kill it. At the end, one of the followers senses something is not right, but it may be too late.

• "Burned Like Coal" by T. R. Napper: two people attempt to sabotage a coal plant, in an attempt to make a corporation pay for global warming. But it does not go as planned.

• "The Diamond Factory" by Phoebe Barton: on a space station due to be destroyed, one final check reveals an apparent stowaway on board. But the stowaway may not be who she appears to be.

• "The Body-Part Woman" by Bonnie Elizabeth: about a woman at an unusual shop that houses body-parts. But it is no horror story, for the body parts are willingly given, at the point of death, and are kept at the shop to be passed on to others. In this story, she faces a hostile customer who demands (in her opinion) the wrong body parts, and she has to convince him to take the body part that he really needs.

• "How To Care For Your Domestic God" by Clara Madrigano: a fascinating tale of a couple who move in a house that may be too good to be true. And it turns out to be that when they discover a god inhabits it and if they don't satiate its hunger, it will make their lives miserable. The birth of their baby would cause a change in their accommodation with the god.

• "Big Trouble In Sector C" by Robert Friedman and Barry N. Malzberg: in a virtual world, an avatar hunts for an elusive malware. But the final confrontation doesn't go as expected.

• "All Our Better Angels" by Jack Neel Waddell: a time travel story about saving various world lines. But in this one, the protagonist gets tangled up into saving her own past due to her past actions.

• "Puzzle Pieces" by Jennifer R. Povey: in a dystopian future, a child's mind is being manipulated, taken apart and put back together, so that she can look 'normal' to the outside world, while still hidden inside is the child that just wants to be left alone.

• "Zariel: Parable Of A Gifted Black Child" by Denzel Xavier Scott: the story of a black child gifted with strange powers, and tells her mother of all the abuses that her family have suffered at the hands of white society, before leaving with a higher power that has come to claim her.

• "The Wounded King" by J. A. Prentice: in a ruined castle, a former king waits the arrival of knights who have come for help to save their country from a comet that is laying waste to their land. But the price the king, wounded but kept living with the help of mystic forces, asks for may be too much for the knights to accept.

• "The Interspatial Accessibility Compact’s Guidelines For Cross-Cultural Engagement" by Dane Kuttler: an alien botanist at a flower shop gets a visit from a human scientist with a human problem: falling in love. But the love interest is a fellow alien scientist, making the problem more complicated. An above average issue, with some interesting stories by Moustapha Mbacké Diop, Bonnie Elizabeth, Clara Madrigano, J. A. Prentice, Dane Kuttler and Will McMahon.

• "Do Not Hasten To Bid Me Adieu" by Will McMahon: a old man waits for letters from his son who is fighting in the Spanish Civil War. But what he finds are letters from his great-great-granddaughter from the future, asking him for help from an arranged marriage she does not want. He gives what advice he can, but when tragedy strikes, his last advice to her would involve a leap of faith from the granddaughter.

Presented here are the winners and finalist of Grist's climate fiction competition. They all feature people who are coping or trying to cope with a world where more extreme climate change is underway or has happened. The ones I enjoyed are by Jamie Liu, Louis Evans, Cameron Neil Ishee, Rae Mariz, Sanjana Sekhar, Karen Engelsen and by Guglielmo Miccolupi and Laura C Zanetti-Domingues.

• "To Labor for the Hive" by Jamie Liu: an interesting story of a woman who takes care of bees. One day she reluctantly enrols in a programme to monitor the weather based on the behaviour of her bees. That would lead to a relationship with a researcher through messaging and, perhaps an opening up after her last relationship ended.

• "The Last Almond" by Zoe Young: heavy rains are forecast, and a farmer's land has to be sacrificed to help alleviate the flood. The farmer prepares and remember the previous time a flood caused widespread damage and personal loss.

• "A Seder in Siberia" by Louis Evans: a family starts the ceremonial dinner with a missing family member, only for him (the eldest brother) to turn up after it starts. The celebration turns tense as family secrets become revealed as the brother explains why he left and why he has now returned, and it involves an event that their father was involved that the resulted in where the family is located now.

• "Accensa Domo Proximi" by Cameron Neil Ishee: as people converge to see an artist finally finish an unknown sculpture, one person recognizes it for what it is and realizes the artist has given the community a remembrance of places lost to the rising sea.

• "Gifts We Give to the Sea" by Dinara Tengri: a son returns to his home near the Aral Sea in Kazakhstan, in the hopes of reconnecting with his family and, perhaps, help bring part of the sea back to life.

• "The Imperfect Blue Marble" by Rae Mariz: a curious child is given the gift of a blue marble by a glassblower. But what he does next with it has echoes with how we should treat another blue marble.

• "Cabbage Koora: A Prognostic Autobiography" by Sanjana Sekhar: a story spanning generations as a family spread around the world bond over virtual meetings where they discuss growing their favourite traditional vegetable, in a world where growing things and travelling around gets increasingly difficult in a warming world.

• "La Sirène" by Karen Engelsen: in a future of rising sea levels and more deadly storms, a religious facility at sea gives shelter to people who have been affected by pollution, causing them to not develop proper legs. A priest at the shelter dreams about the sea goddess, who will try to destroy them for when humans have done to the sea; unless he can find a way to work with the sea with the help of the affected people.

• "The Long In-Between" Andrew Kenneson: a person decides to re-wild his patch of land. But he has to deal with neighbours who don't agree with his methods.

• "A Gift of Coconuts" by Melissa Gunn: as a storm hits an island, one family not only has to worry about surviving it, but also about the fate of their father who was out in a boat. As it turns out, one product on the island would have a hand in helping the father find the island again.

• "Stasis" by Lovinia Summer: a person undergoes an unusual transformation in preparation for a journey of their village from a desert to the sea: a transformation that would involve a change in microbiome.

• "The Blossoming" by Guglielmo Miccolupi, Laura C Zanetti-Domingues: a somewhat hilarious story of a cyclist running away from an angry bull, and then from a flock of sheep. In a flashback, we see who the cyclists, who was wondering what to do with his life, got involved in the situation, which would involve a bunch of rare plants.

A fascinating series of stories, each based on a fairy or folk tale, that then gets turned by the author into her own tales. Some maintain the fairy tale atmosphere, while others take on a fantasy or contemporary tone. I was not familiar with some of the sources used for the stories, but it is worth looking them up after reading the stories here to see the similarities and differences between the source materials and her stories.

• The White Cat's Divorce: a rich man who can get anything fears growing old and sets his sons tasks to determine who will inherit his wealth. As usual, the youngest one manages to fulfil the wishes with unusual results when he meets a talking white cat that helps him out. But the strangest result would come when the cat insists on meeting his father.

• Prince Hat Underground: the relationship between Prince Hat and his lover are interrupted when Prince Hat's former fiancée suddenly appears and whisks him away. The lover then goes on a journey to Iceland and then down underground into another world to find Prince Hat and find out how he wants to live.

• The White Road: in a future when an unknown calamity has occurred, a travelling theatre group which also acts as a messenger service travels to the town of Bremen, with a strange white road running alongside them in the distance. It is only when they get to Bremen, and discover a disaster, do they realize that they have to give a realistic performance to save their lives from whatever inhabits the white road.

• The Girl Who Did Not Know Fear: a traveller is stuck at an airport, waiting for an available flight during a weather disruption. While there, she learns her child at home is getting scared; a situation which she is struggling to understand when, at last, a flight home opens.

• The game of Smash and Recovery: a girl and a boy play games on a distant world while waiting for a long delayed rescue by their parents. But in one of the games, the girl does the unexpected and discovers the truth about herself, hidden in a forbidden area of the planet.

• The Lady and the Fox: during a snowy Christmas at a house, a young girl sees a face at a window, whom she later discovers is that of a young man. But at subsequent meetings, when the man only appears when it snows at Christmas, she finds herself falling in love with him. Now, she is determined to discover why he can only appear at that time, and how to keep him in our world.

• Skinder's Veil: a man is asked by his friend to help take care of a house in the woods while she is away. He is given strict, and unusual, instructions about who can enter the house. Following the rules, he lets in a series of travellers, both human and non-human, which tell him seemingly disconnected stories that gradually reveal just who the owner of the house really is.

An average issue, with interesting stories by Zohar Jacobs and Yang Wanqing.

• "Scalp" by H.H. Pak: a young janitor does his job in a facility where people infected with an extreme addiction are sedated and put into virtual worlds to recover.

• "The Flowers That We Intend To Share" by Rajeev Prasad: robots that take care of modified plants in a greenhouse began to develop awareness. The two sons of the parents who own the greenhouse are determined that the robots can explore the world, against the wishes of the parents.

• "The Enceladus South Pole Base Named after V.I. Lenin" by Zohar Jacobs: set in an alternate world where the Soviet Union has a base on Enceladus, the story centres about the base commander who discovers that religion is becoming popular as the base, which is against Soviet principles. His attempts to stamp out it occur when a major discovery is made, prompting new explorers to come from the Earth. But the new people bring news of changes on Earth, leading the commander to consider a new path for the base and for himself.

• "Kardashev's Palimpsest" by David Goodman: in the far, far, future, a Seeker recreates his earlier self to explore his beginning on Earth and his relation with a long-lost companion that, perhaps, is not lost forever.

• "The Peregrine Falcon Flies West" by Yang Wanqing, translated by Jay Zhang: a girl makes a trip to the west of China, on a fanciful desire to follow a falcon. But events in this warming world make a change when unknown aliens turn up and turn the climate around, but maybe not for the better in the long term for humanity. The girl, and her interest in birds and their intelligence, may be what is needed to break through and communicate with the aliens.

• "Why Don't We Just Kill the Kid In the Omelas Hole" by Isabel J. Kim: an unsettling story of a community people are happy and healthy, except for one child who must suffer in a hole. Then, the child is murdered, and disasters occurs until another child can be found who can suffer on behalf of the community. Conflicts break out between those who say the child must suffer and those who think the community are moral monsters for doing it.

• "The Beam Eidolon" by Ryan Marie Ketterer: a conscious planetary entity's peaceful existence is shattered when four people arrive to dig up its earth, cut up its forests and eat its creatures. Now the entity just wants to take revenge for its suffering.

• "Lonely Ghosts" by Meghan Feldman: a robotic planetary surveyor keeps asking an unseen entity exploring on a nearby moon whether it is along on the planet, for it is seeing the ghosts of its trainers, and now even doubts the existence of the other explorer.

A fascinating layman's level approach to explaining about black holes, time warps and warped space. Kip Thorne summarizes much of what he and other researchers now know (and don't know) about them, while also indulging in some speculative thought experiments about the consequences such objects would have in our universe.

But speculation remains speculation, unless there is a way to gather objective evidence about it. Here, Thorne talks about his work in getting the massive LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory) up and running, and detecting the gravity waves generated when black holes and other massive celestial objects collide and merge. He also talks about plans for even more massive gravitational wave detectors and can detect the signatures of supermassive black holes and maybe even the gravitational waves generated during the first moments of the Big Bang.

Along with the text are illustrations by Lia Halloran that help put down in images what Thorne is saying.

This is a short but deeply descriptive book about the nature of black holes and warped space that contains up-to-date information about what is currently known about them.

A dense, but fascinating book on a puzzling subject: how does life work. The author freely admits that he doesn't have the answer, and biologists are still working on the problem. But what he does say is that the 'gene-centric' view of life, sometimes pushed to ridiculous limits (i.e., "it is not my fault, my genes made me do it"), is incorrect and won't lead us to the answers as to how life works and what makes life so different from non-life.

Starting from the smallest details, the author shows that while DNA does store the information needed to produce proteins and RNA, it is very far from being the 'blueprint of life'. The Human Genome Project, covered by the author, may have decoded the genes that make us human, but it is still far from helping us to solve the problem of how to make a human from a single cell formed from a merger of an egg and sperm.

Instead, the author shows that the interplay of DNA, proteins and RNA at the cell, tissue and higher levels are what make life work, in the broadest details (once again, scientists are still working hard at puzzling out the details). DNA may help provide the information on how to make the proteins and RNA needed for life, but it is far from being able to dictate how to make a body. Proteins and RNA regulate and coordinate among themselves, at the cell level and higher, using the instructions provided by DNA (but sometimes ignoring it) to build the cells and tissues that make up a body (human or otherwise) as it develops and interacts with its environment.

An analogy provided by the author that I found illuminating is that of the development of cities. Cities get started in different ways and in different environments. Yet their overall structure (business and civic districts, transportation networks, housing) resembles each other. City administrations (the DNA) may roughly dictate the purpose and locations of areas, but it is the 'people on the ground' (the proteins and RNA that do development) that decide what actually gets built depending on the material and environment available.

In the same way, DNA may provide instructions for creating proteins and RNA required to create cells and regulate them, but it is the cells and, at a higher level, the tissues, that determine how the body gets built, based on the environment the body finds itself it. For this reason, searches for a 'gene that does X' mostly fail because what does X is dictated at the level of the cell and tissue, not by the gene.

Throughout the book, the author shows time and again how little genes actually determine things. A recent prime example is COVID-19. Despite knowing the intimate structure of how the virus invades a cell, the huge number of possible results (from people 'just' having colds to suffering from Long COVID or other disabilities) shows that it is the body's reaction to the virus, not the DNA in our bodies, that determines how sick we can become.

Another subject the author touches on is, of course, human sexuality. And here, he shows why those that say that genes (the X and Y chromosomes) determine our sexual orientation are out of touch with reality, with the various ways bodies and cells can develop to have male or female characteristics, despite the instructions that the genes are providing that say otherwise.

An entertaining book that needs time for the information to sink it. And one that probably needs to be read sooner rather than later, but it is quite possible that some of the details in the book may prove to be wrong, as new ways to look at how life works get discovered by future developments in biology. But overall, a good overview on what modern biology has to say, for now, about how life works.