Status Updates From The Year's Best Science Fic...

Read
- "Sailing to Byzantium" by Robert Silverberg: a beautifully written story about a decadent society.
- "Solstice" by James Patrick Kelly, about the feverish wish for escapism.
- "Duke Pasquale's Ring" by Avram Davidson: which I did DNF after one third. Another day perhaps.

Read
- "Sailing to Byzantium" by Robert Silverberg: a beautifully written story about a decadent society.
- "Solstice" by James Patrick Kelly, about the feverish wish for escapism.
- "Duke Pasquale's Ring" by Avram Davidson: which I did DNF after one third. Another day perhaps.

Read:
The Lake Was Full of Artificial Things by Karen Joy Fowler
Solstice by James Patrick Kelly
Duke Pasquale's Ring by Avram Davidson
Side Effects by Walter Jon Williams
Dinner in Audoghast by Bruce Sterling

Read:
- "Green Days in Brunei" by Bruce Sterling: much better as short story than his shaper/mechanist pieces in the first two volumes.
- "Snow" by John Crowley: may be that I was just too tired while reading this, but it left me blank.
- "The lake was full of artificial things" by Karen Joy Fowler: Still marvelling about this title. A related topic to the previous story, worked better for me.

not read: OSC

Read:
- "The Jaguar Hunter" by Lucius Shepard: my favourite short story of this author so far (he was represented with short stories in each of the first three volumes)
- "Dogfight" by Swanwick and Gibson: a vernicular story of greed and the desperate need to 'be somebody', that didn't quite connect with me.
- "Fermi and Frost" by Frederik Pohl: a chilling (in both meanings of the word) story about the nuclear end.

Read:
Sailing to Byzantium by Robert Silverberg
The Jaguar Hunter by Lucius Shepard
Dogfight by Michael Swanwick and William Gibson
Fermi and Frost by Frederik Pohl
Green Days in Brunei by Bruce Sterling

Read the beautifully crafted, touching, vividly alive “The Only Neat Thing to Do” by the always-brilliant James Tiptree, Jr.; the wryly haunting “Dinner in Audoghast” by Bruce Sterling; the layered, melancholy, darkly inventive time-travel story “Under Siege” by George R.R. Martin; and the wacky, sweet “Flying Saucer Rock & Roll” by Howard Waldrop.

More Than the Sum of His Parts by Joe Haldeman
Snow by John Crowley
Out of All Them Bright Stars by Nancy Kress
The War at Home by Lewis Shiner

Read the initially fascinating but ultimately melodramatic “More Than the Sum of His Parts” by Joe Haldeman; the delicately touching “Out of All Them Bright Stars” by Nancy Kress; and the wickedly satirical, prescient “Side Effects” by Walter Jon Williams.

Read “Solstice” by James Patrick Kelly, a troubling, cautionary, psychologically complex tale of the perils of a futuristic culture obsessed with designer drugs; and “Duke Pasquale’s Ring” by Avram Davidson, whose stylistic flourishes are wholly original and delightful, but whose plot gets occasionally obscured by them.

Read the touching, delicate “The Lake Was Full of Artificial Things” by Karen Joy Fowler; and the Nebula-winning novella “Sailing to Byzantium,” a fascinating exploration of the phenomenon of vast civilizations being repeatedly subsumed by the relentless march of history, and of how puzzling and mysterious all of that accumulated history might seem to people in the very far future.

Read the first of Bruce Sterling’s stories I actually enjoyed: “Green Days in Brunei,” which was — unlike his other stories I’ve read — lucid and well-plotted, with recognizably human, enjoyably idiosyncratic characters. Also read the lovely, quietly evocative and meditative “Snow” by John Crowley.

Read the beautifully rendered, hauntingly magical “The Jaguar Hunter” by Lucius Shepard; the dark, twisted, fascinating “Dogfight” by Michael Swanwick and William Gibson; and the allegorical, touching, post-apocalyptic tale “Fermi and Frost” by Frederik Pohl, on 9/14/2018