Quick Sunday reads: more sci fi short stories

Science fiction shorts

Chemical creatures | Gary Kuyper

We have here a depressive with blackout episodes and an alien with a humble task at which he/it hopes to excel and get promoted. There are chemicals involved and a weird kind of salvation for the depressive. The bit focussed on the depressive is very very chemical and the bit about the alien is a little funny and a bit of a surprise. The best part is the description of Cape Town.

It's neat, but not really my type. You can read it here.

Beyond: Space Opera | Milo James Fowler

This is a collection of shorts, which I'm taking one by one:

Captain Quasar and the Kolarii Kidnappers by Milo James Fowler has our intrepid Captain attempting to recover/rescue from the slow-moving Kolarii, a bunch of children whom they are alleged to have kidnapped. Except that it's not that simple. Captain Quasar stories are droll, but the villains always get their comeuppance, which is very satisfactory.

The Ungreat Escape by Siobhan Gallagher features a jewel thief and rocket motors, and eventually, an escape best described as ungreat. A bit funny in parts, and of course, crime doesn't pay...yet.

All Comms Down by Anne E Johnson is about one of the first extra-galactic spaceships, carrying a crew of colonists, and the trouble they encounter. Is there, ultimately, a cure of sorts for the mysterious illness that strikes the humans aboard? Plain and simple space opera.

Remembrance Day by Simon Kewin has a Mobius Strip in outer space, a Space Bar (I kid you not, he put this in with a straight face), a bar owner with little memory, a long-lost girlfriend, an old enemy and a startling surprise. I liked this one second best in today's lot. The plot is neat enough and the characters are well done.

The Lion's Den by Devin Miller has a very light touch. There is an ill-maintained spacecraft, zoo animals and a love-struck young man out to rescue the girl of his dreams. It's a fun and funny story, and my favourite in this collection.

Captain Clone by Deborah Walker has clones, wine, and a spaceship stuck on a planet, held by tentacles. Not to mention two utterly unloving 'mothers'. Creepily well done.

There are also short notes on the inspirations for the stories, which add to the experience.

You can buy this on Amazon.

A Golden Goose of a Girl

Science Fiction | Girl of Great Price | Milo James Fowler

Milo James Fowler writes sci fi, noir and detective, and this story is a mix of all three. Charlie Madison, the hard-boiled detective who is on the verge of bankruptcy, gets clients who want their kidnapped daughter back. Except that the city is run by the Russian mobster Ivan, whom nobody has ever seen, and Ivan is interested, too. Why is murder a real possibility in this mad search for a little girl? An old war with bioweapons results in strange and creepy outcomes. Is there a happy ending? Read this short story, and enjoy finding out.

A smorgasbord of books

Vampire | Thriller | Spy | Legal | Science fiction

Twilight | Area 7 | Scarecrow and the Army of Thieves | Private Wars | The Hearing | Illegal Action | Brood of Bones | I am FanFare | Post-Human

Stephanie Meyer | Matthew Reilly | Greg Rucka | John D Lescroart | Stella Rimington | AE Marling | Milo James Fowler | David Simpson

I'm embarrassed to admit that I'm so far behind in my notes on books I've read that I'm in danger of forgetting which ones I've read, so for now I'm just listing them out, and will give longer reviews later. In no particular order:

Twilight by Stephanie Meyer. I've finally worked out (to my satisfaction, your mileage may vary) why this series became so wildly popular, and why some people hate it so very bitterly. Promise, I'll write more on this some day.

Area 7 and Scarecrow and the Army of Thieves by Matthew Reilly. I think I've written in more detail about Ice Station, the first book in the series, some time earlier, so not rehashing that. Area 7 is the second book, and Thieves is the fifth, so I haven't read the ones in between. Aussie writer M Reilly writes about an American soldier, Shane Schofield aka Scarecrow, who can give Rajnikanth pause, and run rings around Chuck Norris. His books are the equivalent of very fast-paced Hollywood action movies, complete with helpful italics and utterly improbable scenes in quick succession. Suspend disbelief, pack a tub of popcorn, and read breathlessly. It doesn't make sense, you have things like negative and positive magnets, and rusted aluminium tanks, but who cares? Some day M Reilly will grow up and become all thoughtful and plausible and then we'll all stop reading.

Private Wars by Greg Rucka. This features Tara Chace, Minder 1 in MI6. OK, here you thought the agents with licence to kill had 00 prefixes, and there are at least 7 of them. Wrong, there are three only. Tara Chace leaves MI6 to have a baby (clearly, I need to stop entering a series in the middle), and then is brought back in by her boss. Nothing is as it seems. Uzbekistan is being run by a dictator, and his ruthless daughter and her besotted chief of the secret police are bent on getting her the post next. Her brother is the hitch, being a sort of heir apparent, apparent only to the US Ambassador, who asks the Brits for help. Tara is sent in to get him out. Mayhem follows. Forget James Bond. Cut to the Chace.

The Hearing by John D Lescroart. Lawyer Dismas Hardy (what kind of name that is becomes clear in this book) is begged by a friend to get her brother to hospital. He's a junkie, and the prime suspect in the murder of Elaine Wager (spoiler warning!) who is the chief detective, Abe Glitsky's unacknowledged daughter and a rising legal star. Abe has hinted to his staff to hang the mugger out to dry, hence the call. Dismas slowly becomes embroiled in the case, though Abe is his best friend, he admired Elaine, and hates his new client. Vintage Lescroart. But read the series in order, okay.

Illegal Action by Stella Rimington. This is what comes of writing without googling first. I have moaned in an earlier post that S Rimington wrote a wonderful first novel and would probably not write any more about Liz Carlyle. Serves me right (but, hey, I'm delighted). She's written five more. This is the third in the series (and I haven't read the second). Liz gets to protect a Russian emigre from an assassination attempt. Yup, the Russkies are as evil as ever. Or are they? I liked the first book more, but this one was good too. 

Dang, I've forgotten the next book. Never mind, carrying on...

Brood of Bones by AE Marling. Amazon sent me a hint that this one was a free download for a time. Unfortunately, that means I cannot go out there and give it a five-star rating. Our heroine is the Elder Enchantress, and has won 27 gowns in academia, showing her prowess. For some reason, in a land of banyan trees and protectors named Gautam, she wears all of them at the same time, making movement tiring and complex. Which is the least of her problems, since she keeps falling asleep all the time. In this world, magic is done only when asleep, so her magic is fine, if only she can keep awake long enough to find out what the problem is she needs to fix. The great city of Morimound, from where she hails, has suddenly been afflicted with mysterious pregnancies. Every woman 12 or older is pregnant. Is it godly or an evil magic? Whom can she trust? Our heroine turns out not to be snobbish, incompetent, sociopathic or stupid, but a shy nerdy young woman you begin to love more and more as the book moves on through horrors and petty people to a rivetting end. Read this book! I look forward to more.

I am FanFare by Milo James Fowler. This is a short novel about a different kind of nerd. This one spends his life (if you call that a life!) on a social network. Curious about the ads it shows, he finds a horrible truth, with grievous consequences. Funny and a bit poignant.

Post-Human by David Simpson. What I liked best about this book is the seamless way the post-human technology is introduced to us with the minimum of exposition. In the post-human society, nanobots or nans support humankind with everything from permanent online connectivity, to morning wake-up calls, trauma repair, IQ upgrades and work commutes to Venus. When James Keats, whose IQ of 200 is still above the international average, is working on terraforming Venus, his team suffers a problem and finds themselves offline. Navigating back to Earth by memory, they find every connected human on Earth dead. Now, all their hopes lie with the Purists. Somehow, they have to save the world. Very enjoyable (I'm on the sequel now).