Mouth-watering hard SF.

Wrecking crews are harvesting metals and other resources from a space junkyard of ships, many crippled following the 'Quiet War'. Humanity is contained within the solar system, and whilst their is post-humanity in the form of genmod humans, there is still greed and aggression and injustice.

The foreperson of wrecking gang #3, Maris Delgado, is struggling to get her small team of ne'er do wells to keep on schedule with a small shuttle which they are stripping. Her team are concerned that there are some pieces of kit missing, and one body unaccounted for. She is keen to brush aside their concerns in order to avoid financial penalties for finishing the job late.

However, the missing body is found, although the body is far from dead and is in fact a genmod human developed by one of the leading scientists in the losing faction of the recent war. As this find comes to the attention of those higher up in the corporation a struggle over the young girl and her precious cargo takes place.

An excellent story.

Similar in feel to the preceding story (in Asimovs), in its thoughtfulness and depth of empathy portrayed. A female shepherd (I'll refrain from referring to her as a sheperdess would bring up Little Bo Peep images) spends several seasons looking after her charges. She is happy in her own company, and when she meets on several occasions an alien who is evidently surveying the remote wilderness, she does not engage with it directly, but on a very 'human' emotional level does achieve an understanding and a connection.

In the Dec 2001 issue of F&SF, Reed's 'Raven Dream' brought us a strange story told as if through a distorting lens. This story is similarly unsettling, with a variety of perspectives on what are somehow linked events.

A strutting far future man, at once proudly erect and aware of humanity's greatness, yet at the same time aware that the future will bring by constrast even higher achievement. A microscopic being, young children, and small humans living to a different time cycle (with echoes of the setting of 'Raven Dream').

A range of far and post-humanities are described in loving detail, although the big picture remains difficult to grasp!

Alzheimer's Disease has been featured in a number of stories of late. The editor suggests that this story is sufficiently different to others, but I'm not convinced. A wife reluctantly invests in leading edge medical intervention to rebuild her husband's brain, in the knowledge that whilst he may return to functionality, he will in effect be another person.

The story ends at the interesting bit - the treatment is appearing to work. How will the couple build a new relationship?

Now this is what I call Science Fiction.

Halo continues the story of hi-tech semi-anarchistic Manfred Macx, although through the viewpoint of his daughter, whose conception was one of the more remarkable episodes in recent short SF. (hem hem).

Humanity is now in space, joining the lobsters (you'll just have to read the back stories to catch up, dude), out as far as Jupiter, nearer to the teasing undecipherable message from outside the solar system which has been an underpinning if submerged background to the stories to date. Amber, a generation beyond Mafred, is even more wired-up to the processing power which is available. She is out in space thanks to a plan whose cunning was worth of her father (in fact it came via her father and his French partner). Liberating from her domineering mother, or so she thinks, Amber's freedom is threatened by her mum taking the drastic step of becoming a muslim. Is the young woman about to fall under the jurisprudence of muslim law?

Naturally she finds a way out of a sticky situation, and (rather too quickly for my liking) we have an excellent denouement which, and this is difficult to believe if you have read the previous stories, takes the story forward by a quantum leap. More!

An all-too-rare story from Sterling, and one which highlights just what we have been missing.

A touch of near-future technology, but it is the circumventing of the darker side of that technology, in its capacity to monitor and inform, upon which the story hinges. A love story, would you believe, in which East meets West and love is seen to be possible at first sight. And an evocative one at that. Top quality.

Another UK stalwart, with Interzone regular Beckett returning us once more to Thurston Fields estate in his near future welfare state series. A thoroughly unlikeable working class sort (so unlikeable as to put you off the story!) has the chance of attaining a manly godhood (me, I'd prefer a godly manhood) and all he has to do is despatch the now-retired social worker Cyril Burkitt whom has featured in previous stories.

Ryman continues PS Publishing's run of high quality novellas, as you might expect from an author whose short story output is limited in volume but almost invariably of the highest quality. VAO is one of the shorter of the stories, but Ryman fits a lot of ideas into a neat little story.

VAO is Victim Activated Ordinance - near-future electronic equivalents of land-mines are being used as security measures. As has been postulated before, in the near future the elderly are becoming, or seen to becoming, a burden on society. The older people in Ryman's stories are our contemporaries, some decades hence. With the threat of Alzheimers Disease still a major problem, life can be pretty cruddy.

The protagonist, Brewster, is an ex-security systems IT geek, now keeping his hacking skills alive despite the surveillance in his retirement flat - a geriatric version of Charles Stross' Manfred Mancx.

He is brought up to date with news of the self-titled Silhouette, a leader of a gang of senile delinquents who are fighting back. They would be like Robin Hood, except that they hurt and maim indiscriminately.

Brewster is suspected of being the Silhouette, and after secreting his digital hacking evidence in a most unusual place (-wince-), he and his friends attempt to find out the leader of this gang of criminals. The answer is surprisingly close to hand.

The story is packed with ideas (toilet bowls analysing urine streams and making spot-diagnoses, etc.), in a most believable setting, and with a small case of interesting characters the story could well have been longer than it was.

I was looking forward to this hugely. A 'companion piece' to "Green Tea" from a couple of years back, which I greatly enjoyed, as I did "From Here You Can See the Sunquists".

However, I have to admit to being a tad disappointed, as this didn't really reach those heights. Some complex commodities trading shenanigens somewhat obfuscates the plot. As in "Green Tea" the use of near-light speed ships to transform base metals and chemicals into higher value states is the underlying science, and the wreck of one ship and the death of the crew offer a chance for the unscrupulous to make lots of money - provide they gamble right.

Of course, justice is seen to be done, finally (although not unequivocally). For me rather too much attention was placed on the trading and the science, at the expense of what was an interesting although relatively underdone human element.

I have to admit disappointment with this story. I approached it with egaer anticipation - a lengthy story (which Interzone provide only too rarely) and one from Greg Egan at that!

Egan looks at the quantum nature of life from a slightly different perspective - that of choices made, and actions taken or not taken. A young Australian decides to defend a stranger being beaten up, and in doing so sets his life off onto a different path to that which he was taking, due to now being confident enough to approach an attractive colleague.

The story, which is episodic, jumps a decade. Returning from a project which is attempting to cleanse radioactive contaminated desert in Iraq to find his wife is pregnant. The bad news: she miscarries. During this segment the issue of Many Worlds is raised, and an one too subtle dig in the ribs of cheesy Alternate History stories is made.

Eight years on: some technicals tuff about quantum effects playing a role in consciousness is provided, as the protagonist begins his work on the Qusp - a quantum singleton processor. This gets a little Schrodinger Cat-ty for me - a debate about whether a computer can run in parallel different programs without knowing about it blah blah. Alongside this the couple consider raising an AI child.

Nine years on: the QUSP research has moved on, to encompass white mice (meeses), anbd the decision is made.

Two years on: the child is 'delivered'. Somewhat bizarrely the AI is placed in a babies body, as opposed to being a purely software construct.

Ten years on: the child is now 10 and public opposition to such children is mounting.

Nine years on: the daughter is now a young woman but has run away from home. In searching for her the parents are tracking fetishists who have a 'thing' about having sex with such AI/prosthetic 'humans' (they appear to all intents and purposes human, so I'm not sure what the attraction would be!) The abscondee is found and returned to the family bosom.

A curious story IMHO - it felt almost like work done towards a novel, with the structure and key passages done. The several episodes didn't really work for me, and an author as good as Egan could have found some mechanism for handling the concepts in something other than strictly chronological.

Standard Analog fayre from an author whom you wouldn't immediately associate with Analog.

Lizzie O'Brien is part of an expedition on Titan, hamstrung slightly by media fascination and online chats with members of the public back home. Whilst a turbot-cam (and, yes, that is right - a turbot-cam as opposed to a turbo-cam) navigates a methane-ammonia sea, Lizzie takes to the skies in a balloon. And as you might expect, a problem occurs: her harness jams, threating to float her off to a lengthy airborne death. A dream which she had prior to the harness jamming returns, in greater detail. Is she communicating with some form of native intelligence, or is she cracking up under the strain of her imminent demise?

Whilst Lizzie feels herself as being increasingly alone, the intelligence she is communicating with is finding the shock of being not alone as threatening its existence. Lizzie plunges into the sea, to be rescued by turbot-cam.

I should own up to the fact that I much prefer SF to fantasy (this is Best SF, and not Best SFFH), and personally have never found myself engaging with Arnason's stories. Her 'Lydia Duluth' stories have generally failed to impress me :

The final days of a very elderly, wealthy and successful IT businesswomen are interspersed with memories of her life, and also with a forebear - for she is a descendant of Ada, Lady Lovelace, she of the laudanum, computing expertise, and Byronic tendencies.

The young Augusta Medora de Lauron was a mathematical and scientific prodigy, and despite her difficult upbringing, she is able to play a leading role in developing technologies that will finally offer humanity the chance to escape our shackles. Deserving of a larger audience.

Turquoise Days is a slightly shorter story. One of Reynolds' techniques is to gradually unfold the background as the story develops, which he uses to good effect here.

The first chapter sees sisters Naqi and Mina studying the enigmatic information-processing life form, the Pattern Jugglers, in an aquatic environment. The planetary setting is one which you hope Reynolds will return to, as it is genuinely inventive and original (the cataclysmatic ending need not be an obstacle, as Reynolds has handled this trick before). The planet Turquoise was settled by one colony ship, which was broken up to create a number of floating cities which move around the planet (from time to time marrying and divorcing). The fecund aquatic planet causes decay to inanimate objects, and fungal infections on the population (somewhat more attractive than athlete's foot).

As news of the first visting spaceship for a century arrives, the sisters have the chance to commune with the Pattern Jugglers, and the pair submerge and become as one with the Jugglers. Only Naqi returns.

Two years later, the spaceship arrives - an Ultra ship, led by Captain Moreau. The ship carries passengers interested in the Pattern Jugglers, and who take an interest in Naqi's work on isolating Juggler nodes.

As with Reynolds stories, nothing is quite as it seems, and when one passenger appears to be intent on destroying the Jugglers, a more complicated history is revealed (including a passing reference to the tower from 'Diamond Dogs'.)

A story which, as part of the wide Revelation Space series is particularly interesting, although as a singleton somewhat less powerful than Diamond Dogs.

Still, nice to see two shorter stories being given high-street shelf space by a mainstream publisher, and the PS Publishing/Gollancz link, which has two annual collections of the PS Publishing chapbooks similarly presented, is to be welcomed.