Exhalation
{5/5} “The universe began as an enormous breath being held. Who knows why, but whatever the reason, I am glad that it did, because I owe my existence to that fact. All my desires and ruminations are no more and no less than eddy currents generated by the gradual exhalation of our universe. And until […]
Organisms
{5/5} “All that remained was to find the right partner: another interstellar entity who’d complete the Union’s life. An entity who was smart and fun to be with. An entity whose component orgs were carbon-based. (Some of the Union’s best friends were silicon-based, but still…) What the Union was looking for was an entity with […]
SF & fantasy collections & anthologies
Here’s an update to this list. Collections Best of the best I, Robot – Isaac Asimov Nightfall – Isaac Asimov Virtual Unrealities – Alfred Bester The Golden Apples of the Sun – Ray Bradbury Keeper of Dreams – Orson Scott Card Maps in a Mirror – Orson Scott Card Stories of Your Life and Others […]
SF & fantasy collections & anthologies
Here’s an update to this list. Collections Best of the best I, Robot – Isaac Asimov Nightfall – Isaac Asimov Virtual Unrealities – Alfred Bester The Golden Apples of the Sun – Ray Bradbury Keeper of Dreams – Orson Scott Card Maps in a Mirror – Orson Scott Card Stories of Your Life and Others […]
Starlings
{4.5/5} “The first thing she’d struggled for was saving to buy more memory, but whether that had been a self-aware struggle or a pre-aware struggle or a zombie struggle or just an unexpected kink in her programming, she didn’t know. The ability to think, to want things, was something her owners would have seen as […]
Four Ways to Forgiveness
{5/5} “Peace was the true life, the life of working and learning and bringing up children to work and learn. War, which devoured work, learning, and children, was the denial of reality.” Four Ways to Forgiveness by Ursula K. Le Guin, published in 1995 In “Betrayals” Yoss’s daughter and her family have gone off world […]
SF & fantasy collections & anthologies
Here’s an update to this list. Collections Best of the best I, Robot – Isaac Asimov Nightfall – Isaac Asimov Virtual Unrealities – Alfred Bester The Golden Apples of the Sun – Ray Bradbury Keeper of Dreams – Orson Scott Card Maps in a Mirror – Orson Scott Card Stories of Your Life and Others […]
The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories
{5/5} “There are no heroes, Tian Haoli. Grand Secretary Shi was both courageous and cowardly, capable and foolish. Wang Xiuchu was both an opportunistic survivor and a man of greatness of spirit. I’m mostly selfish and vain, but sometimes even I surprise myself. We’re all just ordinary men — well, I’m an ordinary demon — […]
Elements
{4.5/5} “Alone, she fled Boston, making her way from culverts to abandoned sheds, hiding from the world while building her own place in it. Living off the grid meant no formal education, no military training, no family, no friends. She had constructed a hole in the world and waited for me to join her.” Elements […]
The Engine of Recall
{4.5/5} “The alien is incapable of language, does not possess a society in our sense of it and instead of our massive vocabulary, the thousands of words we have and the millions of subtleties of personal relationships which clutter up our thoughts and unconscious minds, it has an instinct and mind directed to technology… Both […]