Short Stories, FTW!

This post, we have 2 novels & 2 short story collections. The short stories were much more enjoyable than the novels, which weren't bad, but maybe were "meh".

For decades, I read the Gardner Dozois short story collections, "Year's Best Science Fiction". That of course ended with his death a few several years ago. It looks like the 35th edition in 2018 was the last. I can't verify, I always bought these in trade paperback & they are all in FL while I am currently in KY.

I had identified "The Best Science Fiction of the Year" edited by Neil Clarke as the replacement. I have had Volumes 1 & 3 on my iPad for years - it looks like Volume 1 came out in 2016, so a little overlap with Dozois.

I think, after I finish the novel I am currently reading, I will read the 1st Clarke volume, and thereafter alternate this series with novels until I get caught up. I discovered so many of the best SF authors of the last 3-4 decades via the Dozois collections: Bruce Sterling, Lucius Sheppard, Charles Stross, Greg Egan, several others. I need to reestablish an annual review as a source of good new SF. So much of how I buy books has become enshittified, with everyone wanting to sell me "all you can eat" subscriptions rather than helping me find stuff I would like.

Meanwhile, 4 to review.

1. "Translation State", by Ann Leckie, 2023, 333 pages, 103k words. This story is set in the Imperial Radsch universe of her "Ancillary" novels. Mild spoiler alert, I'm going to briefly describe this universe.

   The Radsch empire is based on personalities being able to occupy multiple bodies. The Radsch's main justification for their existence is to maintain the coexistence treaty with the alien, somewhat god-like (maybe existing in a different # of dimensions?), Presger race. Left to their own devices, the Presger like to take things apart and maybe eat them. So the treaty doesn't allow that, when it comes to human or other sentient races. Meanwhile, the Presger have mixed some of themselves with lots of human DNA to create a human-like species (which also likes to take things apart and maybe eat them) to function as ambassadors between the races: the Translators.

   The Presger Translators do a thing where 2 individuals merge and become mostly 1 individual in 2 bodies. This allows their important people virtual immortality.

   **** SPOILER ALERT ****

   Our protagonists in this novel are a failed juvenile Translator and the descendant of an escaped Translator. Sadly, the book winds up being a standard chick-flick rom-com: will the 2 star-crossed lovers wind up together, or will they each merge with bio-mechanical automata-type things? This is the essence of a chick-flick: will the right people wind up together? Meh.

2. "Lake of Souls", by Ann Leckie, 2024, 397 pages, 123k words, 18 stories. some from the Imperial Radch universe (like the prior novel), some from the world of "The Raven Tower", the rest free-standing. All in all, an outstanding collection. Several standard SF tropes being revisited and given interesting twists. The Raven Tower stories are fun, with their concept of gods of all shapes & sizes, trying to hustle up worshippers to keep themselves alive. A very enjoyable collection, and quite a relief after the prior novel.

3. "The Steerswoman", by Rosmary Kirstein, 2018, 354pages, 96k words. I think The Bard of The Revolution, My Hero, Cory Doctorow, recommended this book in his Pluralistic blog. Some interesting concepts: the steerswoman is basically a member of a cult/order (with what seemed to me to have an unmaintainably low number of members) dedicated to making better maps of their world. The interesting part is, they must answer any question you ask them, and you are bound to answer any question they ask you. The steerswoman's friend companion sidekick is a barbarian female warrior. I think lots more female than male characters, fine by me. Overall, the pacing is somewhat slow. But the worse thing was, this really was feeling like 1 of those post-apocalyptic stories where the "magic" is actually 18th-21st century technology that gets rediscovered or whatever. I've gotten kind of tired of those so, meh. It looks like there are at least 4 novels in the series, I will not continue it.

4. "Lost Places", by Sarah Pinkster, 2023, 273 pages, 84k words, 12 stories. Interesting, I reviewed her 1st short story collection in the same post as Leckie's "The Raven Tower" mentioned above. Synchronicity, perhaps?

   This is an outstanding collection. The stories are all over the place, many different approaches to storytelling. There is not a bad story in the bunch.

   1 thing that was a little odd, the stories were basically put in the eBook as all 1 chapter, although there was a TOC that seemed to function?!?!? Was this eBook badly designed, or was this intentional?

   I feel that I must thank the author for including a few male protagonists in the stories. I definitely recommend this collection

The Unread shelf in the Kobo app on my iPad is at 141 books. :-O I guess I should start remembering my speed reading techniques ...