The Hunger After You're Fed, by James S. A. Corey

One of the better ones in the Wired Science Fiction issue.  The Hunger After You're Fed tells the story of a man searching for a mysterious author, one Hector Prima.  This is not a society of want--everyone seems to have a basic income.  The problem then is purpose.  The protagonist suffers from purpose issue--this seeking of Hector Prima makes him doubt himself.  The town he visits suffers as well, with its denizens looking to get more appreciation than their neighbors, by sharing food they make.  Doesn't seem so bad.  The story is reflective and sad, pulling you along.  I enjoyed it.  3 stars.

I have read James S. A. Corey before, but that book was much more of an adventure.  This is more of a reflective story.  I also did not know that the author is actually a husband and wife team. 

Know Your Enemy, by Matt Gallagher

More from the Wired Magazine Science Fiction issue.  Know Your Enemy is a tribute to Haldeman's The Forever War, and rings very true.  It's set in the future but that's not particularly important--the point is the relationship of war veterans to the rest of society.  We are in a period where we glorify military service beyond measure, partly to make up for the guilt of putting the soldiers in harm's way.  The protagonist in the story, a female Marine, reflects on this and many other things about being a disabled vet.  It's a good story, solidly written and allows drawing your own conclusions.  I give it 3 stars.

Hold Dear the Lamp Light, by Jay Dayrit

Continuing the Wired Magazine Science Fiction Issue: Hold Dear the Lamplight is one of several dystopian stories in the collection.  We see a picture of society failing, rather gracefully actually, through the story of the loss of a community's power plant.  In the story it's climate change taking the plant away, but this could be in any war torn disorderly country in the Middle East or Africa.  The family learns to make do.  It's sort of made to sound tragic but isn't.  Anyway, it's OK, 2 stars.

Stochastic Fancy, by Charlie Jane Anders

Continuing my review series on the Wired Magazine Science Fiction issue.  Stochastic Fancy has our protagonist sitting in a bar, answering polling questions into her KloudScape, which seems like a fancier and more immersive phone interface.  Her thing about incessant opinion polling is pretty on target.  In the story the polling is used as a real-time matchmaker.  Works so-so.  Story OK but forgettable.  2 stars.

The Black Box, by Malka Older

Another from the Wired Science Fiction issue.  The Black Box shares an element with the previously reviewed story Subtext, in that the technology it features is capable of recording and playing back your personal experiences.  The author illustrates how such an outsourced, potentially publicly available memory would shape a person's life.  It's kind of true to life in that it doesn't upend everything, the world is still recognizable.  It's fine, but not amazing.  2 stars from me.

Subtext: It Knows What You're Thinking, by Charles Yu

Another entry from the Wired Science Fiction Issue, Subtext is a literal stream of consciousness, as transcribed and possibly helpfully edited by the app.  Not much different than a raw first-person narrative, which is something of a staple in many fiction genres.  I guess the idea is that we're getting close to making it real.  I suppose we are.  2 stars.

The Evaluators, by N. K. Jemisin

Wired Magazine's January issue consists of 15 science fiction stories they commissioned to allow us to "approach reality a little more obliquely".  SF has always been the best way to tell truths about the future that mere prediction can't manage, and more importantly to tell truths about the present that are impossible to express directly. 

Most of the stories are freely available on their website, so I'll start with N. K. Jemisin's The Evaluators.  She tells the story of humans contacting an alien species through their correspondence. The story has the same driver as John Campbell's classic Who Goes There? (Link courtesy of Free SF Online)  A super powerful, adaptive predator threatens to subvert the species.  What Jemisin does with the predator's origin is what makes the story worth reading.  3 stars