The Red: First Light by Linda Nagata

James Shelley, the main character of Linda Nagata’s Nebula-nominated novel The Red: First Light, is the high-drama leader of a Linked Combat Squad or LCS. It is Shelley’s opinion, shared at length with his squad, that “there has to be a war somewhere,” and that these wars are consciously orchestrated by the cabal of defense contractors who grow mega-rich off military contracts.

Shelley and his squad are linked to each other via communication implants; linked to remote handlers who have access to satellite data; and linked to the visual data from surveillance drones. Shelley was a spoiled rich boy who got into trouble and took the army route rather than go to prison. He has the loyalty of his squad because he is good at his job and because they know he cares about them. This squad might be a little extra loyal, though, because Shelley has something one of his soldiers calls “t... Read More

The April/May 2013 issue of Asimov’s leads off with a difficult but exciting novella by Neal Asher entitled “The Other Gun.” It portrays a complicated universe in which humanity has found itself at war with a race called the prador, which is ruthless, merciless and completely uninterested in compromise. It has already exterminated several species when it runs into humans, and a survivor of one of those wars, a member of a hive species, has allied itself with humans. The narrator of this tale is a parasitologist and bio-synthesist who was working on a biological weapon to be used against the prador when he was reassigned to work for the Client, as he knows the survivor of another species. The Client has somehow managed to steal a prador cargo ship, and is using it to hunt down pieces of a doomsday weapon called a farcaster that had been broken up and scattered across the galaxy. The narrator no longer has a human body in any sense that we... Read More

Nightmare has made it for a year now: the September issue is the twelfth. Based on the quality of the magazine to date, I hope it manages to at least cube that number.

“Halfway Home” by Linda Nagata is the first original story in this issue. It’s a stunner set in the real world; no supernatural beings or powers are at work here, just human evil.  It starts so prosaically that one is lulled into a false sense of security, even boredom. Two women are speaking to one another as their flight leaves from the Philippines for Los Angeles. They are strangers, each traveling for her own reasons, one starting a conversation with the narrator as the narrator browses through the airliner’s safety brochure, making sure she knows where the exits are in case the worst happens. The narrator is basically a professional adventurer — a photogr... Read More

The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2014 edited by Rich Horton

I've been reading a lot of anthologies lately, including another of the several "Year's Best" collections (the Jonathan Strahan one). I was pleased to find that, unlike some of the others, this one matched my tastes fairly well for the most part.

I enjoy stories in which capable, likeable or sympathetic characters, confronted by challenges, confront them right back and bring the situation to some sort of meaningful conclusion. I was worried when I read the editor's introduction and saw him praising Lightspeed and Clarkesworld magazines, because they can often be the home of another kind of story, in which alienated, passive characters are battered by tragedy until the story stops at a t... Read More