Network Effect
{4.5/5} “If you put everything that had happened to me on a scale of awfulness and assigned exact values to each incident (which I had done once, it’s in my archive somewhere) dealing with corporates who exploited failed colonies, and probably went through SecUnits as fast a Amena did fried vegetable crunchy things, was in […]
Star Trek: The Next Generation — Kahless
{4.5/5} “Kahless no longer fomented rebellion for Morath’s sake alone. Now he did it for himself as well — and for Kellein. He had discovered it was the only thing that made his heart stop hurting for her, the only balm that worked for him. Had he been the one to die instead of Kellein, […]
Galaxias
{4.5/5} “‘My head is spinning. So what you’re saying is that an alien cannon, hidden on the Moon, spat a gob of water at alien planets that didn’t even exist last month.’ ‘I know,’ Mel said, sounding unhappy. ‘On any other day, in any other year, that might seem strange.’” Galaxias by Stephen Baxter, published […]
Obscura
{5/5} “‘Whoever’s doing this doesn’t want us here, doesn’t want us finding out what’s wrong with shifting. That’s why they killed Tinsel. He had the authority to shut this all down.’ ‘Because whoever it is knows the truth.’” Obscura by Joe Hart, published in 2018 Gillian’s husband Kent died of a new disease, Losian’s, that […]
The Life Impossible
{4.5/5} “The willingness to be confused, I now realise, is a prerequisite for a good life. Wanting things to be simple can become a kind of prison, it really can, because you end up staying trapped inside how you want things to be rather than embracing how they could be. You end up closed. You […]
Star Trek: Voyager — Echoes
{5/5} “The statue’s expression was a gentle half-smile made strange by the disturbing filmy eyes. What this balding creature was doing, or what he represented, was beyond Janeway’s comprehension. But the entire feeling from the statue was one of a people Janeway felt she might have liked. So where had they gone? What had happened […]
Starling House
{5/5} “He doesn’t know why it would want her, of all people: a freckled scarecrow of a girl with crooked teeth and holes in the knees of her jeans, entirely unremarkable except for the steel in her eyes. And perhaps for the way she stood her ground against him. He is a ghost, a rumor, […]
Radiant
{4.5/5} “I was a wet-behind-the-ears Explorer Third Class. Tut was not only more experienced than I, but he outranked me: as an Explorer Second Class, he was my superior officer. Protocol demanded that the captain address all Explorer matters to Tut, who would then bring me in if he chose. Going over Tut’s head to […]
The Road to Roswell
{4.5/5} “Where was everybody? … You couldn’t go ten miles without running into construction. She should have come across some by now. Unless every single person in New Mexico had been grabbed getting into their cars, forced to drive to the aliens’ flying saucer, and been spirited off to their home planet — and for […]
Usurpation
{4.5/5} “This is one reason why farmers call us lucky bamboo. Their crops grow better in our presence. This is also why you have heard of witchweed but have never seen it. I have a natural revulsion to parasites the same way that humans have an inborn fear of snakes.” Usurpation by Sue Burke, published […]