Reviews and Comments

An above average issue, with interesting stories by Charlotte Ashley, Ted Rabinowitz and G.V. Anderson.

• "The Satyr of Brandenburg" by Charlotte Ashley: an interesting tale set in historical France with supernatural elements. A competition of duels is called, but one of the participants is an unusual Satyr who would appear to have no sword skills but has the skill to seduce people into doing his bidding. This would be used to terrible effect on the other competitors until only one is left to resist his charms.

• "Deep Sea Fish" by Chi Hui, translated by Brian Bies: set on Titan, a moon of Saturn, this tells the story of a rush to record ancient alien artefacts found there before they literally melt away via efforts to terraform the cold moon to make it more comfortable for humans to live (by heating things up). As so often happen in such stories, disaster strikes the environmental modification effort and mankind has to learn to live with the consequences.

• "The Next to the Last of the Mohegans" by Joseph Bruchac: a short story about dealings with the Little People as seen by Native Americans: one who tries to get the better of them and ends up in a strange position, the other being his friend who has to get him out of the twisted position.

• "Likho" by Andy Stewart: a girl investigates the history of a strange phenomenon reported in Pripyat during the Chernobyl disaster. In the course of the investigations, she stumbles into people keen to investigate the secrets of a room: a room to which she may be connected to in her own mysterious past.

• "The Beast from Below" by William Ledbetter: a short, fun 'animals mutated into monsters by radiation' story featuring a down-to-earth Sheriff and a lady mayor of the town keen to commercialize the monsters.

• "Hideous Flowerpots" by Susan Palwick: a light fantasy about an art gallery owner whose dark secret is revealed by a new acquaintance: she fears to do art. But her acquaintance offers to help her overcome her fear with the help of a strange set of equipment, and ends with the offer of a flowerpot.

• "A Swim and a Crawl" by Marc Laidlaw: a story of a man who goes for an apparently suicidal swim before crawling up a cliff wall, only to become one with nature in an unexpected way.

• "Plumage From Pegasus: The Varley Corps Wants You" by Paul Di Filippo: a dead author wakes up, apparently snatched from the past at the point of death by people from the future who have bred talent out of the human race in an attempt to make people conform to a peaceful idea and now need him to re-introduce artistic talent back. That he does, but only with the help of other artists from the past (and our present) and by changing the future civilization.

• "A Dog of Wu" by Ted Rabinowitz: an assassin trained to follow the orders of his master is given the task of finding out who is broadcasting recordings of rocket flights: for that way would lead to disorder in the human civilizations that rose out of the chaos before the current order. But what he discovers would lead him to re-examine his life and to consider whether obedience to his master is the only way.

• "The Harmonic Resonance of Ejiro Anaborhi" by Wole Talabi: an African girl who loves SF tales stumbles on to a device that allows her to expand her mind. She and the device would get caught up in a confrontation between her father and local authorities that would end up changing the world.

• "Down Where Sound Comes Blunt" by G.V. Anderson: a daughter searches for her father, who has gone missing during his research on mermaid-like species found in the oceans. When she traces him and gets involved with the local matron of a mermaid group, she would get her answer; but in an unexpectedly horrifying way.

A fascinating autobiography by Goodall about, yes, her life with the chimpanzees. It is elegantly told, using a vocabulary and simple writing style that should be suitable even for children to read. For, as the conclusion of the book shows, it is up to the youth of the world to protect the environment and to heal as much of it as they can.

The book can be divided into three main parts. The first part is the story of Goodall as she grows up, fascinated by nature and already performing the kind of observations that would make her famous later in life: diligently watching the hens in the hen house lay eggs. She is eager to continue her observations of nature as she grows up, but is held back by the needs of society to become a 'respectable girl' of that era.

But that was to change when, after saving up enough money to make a trip to Africa to see the animals, she encounters one person that was to change everything: Louis Leakey. He would put Goodall in charge of observing chimpanzees at Gombe, from which she would make her famous observations that would change what we think of chimpanzees.

The second part of the book details her various observations and interactions with the chimpanzees at Gombe. She details the initial frustrations she had gaining their trust, including one episode where she was surrounded by them and under possible attack. Then she gets a breakthrough and from then on, she was able to make her observations of them, including the famous one detailing their use of sticks and leaves as tools to get termites from mounds. She covers the movements of the chimpanzee troop at Gombe, providing details by naming several individual male and females and telling us about the dynamics of chimpanzee troop behaviour.

The third part is Goodall's view of the world, on the destruction of nature and on animals being held captive by humans or being used in experiments. She details some of the efforts she and others have made to improve animal welfare, to protect wildlife areas and to educate people (especially the youth) on how to take care of the environment. In that, she urges everyone to take part.

A fantastic book, containing a list of illusions that will have you wondering just what your brain is up when you look at the environment, observe A, only to learn that what you see wasn't A at all.

The illusions are divided into various categories, each illustrated with several illusions with possible explanations on what the illusion might be doing to mystify your brain. Not all the illusions are explainable; this field is very much still a work in progress.

Some illusions can be seen as static ones, requiring you to only look at them. Others require you to move your eyes or the book to see it, and others depend on you staring for some time before the illusion becomes apparent. Most illusions will be apparent to a majority of readers, while some may not work due to subtle differences in how the brains of some readers work.

Another class of illusions are described in the book but not presented are moving illusions which don't work as static images in the book. For those, you have to go to the Best Illusion of the Year Contest website [ illusionoftheyear.com/ ] to see them.

An excellent book to read to discover how the brain can be fooled into seeing something that should not be there. It is also an interesting examination of how evolution has shaped our visual system and how illusions can help reveal just how the brain works to interpret how it sees the world.

A better than average issue of F&SF, with one rather gruesome horror story by Max Firehammer. Other interesting stories are by Maricar Macario, Christopher Mark Rose and a moving story by Douglas Smith about the sacrifices to be made for saving the universe.

• "Shining Shores" by Max Firehammer: a fascinating horror story featuring the 'Orcadian folktale of the Nuckalavee'. It starts with a woman search for her writer friend who has gone missing in a seaside town. Things would go downhill, and horrifying, from there when it involves a water god who enjoys toying with primates.

• "Bayanihan" by Maricar Macario: in a future where more of the Earth has been covered with water and aliens exists, one Filipino whose family migrated to Mars makes a journey home to Earth. But she finds that much has altered since she left, except for one old robotic nanny who reminds her of where home is.

• "Sort Code" by Chris Barnham: two people keep meeting as they are apparently 'bumped' though different time settings. Mixed into it is a story of a fatal accident both were involved in and musings over just why they keep seeing each other in different time scenarios.

• "What We Found In The Forest" by Phoebe Wood: two girls enter a forest in search of their adult selves, only to find each other instead.

• "Three Sisters Syzygy" by Christopher Mark Rose: an unusual story that starts off with an astronaut shifted to another universe where she now on a mission with her sisters to visit the moons of Earth. Other mysteries occur when they visit the moons, leading to a meeting with alien technology that would change all their lives and leave them with memories of the encounter.

• "Mixtapes From Neptune" by Karter Mycroft: on songs played while one explorer, who helps make an important discovery on an outer solar system moon.

• "To Pluck A Twisted String" by Anne Leonard: a mother's son returns from a magical city, angry and disappointed, and is later taken away to be imprisoned without a cause given. The mother's determination to learn what crime he had cause would lead her to a discovery about the power of her son's broken guitar.

• "My Embroidery Stitches Are Me" by A Humphrey Lanham: an uncomfortable story of a person who has embroidery stitched into the skin by her loved ones.

• "Upstairs" by Tessa Yang: a family shifts home 'upstairs' into a tower with better living space, leaving their old, poorer lower level home behind. But the past has a way of catching up, when an old acquittance presses her to get new customers for their illicit goods. The backlash would sever her relationships, perhaps for the better.

• "Teatro Anatomico" by Getty Hesse: on the night of a carnival, a public anatomy lesson turns strange when the corpse is still animated, and the person who did the cutting makes an unusual request to the corpse in return for giving it a 'life'.

• "Night Haul" by Andrew Crowley: a truck driver hauling an unknown cargo drives through the encroaching night. Then, a radio conversation with a fellow trucker makes him realize the cargo he's carrying may be the cause of the enveloping darkness, and now he may have the dreadful task of getting rid of it.

• "On The Matter Of Homo Sapiens" by Kel Coleman: two robots in the future on a treasure hunt debate the pros and cons of bringing back one particular harmful organism that once ruled the earth.

• "Sugar Steak" by Jenny Kiefer: a meal in an unusual restaurant leads one person to develop a deadly kind of dental problem.

• "Growths" by Nina Kiriki Hoffman: a mother brings her small daughter to meet her father, who turns out to be other than human, as evidenced by the daughter's extra arms. The meeting would be on deciding what to do with the extra arms and the wishes of the daughter.

• "If I Should Fall Behind" by Douglas Smith: an interesting and moving story of a boy and girl running away from Chasers who want to kill them. The boy has the ability to see what may happen in the future and uses it to avoid them, again. But this time, the universe has a 'glitch'. Eventually, one Chaser meets him for a private chat, in which is revealed the reason for the glitch and the price to be paid to fix it. In the end, he pays it but, with a change in the plan.

A fantastic book about insects (and related invertebrates), in particular the ones found in Costa Rica. The book includes incredible photography by the author showcasing the insects, a few of which the family had the opportunity to see during our trip to Costa Rica in Nov 2018.

The book starts by looking at what is an insect (and what isn't, like spiders, millipedes and centipedes). It then goes through the various families of insects and their defining characteristics. You will get a good overview of them and learn the differences between them.

The book then looks at the few insects that are dangerous to humans. These include the venomous biters, those with stingers and those that are parasites. The author stresses at the beginning that the majority of insects are harmless, so as long as proper care and preparations are taken, observing these insects in the wild is not dangerous.

The book then looks at the various ways insects defend themselves against predators or fight for mating rights. From the enormous horns of rhinocheros beetles to the pincers and spikes displayed by other insects, they are listed here in the book.

Disguise is another way to avoid predation or to disguise yourself while looking for prey. Among them include the fantastic leaf mantids and katydids, which really look like leaves, down to having parts that look like holes or bitten off parts of leaves. Walking sticks are also the masters of disguise, from those looking like plain sticks to fantastic decorated ones for hiding among moss covered tree trunks.

The book also covers colour as used as an indication that the insect is poisonous or is distasteful. The wonderful world of insect mimicry is also covered, showing the variety of ways some insects disguise themselves to look like distasteful or poisonous insects and how various distasteful insects have 'converged' on to a few basic colour indicators (so predators don't have to struggle to figure which are not good to eat).

Sound is also used to attract mates or fight rivals. Among the usual suspects like cicadas, katydids, crickets, the author features the fascinating Hamadryas butterflies, whose males create cracking sounds, possibly to attract females or assert their territory.

Social insects like termites, ants and wasps are featured in the book. Also fascinating is a part on the relationships some insects have with plants, which provide places to live to the insects in return for protection from other herbivores.

The final chapter takes a particular look at butterflies and moths, usually one of the most spectacular and well known of the insect families. Those that can be found in Costa Rica include the amazing looking glasswing butterflies (with nearly transparent wings) and the morphos (with iridescent blue wings).

The book is illustrated throughout with fantastic photos of the various insects taken by the author. If you are looking for a book that looks at insects in general and the ones in Costa Rica in particular, this book is to be recommended. It can also act as an informal field guide to the more spectacular insects to be found in Costa Rica.

Having thwarted Professor One-Zero's plans in the previous book, the coding trio are shocked to discover that Professor One-Zero has now taken over the school, and has now introduced a chemistry class to manufacture the chemicals that the Professor will use to take over the world.

The trio is forced to use the last resort left to them: a letter that guides them to the ultimate turtle that could help them defeat the Professor. But before they can do that, they need to learn the use of repeats that will simplify code they produce that requires many repetitive steps.

In the meantime, Professor One-Zero forbids the trio from seeing each other in public. So, they have to meet in secret and discover a secret location. But the location is guarded, and they have to use their new coding skills to overcome the guards. Can they do so? Find out in the next book of the series.

A better than average issue with an interesting mathematical based story by Arula Ratnakar and a loving story of a different kind of robotic servant by RJ Taylor.

• "Stones" by Nnedi Okorafor: a story about an alien made out of stones who makes contact with humans and comes to regret it. Unfortunately, the abilities of the alien to span time and space and sense humans are rather too fantastic to allow me to enjoy the story.

• "The Queen of Calligraphic Susurrations" by D.A. Xiaolin Spires: a writer working with bees is desperate to write an award-winning story and uses an AI that virtually takes over her body to write one. The after effects would be dramatic.

• "A Guide to Matchmaking on Station 9" by Nika Murphy: a matchmaker on a space station has to go out of her comfort zone to find a match for her customer, so that she can return home on the proceeds.

• "Axiom of Dreams" by Arula Ratnakar: a remarkable and fantastic story of a graduate student who installs an AI chip in her brain in an attempt to harness her dreams for ideas for her mathematical paper. In parallel, the inhabitant of a strangely mathematical world wants to know why she has not been marked out for 'mathematical selection' like the other inhabitants. Both stories would merge when both get to meet. But the meeting would cause a crisis when it turns out that the dreams of one person are a nightmare for the other, and resolving it would require sacrifices.

• "The People from the Dead Whale" by Djuna, translated by Jihyun Park and Gord Sellar: on a world where people live on 'whales', one group has to abandon its whale when it dies due to an unknown disease. The attempt to find a new home would lead to a discovery from their past.

• "The Five Remembrances, According to STE-319" by R. L. Meza: a fighting machine is left to rot by the military after a battle. As it slowly decays and rusts, an event would occur that would require an act of free will from the machine. The results would lead to a kind of peace for the land.

• "Upgrade Day" by RJ Taylor: an uploaded person in a robot body acts as a servant for a family. But without periodic upgrades and repairs, which are becoming more expensive, the robot will start to malfunction. Then the family makes a suggestion that would allow this, a suggestion that the robotic person has to decide upon.

A fascinating start to a series of fantasy stories set in an Africa that never was, but could be. Abeni is a young girl soon to come of age whose village is her whole world. But the harvest celebrations that year would be interrupted by the arrival of the village's witch, who has warned them that evil is coming. But her warnings were ignored: evil has come and captures the village's inhabitants, with only Abeni and the witch escaping.

Living with the witch, Abeni learns to live a new life, but yearns to learn the witch's magic and fighting skills, so that she can go to free her village folk. But an attack interrupts her training, and now she and the witch (in a new, reduced body) must make a journey to the witch's sister for help.

Along the way, Abeni would gather a group of spirits, and adventure through danger and strange lands. And at the sister's place, they would discover that evil has already arrived. But that would not prepare them for the discovery about the true nature of the monsters they find.

After an initial lengthy 'growing up' phase, the story begins to become interesting as Abeni meets and interacts with various forest sprits, both helpful and dangerous. She also grows up fast and learns the meaning of friendship and of not hiding secrets from your friends if you plan to go into danger together. But perhaps the biggest message is in how we should treat fellow humans. For must of the evil that Abeni encounters in the story did not start out evil, but became so through mistreatment.

At the end, Abeni achieves some objectives, but her quest to free her village folk from the evil is not over.

An interesting illustrated book that look that three things we take for granted: the Internet, electricity and water. It shows the history of how we created the Internet and how we now harness it and electricity and water to power our modern society. But the book doesn't shy away from showing the damaging effects all three have had on parts of society (like the underprivileged and marginalized).

On the internet, the book shows that our desires to use it to gather information and to broadcast our thoughts (yes, I'm aware that this review is part of that desire) lead to huge resource requirements to store and transmit the information.

The discovery and harnessing of electricity, from the initial small groups to the huge modern conglomerates that generate and distribute electricity, have damaged the environment and people whose lands are now gone (flooded by electricity generating dams, for example).

Water has been misused since the beginning as a sewer and even today, much of the fresh water in the world is wasted.

But to close on a brighter note, the book's intent is to reveal just how much of how these things are used in the world are hidden from sight and, as a result, we are not aware of the damage they are doing. But now that we have a better idea of how they are used in the world, it is up to us to make better use of these systems, and the many others 'hidden systems' in the world.

An excellent book about various "Heroines, Hellions, and Heretics" that have romped through the history of the world. Some are celebrated in their countries, others are forgotten, while others have had their history (re)written by others. Some are real, others may have been real (or are amalgamations of several women) while some are mythical.

Originally started as a dare to see who can come out with the character most unlikely to be featured as a 'Disney Princess', the author has put them into this book, accompanied by illustrations depicting the life of each character.

In one way or another, each character in the book has made their mark in the world. But the book is not all sweetness and victory: some of the women have been viciously abused (or are abusers) and violence is a near constant feature of the entries.

But you will learn some fascinating facts about these women. The author includes numerous references, some of which the author admits do not make for easy reading.

All in all, an entertaining and educational book that shows that women have made their mark in history; it is only that that current day media outlets have tended to ignore their efforts: something that this book, and many others, are now trying to change by telling their stories and making sure the world knows about them.

A fascinating book that looks at the history of typing Chinese characters. In the modern computer era, we are all used to seeing a standard computer keyboard that is able to produce various characters, from the Latin alphabet to Chinese/Japanese/Korean or other languages. But before computers, there was an era where mechanical typewriters would need to produce characters in non-Latin languages, and this book covers that in great detail.

The first chapter looks at how the 'myth' of a huge, Chinese typewriter with thousands of keys (that never existed) came to be. To tell that tale, the author steps back a pace and starts with looking at how the current form of the mechanical typewriter (with a fixed number of keys and a shift mechanism) came to be and why alternative types of typewriters fell out of contention. He then shows how various non-English scripts (like Thai, Arabic and various European languages) were modified and mangled to fit the typewriter (for typewriters were mass-manufactured to a single, fixed set of keys). The only mechanical changes allowed were to cater for right-to-left scripts (like Arabic and Hebrew) and to accommodate no-space and variable spacing between characters. With no leeway to increase the number of keys, it would be obvious that Chinese (with its thousands of characters) would never be accommodated, leading to the rise of the mythical Chinese typewriter with thousands of keys. It was also a way to imply that Chinese characters were more 'primitive' and could not be used in a 'modern' and 'progressive' society, as embodied by the technology of a typewriter.

The second chapter looks at the puzzle that the Chinese characters present to printing (with a printing press) and the telegraph. Three approaches were tried. The first is to create a collection of the most commonly used Chinese characters, enough to print out the majority of books in Chinese. The second approach is to 'break up' as many Chinese characters as possible into 'submodules' of characters that can be recombined to produce any Chinese character. The third is to bypass the problem of reproducing Chinese characters at all; instead, each (or most) characters are represented as a number that is transmitted, and it is up to the sender and receiver to agree on a common number to represent each character. Each method has its advantages and disadvantages and serves as an introduction into the next chapter, the creation of an actual Chinese typewriter.

The third chapter looks at early attempts to create a real Chinese typewriter, both by Chinese who went to the West looking for opportunities to introduce technology to a modernizing China and settled on the creation of a typewriter. The first one was an attempt to use only the most common Chinese characters and aimed at the masses. The second one was also a creation that used the most common Chinese characters but included options to combine radicals to create other characters. While prototypes of both (and a few other machines briefly mentioned here) existed at one point, they were ultimately never mass-produced.

Chapter four finally looks at a mass-produced Chinese typewriter. This was a flatbed type design with several thousand characters and a separate tray holding additional characters that can be added to empty spaces. Besides the design, the author also looks at the culture that developed around it, including the culture of promoting 'typing girls' in promotional and news material around the typewriter, despite men forming a significant minority of typist for the Chinese typewriter. There are some notes that this may be influenced by western depictions of typist, which do consist of mainly women. The art of learning to use the typewriter, developing the muscle memory needed to quickly select character after character, is discussed in this chapter. An abortive attempt to release a Chinese typewriter without Chinese characters (it was an attempt by Chinese educationalist to simplify the system by promoting simple individual characters) is also covered here.

Chapter five switches to the development of Japanese typewriters. Two types were in use: one that handles Japanese kana characters (and relatively easy to develop as there were a limited number of characters) and one for kanji, similar to Chinese characters. The similarity of Kanji to Chinese would enable the Japanese manufacturers to enter the Chinese market and begin to dominate it. Chinese typewriter makers attempted to compete with either local designs or ones (quietly) copied from the Japanese. But World War II would change matters, causing Japanese typewriters to dominate the Chinese marketplace.

Chapter six starts with a diversion into the present, showing how the CJK (Chinese, Japanese, Korean) input system works on current computers: it requires the user to enter two or more key presses to generate a Chinese character. Once this is understood by the reader, the author then quickly goes through the history of attempts to categorize Chinese characters for quicker searching and indexing. He then introduces a mechanical marvel: a Chinese typewriter that implements a mechanical version of the modern-day CJK system to produce Chinese characters. But for political turmoil in China (the takeover by the Communists), this might have become a widely manufactured typewriter system.

Chapter seven shows the growth of Chinese typewriters. But with that growth comes pressure to increase the typing speed. This, the author says, would lead to an early form of predictive input. Users would discard the approach of arranging the characters on the typewriter by a 'logical' pattern (the type of strokes, for example) but instead would group characters by usage, keeping often used characters close to each other. Using such methods, typists would boost the amount of characters they can produce to keep up with the needs of the state for typed documents.

It is here that the book ends. The next book, the author promises, would cover the advancement of typing Chinese into the computer era.

An average issue, with interesting stories by Antony Johnston, Michael Reid and Alexandra Renwick.

• "Beautiful Quiet of the Roaring Freeway" by James Sallis: a couple take a ride in a car with a driver in this future where other cars have a difference

• "Soul Music" by Antony Johnston: on a colony world isolated when their wormhole collapsed, an artist is offered a guitar by her ex-abusive boyfriend. Little does she know the contents of the guitar would become the centrepiece of her next artistic show in the colony that is trying to live day-by-day while waiting for the wormhole to be re-established (if ever).

• "Schrödinger's" by Julie C. Day: set in California in a future where an unrest is gradually creeping closer to town, a group of girls finances the operations of a scientist who provides them with a quantum device that makes their exotic dance operations a draw: in its field, the audience sees other quantum possibilities of the dancers, some of them very strange. But it all comes to an end when the fighting reaches the city: unless one girl operates the quantum device in another way, hoping to influence the fighting instead.

• "Never the Twain" by Michael Reid: a story of one person living two lives: in the present as a patient dying from cancer and in the future as an inhabitant of a far away colony. Should the two lives be kept separate, especially when the future half has knowledge that could save the present half?

• "Opium for Ezra" by T.R. Napper: a story about a group of people isolated in a self-powered tank on a battlefield. As they pursue their enemy, they receive a strange set of messages aimed at the commander, telling her she's not a commander of a tank, but actually immersed in a video game. And they desperately want her to leave the game by opening the hatch, which would let the enemy in. Which reality should she believe in?

• "baleen, baleen" by Alexandra Renwick: an interesting fantasy tale of a man who deliberately drowns himself multiple times. In doing so, his non-physical self gains access to whale-like 'baleen strings' that he can manipulate to change the past. But doing so would also change his future.

• "Zen" by Eliot Fintushel: aliens take over the minds of the crew of an Earth ship, except for one whose meditations prevent them from doing so. But will her meditations be strong enough to prevent them from invading the Earth?

A fascinating book about fifty women who overcame various odds to make their mark in the scientific field. Nice illustrations of the women are featured, which include little titbits that highlight particular points about the women's lives.

Most people will have probably heard about some of the more prominent women featured here, like Marie Curie, Jane Goodall or Valentina Tereshkova. While the others are possibly less well known to the public, they are equally noteworthy.

A common theme that runs through the stories of the women are the obstacles put into their path: being denied an education, being treated as less intelligent than men or denied opportunities (much less equal opportunities to men). The women overcome them and their importance has become recognized (for some, after their deaths).

Mainly aimed at younger readers (although the stories should also be eye-openers to adults), the stories show that you shouldn't judge the ability of a person based on their gender or their background.

An interesting collection of stories about fifty items curated from the Singapore National Library's Rare Materials Collection. The items are normally stored in special containers to preserve them and usually not put out for display for the public.

Ranging from maps, books, personal items, etc., they give a glimpse of what the South East Asian region around Singapore was like from a few centuries ago to the end of the Japanese Occupation during World War II and briefly onwards with items related to the early beginnings of Communist China.

Each item is briefly explained within a few pages, which gives the historical context around the item, a description of the item itself and what the item can tell us about how life was like at that time.

For those who are interested in nuggets of history about Singapore and its surrounding region, this book will give a glimpse of how life was like in those historical periods.