Reviews and Comments

A story set in the author's "Lady Astronaut" series, this one looks at a female astronaut in a backup crew for a moon mission, who finds herself being excluded from events from both her fellow male astronauts and from another female astronaut. One day, she decides to follow them and discover they were all secretly going to a particular pub, increasing her feelings of being excluded. Then events occur, and she decides to gatecrash the pub, only to discover that what goes on inside is not what it seems, and they all discover secrets about each other that will only bond the crew closer together.

An average issue with interesting stories by Nigel Brown, Fiona Moore and Arula Ratnakar.

• "A Space O/pera" by Abby Nicole Yee: the Philippines sends up a dog into space. But a problem occurs, and the dog is left for dead in space. But her owner does not give up, and plans to rescue the dog.

• "The Buried People" by Nigel Brown: an expedition goes to the frozen north to dig up people who have the ability to hibernate and freeze during winter. The reason for this, and how these people may have got this ability, are hinted at in this story about a climate catastrophe that happened in the past.

• "The Children of Flame" by Fiona Moore: a community that sprung up after a civilization collapse now face a new challenge: a feudal group that wants to take over. It would need the community to realise that they need each other to face the challenge.

• "Fractal Karma" by Arula Ratnakar: a girl loses her job. Desperate to keep up her share of the payment, and stop being seen as a loser, she learns of and steals an experiment headset that allows the user to connect to the minds of another user. Intrigued, she forces her way into a study (which promises its volunteers a reward) being conducted with more connected minds, not knowing what she will get into. A rather mathematical story, featuring fractals and aspects of Borromean rings that tie into aspects of melded minds giving rise to another form of intelligence.

• "Fishing the Intergalactic Stream" by Louis Inglis Hall: a 'fisherman' travels from many worlds to catch their equivalent of fish. But a new, empty world presents a new challenge, for it may have been set to lure the fisherman instead.

• "Midnight Patron" by Mike Robinson: in a future where humans are no more and crows are more intelligent, one crow finds an abandoned house with images and a statue and, in a burst of imagination, sets out to create its own artwork.

• "The Face of God: A Documentary" by Damián Neri: short pieces from many viewpoints on the discovery of a large alien corpse in space that many view as the body of god.

In this story, the protagonist 'doom-scrolls' through the postings on a social-media app. Only, instead of seeing posts by other people, he is seeing posts by himself in other universes. And the posts are uniformly depressing, with complaints by his alternate selves about their lives in the doldrums. But then, he occasionally sees direct messages from his other selves, asking him how he is. And when he decides to respond to one message, he discovers what may be the truth behind the app that is keeping him addicted to the social network, and what he may have to do to break out of the cycle of depressing posts.

In this story, angels can perform miracles for a person. But they also need to feed on the person, and what they feed on are the bad feelings; angel, rage, revenge. The person in question finally calls an exorcist to banish the angels. But then the exorcist discovers the source of her anger and frustration, and it is not something the exorcist can get rid of: only the person can do so. But what if the person doesn't want to? A rather grim story about hitting back at the source of a person's trauma, and what it would take to finally heal and exorcise the angels, in this case.

A fascinating and enlightening book on quantum field theory and how the Higgs field gives mass (to be more precise, the rest mass) to the particles found in the Standard Model of particle physics. Except, as the author points out, particles don't exist: the best way to understand modern physics is to see the particles as confined standing waves with different level of interactions with the Higgs field.

The first part of the book gives an introduction to physics, starting with Newton's laws of motion and Galilean relativity, which states that the laws of motion are the same in all inertial reference frames, followed by Einstein's Relativity. This would lead to the author's way of looking at the world, in terms of waves, fields and mediums, necessary to understand how modern quantum field theory describes the world. The author admits that we don't really know what kind of medium 'empty space' is: it is the medium that the particles of the Standard Model interact in. For this reason, the author concentrates more on fields (as do other scientists).

Now, the reader has to make the leap, guided by the author, to understand that what we consider as particles are actually standing waves vibrating in the various fields: an electron is a standing wave in an electron field. Protons and neutrons are composites, made up of standing waves of quarks and gluons that vibrate inside the protons and neutrons. And it is the Higgs field, which interacts with these fields, that make the standing waves possible. The frequency (and energy) of these standing waves are what give the 'particles' their rest mass. The photon does not have a rest mass because it does not interact with the Higgs field, so it has no standing wave, but must keep moving (as a travelling wave) at, of course, the speed of light. Once this is accepted by the reader, the rest of the book, briefly covering cosmology, the puzzle of vacuum energy, and so on, should be more easily understood.

By the end, the reader should be able to get some understanding of how modern quantum field theory views the world in terms of fields and waves. The puzzle of the medium of 'empty' space that the field and waves operate in will have be left for future physicists to try to answer.

The Nawab (ruler) of Mehranpur is offered a meal that can bring eternal youth, taking many days to prepare. During that time, the Namab worries about his tree, a Gulmohar, which is wilting and dying. Just before the meal is ready, he is summoned by the ruler of another kingdom, which the Nawab is a subject of, and told to uproot and present his tree to the ruler. As the Nawab ponders what to do, the meal is present: its effect would make the Nawab consider alternatives to the ruler's demand.