Reviews and Comments

An interesting collecting of stories from an interesting writer. Not all the stories are to my taste (which is more into Worldbuilding and Hard SFF) but they reveal the concerns the author has with society's interaction with the LGBT community.

What follows are individual reviews of the stories in the collection.

• As Good As New: the world has ended, apart from one person. In the aftermath, she finds a genie in a bottle who can grant her three wishes, including the wish to restore the world. But an off-hand comment by the genie makes her pause: so while thinking about the wishes, she has conversations with the genie, which turned out to be a former play critic. This suits her fine, as she is a former writer of plays (now studying to be a doctor). In the course of the conversations, she gets an idea for a new play and, in the process, come up with three wishes that may just save the world.

• Rat Catcher’s Yellow: a woman gets a Cat Kingdom game for her partner, who is suffering for a neurological disease (Rat Catcher’s Yellow) and is only responsive when playing the game. And it turns out the partner is very good at the game, to the point where an organisation asks them to join a competition. And it is at the competition that the woman discovers that she doesn't have to be alone in taking care of others with the affliction.

• If You Take my Meaning: a follow-up to a book by the author (who suggests skipping the story to avoid spoilers), it concerns a girl who goes on a journey to get alien tendrils embedded into her. The tendrils enable a person to send and get emotional messages from others, and she wants to use it to send political messages. But it is only after the surgery does she realise that she has another mission to fulfil.

• The Time Travel Club: a club of people who talk about their fictional time-travels is shown a real time-travelling machine. Problem is, the machine moves objects only through time and not space, so it ends up somewhere else (since the Earth has moved). Close to giving up after other plans to use the time machine fail, one girl convinces the group to try one more time to make the machine work. The end result should be expected to those who know what happens to people to make the first time travel journey.

• Six Months, Three Days: a man who can see the future dates a girl who can see alternate futures. Their lives together for six months and three days would be full of love and conflicts over what kind of future can they have when one expects events to always happen while the other sees alternative events that can happen.

• Love Might Be Too Strong a Word: a on city sized ship heading to a colony world, a 'higher' level pilot falls in love with a 'lowly' general cleaner and sets out to woo the cleaner. In between the romantic letters being sent, we see a ship where genders have been split between different types of city inhabitants (the gender for the pilot is 'Be') making you wonder how such trysts are seen and handled by the ship's inhabitants.

• Fairy Werewolf vs. Vampire Zombie: a 'wild' story mostly set in a bar that hires a fairy singer before discovering the fairy is also a werewolf. Her singing makes a person falls for her: a person who later is found to be a vampire and a zombie and has designs on her. The only way out is, via a spur of the moment thought, a karaoke contest. But that doesn't go as planned, leading to general mayhem.

• Ghost Champagne: a depressive project manager, who also moonlights as a comedian, sees a ghost that looks like her. Her thoughts on the ghost, and wondering what she did to become one, only make the ghost appear closer to her and become more of a mental and physical distraction. Until one day, at a wedding, she 'steals' the drink the ghost is holding. The effects would cause a re-evaluation of her mental condition and to see things from the ghost's perspective that would change her own life.

• My Breath is a Rudder: in a future San Francisco, now protected by a sea wall against the sea, an artist is contemplating the mural she has been asked to create on a section of the wall, to help remind the inhabitants about the ocean they can no longer see and the danger it represents.

• Power Couple: a couple who want to Change the World start a relationship, but it gets interrupted by their studies. Then, the girl gets an idea on how to delay their relationship until they have done their work, which involves hibernation. You have to read the story to see how this idea for delayed gratification turns out.

• Rock Manning Goes For Broke: a hilarious story set in a future America whose society is crumbling. Rock Manning is a well-meaning person who loves to do stunts and gets involved with a girl doing film studies, which means lots of short meme-type films will no storyline but lots of dangerous stunts, distracting people as the world slowly goes to bits. But things get serious when a school bully becomes a big-time bully and tries to enlist him into making films for him to gain support; or else. And we follow their lives, we see a country tearing itself apart.

• Because Change Was The Ocean and We Lived by Her Mercy: in the future, when climate change has raise sea levels by metres, society is slowly rebuilding itself. We follow a person as he leaves a city which he feels is becoming too civilised and moves to a fringe town to lead his own life. But the call of civilisation is strong.

• Captain Roger in Heaven: one woman meets another; to keep her interested, she invents a sex prophet on the spot. This snowballs into a popular cult that is picketed by other religions, claiming that the sex cultist are going to (of course) Hell. Then, a device reveals where people go after death, and now the cult will have to invent a kind of heaven for themselves to go to.

• Clover: a cat abandoned by a girl is given to a couple by a mysterious person. After the cat settles in, another stranger gives them another cat. The first cat is not happy with this. But then the second cat does something unexpected, and now it is up to the one member of the couple and the first cat to do all they can to protect her from the strangers.

• This is Why We Can’t Have Nasty Things: two friends get together for the last time at a bar that is closing down, with one of them contemplating moving away.

• A Temporary Embarrassment in Spacetime: a hilarious story of two people who engineer a heist from a large space organism. They then discover a stowaway, and offer to infiltrate a planet to find out information about a weapon, in return for being able to open a restaurant (their dream). Events would bring the organism and weapon together in a rather embarrassing climax.

• Don’t Press Charges, and I Won’t Sue: a disturbing story about a person who is abducted by the government to undergo a rather radical gender change treatment to give the person the expected 'body' type to match the gender. Further tension is raised in the story when one of the administrators of the treatment is a long-time friend who is now in two-minds over the treatment.

• The Bookstore At The End of America: a bookshop on the border between an independent California and the rest of the US is a meeting point for people on both sides. But a crisis between the countries forces people to shelter in the shop, and now they have to manage their tensions in the only was possible in a bookshop while waiting for the conflict to end.

• The Visitmothers: aliens grant 'wishes' to certain people who seek them. But like genies, you have to be careful what you wish for. One girl who wishes not be alone any more gets her wish answered in a most unusual way.

An interesting story of a two characters on opposite sides of a war fought through time. It begins with Red finding a letter with the words, "Burn before reading," which turns out to be from her adversary, Blue, who teases and challenges her before their next encounter. This time war is fought between two forces, Agency and Garden, who move agents (like Red and Blue) through time to tease and alter events so that, far in the future, victory is theirs.

Each chapter features an event as seen by Red or Blue, in alternate, with a hidden letter discovered by one or the other once victory (or defeat) is tasted by one or the other. But after a few rounds, the tone of the story changes, as both Red and Blue start to talk about their past, and their lives during the war. Then, events happen that show that at some time in the past, their lives have intersected with each other, thought they may not be aware of it at the time. It is then that romance and love being to blossom between the adversaries, an affair that both have to keep hidden from their masters.

At the end, as adversaries, one is given the task of killing the other, with not way out without betraying the other. Yet, there may be a way, and it may involve a shadowy character that has been following their steps, but not revealed until the end of the book.

A short but nice book on the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), covering its history from conception to launch and commissioning, followed by chapters that look at how the JWST has changed the way we look at the solar system, the stars, the galaxies in the universe and how the universe began.

Starting as a planned next generation telescope after the Hubble Space Telescope, the first chapters cover the various ideas that were discussed over what astronomers want the new telescope to do. Politics and budget considerations would cause changes in the design and management of the telescope. Finally, after numerous delays and near cancellation, the JWST was launched, deployed successfully and began to return data that was better than expected.

The next chapter looks at JWST's contributions to planetary science. At one point, the JWST was not planned to do much observation in the solar system as it lacked a tracker to lock on to moving objects in the solar system. This was overcome by using an alternative method that proved to work better than expected: when the DART probe collided with Dimorphos (a moon orbiting the asteroid Didymos), JWST was able to track it and provided valuable data on the result of the collision. JWST was also able to provide spectroscopic data on the planets and their moons, helping to determine what elements and chemistry was happening on them.

Next, a look at what JWST can say about the nearby stars is covered. The JWST is able to detect exoplanets orbiting the stars by various methods, and even do spectroscopic analysis of the exoplanets' atmosphere. While tantalising signs of potential biochemistry have been detected, none have yet to meet the high standard (5 sigma) that mark a discovery.

Going further, the next chapter looks at the galaxies that dot the universe as seen by the JWST. Details on the evolution of stars and galaxies have helped cosmologist get a better idea of how galaxies have evolved throughout the universe.

Finally, the JWST looks past the galaxies and back in time to the period when the universe was still young. Where there have been headlines about "JWST breaking the cosmos", what JWST has actually done is provide even more data that are helping cosmologist refine their models of the cosmos, helping to give us a better picture of how the universe works.

A wonderful collection of three novels of a "China that never was", featuring the narrator, Number Ten Ox, and Li Kao, an ancient sage and scholar with "a slight flaw in his character". Originally published in the 80s and 90s, this reread still finds the stories enjoyable, humorous and full of wonderful myths and details.

The first book, "Bridge of Birds", is the most enjoyable and introduces us to Number Ten Ox. His village is preparing for a large silk harvest, when disaster strikes. Worse, the children in his village (of a certain age) are struck down with a sickness. Ox is tasked with going to Peking to find a scholar who can figure out what happened and how to cure the children. The person Ox eventually finds is an inebriated Li Kao, which turns out to be the only one willing to listen to Ox and help. From there, the story builds up and gradually turns into a quest to find the Great Root of Power which may be able to cure the children. But this quest is also wound tied up with another quest: the search for the Princess of Birds, for both are part of the same story. Through lots of hilarious twists and turns, and strange coincidences that makes Li Kao wonder if Heaven is also involved, they travel the length and breath of China and finally get a triumphant ending that makes all of China celebrate.

The second book, "The Story of the Stone", is at a smaller scale. The abbot of a village in a valley seeks out Li Kao to investigate the murder of a monk, which the abbot fears may be the work of the Laughing Prince, a historical ruler of the valley that once worked and tortured the villagers for his own gains and amusement. During the investigation, Ox hears a compelling tone (that Li Kao does not hear due to his 'slight flaw'), which Li Kao later deduces is the 'soul sound' of a stone. But the stone that produced the sound that Ox (and other villagers) heard and followed would need an especially powerful 'soul', which Li Kao finds referenced in an ancient tale about a stone that was touched by a Goddess. The story of this particular stone would become linked to the murder when further investigations (including a subconscious trip to Hell) show how that ancient tale is not yet over, but could well cause the deaths of all involved, unless they can separate fact from legend and uncover the reason for the murder of the monk.

The third book, "Eight Skilled Gentlemen", starts with a "vampire ghoul" interrupting an execution. But from there, it builds up into a tale involving "Eight Skilled Gentlemen" and eight special bird cages that arise from the myths of pre-Chinese aboriginal peoples. For some reason, food (cooking and preparation of) plays a large humorous part in the story. The ending would involve a race that would determine whether Heaven would turn its back on Earth, unleashing a calamity.

A story based on an East Asian mythology about the Red Thread of Fate, it involves Sai, a poor man running a teahouse with his ailing mother. He has the ability to see people's Red Threads of Fate and, as a side business, he helps and guides people to find their Fated One, who is at the other end of the thread. But a mystery surrounds Sai, for his own Thread is not red, but grey and fraying: and he has never sought out his own Fated One.

But one day, he buys what are purported to be dragon scales, a miracle cure. The scales come to the attention of the cruel Emperor, who orders Sai to find the dragon, or else. His search would take him through a battle, where his thread would suddenly react in an unusual way.

He would, of course, find the dragon. But the search would also lead him to discover his Fated One, and go on a journey to escape the Emperor. He would also discover the reason behind his grey Thread, a reason that dismays him. But it is during the final confrontation with the Emperor that Sai discovers who he really is, and the reason for the Emperor's hunt for dragons.

A story in the Fantasy-Romance vein, but laced with scenes of violence (as warned by the author at the beginning) that show off the cruelty of the Emperor, but also the desperation of Sai and the dragon to escape. In the end, they do escape the Emperor, but not before suffering high emotional anguish, which makes the impact of the ending even more fitting.

An interesting look at the history and impact of the barcode upon society. Starting out as a way to quickly and accurately input product information into cash registers, its usage would become ubiquitous as a way to track inventory. Despite the rise of the QR code (a two-dimensional form of barcode), the traditional barcode is still widely used due to business inertia.

The book starts with the invention of the cash register as a way for businesses to keep track of items being sold and the money being handled. As the number of transactions grew, the need to automate the cash register became imperative. The barcode was invented and patented as a way to automate number entry, but the technology was not there. It was only when the laser scanner was developed would the technology to scan barcode entries become available.

A committee was set up to decide on what should be used to label products. The barcode that we know was not the first choice: that was a circular code, and the choice of a linear barcode may have been due to some internal politics. With the choice of barcode done, the task was then to get businesses together to decide on a common standard for the data encoded by barcodes.

The usage of barcodes was not inevitable. Consumer and workers unions opposed the use of barcodes, for they reduce user choice (individual pricing as opposed to shelf pricing) and the job losses due to automation. Businesses pushed back, but it would be many years before barcode usage would grow to the point where its use would be ubiquitous and objections would begin to die down. But one group would continue to oppose the use of barcodes, religious groups who believe that barcodes are the 'mark of the devil'.

The book also looks at the appearance and influence of the barcode in society. Films like "The Terminator" would use barcodes as a shorthand for oppression (humans are barcoded by the machines). In politics, the barcode would feature as a political point when George H.W. Bush was portrayed as out of touch with the public due to his reaction to seeing a barcode reader in action (a false portrayal, it would later turn out).

The book closes with a look at QR Codes, which are two-dimensional barcodes. The difference between QR codes and barcodes is what the encoded information represents. Barcodes encode a number which references an item in a global, central database. QR codes directly encode the data and do not have to reference a central database. QR codes were also first developed and popularised in East Asian countries (Japan and China). It would require COVID-19 restrictions for QR codes usage to grow in other parts of the world.

A short but fascinating book on viruses, by a science writer with the art of making complex subjects easy to understand. It is divided into several sections, each containing essays on an aspect of viruses in general.

The introduction looks at the history of viruses with the discovery of the first virus known to man, the Tobacco Mosaic Virus. Initially though to be a contagious fluid, and then living protein, it is only when technology got good enough that viruses could be seen, as packets of RNA or DNA contained in a protein capsule.

The first section looks at viruses that have been 'companions' of mankind for a long time: the Rhinoviruses (which causes the Common Cold), Influenza and Papillomavirus. He explains how they invade and take over our cells, causing the cold, the flu and even cancerous tumours.

Next, he looks at bacteriophages, viruses that attack bacteria, and how therapies combining both antibiotics and bacteriophages may be able to treat hard-to-kill bacteria that have grown immune to antibiotics-only treatments. Marine virus are then examined, showing that the oceans contain vast numbers of them than we are only now starting to recognise. Retroviruses (viruses that have become part of human DNA) are then looked at. While most are now harmless, one protein produced by a retrovirus in our DNA would prove to be important: it produces the protein that is a vital part of the mammal placenta.

The next section looks at what is in store for us as development and climate change causes disruptions, and it is not a pretty picture. HIV (and AIDS) is one example of an animal virus that spilled over into humans, causing massive suffering over the decades. The West Nile Virus is a virus that targets birds, but can end up killing humans because the mosquito, which spreads the virus, does not discriminate when feeding. And COVID-19 shows what can happen when humanity is not prepared for a virus that can cause a rapid global epidemic. Finally, he looks at the question of what to do with the last stockpiles of smallpox virus, one of a few viruses that man has managed to eliminate from the world.

The epilogue looks at what we still don't know about viruses. The discovery of giant viruses (the mimivurs) shows that viruses are not necessary tiny containers of DNA or RNA. And the question of how life began and how viruses may have played a part in cells becoming alive is yet to be answered.