Thoughts and Prayers, by Ken Liu

This story was commissioned for Slate Magazine's Future Tense project.  It's a pretty straight-line projection of how intense trolling is going to get in the future, focusing on a mass shooting victim's family where the mother decides to go public and try to change things.  Seems like a much more intense version of what we do today, and much more intensely ignored.  

I don't think we're going to go in a straight line.  We are going to adjust to how social media works and put it in its place--I think ordinary people are already moving in this direction.  The terminally outraged will become more so, though and that is going to lead to more trouble and pain.  

The Girl Who Did Not Know Fear, by Kelly Link

The Girl Who Did Not Know Fear is very much a literary story, only speculative in a bit of an out-of-body sequence.  The premise is a kind of Groundhog Day In An Airport thing, where a professor coming back from a conference is stranded in Detroit for 5 days waiting for a flight.  She's not much of a traveler so it's that much worse, though she seems mentally prepared.  It feels weirdly off center, since the title character is actually kind of a side story in a tale of intensely difficult and deeply felt coincidence.  The flight in the story is as horrible as one I took on my one and only overseas trip, to London, which was in the end quite worthwhile even though both ends of the trip competed with each other for worst flight ever.  The story will find a lot of sympathetic ears.

I (28M) created a deepfake girlfriend and now my parents think we’re getting married, by Fonda Lee

I am not sure what the (28m) parenthetic piece is in the title of this story, but it seems to have become kind of a meme.  Lots of riffs on the title out there.  The story itself is pretty darned good--seems to be from tomorrow's newspaper, so to speak.  A social media company lets you create a virtual significant other.  It kind of works like a Tamagotchi, you interact with it and it gets happier and better at being your partner.  In this case, the girlfriend of a guy who is not trying to hook up that much but his parents are after him.  It all sounds so very real that I think in 6 months it will be.  Very well executed by Fonda Lee as well.  Definitely go read it.

Lest We Forget, by Elizabeth Bear

This one is on the disturbing side of SF, though not severely so.  A veteran is dying of the war they fought, in an unusual way.  Not in combat.  Much of the story is description leading up to the moment of the reveal.  A doctor has found a way to infect people with memories via a virus, but it requires some sacrifice to get the memories into that form.  Our veteran is making it.  Lots of possibilities here, this could go wrong in so many ways, and they know it too.  I think that would be the end of our species as thinking beings--we'd never know again when a thought was ours.  The leadup is pretty believable too.  Good stuff!

Erase, Erase, Erase, by Elizabeth Bear

This is a story that F&SF says it has held for a long time, waiting for the right time to publish.  And it is a fine literary piece.  Our protagonist is slowly disappearing--parts fall off, become transparent to ordinary objects.  Not consistently, but inconveniently.  And she is losing her memory, and losing track of things.

Sounds like an Alzheimer's story, but the cause seems to be guilt--the protagonist does a lot of writing, and is trying to remember the name of the leader of the terrorist cult she joined in college.  Before he does terrible damage.

The story is well written and good to read.  Made me think about the Unabomber a lot.  How do people in this position find their way back to reality?

It's 2059, and the Rich Kids are Still Winning, by Ted Chiang

This story was commissioned by the New York Times as part of a series of "future editorials"--opinion pieces speculating on how some event or social trend is going to develop in the form of a newspaper opinion piece.  Ted Chiang's version, like pretty much everything else he does, is fully brilliant.  His piece speculates on a social intervention where some disadvantaged children are given a genetic enhancement that is popular with wealthy parents--one that boosts the IQ.  The kids generally finished a college education, but are still not any better off.  He gives various reasons for this that are drawn from today's knowledge, and draws reasonable conclusions.  He could do this for a living, except that being a sysadmin has to be more fun.

A Country Called Winter, by Theodora Goss

This story belongs in that small but significant set of stories featuring small, obscure countries that are semi-magical but exist in our world.  Veriska (approximately) is from a country called Winter (approximately).  She came with her mother when they left for America.  A lot of the story is centered around her relationship with the son of the Danish ambassador, and how his foreignness contrasts with hers.

Her ambition is to get a doctorate in English literature and go into teaching.  She is pretty buried in that space.  But (spoiler alert) it turns out that she is royalty in Winter, and will be instrumental in getting Summer to come.

It's nice, not a lot of powerfully original stuff here but well written.