First was ³By Salt, By Sea, By Light of Stars² by Premee Mohamed. A
wizard with a serious personal problem arranges for her apprentice to
drive off a fearsome sea dragon.

Second was ³Lake of Souls² 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 ³Loneliness Universe² by Eugenia Triantafyllou. The
protagonist discovers that she can¹t meet an old friend (both are at the
same place, but can¹t see each other). Then she can¹t meet her siblings
and parents. Then it happens to other people; to everybody.

Fourth was ³Signs of Life² by Sarah Pinsker. A woman visits her
long-estranged sister and discovers family secrets.

Fifth was ³The Brotherhood of Montague St. Video² by Thomas Ha. A man
finds a book and runs into complications. I don¹t understand why the
villain was willing to spend so much effort over one book.

Sixth was ³The Four Sisters Overlooking the Sea² 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 ³Five Views of the Planet Tartarus² by Rachel K. Jones. A
short-short that describes how one empire imposes life sentences for
certain crimes.

Second was ³Marginalia² by Mary Robinette Kowal. A peasant woman faces
a problem and deals with it. But, if salt worked, why wasn¹t this more
broadly known?

Third was ³Stitched to Skin Like Family Is² 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 ³Three Faces of a Beheading² by Arkady Martine. A story with
a lot of footnotes (which I didn¹t 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 ³We will Teach You How to Read/We will Teach You How to Read²
by Caroline M. Yoachim. I don¹t understand this repetitive array of
words on pages.

Sixth was ³Why Don¹t We Just Kill the Kid in the Omelas Hole² by Isabel
J. Kim. A story inspired by Le Guin¹s 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 robertaw@drizzle.com

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