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A better than average issue, especially compared to the previous issue that was SF-lite with great stories by Amanda Forrest and Greg Egan.- "We Jump Down Into The Dark" by M. Bennardo: a story about a rescue attempt on a crippled space station that houses a biosphere, mixed in with commentary about whether it was worthwhile trying to save habitats by putting them in space.- "Empty" by Robert Reed: in a future where humanity is only represented by their robotic descendents, a group of machines a...
So far only read:-- Bidding War by Rich Larson - 2*SFish, kinda humorous, a futuristic-ish world but some things never really change.(view spoiler)[ Online auction bidding war. Who is he bidding against? (hide spoiler)]I found a podcast on Spotify
Interesting how many of the stories focused on young protagonists coming of age. My favorite of those was "Riding the Waves of Leviathan" by Garrett Ashley, a great, understated story with excellent portrayal of characters in a short space. "Empty" by Robert Reed was fascinating and mind-bending, and "Bidding War" was a tight, humorous little piece.
Some really great stuff here, and some other things that really missed the mark for me. In order of how much I enjoyed them, we have:5 stars"The Four Thousand, the Eight Hundred" by Greg Egan - This was fantastic, and is one that definitely gets a Hugo nomination from me. A hard question in ethics - do you save the eight hundred, or do you save the four thousand? Especially if you have imperfect information (or worse, don't necessarily trust the information you have). And a very engrossing depic...
Asimov's Science Fiction December 20153 - StarsShorts:We Jump Down Into The Dark by M. Bennardo2 – StarsI wanted to give this a higher rating but the MC is both a space based search and rescue guy as well as the guy who helped design and construct Eden, the space station where his ex-girlfriend is and that is spinning out of alignment and breaking up.Other than that glaring absurdity, it's not a bad story it just doesn't really have any motivating factors for reading it. The MC is woken from a d...
An uneven issue for me, with one really great story but two that I skipped/didn't finish. We Jump Down Into The Dark by M. BennardoThis story about a jungle on a space station had a great evocation of place, but its plot and characterization were lackluster. What, exactly, was the conflict in this piece? And what did I know about any of the characters? Empty by Robert ReedTold from the perspective of an incorporeal machine species called Data, Empty was superb. After a terrible war between...
Starke Ausgabe mit guter Ausbeute. Mein klarer Favorit ist die Geschichte "Empty" von Robert Reed, die die gewollte Rest-Vernichtung der Menschheit aus Sicht einer KI beschreibt und thematisiert, warum Leben im Universum trotz seiner Seltenheit sich gegen sich selbst richtet. Eloquente und souveräne Erzählerstimme, ein Genuss.Das gilt auch für die Highspeed-Prosa in meinem weiteren Favoriten "Bidding War" von dem mir bisher nicht bekannten Rich Larson, der eigentlich wirklich nur von einem Biete...
Mixed bag that gets a bump to 4 stars on the strength of Greg Evan's novella "The Four Thousand, the Eight Hundred", a powerfully written story about justice and simultaneously philosophy.
This issue contains 4 short stories, 4 poems, a novella and 2 novelettes as well as the usual variety of essays, articles and book reviews. I'm primarily going to comment only on things that I thought were above average and/or quite good in some way. As it happens this was a pretty strong issue and I liked it quite a bit primarily on the strength of two longer excellent stories and the fact that we had science fiction stories here, not a bunch of little emo things and middle school dramas. There...
I thought this was a very interesting issue, if not the most exciting. Many of the stories felt like they had a similar theme in that they were centered around the lives of people living in speculative fiction universes, but the main storylines were focused on the lives of the characters rather than specifically tied to whatever made the respective worlds fantastical. The title story, "The Four Thousand, The Eight Hundred", had me very well hooked on it, telling a great tale of a believably poli...
I only read the Egan novella.
2 stand outs - Come from aways, hopeful small town coming of age story. Bidding War - Great dialogue
