Reviews and Comments

An anthology of interesting 'proto-SF' stories from before the era known as the 'Golden Age of Science Fiction'. These stories show that some ideas about aliens, machine intelligence and the unknown are much older than they seem. However, due to their age, some stories may make modern audiences cringe at the depictions of humans at the time (as being 'lesser beings' compared to white people). My favourite stories here are by E. M. Forster and Arthur Conan Doyle, which I have read before in other anthologies, but are still cracking stories that show what SF (and horror) are capable of, even in those early times.

• "Sultana's Dream (1905)" by Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain: a woman dreams and is transported to a land where women rule the country and men run the kitchen. It is, of course, a utopia.

• "The Voice in the Night (1907)" by William Hope Hodgson: a sailing vessel is hailed by a lone voice which refuses to reveal himself. But he tells the sailors the story of how he ends up being marooned on an island with nothing to eat but a fungus that slowly reveals its horrors.

• "The Machine Stops (1909)" by E. M. Forster: in a future where all of humanity lives in isolated underground cells, and their every need is catered to by the Machine, one mother reluctantly makes a journey to visit her son, who tells her an incredible story of surviving a trip to the surface of the Earth. But that would not be the last of it, for he would later tell her that the Machine is stopping. And that may well spell doom for humanity.

• "The Horror of the Heights (1913)" by Arthur Conan Doyle: an airman suspects, from the mysterious deaths of fellow flyers, that there is some kind of 'jungle' in the air. What he discovers, as later found written down in a stained journal when he journeys high up in the air, would be both wonderful and horrifying.

• The Red One (1918)" by Jack London: a jungle explorer hears an extraordinary sound coming from the interior of a jungle, leading to a voyage filled with violent encounters with native tribe until he gets to the truth behind who or what is making the sound. But he may not survive to show it to the world.

• The Comet (1920)" by W. E. B. Du Bois: Earth passes through the tail of a deadly comet, and the only two survivors in the city are a lowly black bank worker and a wealthy white heiress.

• "The Jameson Satellite (1931)" by Neil R. Jones: an eccentric person arranges for his dead body to be sent into space so that it would not be consumed by earthly decay. Millions of years later, an alien race discovers his body and revives him in a body of metal. Now, he has to decide if all he craves is to follow the human race into death, or join the aliens on a voyage of discovery.

A better than average issue with nice stories by Matthew Hughes, Corey Flintoff, Ashley Blooms and William Ledbetter with an interesting story by Rachel Pollack about fantastic cities featured during a search by the protagonist.

• "The Phobos Experience" by Mary Robinette Kowal: an interesting story set in an alternate timeline where we have a colony on Mars. An astronaut there is tasked to help a military unit investigate the moon Phobos. An unexpected finding there hints at possible moves by the military to get a foothold in the Martian civilian colony.

• "The Prevaricator" by Matthew Hughes: an entertaining piece about a boy who discovers early in life that he can get rewarded by creating and then taking away unpleasant situations that people are uncomfortable with. He grows rich by planning cons to create and then remove unpleasant social situations. Then he hits upon an idea to involve a wizard to create an even more unpleasant situation. But that would eventually lead to a very uncomfortable situation for himself.

• "The Queen of the Peri Takes Her Time" by Corey Flintoff: a fantasy tale involving a beautiful, unworldly being who will remove a promised body part if your promise to love the Peri is broken. One person has lost his hand to her. Now another comes, looking for help for an even more vital body part that will be lost in his broken promise.

• "Freezing Rain, a Chance of Falling" by L.X. Beckett: in a future where wealth and social standing is determined by your social media popularity, one man loses it all when his attempt to gain social points by criticizing another socialite backfires. Then, he is offered a chance to regain it by working on a story about illegal medical drugs by a very wealthy and 'artistic' eccentric lady. As the story proceeds, he begins to realize that the lady may be more interesting in turning him into part of her private, grotesque art work, and has to figure out how to escape.

• "The Adjunct" by Cassandra Rose Clarke: a funny story about an adjunct faculty member tasked to teach students at a college how to use a peculiar indexing and referencing system in their work. Trying to understand the system better (so she can teach it better) leads her to discover the sinister origins of the system as a means to take over the world. But, as it turns out, the world might be safe due to the students themselves.

• "Visible Cities" by Rachel Pollack: growing up, a girl is suddenly aware of another world hidden from ours that only she can see. This draws the attention of a secret society, who points her to a teacher. When the teacher vanishes, she goes on a journey to various kinds of hidden cities to find him. The conclusion of her search would be an interesting one and hints at a bigger plan that she will be part of.

• "Bedtime Story" by James Sallis: a short, fragment of a story about a future when civilization is apparently breaking down due to an alien virus. In this story, a man looks for the body of his former partner. The journey would show how much the world has changed.

• "Morbier" by R.S. Benedict: a chilling story set in a country club where waiters and waitresses suffer abuses while they work. One unusual person suddenly arrives and is given the job as a waitress. Her unusual behaviour climaxes when she claims to be a time-traveller and, she has a terrible job to perform to the guests at an upcoming party.

• "Hainted" by Ashley Blooms: an interesting story involving 'haints' which are parts of a person left behind in coal mines, squeezed out by the unrelenting pressure of working in such confined, stressful underground mining conditions. A boy convinces a girl that her father's haint must be found if she is to restore her father (who has been acting distant). But as she journeys into the coal mine and learns more about haints, she discovers that finding her father's haint may not be the best way to recover her father.

• "Broken Wings" by William Ledbetter: a fast-paced story about an asteroid miner who discovers an artefact and asks for the help of a flight dispatcher on Deimos to put his claim on it. But their plans are interrupted in a sudden and suspicious manner by a customs official. As news of the discovery spreads, the dispatcher will find herself involved in a web of intrigue and needs to think fast if she is to save the miner and the discovery.

An average issue with interesting stories by Rachael Cupp and Paul Crenshaw.

• "Grey Halls" by Rachael Cupp: in a distant future, humanity lives in a closed-up world with only fragments of the past available. From the fragments, one composer has come up with a composition called "Grey Halls" that earns him a chance to travel to the past. What he discovers there will shake his artistic abilities and leave to wonder whether there is truly anything new to compose.

• "Superbright" by Ryan Row: a growing up tale of a boy who can give off heat and light, in a world where people with super abilities exists. Going through school, forming a super team, fighting evil was all standard until one day, he gets really super abilities - abilities that would bring his whole world crashing down.

• "Tumblebush" by Darby Harn: a rich old woman asks an investigator to find her missing daughter in a world where the climate has changed, a powerful corporation owns the computing servers and people make a living by taking photos for the corporation and hoping to be noticed.

• "P.Q." by James Warner: researchers investigating ant nests discover some nests piling together structures with no apparent purpose. Investigating them would reveal the structures may be related to the way the ants sense the world through scents and chemicals, and perhaps to store knowledge. But the ants would be threatened by approaching fires unless something is done to save them.

• "Throw Caution" by Tim Major: prospectors on Mars converge on an area discovered to have Martian life: a crab that has a jewel embedded in them. But the pickings are few and hard to come by for a new group unless they take a chance during a storm and chase after the crabs and discover their purpose.

• "So Easy" by Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam: in a dying country, a mother and child make a final journey to the sea to end it all.

• "Eyes" by Paul Crenshaw: a fascinating tale told by a pair of eyes found in a stream one day by a boy. Gradually, the boy learns the story of the country where the eyes come from, where eyes are passed down from parent to child over generations, gathering knowledge as the eyes see the world.

An entertaining book about a topic that will either be greeted with disgust or with laughter when discussed at the dinner table: does animal X fart?

The authors use the general meaning of fart rather than its stricter scientific meaning, so some animals that pass gas don't actually fart (scientifically), but even then the details are fascinating.

Yes, most of the animals featured in the collection do fart and the reasons they fart are many and varied: at one end (like for fish), farting to get rid of gas can be a matter of life and death. For others (like primates), farting could be a social signal! In between, the authors not only look at whether animals fart, but also how and why they fart and why some animals produce smellier farts than others.

You will also get an interesting education into the various way animals digest food (especially herbivores) that lead them to produce the gases that make up a fart in different proportions (from smelly to very smelly). Some anecdotal information (provided via pet owners) on how to reduce farts from some pets is also provided.

All in all, an entertaining read from beginning to end. Each animal is covered in one or two pages, with entertaining drawings of some farting animals.

An interesting story of discovery and survival set in a system where two small worlds circle each other, and they orbit a sun together. The worlds are cold and covered by ice, but the tidal forces between the worlds ensure their interiors are heated and some heat breaks through the ice in the form of geysers, bringing with it life giving chemicals and material. And there is life living on the worlds.

The story is told in three parts and starts with intelligent life struggling to live on one of the worlds. On that world, no geysers have erupted for ages and the farmers who live on it are struggling to survive. Then one farmer proposes an audacious plan. To grow an ice tower high enough to launch gliders from it and glide to the neighbouring world, where life is known to exist and geysers are still erupting. The first part deals with the farmer struggling to convince the various communities to come together and build the audacious structure, which will take generations.

The second part starts with the completed tower and the first expedition launched to cross the gap and land on the other world. It turns out to be a hospitable place, but with unexpected difficulties when it comes to trying to grow the crops they are used to instead of eating the native plants. Then comes the problem of sending a message back to the people waiting for a signal that the expedition is a success.

The third and last part deals with a return expedition back to the home planet, hoping to find survivors among those that have decided not to emigrate. It will be a bleak world to return to, yet there may still be hope in parts of the planet that cannot be seen from the other world.

While the story is primarily about how the people there survive and make the journey between worlds, Egan does hint that the people aren't human but have an alien physiology. For one thing, all the intelligent people are females. Males are present, but they aren't intelligent (apart from having instinctive behaviour) and the way the males depend on the females isn't revealed until a mating scene is described in the story. It is then that the alien biological nature of the people in the story is revealed.

An interesting story, set in a believable situation about survival on two worlds.

A fun book that looks at what it would take in the real world to have the powers and abilities of superheroes (and the occasional supervillain) that can be found in the various comic universes. From the amount of eggs a real Spider-Man would need to produce all the webbing naturally, to how the Flash could run at super-speed without overheating, the book treats the idea of such super abilities as real and see what it would take to keep and maintain them in real life.

The 'toys' and suits of Batman or Iron Man are also considered in the book; you will get an interesting look at what current material science can do to try to duplicate their abilities. The properties of Captain America's Vibranium shield also get examined to see what combinations of material could duplicate its properties. There is also a chapter on Wonder Woman's Lasso of Truth that comes with a look at how such a lasso could be armed with biological chemicals that could induce people to tell the truth.

Of course, the abilities and materials featured in superhero comics are fictional. Yet, by treating them as real objectives, the writers of the various chapters have been able to let their imagination run wild and imagine how they could have come about, knowing what we know now about the physical, chemical and biological materials that exist in the real world.

Definitely an interesting book to read. Even those who don't really follow the comic books will get an interesting look at what real science has to say about their abilities.

A better than average issue with fun stories by Cassandra Khaw and Jonathan L. Howard, Jeremiah Tolbert, Yukimi Ogawa and Sarina Dorie. Susan Emshwiller's debut story was also interesting and continues her parent's involvement with the magazine.

• "The Memorybox Vultures" by Brian Trent: the story of a future where AI driven memories of dead people live on as 'posts from the dead'. But when one dead person's recorded videos of a politician's younger self abusing animals and others start to surface, it causes all kinds of scary conflicts between the living, the dead and a cult that 'worships' a dead musical group.

• "Shooting Iron" by Cassandra Khaw and Jonathan L. Howard: a fun and interesting story of a girl who possesses a curious and magical gun who had made it her mission to find and kill an evil boss (and his assorted minions). It is told as two separate, inter-related stories. One is set in the present, showing her confronting and hunting down one of the bosses top minions. The other is set in her past with her crashing into a town that is caught in a cursed existence by the boss, and she decides to make it her mission to bring the boss to justice to free the inhabitants.

• "The Men Who Come from Flowers" by Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam: a fantasy story about a woman who, as the title says, grows a kind of man from flowers. Flowers that aren't perfect are discarded but one day, she nurses one bruised flower into a man to become her companion, which is against the rules. Life looks good until the day comes when her secret has to be revealed and the final behaviour of all men who grows from flowers is known.

• "Powerless" by Harry Turtledove: an alternate history story where communism has taken over the US and on the West Coast, a family man ekes out a living running a grocery stall while silently grumbling about the state of the crumbling city and run-down economy. But one small act of defiance against the socialist party would lead to others, and to a realization that he may not be powerless in a one-party state. A nice story, but only works with the premise that a socialist state would be much poorer (both economically and politically) compared to a capitalist system.

• "The Gallian Revolt as Seen from the Sama-Sama Laundrobath" by Brenda Kalt: the old owner of a combination laundromat and bath unwillingly gets involved in a revolt on a planet when one of the rebels uses her place for a bath.

• "We Mete Justice with Beak and Talon" by Jeremiah Tolbert: a fascinating and exciting tale of a future where the mind of a bird and a man can 'meld' as they go in pursuit of an airborne drone that has just made an assassination attempt on a city politician.

• "Taste of Opal" by Yukimi Ogawa: an interesting fantasy depiction of a world where a young girl is 'milked' for her blood, which turns out to have strong medicinal (and addictive) properties. The story slowly reveals the details of the girl's world, her relationship with the 'merchants' who take care of her and carry her from client to client who use her blood. Then she is suddenly 'freed' by a stranger whose blood has other properties, and their relationship together in hiding will yield yet more details about this fascinating world. A worthwhile read.

• "Suicide Watch" by Susan Emshwiller: a disturbing, thought-provoking story about a man who enjoys (and gets emotional highs) from watching people commit suicide. He's not the only one, as the company at the heart of things links up suicide watchers like him with people who are committing suicide. But when his line of credit with the company runs out, he signs a new contract to continue his watching, only to learn that the contract ends with his own suicide. But he may have one last desperate plan to evade the company and deny the person watching his suicide from getting pleasure from it. (The author is the daughter of Ed and Carol Emshwiller, both of whom have long associations with the magazine.)

• "Emissaries from the Skirts of Heaven" by Gregor Hartmann: in a future, a poor girl struggles with her studies to enter a religious-based order to survive. As she rises in the religious hierarchy, we get a fascinating view of a future where a religious schism threatens to split humanity apart but, she believes, only she can prevent by looking for and finding out the truth behind her religious beliefs.

• "Impossible Male Pregnancy: Click to Read Full Story" by Sarina Dorie: a story that starts off with good humour about a man who is somehow pregnant and worried about how it affects his 'manliness'. But as the story develops, and he accepts his condition, the story suddenly turns serious and chilling when people start telling him that the 'baby' he harbours isn't what it seems to be. Now the question is whether the man believes them and what will he do about it. The ending is unexpected and chilling. The ridiculous click-bait sounding headlines that pop-up in the story enhance the plot and slowly reveal the truth.

• "Blessed" by Geoff Ryman: a woman on a pilgrimage to a cave system in Africa is suddenly plunged into a whole different world.

An average issue with interesting stories by Gregor Hartmann, Joanna Berry and Samantha Murray.

• "Inscribed on Dark Water" by Gregor Hartmann: a story set on a world where life is hard, and the colonists are struggling with making the world properly habitable. On an oil refinery, an intern is hard at work with mundane tasks, when an observer group arrives to check on the refinery. She has an opportunity to ingrate herself with the group at the cost of alienating her fellow workers, especially one with a hidden past. But she has to decide where her loyalties lies when she figures out a refinery process that would change the way things are done.

• "The Sea Maker of Darmid Bay" by Shauna O'Meara: a fantasy tale set in a future where much of the natural world is apparently in ecological ruins. A group of fishermen suddenly hook an unusual sea creature whom one believes is able to renew the world. But the needs of the fishermen's families may override his desire to save the creature, unless they are willing to throw themselves into the task to renew the world too.

• "The Analogue of Empathy" by Joanna Berry: an interesting tale of an AI gaining awareness in a time when much of the world is in conflict and the AI project is fighting to stay alive against another project that may well end the world. But the world might be saved if the scientist working on the AI can provide the AI with a form of empathy towards others and pass on its abilities.

• "Territory: Blank" by Aliya Whiteley: disjointed journal entries going back and forth in time about a person who encounters 'creatures' that may have eaten her comrades, but is not believed.

• "Singles' Day" by Samantha Murray: set in a future where China's Singles' Day is the most important shopping day in the world, the story looks at the lives of a few people around the world on that day who have won a lottery to journey to a new world. None were expecting to win, of course, and now they have to prepare, in their own ways, for the journey: like learning to overcome a fear of the outside world, meeting your twin for the last time and really deciding who should go, or how to break the news that you have an unexpected unborn child to bring along for the journey.

An entertaining book on mathematics with, of course, bad drawings (but illuminating ones) that covers several sections of mathematics. Separated into different parts, it can be read at a sitting, but I found that to be an overwhelming read, as it is thick with information that needs time to digest. Digging into its sections at leisure would probably be a better way to digest the entertaining and interesting mathematical information provided in the book.

Part One is on how to think like a mathematician and looks at mathematics from various viewpoints: the teacher, the student, mathematicians and scientists. Each has a different view on mathematics, and probably accounts for why some people learning mathematics have a hard time understanding the relevance of mathematics to their lives until much later.

Part Two looks at geometry and via examples like the design of girders, why the A4 paper has irrational dimensions, the geometric scaling laws and the design of many sided dices, shows how geometry plays a part in our daily lives. He closes with an entertaining example about a fictional Star Wars Imperial Engineer grumbling over the various trade-offs required to design the Death Star to Grand Moff Tarkin's specifications.

Part Three looks at probability and via various examples like the lottery, genetics, telling the odds, the costs of buying (and not buying) certain types of insurance and misunderstanding the odds that an event are independent of other events (the pricing of CDOs [collateralized debt obligations]), show how probabilities can mislead people in thinking that the odds of certain events happening are actually lower or higher than people imagine them to be.

Part Four is related to Part Three but looks at statistics. It starts with a look at the terms used by statistics (like mean, median, etc.) and show how each of them can lead or mislead people into understanding statistical results if you don't know what they show (and don't show). The next part on baseball statistics may bore or interest you and covers the history of the various baseball statistics. Next, the P-value used in scientific statistics is covered and shows how and why it can mislead scientists into believing that an experimental finding is 'statistically significant' when it is not. Going closer to the author's field (teaching), he looks at the measures used to score schools and asks whether such scores are used as a window on a school's performance or as a score to show how good or bad a school is, both of which produce different outcomes for the schools concerned. The final section of statistics looks at the interesting field of determining authorship based on the statistics of words and sentences used by various authors over time.

Part Five is a bit of a mixture with the theme of how small changes can have large effects. He first looks at the misunderstanding over marginal tax rates and tax brackets and how they affect your actual income and tax rates. The issue of voting, voting boundaries and gerrymandering is then looked at, followed by chaos theory and a look at fractal dimensions.

All in all, an interesting book that is best read part by part as and when you feel a need to learn or refresh your memory of some aspects of mathematics covered in the book.