Shadow Prisons, by Caroline M. Yoachim

Shadow Prisons feels very far-out speculatively, but I don't think it is such a stretch to go from the Metaverse to allowing our entire reality to be mediated virtually, especially if it becomes really inconvenient to live any other way as she speculates. But it may be a little on-point, and it has a happy ending, which given where this starts I just don't see happening. Very much a tale of our times.

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Where You Linger, by Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam

Where You Linger is a time travel story--an author has become successful enough to afford a process where one can travel to the past and change one's own timeline.  That part isn't very fully explored, there are no consequences enumerated.  The protagonist had a complicated sex and relationship life and intends to save her past self from some of that.  Mostly it is a dialog between her present and past self as they travel through her experiences.  I don't know, I've seen versions of this that had more impact on me.  

Stepsister, by Leah Cypress

 Stepsister is set in the Cinderella fairy tale, but a very different imagining of it.  Prince Ciar has become king and has a bastard brother that he and no one else trusts.  Ella is now queen.  She was allowed to take vengeance against her stepfamily, killing the stepmother and one sister but letting the other (in this telling Jacinda) live.  Five years have gone by and things are a bit more sour.

Mostly this is a royal house tension story now.  Lots of people walking very thin lines.  Good if you like that sort of thing, and a good attempt at adding depth to the characters, but it's far enough removed from the original that to me it doesn't feel like the same space. 

Open House on Haunted Hill, by John Wiswell

This is a fun take on haunted house stories. Houses don't have ghosts. Houses do their own haunting. The author got a lot of good character development into a very small space, too. A very nice Christmas read.

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Metal Like Blood In the Dark, by Ursula Vernon as T. Kingfisher

A good solid escape story. Explores how AIs programmed to trust might figure out that humans (and other AIs) are not necessarily trustworthy. Like others, I think I have read this story before in some other form, but it's not a bad thing for it to come around again.

David Shontz’s review of Metal Like Blood in the Dark | Goodreads

A Guide for Working Breeds, by Vina Jie-Min Prasad

This is a fun but serious story commenting on worker exploitation as robots.  Employers are taking it in the face at the moment since with Covid-19 staff shortages people won't put up with garbage, but automation is progressing and an intelligent but indentured AI might be forced to.  Pretty fun relationship story here too.

David Shontz’s review of A Guide For Working Breeds | Goodreads

The Mermaid Astronaut, by Yoon Ha Lee

This is what you would call a "pretty" story--the point of it is not explored through conflict. In fact, everything works out as well as it could, though there is some foreboding. But it's told like a fairy tale, and not one of those Grimm ones that's really a horror story. Hard to pull off, so the award nominations are deserved. This is the first thing by Yoon Ha Lee outside of the Machineries of Empire series that I have read, and I enjoyed it.

David Shontz’s review of The Mermaid Astronaut | Goodreads

Little Free Library, by Naomi Kritzer

There's a lot of this kind of story out there, where someone connects with a fantasy world by way of asynchronous, analog dispatches. They are always fun and need to be sprinkled into the world again sometimes for those who have not stumbled across them in old library collections. This is a solid example and it's time for one of these to come around again.

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Badass Moms In the Zombie Apocalypse, by Rae Carson

A good, action packed zombie story. You could pretty much drop this into Seanan McGuire's "Feed" universe, say in the early days, and it would provide a good perspective. The story makes excellent sense in its own space and highlights the incredible fear and reward of childbirth.

David Shontz’s review of Badass Moms in the Zombie Apocalypse | Goodreads

Two Truths and a Lie, by Sarah Pinsker

I have to tell you it is a little frightening and intimidating how good a writer Sarah Pinsker is. In "Song for a New Day" she pretty much called our current times and had an incredibly moving and effective story arc. The story arc is just as good here in a shorter form. Our protagonist is a person used to lying about her past--even though these days it is pretty easy to check up on people. But she gets by with it. Then she makes up a lie that ends up being true and leading to a very creepy children's show host. This is told with a backdrop of her helping an old acquaintance (not quite a friend, and that explanation is good too) clean out his brother's hoarder home. It's just absolutely delicious to read, if for some reason you have not go do it now.

David Shontz’s review of Two Truths and a Lie | Goodreads

Monster, by Naomi Kritzer

 A solid, entertaining story.  Our protagonist goes to China to bait out someone she knew in high school, a guy that the girls get warned about.  Seemingly nice, but with a dark side.  He learns biology and starts in on a project to make humans superhuman.  Kritzer does a nice job of speculation, and an even better job at the end of the story tying in the layers outside of it.  Worth a nomination and a read.

Monster, by Naomi Kritzer

Burn, or the Episodic Life of Sam the Super, by A. T. Greenblatt

Burn is almost a 4 but not quite. This is a good, pleasant read, bringing superheroes down to earth. Many may remember that this take on superheroes has been very thoroughly explored in George R. R. Martin's Jokers series, which is still going strong, but this is a good one-off. Our protagonist Sam goes through the phases of adjusting to his superpower, which is possibly a useful but not spectacular one. A good reminder that people with extraordinary powers like this would lead a lonely life, but Marvel and DC actually do make that pretty clear already.

My Goodreads Review

Helicopter Story, by Isabell Fall

This story was withdrawn from publication in Clarkesworld.  I am able to find it on the Internet, but out of that much respect for the author I will make you find the link for yourself.  I have read some of the backstory but not nearly all of the spilled ink.  But I am an activist in this space so was motivated to chase it down.

I understand it being viewed as controversial--it is a very unusual and continually disturbing take on the harnessing of gender roles for other purposes.  The protagonist told her story in extremely personal terms.  Isabell Fall is a writer who can really write, and I think it is a true loss for SF that she probably will never write again.  I have seen so many tired takes on LGBTQ+ support and gender issues get nominated for awards, where the main contribution seems to be simply role reversal--putting women in place of men and homosexual for heterosexual relationships.  This story takes gender seriously.  And the setting--a postapocalyptic matchup between a fugitive human government and one run by an AI--pretty much gets lost in the controversy.  I am sad that this went down the way it did.

Unconquerable Sun, by Kate Elliot

Well, I liked reading the book, it had some good battle scenes and kept me going. But "gender swapping Alexander the Great" is a little too literal. It reads like it is set on earth, in pretty much every way. We have modern references with Channel Idol (American Idol, get it?), and older references with descriptions of what is sumptuous (sandalwood incense). Instead of kings and sons we have queens and daughters, and broader sexual expression categories. But if those things are not explored (and they're not), the switch is just a bit flip and not signifying. I've read this story many times, in earthly fantasy, make-believe world fantasy, and galactic fantasy. It's not new or fresh and plays directly into the notion of someone having worth, merit and power because of their birth. Can we somehow get away from this?

My Goodreads Review

Attack Surface, by Cory Doctorow

Like other reviewers, my feeling as I read this book was that it was not science fiction--more of a cutting-edge thriller with technologies that seem very possible today. This is how Cory Doctorow usually writes--the technology is from the descriptions of alpha- and beta-version tools in the best technical journals and blogs (like Boing Boing).

For about 80% of the book I felt sad at the state of play that Doctorow describes. There's just no real hope of retaining your privacy if you have the nerve to stand out and get a powerful actor's attention. For the last 20%, the hope faded to cynicism. The setup was so bleak that it really did not leave much room for a turnaround beyond Masha's "waking" moment. It made me think about Hong Kong, where the protesters had the latest versions of all this technical and social engineering thrown at them. The protesters lost in the end. And they knew it was going to happen. I do have to give props to Doctorow's complex ending. Even a turnaround that stretches hope to the edges leaves the situation at status quo ante.

We live in historic times. This book is not going to make you feel better about them. Sorry.

My Goodreads Review