First was �By Salt, By Sea, By Light of Stars� by Premee Mohamed. A
wizard with a serious personal problem arranges for her apprentice to
drive off a fearsome sea dragon.

Second was �Lake of Souls� by Ann Leckie. This story has two threads. In
thread one, a youngling (not human) is the odd one out in a village and
goes on a quest. In thread two, a xenoanthropologist wakes up alone in a
ruined spaceship (at least his suspended animation capsule worked). He eventually concludes that one of the active crew members had killed the
rest, wrecked the equipment aboard, and fled to the planet below. He
descends to that planet to search for the killer. The two threads meet.

Third was �Loneliness Universe� by Eugenia Triantafyllou. The
protagonist discovers that she can�t meet an old friend (both are at the
same place, but can�t see each other). Then she can�t meet her siblings
and parents. Then it happens to other people; to everybody.

Fourth was �Signs of Life� by Sarah Pinsker. A woman visits her
long-estranged sister and discovers family secrets.

Fifth was �The Brotherhood of Montague St. Video� by Thomas Ha. A man
finds a book and runs into complications. I don�t understand why the
villain was willing to spend so much effort over one book.

Sixth was �The Four Sisters Overlooking the Sea� by Naomi Kritzer. A
woman finds a place for the family to rent for a year (because her
husband will be at Harvard for a year long sabbatical) in an odd little seacoast town In Massachusetts. Things happen, she and daughter end up
staying there.

Next were the short stories.

First was �Five Views of the Planet Tartarus� by Rachel K. Jones. A
short-short that describes how one empire imposes life sentences for
certain crimes.

Second was �Marginalia� by Mary Robinette Kowal. A peasant woman faces
a problem and deals with it. But, if salt worked, why wasn�t this more
broadly known?

Third was �Stitched to Skin Like Family Is� by Nghi Vo. A Chinese woman
travels across early 1930s Illinois with a suitcase and finds a family
owned inn that had better days. She leaves a mystery behind for the
local sheriff.

Fourth was �Three Faces of a Beheading� by Arkady Martine. A story with
a lot of footnotes (which I didn�t try to check if they were real or not
- does it matter if none, some or all were real?) that appears to be a mediation on the agendas behind written history. But, maybe I am
confused.

Fifth was �We will Teach You How to Read/We will Teach You How to Read�
by Caroline M. Yoachim. I don�t understand this repetitive array of
words on pages.

Sixth was �Why Don�t We Just Kill the Kid in the Omelas Hole� by Isabel
J. Kim. A story inspired by Le Guin�s story (I see from the ISFDB there
are at least 6 other such stories by various authors).

--
"We have advanced to new and surprising levels of bafflement."
Imperial Auditor Miles Vorkosigan describes progress in _Komarr_. �-----------------------------------------------------
Robert Woodward [email protected]

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