Reviews and Comments

An average issue, with interesting stories by Ben Berman Ghan and R H Wesley

• "The Music Must Always Play" by Marissa Lingen: an alien ship crashes on Earth. A linguist is tasked with trying to understand the alien's language, but it is the 'music' that she hears from the ship that would lead to a possible breakthrough, and a way for making the rest of humanity have an understanding of what the aliens are.

• "Fish Fear Me, You Need Me" by Tiffany Xue: in a future where water has flooded much of the world, two people go out fishing. But it is no ordinary fishing trip, for it appears that much of humanity have been turned into fish, and one man searches in vain for his wife.

• "Broken" by Laura Williams McCaffrey: a story, told in reverse, about repairing a broken virtual reality helmet. Only, the player has been in the virtual world for so long, it has become the Real World to her, and the real world is now just a shadow of reality.

• "How to Remember Perfectly" by Eric Schwitzgebel: two elderly people in a nursing home take a special treatment that enables them to change their mood and their memories. In the end, it is up to the reader to wonder if the abiilty was really worth it.

• "The Children I Gave You, Oxalaia" by Cirilo Lemos, translated by Thamirys Gênova: a story about alien refugees from Venus in a Brazilian favela. In this story, one of the alien refugee is caring for human children, and later strikes up a relationship with a human. But things change, when a war on Venus that caused the refugees to flee, is declared to be over. Now, the refugees are being forced to leave the favelas and return home. But for this refugee, Earth is home, setting up a confrontation with the authorities.

• "Those Who Remember the World" by Ben Berman Ghan: a death occurs in a city. But the cause of death may be a fungal infection, and an Investigator investigates. But as the story progresses, it becomes clearer that the Investigator isn't originally human and neither are the city's inhabitants, in a tale where the line between what is originally real and what was created by the city blurs.

• "A Theory of Missing Affections" by Renan Bernardo: a researcher of alien artefacts tries to convince her sister to join her on the alien's world before the gateway between their worlds is closed. But beliefs in the aliens' system of treating each other for an unknown purpose clashes with the needs of their family.

• "A World of Milk and Promises" by R H Wesley: the survivor of an accident while surveying an alien world discovers that life-forms there survive by cooperating with each other, rather than competing. This would have an effect on the development of the survivor's children.

A fascinating book (apparently the first in a series) set in a Victorian-era world involving two investigators that use Hexes to solve crimes. Well, only Iz Ann Always Wilby (hah!) uses Hexes, while her husband has his own resources. And their current investigation is a doozy, involving a King who wants to be cooked, a possible bastard son, and various spirits and denizens of other worlds. Like most investigative stories, the clues are there, but it would be a challenge for the reader to solve it before Iz does, even with the various Hexes and other magical incantations and objects shown and explained.

The story starts with the King's cooking situation explained by his secretary and a letter from the apparent bastard son, before action explodes on to the scene (literally). Iz and her husband are then off to investigate the origins of the possible son. But it becomes clear that some forces would be happier if they drop the investigation. The investigation would lead them into the realm of the dead, interactions with a shadow world, and encounters with monstrous creatures from another plane of existence. But even with the case closed, things are not settled, for the Wilbys are now aware of an even more powerful magical force at work in their world, and it would not do to antagonize it unduly, for the force is aware of them and is willing to leave them alone: for now.

In the Wilby's world, the system of magic is divided into four branches: the Wizards, Necromancers, Alchemists, and Hexology. The Wizards and Necromancers are now banned and strictly controlled, while some Alchemists are busy creating new sources of power and raw materials, sometimes from other worlds. Iz uses Hexes (drawings of arcane symbols) during her investigation to help her, and also magical items that have come into her possession from her long-lost (and dead) father, who was an explorer and collector of magical items.

The story is written in a light-hearted way, but with moments of high emotion during important revelations in the investigation. The book would conclude with Iz making a controversial deal with a magical being that would reveal a truly power magical being at work in her world that she would rather avoid if possible. Presumably, a confrontation between them in the future is inevitable, but that would be for a future book in this interesting series to reveal.

A technical and fascinating book on the history of Japan's Shinkansen, the world's first high-speed railway. It is amazing to think that it was created in the 1960s, well before modern computers, and the engineers had no option but to use hand computations, paper tables and graphs to simulate all aspects of the design of the trains and railway lines.

The book covers three main parts: the first part covers Japan just after the end of World War II, when Japan was still under the occupation of the Allied Forces. Former designers and engineers from Japan's military now work on railways, and put their minds on making them better. Their theoretical and simulation work on Japan's trains and railways would include making them faster and quieter (more suitable for moving passengers instead of just cargo). These would pave the way for some to publicly state a desire for a high-speed rail network, with trains able to travel at 200 km/h or better.

The second part covers the design of the high-speed trains, looking at various aspects of the trains (aerodynamics, vibration analysis), rails (manufacturing, reliability), power supply and communications. Remember that this was in the 1950s and 1960s, so engineers have to come up with simplified theoretical models and run simulations on scale models and, later, full size models, to discover how the trains and rail networks would behave. At the time, in the west, few believed that trains could travel at 200 km/h, so the Japanese had to depend on their own research to push on. The engineers also had a short time-line to come up with the design and testing of a high-speed rail before starting production on the actual trains.

The third part looks at the early commercial history of the train and the lessons learned from running it. After an initial start, when problems tend to occur, the book concludes that the major lesson learned was to get at the root of all problems. Even minor problems must be thoroughly investigated, for the problems, if ignored, may later cause major ones. Earthquakes, and the derailments caused by them, lead to redesigns to minimize the possible damage that can occur when such events occur.

The book closes with a brief pictorial history of the various Shinkansen trains, from the earliest ones, to the ones now running in the 2020s.

This is a highly technical book, full of equations and graphs and technical discussions on aspects of trains and railway network design. Those looking for a book that goes deeply into the design of a high-speed railway will find many fascinating details: details that may cause the less technical to quickly skip over to pick out the more general details.

An interesting addition to the 'cosy fantasy' category where the stakes are not very high (but high enough for the protagonists), with a dose of romance. It helps that the main character is a librarian who gets to show off her librarian indexing skills.

At the start of the story, she is happy taking care of her corner of the Empire's library full of spell books with the help of a magical sentient plant. But it all comes crashing down when a revolution gets out of hand and the library is put to the torch. Saving whatever spell books they can, the duo escape in a boat before heading to the only place she can think of: her childhood home on an outer island.

Before she has a chance to settle in her old home, her nosy (and rather handsome) neighbour intrudes, to try to help renovate the place. Now lacking an income, she decides to start selling jam, with the help of her mother's old recipe book that she discovers. But finding fruits to make jam is hard on the island, especially since the Empire's sorcerers have stopped visiting the outer islands, casting spells to help make living easier. She decides to use the spell books she saved to help her grow the required fruits, as well as revive the plants on the island. This has to be done surreptitiously, as using magic is forbidden, except by approved people, which she isn't.

As first, it goes well, as her jams are a hit with the island folk, who she starts to get to know, including her nosy, handsome neighbour. But then an outsider intrudes, claiming to be an Inspector, out investigating the improper use of magic. And now she has to somehow hide that fact that she used magic for her jams. But the Inspector would turn out to be the least of her problems when other visitors appears, and this one may use military force to bring back what they believe is hidden on the island.

In this book, magic takes place in the form of incantations in a language with the proper ingredients. So anybody could do it, if they knew what they were doing. And at first, the librarian has to experiment to get things right, as the writers of the book may sometimes be vague about how a spell actually works; and that is assuming the handwriting can be correctly read. The island itself is full of magical creatures that the librarian gets to know when they sense her using magic and come to her for magical aid.

The tone of the book is light-hearted and full of humour. Even the 'bad guys' in the story turn out not to be so bad after all, and she learns to deal with them, with the help of the islanders who are mostly friendly and willing to help out one another. For life on the island is already hard enough, so having helpful neighbours is a good thing. And in the end, the librarian gets to come out and help the islanders with her use of magic to make their lives easier.

An average issue, with interesting stories by Lyle Hopwood and Noah Lemelson.

• "Hate: A Genealogy" by Fábio Fernandes: a somewhat meandering story of a person who, after an attempted suicide attempt, gets recruited into an organization that polices alternate times and places by transferring their consciousnesses. This gets wrapped around a story about him planning to kill his father, which does not appear to get resolved.

• "Joanie from Rupture to Rapture (Once Again Under the Spotlight)" by Carlos Norcia: a story of the journey of a musician through space.

• "Fables" by Rachael Cupp: a series of fables with morals as told in a shelter after the end of the world.

• "Swim With the Space Whales" by Lyle Hopwood: a private investigator is hired to find a package that goes missing during a transit in space. But things get serious when the investigator's companion ends up dead during another investigation, and they may be linked together, along with some intelligent space whales that aren't really whales.

• "The Complete Expiration Records of Nebu Inc. Colony KE-4-01" by Noah Lemelson: an interesting series of scenes of a mining operation on a planet that goes seriously wrong when the planet's native lifeforms turns out not to be as harmless as originally thought.

A fascinating book that looks at the history of Machine Learning (ML) to show how we arrive at the machine learning models we have today that drive applications like ChatGPT and others. Mathematics involving algebra, vectors, matrices, and so on feature in the book. By going through the maths, the reader gets an appreciation of how ML system go about the task of learning to distinguish between inputs to provide the (hopefully) correct output.

The book starts with the earliest type of ML, the perceptron, which can learn to separate data into categories and started the initial hype over learning machines. The maths are also provided to show how, by adjusting the weights assigned to its testing input, the machine discovers the correct weights which can allow it to categorize other inputs.

Other chapters then cover other ways to train a machine to categorize its input is shown, based on Bayes Theorem and nearest neighbour. They have their advantages and disadvantages: choosing the right (or wrong) way to train a machine will have an impact on how well the machine can categories its data.

Matrix manipulation, eigenvalues and eigenvectors are then introduced. When there are many input parameters, it can be hard to categorize them based on all the factors. By using eigenvalues and eigenvectors, it is possible to discover which factors cause the most variation among the data, and thus categorize them. And, in an interesting reversal, it is also possible to manipulate the input by putting them into more categories, which can reveal patterns that can then be used to categorize the input.

These ML models categorize input data using one level of 'neurons'. The next step would be to introduce a 'hidden layer' of neurons that can be used to combine the incoming data in many ways, which provides new ways to manipulate the data for categorization. This would provide a boost in the abilities of machines to recognize input data.

Lastly, the book catches up to current day ML models, which feature a huge increase in the number of hidden layers and weights used to manipulate input data. The book then points out that this huge increase has caused the theory of how machines learn to fall behind: the machines now exhibit abilities that theory cannot account for. The ability of such machines to pick out patterns in data through self-learning, rather than being pre-fed known data, is also an unexpected feature that current ML theories cannot account for.

These unaccounted features of current day ML systems are a probable cause of concern. So too is the concern over the kind of data being pre-fed to the systems: data that comes with various biases that only cause the system to make yet more biased decisions. Until we know better how these systems behave, it would be best to treat their outputs with caution.

An entertaining book set in the 1890s Singapore. Miss Cassidy arrives to become a companion for Sarah Jane Bendemeer, whose family has recently suffered the loss of her mother and siblings. Miss Cassidy is slowly revealed to be more than just an English Lady in an Asian Country, when she investigates and learns the cause of the tragedy: a local spirit, the Pontianak, who has come to haunt the family.

Just who Miss Cassidy is really is not yet fully revealed, but enough is shown that she can converse with local spirits and even goddesses to learn just what must be done to remove the threat to the Bendemeer family.

But that is only half of the book. The other half concerns the family of Mr Kay Wing Tong, who hires her to become an English tutor to his family. Mr Kay himself develops a curious conversational relation with Miss Cassidy. And it is in this role as a tutor that Miss Cassidy is finally revealed as who she is, as yet another local spirit haunts the Kay family, and it would need all of her power and quick thinking to help save the day.

The people in the story show an acceptance for spirits that may or may not affect their lives in Singapore. The book itself is a delightful mix of Western and Asian culture and mythology as goddesses and spirits from several pantheons, Western, Indian, Southeast Asia and Eastern Asia, mix together to test their wills and strengths against each other.