Status Updates From Explorations

05. Epilogue, 3 stars. Long after human beings destroyed the planet and themselves, an emergency seed colony pops in for a look. Captured by a wild robot, the scouting team quickly regrets their curiosity.
06. Starfog, 3 stars. Descendants of a long lost colony blunder out of their home region, hopelessly lost. An official is summoned to confirm the veracity of their unlikely story, and to locate their home system.

03. The Ways of Love, 3 stars. First contact with aliens is scandalous for bigots on earth. Fearing loss of power, the government lashes out in an attempt to end peaceful negotiations before they can begin.
04. The Voortrekkers, 2 stars. Man and woman have their personalities copied into machines to supervise space exploration, eventually get reanimated/regrown in fleshy bodies when the time seems right.

Word: "Perforce, we became a pair of jackleg xenologists."

Used as a term of contempt or depreciation:
a. adj. Incompetent, unskilled; unscrupulous, dishonest. Freq. used of lawyers and preachers.
b. n. An incompetent or unskilled or unprincipled person.

01. The Saturn Game, 2 stars. Daydreamy crew members go overboard with their LARPing, clinging to their fantasies even after inattention leaves them injured and possibly beyond rescue.
02. The Bitter Bread, 3 stars. Fundamentalist Christian zealots control space travel (and the world?), a wife moves heaven and earth to reunite with her husband after his ship is permanently stranded in space.

Disappointing so far. Short stories, so I am going to take a break from it for a while.