Reviews and Comments

An average issue with some interesting stories by Eugie Foster, Nick Dichario, Auston Habershaw, Maiga Doocy and J. A. Pak.

• "The Art of Victory When the Game Is All the World" by Eugie Foster: in a future where sentient beings are created as mixtures of desires and handicaps to be played in an arena, two creators duel via their creations. But through their creations, they world learn desires, pain and love in unexpected ways.

• "Ennead in Retrospect" by Christopher Mark Rose: on a station in the far future, furniture and utensils may familiar, but are now capable of doing much more in the hands of their users.

• "Animale dei Morti" by Nick Dichario: an interesting take set in Italy about a family tradition that threatens to be broken. To prevent it, a man must visit a witch to raise his brother from the dead, which causes all kinds of other problems. But like other fairy tales, it eventually solves s problem the village has with the witch.

• "Bone Broth" by Karen Henler: a mildly disturbing story of a waitress who discovers her boss has been digging up exceptionally large or unusual bones. But it's what is being done with the bones that would make the story a disturbing look at a future that may not be entirely human.

• "Prison Colony Optimization Protocols" by Auston Habershaw: a story about an AI sent to operate a prison on a world for an unspeakable crime. It (later, she) tries to make it more efficient, but ends up making things worse. When she is told to solve the problem in a drastic manner, she comes up with her own solution that would solve the problem of making the prison more efficient and reveal the crime she committed.

• "Full Worm Moon" by Paul Lorello: a story about a strange family and one son who goes for his first ceremony on a Full Worm Moon, devours worms from a grave and learns things that leads him on a journey to the outside world.

• "Proximity Games" by M. L. Clark: a girl learns a lesson in patience that may help her later in life on another planet, when making possible contact with an alien life form.

• "Salt Calls to Salt" by Maiga Doocy: a girl finds a scale growing on her body, and the only way to remove it is to get rid of what has changed in her daily routine: meeting another person she likes. The years past with little change in her routine until one day she gets involved in a major routine change and has to decide whether to live with the consequences.

• "doe_haven.vr" by Cara Mast: in a quiet corner of a VR world, a girl who wants to be left alone finds an intruder. She first attempts to get rid of him, but later discovers why he too has come to her quiet corner of the world.

• "The City and the Thing Beneath It" by Innocent Chizaram Ilo: something falls from the sky over Lagos, Nigeria. The Supreme Leader says nothing happened; life goes on, but the city of no longer theirs.

• "There Won't Be Questions" by Joe Baumann: a boy reveals his 'gift' for calling back lost animals at the price of body pain. But then he declines to call back a lost girl, and realizes what he has lost and wants to call back. But he would have to deal with the consequences of his action.

• "The Gentle Dragon Tells His Tale of Love" by J. A. Pak: the story of a legendary dragon, who finds a girl one day, takes care of her, until they fall in love, and are together to the end of their days.

An exciting episode in the Murderbot Diaries, it has the usual mayhem and humour, but also a look at re-evaluating the relationship between humans and artificial beings like him.

A comment from Murderbot's previous client leads Murderbot to a planet that was abandoned in the past by the corporation, GrayCris. The planet was apparently abandoned due to a failed terraforming attempt, but Murderbot suspects that it was a cover by the company to retrieve alien material (that was what led GrayCris to initially try to murder its clients in "All Systems Red"). Now, he needs to go to the planet to get evidence of this.

But to do this, it will have to infiltrate the survey team sent to look at the station at the heart of the apparent failed terraforming attempt. In doing so, Murderbot gets acquainted with a bot who, to his horror and confusion, is being treated kindly and as a friend by the humans. To him, this does not compute, as he thinks all bots and constructs (like him) are less than human.

But that has to be put aside when the team is attacked by other bots keen to make sure they don't get off the station. Now he has to find the evidence, keep the team alive, and find a way to eliminate the bots who are better armed than him.

This, of course, he does, but in the process, an act of sacrifice makes him re-evaluate the relationship between humans and bots and artificial constructs, and leads him to conclude that he has to return to the clients, whom he left in the first story, to resolve matters.

The second 'Murderbot' story, this one has it going back to where it all began, a mine where it went 'rogue' and killed its clients, forcing it to disable its governor, so it wouldn't happen again. But memory, especially mostly erased memory, is a tricky thing. It isn't sure if it was the governor that made it go rogue, or it disabled its governor to go rogue. Either way, it has to know.

But getting to the mine on a distant planet won't be easy. On the journey, it finds an uneasy ally in the transport ship which happens to be an on-loan research vessel with a hugely powerful bot in charge of it, but is rather emotional over entertainment shows (provided by Murderbot) featuring research vessels whose crew dies from misadventures and needs some 'hand holding'.

On the planet itself, it hires itself off to a small team going to the planet to meet a company person holding the team's data hostage. An attempted sabotage raises the stakes as Murderbot now has to protect his clients and get them safely off the planet again before going off to find the mine. When he does this, the truth he discovers is not what he remembers. But he now has to go save his clients again before deciding what to do now he knows just what happened at the mine.

A fun story about an AI construct who calls itself 'Murderbot' that has secretly hacked its governor module, so it doesn't follow any orders (in other words, it's a free agent). It's also a 'SecUnit' (security unit) leased out by the Company to provide security to a small group of scientists doing a field survey on an unfamiliar planet. While not performing its duties, Murderbot likes nothing better than to immerse itself in entertainment streams, mainly the future equivalent of current day 'soap operas' and to avoid interacting with its human clients as much as possible.

But things change dramatically when some members of the group get attacked by native wildlife. That wasn't in the planetary briefing. A closer look reveals missing information due to probable hacking. Then, a rival planetary survey on another part of the planet goes dark and things start to escalate rather violently.

In all this, Murderbot keeps its clients alive (although it technically doesn't have to) and learns to interact with its human clients (although it is still not comfortable with it). The clients, in the end, repay it for keeping them alive.

Now on to more adventures with Murderbot in future stories.

A good introduction to the topic of Epidemiology: what it is, what it does and how does society benefit from it. You will get a good idea of how epidemiology works and how it benefits society by informing public health and keeping people healthy.

The book starts with the history of epidemiology and how it can determine the causes of diseases and epidemics in early history, even though the causes of diseases were not yet known. The book then goes into how epidemiology uses statistics and other tools to measure the health of people.

Other chapters describe how epidemiology is used to search for the cause of a disease, establishing the cause of it and how to control a disease. Various examples, like cancer caused by smoking, the human papillomavirus, diabetes, etc. are used to show how epidemiology is used.

Finally, several chapters are used to show how epidemiology is used to examine the health of the public in general. Various challenges to epidemiology in the form of genetic consent and storage of samples for future studies are also highlighted.

A fantastic book about the VIC20, one of the early home computers that helped to launch the home computer revolution. The book covers the various versions of the computer created for different markets and includes notes and anecdotes from some creators of the computer, who had to overcome obstacles in their path in creating the computer, included some from management who didn't believe at the time that there would be a market for a cheap, home computer.

The book also covers the various expansion options that were created for the VIC20, like memory expanders, modems, printers, floppy drives, cassette drives and other accessories like manuals. It also covers the range of programs written by Commodore and released on cartridges and tapes.

For those who used the VIC20 in the past, this is an excellent book to read to bring back the nostalgic memory of the system. For those interested in the history of computers of that era, this book provides lots of exceptional photos showing off the computer and the ecosystem that existed about the VIC20 at the time.

A fascinating and, at times, personal, journey through time, space, and history by the author as she explores not just the universe as we know it, but also the various stories of people throughout history who have placed the importance of science and other people above their own. The book is not only about 'Possible Worlds' but also, like the first Cosmos series by Carl Sagan, a 'Personal Journey' by the author who not only wants the readers to see the wonders the universe has to offer, but also some of the trials she has to go through to keep the ideas and ideals of Carl Sagan alive.

"Ladder to the stars" gives an overview of the journey with the Cosmic Calendar (that compresses all of the time from the Big Bang to the present into one calendar year). Highlights from the calendar are presented, from the creation of Earth, the rise of life on Earth, the rise of humanity until human civilization is established.

"Oh, Mighty King" shows humanity's struggle to understand the universe and the supernatural nature of good and evil in an unfeeling universe. The chapter begins with Zoroastrianism and ends with the story of the Indian Emperor Ashoka, who started out being an embodiment of evil, yet was changed by Buddhism to become a paragon of good in India.

"Lost city of life" looks at how life might have developed on Earth, deep under the sea, in vast towers of minerals that sheltered and nurtured the first life forms. It then gives a brief look at the lives of some of the scientists who looked at chemistry and biochemistry, and ends with a consideration of other worlds and moons in the Solar System that may well harbour life as we know it.

"Vavilov" tells the story of agriculture and the struggle to prevent hunger by growing better types of grains and other plants. It also tells the story of Nikolai Vavilov, a Russian scientist whose botanical skills would lead to the identification of the centre of origins for various agricultural plants. But his is not a happy story, for it takes place prior and during the Second World War and would involve Stalin and Trofim Lysenko.

"The cosmic connectome" looks at the brain and the mystery of its numerous connections that give us the ability to think and of awareness. Starting from how animals evolved the brain, the chapter also covers the history of brain research from recognizing that the brain is the seat of thinking to the discovery of what different parts of the brain do, to detecting signals from the brain to current brain research that is revealing the large number of connections between neurons in the brain.

"The man of a trillion worlds" looks at the lives of two scientists during the period in the 20th century when the search for the beginnings of life on Earth and the possibility of life on other planets was being researched: Gerald Kuiper and Harold Urey. The chapter also looks at the graduate student who would be a bridge between them: Carl Sagan, who would also organize the first group to study how life might exist on other planets.

"The search for intelligent life on earth" considers the search for intelligent life in the universe by looking at what may be intelligent life on earth (besides us). From the web of fungi and plants to the 'dance' of bees, the examples chosen show what intelligent life might look like if we were to consider the ways it expresses itself in the way communities of plants and animals live.

"The sacrifice of Cassini" gives an overview of what made the Cassini mission to Saturn possible. Starting with a history of the astronomical observations of Saturn, the chapter moves on to the story of the Russian who dreamed up the idea of gravitational assist, an idea that would make most interplanetary missions possible. The chapter ends with some discoveries made by the Cassini probe before it was commanded to end its mission by crashing into Saturn, to protect the moons of Saturn from possible contamination from Cassini.

"Magic without lies" looks at the strange nature of light. From the early arguments between Newton and Huygens over whether light is a wave or made up of particles, to the mysterious interference experiments of Thomas Young and the mysterious inner quantum nature of light shown by Bell's Theorem, the chapter offers a glimpse that we still don't really understand light, much like Flatlanders don't really grasp the nature of the third dimension.

"A tale of two atoms" tells the tale of two kinds of atoms. One is carbon, which is the basis for life as we know it, the other is uranium, from which some of the most destructive weapons would be created. The two kinds of atoms would meet when humanity would harness uranium for its destructive power.

"The fleeting grace of the habitable zone" looks at what will happen as the sun ages. At first, it will give off more light (and heat), forcing humanity (if it still exists far in the future) to abandon Earth to live on worlds further from the sun. But as the sun becomes a white dwarf and cools, humanity will have no choice but to move to another star system. Is this possible? The author imagines the journey our ancestors did to navigate the great unknown oceans of Earth and believes such an incredible journey to other stars may one day be possible.

"Coming of age in the Anthropocene" this chapters looks at what humanity has done to change the earth enough that we are now living in a human-caused age. The rise of hunting, agriculture and, ultimately, technology, has enabled humanity to change and modify the Earth. More than that, humanity has the ability to predict what will happen in the future (via examples like the ozone hole caused by Chlorofluorocarbon, or climate change caused by increasing amounts of Carbon dioxide). But the question is whether humanity is willing to act on it.

"A possible world" end the book the way it started: with a look at the World's Fair. While the introduction showed the 1939 World's Fair seen by Carl Sagan, the one featured here shows a World's Fair in the near future on a world recovering from the damage done by humanity. It is possible? Perhaps.