{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 a bug, but to her it was everything.” (from “The Panda Coin”)<\/p>\n
Starlings<\/strong> by Jo Walton, published in 2018<\/p>\n “Three Twilight Tales” is a set of 3 stories linked by taking place in the same village where magic is possible. “On the Wall” is from the point of view of a magic mirror. “Relentlessly Mundane” is about what happens when 3 people return to our world from a fantasy world and 1 person doesn’t. “Turnover” is about how people live on a ship that’s in the middle of its multi-generational voyage to a colony planet.<\/p>\n Walton hasn’t written a lot of short stories, but those she has written are in this book — along with 1 play and some poems.<\/p>\n The stories are all pretty short and might not knock your socks off. But all of them are funny and\/or perceptive. Walton is full of intriguing ideas.<\/p>\n I haven’t read any poetry in decades but the poetry is enjoyable, to the extent that I understood it.<\/p>\n If you’re a fan of Walton’s novels you’ll want to see what she’s done at shorter lengths.<\/p>\n