Reviews and Comments

A good anthology of stories, some of which are old favourites, while others haven't been read before but turn out to be interesting stories of speculation. Those I have read before and still like include those by Isaac Asimov, Greg Bear and Ted Chiang, while others encountered in the collection that are fascinating are those by James H. Schmitz, Katherine MacLean, Bruce Sterling, Harry Harrison, Eliza Blair, Robert Sheckley and John Crowley.

• "Sole Solution" by Eric Frank Russell: a short short story about a person becoming aware in a dark place. The person starts a process to 'escape' from the dark place, in a rather obvious way.

• "Lot" by Ward Moore: as civilization breaks down due to the start of a conflict, a man moves his family to the countryside to begin a new life. But the journey is full of family conflict that leads the man to make a decision about his family members at the end.

• "Skirmish" by Clifford D. Simak: a disquieting story about a newspaper reporter who goes to his office early one day to discover all is not right with the machines he sees. He eventually deduces he was chosen for a reason and humanity's fate may lie in the choices he may make.

• "And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill's Side" by James Tiptree, Jr.: a reporter attempts to interview a human who had travelled to the stars, only to learn that to the aliens, humans are primitive.

• "Poor Little Warrior!" by Brian W. Aldiss: a monologue on the poor life of a time travelling timid man from the future who goes back in time to shoot a dinosaur, only to be disappointed by the act.

• "Grandpa" by James H. Schmitz: on an alien world, a trip on an organic raft world turn dangerous, unless one person can figure out how the raft really works based on his observation of other organisms on the alien planet.

• "Nightfall" by Isaac Asimov: on a world surrounded by six suns and forever in sunlight, sunsets has left only one sun in the sky. But now the light from the remaining sun is being blocked and for the first time in thousands of years, man must face the darkness and the horrors it may hold.

• "The Snowball Effect" by Katherine MacLean: an entertaining story about a sociology department head being asked to justify its existence to the Dean. When it does, through a social experiment on exponential growth, the results are inevitably world changing.

• "Swarm" by Bruce Sterling: a human researcher enters the home of an alien swarm with a social structure similar to social inserts like ants. The purpose of the research is to enslave the swarm to do the bidding of humans. But the swarm has other ideas.

• "Blood Music" by Greg Bear: a researcher developing miniature sensors that can enter the body goes too far and develops biological computers. Then, he injects them into himself, and starts a process that would lead to a higher intelligence on Earth.

• "Answer" by Fredric Brown: a short short about linking all the computers in the known universe to ask a question that should not be asked.

• "The Liberation of Earth" by William Tenn: a tale passed down from generation to generation about the time the Earth came to the attention of alien beings who fought battle after battle on it to liberate it from each other, and the end results of the multiple liberations.

• "An Alien Agony" by Harry Harrison: a priest arrives at a world where aliens want literal proof of the truth, and pays the price. And so do the aliens.

• "Track 12" by J. G. Ballard: two men, who are also rivals, spend some time listening to recordings of sounds produced by microscopic objects, vastly amplified. But the last recording would be specially produced by one of the man for the other.

• "Sexual Dimorphism" by Kim Stanley Robinson: on another world, the relationship between two people turn sour, leading to a genetic difference between man and women bring interpreted in an unusual fashion.

• "The Tunnel Under the World" by Frederik Pohl: a man wakes up and goes about his day: again and again. When he wakes up to that fact one day, it leads him and a companion he meets to dig for the truth which would turn out to be stranger than they imagine, but hinted at throughout the story.

• "Friends in Need" by Eliza Blair: a young girl is excited as she is going to choose her pet. But in this future where pets are sentient, the choice of which pet to decide on may have more repercussions.

• "The Store of the Worlds" by Robert Sheckley: a man goes to a shack whose occupant says he can send a person to another world for some time. Is it for real, or is it a hoax? The man has to think about it as he goes on with his life.

• "Jokester" by Isaac Asimov: a man who likes to tell jokes wonders about where jokes come from. The answer given by a large computer named Multivac may not please him or mankind.

• "The Short-Short Story of Mankind" by John Steinbeck: a parody take is the rise of civilization from the cave man days.

• "Night Watch" by James Inglis: the story of an autonomous spaceship on a voyage through the universe on a mission of discovery and, ultimately, survival.

• "Story of Your Life" by Ted Chiang: a language specialist is working on understanding the language of aliens visiting the earth, while at the same time telling the story of the life of her daughter. It is only towards the end of the story that a change in how to perceive events and actions caused by understanding the aliens' language makes the connection between the two parts of the story explicit.

• "Protected Species" by H. B. Fyfe: an inspector on a newly colonized planet visits some ruins believed to have being built by ancestors of the natives on the planet. But the truth will turn out to be the opposite is what was expected.

• "The Rescuer" by Arthur Porges: two scientist blow up important equipment to stop it being used in a possibly world changing experiment, as they admit in the subsequent trial.

• "I Made You" by Walter M. Miller, Jr.: a military robot on the moon is tasked to keep watch over an important area and destroy intruders. But it is still satisfied to do is job even when failures render it unable to tell friend from foe.

• "The Country of the Kind" by Damon Knight: if you live in a world where everybody is kind, a man of violence might be considered its king. Or maybe not

• "The Cage" by A. Bertram Chandler: when human survivors from a spaceship that crashed on an uncharted planet get picked up and put in a cage by aliens, it would take skill and some luck to conduct to convince their captors that they are intelligent beings too.

• "Fulfilment" by A. E. van Vogt: in the future, a solitary machine contemplates its fate when it is contacted by another machine from the past. In following the other machine back in time, it makes plans to conquer the past while discovering its own future, which it has forgotten about.

• "Common Time" by James Blish: a traveller on a faster than light ship suddenly discovers himself unable to move. It is only by thinking about the situation that he discovers the truth, which involves the flow of time; and maybe the flow of love?

• "Alien Embassy" by Garry Kilworth: a woman goes for a holiday on an island given to visiting aliens. But it all seems to go wrong, then she develops a relationship and an appetite for the alien she meets there: or does it?

• "Great Work of Time" by John Crowley: a long tale about a man who works out how to travel through time, only for his invention to be taken over by a society that intends to keep the British Empire alive and the world at relative peace: but only if one event at the start of it all were to take place.

A fun story, where Murderbot gets to play a detective to solve a murder mystery on Preservation Station. The investigation would involve determining if the murder was part of an attempt on its client's life by the company, GrayCris, that Murderbot and its client royally screwed in the previous Murderbot stories.

Also involved in the investigation would be Station Security, who are reluctant to work with a rogue SecUnit (aka Murderbot) who they think would murder them all in an instant (and they wouldn't be wrong). To allay their fears, Murderbot had earlier promise not to hack their security system, which limits what kinds of data Murderbot can access, which makes it very unhappy (it needs all the info to make sure the case wasn't part of a GrayCris plot).

Eventually, Murderbot works it all out and determines not just why the murder occurred, but also the method and who did it. And now it and Station Security have a better working relationship.

Written from Murderbot's point of view, the story features a lot of internal monologues and Murderbot's opinions about humans on the station (mostly sarcastic and funny), which adds a lot of laughs to the situation. Of course, there are moments of sheer violence, but Murderbot keeps the enemy body count low compared to previous stories.

A pretty fascinating anthology of stories by writers of China that shows the wide range of fiction that is coming out from them. With stories ranging from the fantastic and absurd to those where technology is front and centre, it would be hard for a reader to enjoy all the stories. But readers should find a few that catch their fancy. For me, the alternate history tale by Baoshu was a highlight of the anthology.

• “Goodnight, Melancholy” by Xia Jia: the story is concerned with people interacting with apparently intelligent AI machines for therapy. Told as two connected tales, one is a modern day interaction with a toy, while the other imagines a conversation between Alan Turing and a conversation bot that Turing might have created.

• “Moonlight” by Liu Cixin: a tragic comedy tale about a man responsible for energy policy who apparently gets calls and messages from his future self, telling him about future energy and climate crisis and what he could do to prevent them. But as each future self offers a plan, and he decides to implement it, another future self calls to tell of the crisis his new plan creates. So what is he to do, or not do?

• “Broken Stars” by Tang Fei: a tale that starts off with a girl apparently having dreams about her dead mother who reads her fortunes in the stars, turns more eerie and horrifying when she figures out the truth and turns the tables on those who have bullied her about her mother.

• “Submarines” by Han Song: a slightly surreal tale about a fleet of submarines in a river inhabited by worker who commute to the land to work. We are shown their strange water based life and how it all comes to an end one day.

• “Salinger and the Koreans” by Han Song: a tale involving David Salinger and his book, "The Catcher in the Rye". In an altered alternate universe, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) somehow conquers the world. They consider Salinger and his book to be the inspiration that would lead them to liberate mankind. Only, Salinger would rather be a hermit and not have anything to do with the North Koreans.

• “Under a Dangling Sky” by Cheng Jingbo: in a strange seaside town apparently covered by a crystalline cover, dolphins can talk and sing. One particular dolphin wants to do more, and her actions would reveal what the world would look like on the other side of the cover.

• “What Has Passed Shall in Kinder Light Appear” by Baoshu: a fantastical tale about the life of a man and a woman who meet in childhood and grow up together. But in this alternate history story, events in this world happen in reverse order to our own. Starting from the early 21st century and moving backwards toward World War II (the first Great War in this story), we are told of the events from the viewpoint of the man as he and the girl make their way through them while growing up together and separately, until they are finally united at the end.

• “The New Year Train” by Hao Jingfang: a short short story about a train which vanishes from our universe, only to re-appear as expected. But to the passengers, more time has passed; yet, they still enjoyed the trip.

• “The Robot Who Liked to Tell Tall Tales” by Fei Dao: a fairy tale about a King who likes to tell tall tales. But one day, he decides that he doesn't want to be remembered as a teller of tall tales and the only way to avoid that is by finding somebody else who can tell even more tall tells (nobody remembers number two in any category, he thinks). So, he sets a robot to tell more tall tales than him. The robot takes a long journey (apparently throughout the universe) to gather tales, so he can turn them into as tall tales. The robot's journey would, in the end, comes back full circle to a (tall?) tale told by the king.

• “The Snow of Jinyang” by Zhang Ran: the story of a city that is being besieged by an army in ancient China. But as the story progresses, strange modern day terms (like Ray-Ban, internet, and so on) get introduced, and it gradually becomes obvious that a modern day person has appeared during this time and place. But his plans, which at first appear to be to prevent the city from being conquered, get revealed and history may get to reassert itself.

• “The Restaurant at the End of the Universe: Laba Porridge" by Anna Wu: probably inspired by the same restaurant featured in Douglas Adams' book in "The Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy" series, it tells a story within a story of one of the patrons of the restaurant who makes a deal with a mysterious agency to steal the abilities of writers from other parallel universes so that he can become a great writer, only to lose the one thing that make his writing important.

• “The First Emperor’s Games” by Ma Boyong: a rather silly story of an emperor who has finally united all of China and now wants to relax by playing computer games. In this world that mixes up Chinese history and culture with computers, various groups vie to get the emperor to endorse their games like "Civilization", "The Sims", etc. that reflect their view of life. But in the end, it would be a sweet-talking westerner who would win the day with a game that may never exist. Possibly only gamers or those who know some history of computer games may get the most enjoyment from this story.

• “Reflection” by Gu Shi: a man goes to meet an unusual woman who appears to be able to predict the future, but is strangely ignorant of the past. As he continues to meet her at various time and develop a relationship with her, the story becomes even stranger until the ending reveals how she and the man are related to each other and are reflections of each other.

• “The Brain Box” by Regina Kanyu Wang: a man access the last memories of the woman she loves, who has died from a plane crash. But what he learns about her last thoughts may not be to his liking.

• “Coming of the Light” by Chen Qiufan: a tale of a man working at a marketing company that is desperate to find a way to market an application by their biggest client. The man's solution would involve a blessing by a Buddhist monk, but the results would backfire spectacularly. In the second part of the story, the man has retreated to a monastery to find peace, but the effects of his marketing effort would return to haunt him and reveal to him his role in the universe.

• “A History of Future Illnesses” by Chen Qiufan: a series of short tales telling the various unusual diseases that await us as technology takes over our lives

A better than average anthology of SFF by writers from China. The editor and translator, Ken Liu, is careful to say that the anthology is not meant to represent the best SFF from China, but to showcase some stories and give readers a taste of the kind of SFF being written in China. The anthology ends with some essays by the writers on some aspects of Chinese SF.

• “The Year of the Rat” by Chen Qiufan: without jobs, university graduates have to go for the only work available: the Rodent-Control Force, troops tasked with the job of killing genetically engineered rats meant for the market in the West that had escaped. As they try to meet their quota of rats (to be reassigned to other jobs), it is gradually revealed that the rats are not all they seem to be, and neither are the people catching them.

• “The Fish of Lijian” by Chen Qiufan: an up-and-coming employee is suddenly told to take time off from work for rehabilitation. Now in Lijiang, he meets a nurse who leads his rehabilitation, and it is gradually revealed why rehabilitation is necessary due to the way work has now messed up workers' sense of time due to workloads.

• “The Flower of Shazui” by Chen Qiufan: a person hiding in Shenzen meets an attractive prostitute who asks him to help repair some organic film applied to her body. As he gets to know her more after the meeting, we learn the reason why he is hiding in Shenzen and also what troubles the prostitute, and he decides to help her. But the results would turn out not to be as expected.

• “A Hundred Ghosts Parade Tonight” by Xia Jia: on a street filled with ghosts inhabiting various animated bodies (as a tourist attraction), a boy grows up under the care of a ghost lady. The street has fallen on hard times with few, if any tourist, walking it. And one day, a calamity hits the street and the boy's attempts to save it might not be successful.

• “Tongtong’s Summer” by Xia Jia: a robot, which turns out to be remotely controlled, comes into the household to take care of the grandfather, who is grumpy that he now cannot walk and socialize. But an attempt to get a more competitive Chinese Chess player for the grandfather would set off a revolution in remote robotic care.

• “Night Journey of the Dragon-Horse” by Xia jia: a mechanical dragon-horse (body of a horse, head of a dragon) comes to life in a future where humans have gone. As it explores its new world, it meets a bat who becomes its friend and leads it on to a new life. The author's note at the end gives links to the real life dragon-horse gifted from France to China, on which the story is based.

• “The City of Silence” by Ma Boyong: in a future where only authorized web links can be accessed and only certain 'safe' words may be used in conversations that are constantly listened to by the authorities, a man decides to sign up to use a BBS (bulletin board system). But a secret message encoded into the permission forms returned to him would lead him to join a secret society that would block the listening authorities for a brief time while they indulged their secret desires for conversation and companionship. But it would all come to an end and the man must decide on whether to take the next step in a world that is now becoming silent; for while everybody is listening, nobody would dare to say a word.

• “Invisible Planets” by Hao Jingfang: a series of brief stories about fantastical worlds as told by one person to another, leading to a brief meeting of minds.

• “Folding Beijing” by Hao Jingfang: in a future where Beijing as been physically divided to two halves (for the elite and the rest), with one half 'folded' into the earth and dormant while the other is active, a man is asked to pass on a message from one side to the other, from a man to a woman. The journey would reveal the story of how Beijing came to be the way it is.

• “Call Girl” by Tang Fei: a story that initially starts out giving the impression of a school girl who may have trysts with strangers turns into an altogether fantastical tale when the "Call Girl" turns out to have the ability to call strange things into existence to fulfil the expectations of her clients.

• “Grave of the Fireflies” by Cheng Jingbo: a story of a journey into the far future to a castle that may hold the future (or past) of a girl and a universe where the stars are going out.

• “The Circle” by Liu Cixin: a conquering king believes that the secret of eternal life may lie in the digits that make up Pi, and commands his adviser to calculate it for him. The answer to generating the digits would be a computing machine made up of his soldiers acting as the logic gates of a huge computing machine. But in the end, the king's hubris would lead to his downfall.

• “Taking Care of God” by Liu Cixin: an ancient civilization who claims to have created all life on earth suddenly appears, and ask humanity to take care of the last remaining members of the civilization, whose ships are now failing. As first, it goes well, but those taking care of ailing and forgetful elders may know, conflicts between generations will occur, and it all breaks down. But not before the gods pass on a message to mankind about their possible future

An unusual fantasy story involving a time-travelling Lady Annie who is cross with her trickster lover Crow, and goes back in time to her land in 16th Century England. There, she finds a young lad (Shakespeare) in her home, which is not meant to have any males. More to the point, she discovers a plot to change the future of humanity, to which she is not invited to; so she invites herself.

There, she royally messes up the plans of some Lords for future world domination, causing a conflict that is only resolved after an invasion of her home and her revenge via seduction. And all is apparently forgiven between her and Crow.

Not being aware of the past history of stories (if any) involving Annie and Crow, it is hard to say if this is part of a series or a fragment of a longer tale. But still a fun read.

An interesting and fun graphic novel on the life of the honey bee. The story focuses on the life of one bee, Nyuki, who starts off as a grub asking lots of questions to her elder sister about what is going to happen to her during metamorphosis when she turns into an adult bee.

After she becomes an adult, she gets involved in a bee swarming event to look for a new home. She then ventures by herself outside the hive before she is ready, leading to adventures with other creatures. Once she makes it back, she declares that she has had enough of the outside world and devotes herself to hive activities.

But a crisis event would lead her to venture back out to help her elder sister. The final part of the book shows a now elderly Nyuki, now leading her younger sisters. But as her life slowly ebbs away, she has one final plan to ensure that her legacy remains with the bees' nest.

An anthropomorphic story, this is also an educational look at the life of honey bees, that is full of laughs. However, the ending may be a bit emotional for younger readers.

An interesting book that is equal parts fiction and non-fiction about a mystery discovered during the demolition of an old chemical factory. When a basement is uncovered, a body covered in phosphate is discovered, along with ten objects. A police detective enlists the help of a former supervisor at that factory to help discover whose body it is and the significance of the objects.

As the former supervisor, John Gibson, examines each object, it causes him to recollect events and the people at the factory that involve each object. For readers to understand why the chemical factory does certain things in certain ways, it is necessary for the writer to introduce the chemistry (and some history behind the chemistry) separately beforehand.

The result is a book that part mystery, part chemistry, part plant engineering and part relationships between people, as the ups and downs of the factory involving the workers and the people in the nearby town are shown.

In the end, if the reader pays careful attention, the identity of the body may be discovered and is shown to be part of the history of the factory and its eventual closure as times change. But along the way, you will be entertained by a story about chemistry and the people who help make some of the chemicals that help run the world today.