Reviews and Comments

An interesting book, set as a series of stories as 'retold' by the author of his childhood in a small Swedish town that was host to a powerful underground particle accelerator known to the locals as the Loop. In the alternative past, powerful magnetic based technology has given rise to levitating transporters, walking robots and other sources of energy. But it has also given rise to various myths, like wormholes created by the Loop that let rumoured creatures like dinosaurs roam the present.

But all is not well. The stresses of living just above a machine that might twist reality causes social and communal problems (like divorce and family violence). The author's tales talk about these problems, as well as the times the author and his friends played among the debris that littered the landscape from the building and, later, decommissioning of the Loop.

The illustrations and sketches in the book give a good impression of the landscape the author imagines playing in, full of life and the unusual machines that make up the author's 'childhood'.

A fantastic exploration of an alternative biology. In our world, the cells in an organism belong to it: attempts to directly transfer cells from one organism to another usually result in rejection by the immune system. But in this story, groups of cell (cytes) communicate with each other and with other cells to determine their course of action. Given the right signals, the cells can decide as a group to, for example, leave a person for another person which provides a better environment.

The story starts with two main characters: one who wakes up with parts of her body missing, her cells deciding to leave her for unknown reasons, leading her to become a researcher stuying how cytes communicate and decide on their roles in people's bodies. The other is a Swapper, a person who actively seeks out others to exchange their cytes, hoping to find a better combination of cytes that may eventually let them live as Flourishers, a group of people whose cytes cooperate so well that they can live for hundreds of years.

Both would eventually meet, in unusual circumstances, when the research leads to the discovery of a set of signals that can persuade the cytes to change their roles. But danger lurks, for there is another group that wants to use the research for their own purposes and are not above using murder to stop others.

Through the characters, we get to see how people live in this world, where evolution has lead to a world that looks much like our own: but on the level of cells, groups of them can decide to migrate to another body, or even change their role in the body. This has repercussions in the act of reproduction, but you'll have to read the story to discover how this happens in this alternate world.

A good issue, with interesting stories by Tia Tashiro, Rich Larson, Derrick Boden, Shen Dacheng and Kelly Jennings.

• "The Lark Ascending" by Eleanna Castroianni: people sweep clean the former house of a dissident, leaving behind the house robot, who now only has memories of its owner and his daughter whom it cared for.

• "An Intergalactic Smuggler's Guide to Homecoming" by Tia Tashiro: a smuggler returns home with her latest item to be passed on. The trip brings back memories of her struggles with here sister to leave the planet, whom she thinks gave up their dream to leave together. But a sudden decision to save the smuggled items, instead of handing it over, would change her life, perhaps for the better, and rebuild relationships.

• "The Indomitable Captain Holli" by Rich Larson: a fun and fascinating story about a girl living in a tower who plays a game with a 'puppet' in her virtual reality goggles. The game has her running up a tower, while her family, and another invasion force from another tower, pursue her. As the story progresses, the history of how the people came to live in two mutually hostile towers is told, and the importance of the girl for the future of humanity is revealed.

• "The Arborist" by Derrick Boden: the relationship between a tree, transplanted to an alien world to destroy its native life so that human can begin terraforming it, and an android are the focus of this story about the tension between letting native life live and killing so that humans, who have lost the Earth, can settle it.

• "The Rambler" by Shen Dacheng, translated by Cara Healey: an unusual story of a pedestrian bridge which suddenly decides to start walking. Most of the story is told from the viewpoint of rubbish truck workers who chase after it after the city administration couldn't decide whose jurisdiction a runaway bridge falls under.

• "Occurrence at O1339" by Kelly Jennings: a story of a mining robot in space who suddenly makes First Contact with an alien civilization which threatens to destroy humanity unless they can prove they are sentient within 10 questions.

• "The Oldest Fun" by Natalia Theodoridou: an open-world video game appears at a school, and pulls in students who play it.

Another good anthology of World SF, featuring authors from around the world. As in any anthology with such a wide range of styles, there will be some stories that I didn't like, but it is still valuable by exposing the reader to writers they may never have encountered before. The stories I found interesting were by Diana Rahim, M.H. Ayinde, Luo Longxiang, Thomas Olde Heuvelt, Andrea Chapela, Fadzlishah Johanabas, Efe Okogu, Chen Qian, Choyeop Kim, Eugenia Triantafyllou, Christine Lucas and Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen.

• “A Minor Kalahari” by Diana Rahim (Singapore): on an island turning dry and grey, a watermelon suddenly appears from the ground. The reactions of the person whose garden it appeared in, the neighbours and the local town council form the heart of the story.

• “Behind Her, Trailing Like Butterfly Wings” by Daniela Tomova (Bulgaria): a reporter interviews one of many travellers on a road who are following in the path of a mysterious lady, in a world where 'mouths' that may be wormholes can suddenly open and 'feed' on humans: but not those on the road.

• “Cloudgazer” by Timi Odueso (Nigeria): rumours of clouds spotted in the sky send a girl chasing after them, for she needs the water from the clouds to save her grandfather. But there comes a time when she has to stop dreaming to really save her grandfather.

• “The EMO Hunter” by Mandisi Nkomo (South Africa): on another world, a Mother Earth Knight (bounty hunter) faces a challenge from an unexpected enemy who wants more from him than he can emotionally give.

• “Tloque Nahuaque” by Nelly Geraldine García-Rosas (Mexico), translated by Silvia Moreno-Garcia: at attempt to recreate the origin of the universe leads to an unexpected manifestation.

• “The Walls of Benin City” by M.H. Ayinde (UK): a survivor of an alien attack makes his way to Benin City, the last surviving city on Earth. On the way, he is rescued by a robot with artistic flourises, who shows him the role of art in surviving the attack, and how he can relearn to live with himself, and others, at the city.

• “The Foodie Federation’s Dinosaur Farm” by Luo Longxiang (China), translated by Andy Dudak: think Jurassic Park in space, only here, the dinosaurs (some intelligent) are harvested for food. When they inevitably rebel, the last surviving human on the ship has to work with them to survive as the dinosaurs work to survive tribalism to unite and overthrow the rest of humanity.

• “The Day The World Turned Upside Down” by Thomas Olde Heuvelt (The Netherlands), translated by Lia Belt: one day, the world literally turns upside down and things tumbled down into the sky. For one survivor, who days before suffers through a relationship breakup, it is at least of his problems, as he makes his way back to his ex, bearing a gift and hopes at getting things right.

• “The Worldless” by Indrapramit Das (India): two people living on a world that survives by providing service for spaceships docked at the planet yearn for more. What they yearn for is a place to call home, and that place might be Earth.

• “Now You Feel It” by Andrea Chapela (Mexico), translated by Emma Törzs: an interesting story about a woman who can illegally manipulate the emotions of clients. Now, she has been asked to manipulate the emotions of a teenager who did a horrible thing to a girl so that an investigation would find him innocent of the action. The results show that people should be careful what they want, and she also reconsiders whether she wants to continue doing those jobs.

• “Act of Faith” by Fadzlishah Johanabas (Malaysia): an old man is given an android to take care of it. The man asks the android to act more human. When it does, the man goes further and introduces the android to the Quran, which leads to an argument with the local Iman over whether the android can become a Muslim. In the end, an event causes all involved to reevaluate when it means for an android to become religious.

• “Godmother” by Cheryl S. Ntumy (Ghana): an officer whose job is to make sure people only tell the truth is assigned to investigate an AI medical diagnostics system, nicknamed Godmother, which is popular with people. He is to determine whether the AI is deceiving people into following it by deceiving people. But what he discovers instead is the human need to be acknowledged and to communicate with each other.

• “I Call Upon the Night as Witness” by Zahra Mukhi (Pakistan): in a world where physical Lines are drawn by the powerful on the earth, dividing people from their properties and turning them into refugees, one person wants to find a way out of a land that all refugees eventually end up in: a land where there be dragons.

• “Sulfur” by Dmitry Glukhovsky (Russia), translated by Marian Schwartz: an interrigator questions a woman over the murder of her husband. It gradually turns into a critique of the sulfur mining town, the way people live and the hold the dead there have over the living.

• “Proposition 23” by Efe Okogu (Nigeria): a fascinating tale set in a future where 'citizens' live in a city with implanted nanosensors that cater to their needs; but there are also the 'undead', outcasts whose sensors have been disable and left to survive the best they can. Into this situation are thrown a police office out for revenge against a terrorist who has perpetrated an act of terrorism against the city, and a hacker who discovers somebody or something flitting through the city's system. They would all be thrown together over Proposition 23, whose ramifications would overturn their way of life and entrench the rulers of the system.

• “Root Rot” by Fargo Tbakhi (US): even on Mars, the inequalities between Palestinians and Israelis still fester, as one man tries to keep on living.

• “Catching the K-Beast” by Chen Qian (China), translated by Carmen Yiling Yan: a funny tale about two people sent to a planet to catch the K-Beasts. Problem is, how do you catch beasts that can see twelve minutes into the future? The solution may involve paradoxes about cause and effect.

• “Two Moons” by Elena Pavlova (Bulgaria), translated by Kalin M. Nenov and Elena Pavlova: on an alien world that is mostly uninhabitable, a voyager encounters a living travelling city. Her exploration of it would reveal some answers about the origins of the world, but also more questions.

• “Symbiosis Theory” by Choyeop Kim (Korea), translated by Joungmin Lee Comfort: the story starts with an artist who is obsessed with bringing an imaginary world to life through art, which often moves people emotionally when seeing it. The mystery deepens when a planet is eventually discovered, after her death, that matches the artist's description. A possible, and intriguing, solution is presented when the story switches tracks to look at the work of people trying to neurologically decode the thoughts and speech of babies. It turns out that babies have very sophisticated thoughts, and it is also related to the alien world.

• “My Country is a Ghost” by Eugenia Triantafyllou (Greece): in a world where ghosts of the dead can accompany the living and provide guidance, one lady feels lost when she is forced to give up the ghost of her mother when she moves to another country. She is fearful of losing the memory of her mother and her culture; until another migrant with a familiar looking ghost comforts her and provides a way for her to recall her memories of her mother.

• “Old People’s Folly” by Nora Schinnerl (Austria): an old lady with a crippled leg finds a disc that contains the personality of a person from an earlier age from before the flood. The person is aghast at the changes climate change have caused and tries to rally the old lady into helping a young boy who is suffering abuse. The lady is reluctant to get involved, in a time when pollution is still causing environmental damage. But perhaps the personality can encourage her to start making small changes for the better.

• “Echoes of a Broken Mind” by Christine Lucas (Greece): a person with a brain implant scavenges for a living, hoping to make enough to send a message to her child, taken away at birth. And one day, she does: but the repercussions of the message would change her world view and make her realize the danger she is in from the person she thought was her child. But her implant, suddenly working better than ever, may be the key for her to fight back against people who deceived her and many others.

• “Have Your #Hugot Harvested at This Diwata-Owned Café” by Vida Cruz (Philippines): on an unusual café that serves both humans and mythic people with food containing an emotional ingredient that can only come from humans.

• “Order C345” by Sheikha Helawy (Palestine) — translated by Raphael Cohen: an unusual order about replacement body parts that can awaken would grant their owners an unusual liberty.

• “Dark Star” by Vraiux Dorós (Mexico) — translated by Toshiya Kamei: possibly a metafictional tale about fiction (and rabbits?) told in verse form.

• “An excerpt from ‘A Door Opens: The Beginning of the Fall of the Ispancialo-in-Hinirang (Emprensa Press: 2007)’ by Salahuddin Alonto, Annotated by Omar Jamad Maududi, MLS, HOL, JMS.” by Dean Francis Alfar (Philippines): a very short tale with long annotations about how the opening of a magical door lead to the rise of a country that had been colonized.

• “Ootheca” by Mário de Seabra Coelho (Portugal): in a city where people survive after the reality of the world has been overturned by an unstated entity, a man whose teeth have been replaced by cockroaches (in the story, this means they have been 'hagged' by a Hag) starts up a relationship with an old friend. As the story progresses, we discover the girl's guilt over another hagged person, and he struggles to keep her safe from the Hag as well.

• “Where The Trains Turn” by Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen (Finland) — translated by Liisa Rantalaiho: a narrated story by a woman who tells the story of her strange son who grows up alone and fascinated by trains. Until one day, when he is suddenly horrified by an event involving a train. From then on, the mother tries to prevent his interest in trains and fantasy elements, keeping him (and herself) rooted in reality by only studying 'real' things. As the son grows up, it appears to work: until another incident with a train causes a crisis that will throw both together on a journey to confront an evil that is housed in a particular train. But the journey would change both their futures and their pasts.