Reviews and Comments

A story that drops you straight in with little warning about a future where memories can be uploaded to real-life androids, raising questions as to how human the android can be, especially when some memories are deliberately left out.

As the story progresses, Greg Egan starts to fill in the background of the android, who contains the memories of a famous screenwriter. But when he bumps into another person whom he should know from the memories but does not, it triggers off a search for the missing memories; a search that may reveal a dark secret about a grudge the writer had with another person who may have stolen his idea and caused the death of a loved one.

The title of the story probably refers to the idea that robots and artificial creations start to appear creepy as they become close to, but not quite, human. But in this case, it may refer to the idea that memories make up a person, so how 'creepy' can it get when an android only have almost all the memories of a person?

A thoughtful story that, in contrast to Egan's other recent works, has little esoteric hard SF but instead features a character that is feeling his way through memories, trying to fill in parts that have been deliberately left out.

An interesting set of stories featured in this issue. The 'superhero' story by Michael Reid, a dramatic survival story on Titan by Chris Barnham and a fascinating, biological change to women that terrifies societies by Andy Dudak are the stand-outs in this issue.

• "The Rocket Farmer" by Julie C. Day: a story about an unusual family with an unusual occupation. Through an unknown process, the family can 'grow' rockets. But most of the rockets don't grow properly and fail, except for one who appears to be waiting for a particular passenger.

• "Gods in the Blood (of those who rise)" by Tim Casson: a story about a teacher in a special school that may be hiding children that are different from others: smarter and stronger. Referencing an ancient tale about fitting in, the teacher discovers he may have inadvertently exposed them, leading him into real danger.

• "If Your Powers Fail You in a City Under Tin" by Michael Reid: a fascinating story about a time when a rift has let in a tentacled monster but has also gifted individuals with magical powers. The story starts with a teenager with such powers missing his partner who is on a UN mission. As the days pass without news, he grows anxious and finally decides that he has no choice but to use his power to find him. But this is not without risks, for he has little control over it and the last time he used it, it caused his mother to vanish.

• "Chubba Luna" by Eliot Fintushel: a standard story about couples meant for each other; except when they aren't, in a future setting with music by 'Chubba Luna' as a background theme.

• "When I Close My Eyes" by Chris Barnham: a rock fall on Saturn's moon Titan nearly kills as astronaut exploring a cave system. As he struggles to get back out, he is haunted by visions of his dead wife, who was killed in an accident. But the visions may help to save him as his discovers that the rock fall is no ordinary one but caused by an external agent; if he can only get the news out about the discovery.

• "Cryptic Female Choice" by Andy Dudak: a fascinating exploration of a future where a choice has been given to women. Not the usual choice of having a baby or not, but the ability to choose which genetic features from the sperm will be inherited by the child. In a chilling series of flashes, the women goes through the males she had mated with, deciding what to give to her child while reflecting on the violent changes society has gone through due to the ability.

An average issue with interesting stories by Amal Singh, Katie McIvor, Corey J. White, Frank Dumas.

• "Plague Dream" by Seán Padraic Birnie: in a world full of crisis and plagues, one person is isolated from others and yearns for contact, including from her recently deceased mother.

• "Significant Disruption" by R.L. Summerling: a commuter waits for a late train and muses about possible futures, from missing the train, or meeting unwanted colleagues on it, or possible train disasters. Only one of those futures may come true.

• "Easels" by Amal Singh: a mother tries to reconnect to her teen daughter after an accident kills their father. But the connection would take an unusual turn when the daughter's skill in painting life-like objects turns out to be more than just a skill.

• "We Are A Little Hotel" by Ai Jiang: workers at a hotel struggle to fulfill the wishes of their customers, while hiding their grumbles and the hotel's dilapidated state: much like certain members of families when faced with irrational grumblings.

• "O Sole Mio" by Katie McIvor: a mother taking care of her infant sees an ice cream truck on their street in the middle of winter. Taking a break from being home bound and stressed from taking care of her child, she approaches it one day, only to end up in a strange time situation with implications for the future of both her and her child.

• "Anomalous Instances of Black Ball Lightning in Daggett, Michigan" by Stephanie Lane Gage: a story featuring excerpts from people who have encountered a strange form of ball lightning, leading them to suspect unusual events have happened to their loved ones.

• "Glory Hounds" by H. Pueyo: in the jungles of South America, a duo and a jaguar which have a link with one of the due make a journey to a magical place in the heart of a jungle to try to get back what they had in the past: one has lost his immense strength, the other has lost his mental link with the jaguar.

• "Hollywood Animals" by Corey J. White: a touching story of a future where Hollywood animators have unionized for higher pay, leading film studios to do the 'obvious': create and train genetically engineered animals as aliens instead of getting artists to render them on screen. But one animal trainer has had enough of the animals being 'disposed' after filming, and a strike gives him the opportunity to do something about that, even if it means losing future work with the studios.

• "Copper" by Jendia Gammon: a robot main accidentally reveals a secret to its owner. And now both have a lot to talk about.

• "The Fifth Horizon" by Nozaki Mado, translated from the Japanese by Cat Anderson: in an unusual future, Genghis Khan now rules the steppe grasslands in space. But even here, doubts gnaw at him about the future. But a companion shows the way for him to see all the multidimensional grasslands.

• "The Lunar Asylum" by Frank Dumas: a 'steampunk' alternate future where famous scientists from the Victorian England era group together to send the first rocket to the moon.

• "Supernaut" by Edward R. Morris: another alternate future story, involving one Hugo Gernsback becoming involved in another version of Amazing Stories and looking at the changes wrought by a different version of World War I.

• "Notes From the Meeting of the First ~~State Feder~~ World Court: Walker Dairy, Freeville, NY, ~~198~~ Year One: Jessica Jane Pearson Vs. ~~The Stranger~~ Mr. Jacob Hampton" by Rachael Cupp: in a future where a calamity is hinted to have happened, children run a trial with the court records being rewritten as the trial proceeds.

• "Building Blocks" by Aigner Loren Wilson: an unusual person from a moon travels to the Earth to join a group of people building homes. Their (singular) abilities are noted by others, who are puzzled over his fixation to work.

• "Strung Along in Seaforth" by Jonathan Laidlow: a story about a man who enters a strange competition with an unusual life-like model of his dead father, sewn together from the skin of the father's cadaver. He had been denied the top prize in the competition by a rival for years but now has high hopes to win it, with some collusion from others, both alive and dead.

A fascinating book on the history of counting and the rise (and fall) of the pocket calculator. The author starts with a history of humans counting and remembering counted values using various parts of their body. This leads to various ways, like notches on sticks or imprints on materials, as a way to record values. The need to quickly add, subtract and record values leads to arithmetic aids like the abacus and other simple mechanical aids.

The need to quickly perform multiplications (and other operations like division, square roots, etc.) would lead to mathematical innovations. One of them would involve the creation of logarithms, which convert multiplications (and the other operations) into 'simple' additions and subtractions. Various tables would be created before, once again, machines would be created as aids, like the slide rule. Other calculating machines would become more sophisticated, finally culminating in the mechanical wonder, the Curta, a handheld mechanical calculator.

The rise of electricity and electronics would lead to mechanical relay calculators, then calculators based on vacuum tubes and then, individual transistors and those with integrated circuits. The race to cram more transistors and mathematical operations into cheaper, and smaller, packagers would culminate in the rise of the pocket calculator. The pocket calculator race would lead to various wonders, like the scientific calculator, the programmer calculator, graphing calculators. Strange variations would also appear, like watches with calculators.

The book closes with the final 'act' when computers would 'swallow' the calculator by implementing it in software like Visicalc (one of the first spreadsheet software), leading to the world we know today, where we calculate using software and actual calculators now live on a neglected life in our drawers.

An interesting start to the series. Written in the form of a memoir when she is much older, this book tells the story of Isabella, who becomes fascinated by dragons from childhood and grows up wanting to learn more about them. But she is constricted by the Victorian-like society that she grows up in that expect women to 'know their place' in society and not to stick out by doing unladylike things like being fascinated by dragons.

Then chance intervenes, and she gets the opportunity to go on an expedition to study wild dragons in a far country. But things don't start out well; their guide is missing and dragons are attacking the village. And in the process of their investigations about dragons, Isabella stumbles on to a secret that may well affect her natural study of dragons: for if the secret becomes well known, it may mean the end of dragons.

Most stories about dragons tend to focus on the fantasy part of dragons; this series attracted me because it hints that it would try to treat dragons as real life animals and attempt to portray them realistically. This first book concentrates more on the growing up of Isabella than of dragons, which only makes a brief appearance in the book. But it does provide some hints about the natural history of dragons, why they are worth studying, and what Isabella would have to do if she is to try to protect the secret about the dragons for now.

On to the next one in the series to see what other natural revelations about dragons will be revealed.

The next book in the series, this one has Isabella trampling over a region which resembles Africa in our world. Here, she goes to try to study the dragons that inhabit the region. But she becomes sucked into the politics and conflicts in the region when her desire to look at dragons that inhabit a dangerous swampy region of the country is allowed by the ruler of the country; on condition that she brings back the eggs of the dragon that the ruler dearly wants.

She agrees and enters the swamp to learn about the dragons, but that condition would come back to haunt her for as she gets to know the swamp's inhabitants (on which her survival depends), she starts to realize it may be an impossible condition to fulfil. Then as she finally gets to learn the secrets of the swamp dragons, she gets caught up in an attempted surprise invasion, which she helps to successfully repel, but at a high cost to her reputation.

As in the first book, this one tells a fascinating story about Isabella and her travels and adventures. But the information presented on dragons is still minimal and only revealed near the end. But then, that is the nature of natural history; sometimes you have to slowly gather the information instead of getting it dumped on to you. It would be more interesting to me to be provided with more information about dragons in this world.

Perhaps that will happen in the books to come in the series.

This is the third book in the memoirs of Isabella, the dragon naturalist, and it is finally starting to pay off. The first and second books in the series did not really feature must about the natural history of dragons but concentrated more on who Isabella was, her relationships with the people around her who, in a fantasy version of Victorian times, think she should 'stay in her place' (but of course, she doesn't) and the troubles she causes in her quest to understand dragons and to protect them from being hunted, possibly to extinction: for their bodies contains a secret that would greatly benefit the nation that takes advantage of it.

The third book skips directly to her observations with dragons, since the first two books have helped established the world she inhabits. Here, she is on a sea voyage to study sea dragons to understand their evolution and how the various types of sea dragons are related to each other. Along the way, she meets an archaeologist who is interested in a long dead civilization that had a mysterious relationship with dragons (alluded to in the previous two books).

When the ship suffers damage during a storm and she and her companions are asked to stay on an island while repairs are made, things start to turn hilarious; for she is compelled to enter an uncomfortable relationship to appease the native inhabitants. But when she attempts to perform a feat with sea dragons, she enters a forbidden area and makes a discovery that could change the world.

This is the most interesting and exciting book in the series so far and raises expectations for what can be resolved in the next two books.

The build up is starting to pay off in this series. Events mentioned in the previous books come together in this book satisfyingly, leading to more questions that may be answered in the final book of the series.

In this book, the secret behind the bones of dragons is out. In an attempt to ensure wild dragons are not slaughtered into extinction for their bones, Isabella reluctantly helps her country's military force to try to breed dragons, so that at least wild ones will be safe. The attempt would take her to the country where a certain gentleman she met and worked with while on the Basilisk (the previous book) resides, leading to all sorts of uncomfortable questions.

But that is a sideshow at first: for she and the site used for dragon breeding comes under attack from saboteurs. And then she would need to enter the infamous Labyrinth of Drakes (a maze of canyons) to continue her studies on dragon breeding. For that to happen, she must settle her relationship with the gentleman; which she does in a spectacular manner.

But enduring the hardships of the Labyrinth to study dragons would only be the start. For she and her companions would make a startling discovery in the Labyrinth that would answer some of the questions about the mysterious 'dragon people' of prehistory and raise new ones.

Some questions answered; new ones raised. The series is becoming very interesting and there is only one more book to come. That should well be a very interesting book to read.

A fantastic and satisfying conclusion to the series. In this book, an unexpected visitor presents Isabella with a personal tale about finding the remains of an unusual dragon in a hostile mountainous area. With that, and other tantalizing information, she once again sets out to discover the truth behind the claims.

But then disaster strikes, and she is separated from her companions in the mountains. Then she is unexpectedly saved; and at that moment, she knows the world has been changed and the answers behind the questions that have been in the series about the 'dragon people' since the beginning of the series have been answered. But Isabella must first work hard to earn the trust of her rescuers, and then plan how to reveal their secrets to the outside world. But as usual, her plans are disrupted, and it is only with cunning can she hope to navigate the potential political and military conflicts that build up as the book builds towards it impressive conclusion.

What follows is my opinion of the entire series.

This has been an enjoyable series to read. The first book tempted me with the concept of looking at dragons as a natural part of the world and of a woman who, in an alternate version of the Victorian World, sets out to not only study dragons but to also break the barriers that restrict women of that era.

Well, that temptation has been enough for me to continue the series without regrets. The initial books were light on actual details of the natural history of dragons and of the world Isabella inhabits (a world with new country names but with cultures recognizable from our world) but from the third book onwards, the details have come pouring out, revealing secret after secret of the mysteries that have formed the background of the series and ending with the revelation of the biggest mystery in the last book of the series.

In terms of fantasy, there is very little (apart from dragons) but in terms of science, quite a bit. Not everything is resolved (as is usual in the natural sciences), but enough has been revealed to make the series a satisfying read, although I can well imagine more short stories being written about Isabella's world that ties up the various unknowns about dragon biology that are not yet solved.

In short, this series has been a wonderful series. It will probably not be to the taste of people who want dragons that burn armies to crisp in chapter after chapter, but for those who have a liking for stories with a light overlay of fantasy and attempt to provide a natural explanation for unusual creatures (dragons, in this case), this would be a wonderful series to get into.

An average issue, with some interesting stories by Jeremy Minton, Amy Griswold and Oliver Buckram. But the story by Juan Paulo Rafols stands out for imagining a world where a tiny 'privileged' minority is not afraid to give their children every advantage they can get in a warring future. Quite a number of tales feature unusual sexual encounters and relationships, which appears to be the dominant theme in this issue.

• "Evil Opposite" by Naomi Kritzer: a tale of being able to see parallel universes mixed in with the antagonism between a lab assistant and a researcher. The conclusion is reasonable and shows that, no matter how much you may envy the lives you may have lead in parallel universes, the one you are currently living may be the best one.

• "We Are Born" by Dare Segun Falowo: a fantasy tale with an African feel about the creation of a life out of mud, how it lived and how it was reborn in another form.

• "Leash On a Man" by Robert Reed: in a future where humanity has altered itself and the environment genetically, a horrible crime is committed on a space habitat. The criminal is stripped of abilities and sent to prison on Earth. But such is the crime that the prisoner is in danger, and only an unusual prison guard from another era may be the only one who can protect her from harm; or possibly harm her.

• "Tasting Notes on the Varietals of the Southern Coast" by Gwendolyn Clare: a short tale about the sweetness and varieties of grapes being carried on a guarded cart as it travels through a fantasy land.

• "The Care of House Plants" by Jeremy Minton: two agents trace a runaway worker who has stolen some genetically modified seeds. But what they find is a house overrun by the seeds, the man's mother, and no sign of the man. But lots of signs that something is very peculiar about the plants.

• "The Hermit of Houston" by Samuel R. Delany: a wild but hard to grasp story about a future where gender is fluid and relationships in various enclaves are mediated by 'hermits' who have access to vast computing powers.

• "On Highway 18" by Rebecca Campbell: a story about relationship and loss while travelling and hitch-hiking along said highway.

• "Hollywood Squid" by Oliver Buckram: an entertaining, light-hearted piece about a future where ET squids have landed and mostly moved on (due to their tendency to lie). A going-down-and-out film producer and a fellow squid try to market their story about a conspiracy theory behind the Oscars, but without success: until they learn there may be some truth behind the story.

• "Still Tomorrow's Going To Be Another Working Day" by Amy Griswold: a short piece about what happens in a future where people fail to pay their ongoing loans and almost anything can be repossessed and passed on to other buyers.

• "Bodythoughts" by Rahul Kanakia: a story of an alien (or aliens) who falls 'in love' with a human after watching his exploits and 'interspecies' behaviour in a film. A pretty uncomfortable read.

• "Riddle" by Lisa Mason: a charged story about a down-and-out artist who meets an unusual female who speaks in riddles. Physical and emotional mayhem ensues.

• "Children of Xanadu" by Juan Paulo Rafols: a long and fascinating story, set in a future where China has apparently dominated the world militarily. A doctor from the Philippines is 'requested' to work on a (secret and illegal) project to enhance the bodies and minds of children of selected families. The project is successful but came at a high human cost. Now the doctor has been asked to go to the city of Xanadu, home of the 'enhanced', to investigate and duplicate the work of a 'group-mind' by insurgents. But little do they know the doctor isn't who he claims to be and has other plans in mind for his project.

• "The Two Choice Foxtrot of Chapham County" by Tina Connolly: a fantasy tale about a friend who, against her society's conventions, helps a girl who is pregnant with an unusual baby. A tale about unusual choices made under the pressure of trying to conform and when you shouldn't.

• "Starlight Express" by Michael Swanwick: a man falls in love with a woman who appears out of nowhere from a matter transporter that shouldn't work. As he works to sorts out his feelings and learn more about where the woman came from, we learn more about this strange Earth of the far future. But even here, being lovestruck and failing to love can be painful.

An above average issue of Interzone. With only four stories on offer, they had better be worth reading. The stories are not instant classics but still worth paying attention too.

• "Blessings Erupt" by Aliya Whiteley: a story set in a future recovering after a war and extreme pollution by plastics. In this world, a group of unusual people are found who have the ability to consume plastics from the environment and become part of the environmental recovery programme. But the ability comes at a huge personal cost.

• "The Music of Ghosts" by Paul Jessup: set on a generational starship on a journey to a new planet after the Earth was lost in an unstated disaster, the story concerns memories: of those lost in the disaster, of those lost on the starship after a plague strikes and the effort to recover at least a shadow of those lost during and after the journey itself.

• "Ghosts of a Neon God" by T.R. Napper: in a future Melbourne, Australia under the domination of a foreign power, two petty criminals make a living stealing and selling small items to get by. But life changes when they run into a woman who pleads for help but is ignored. The plea would be noted by the authorities, who then have reason to find and eliminate them. The story feels incomplete and acts like it should be a part of a bigger story.

• "The Goddess of the Highway" by Erica L. Satifka: an interesting piece about a future where, after the release of some mysterious substance, people's intelligence has been lowered and the only way to regain it is via 'plates' attached to people's heads, leading to a caste system where plastic plated ones are for the lowest intelligent, with the top occupied by gold and platinum plates. The story starts with a driver with a plastic plate who apparently hallucinates about a highway goddess meeting a platinum plated girl who is rebelling and wants to end the caste system, with help from a mysterious organisation with whom they are trying to contact.

An interesting story set in the period after the ending of the (first) war between Earth and Mars. A sister returns to her home after the war, only to find her brother behaving strangely and constantly going to a nearby wood. She learns that earlier, one of the unaccounted for Martian war machines had been seen crashing into the woods, possibly felled by a lightning storm.

When she attempts to enter the wood to find her brother, she finds herself in a strange world, almost like Robert Holdstock's Mythago Wood where the inside is bigger than the outside and appears to be not from our own time. She calls upon the help of the Narrator who documented the first Martian war (which is H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds) and together they explore the wood and discover who inhabits it, the mysterious force it uses and how it has a hold over the brother.

Initially sounding fantastical in the beginning, the story uses elements from Wells' earlier story effectively and is a good introduction to Baxter's own sequel to Wells' book, The Massacre of Mankind.