A fairly good issue, a bit above average, I believe.
Mimsy Were the Borogoves • (1943) • novelette by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore [as by Lewis Padgett]
This is one of the all-time classics. I read this story before — decades ago — and I was surprised by how many details I remembered. Two kids find a crate sent from the distant future. It is filled with learning toys that begin to teach them a new kind of thinking that may evolve the children into something else. Even some 80 years later, it is still a good story. The only downside was a far-too-long lecture by a psychologist. ****+
Minerva Girls • novelette by James Van Pelt
Three girls have always been friends. One is very smart in theoretical science, one is brilliant at making stuff, and the third has access to a practically limitless cache of electric parts at her father’s junkyard. At least one of the girls will move after the summer and their friendship might end. What to do? Go to the Moon, of course. Together they manage to invent and build an inertia-less gravity drive. It's a fun story that was well written; it felt very much like a Heinlein juvenile (one of the good ones). The plausibility wasn’t very high, but considering the style of the story, that wasn’t a problem. ****
City • short story by Joel Richards
A successful businessman lives in a city where anyone might shift to an alternate reality at any time. He has just shifted to an alternate reality where he finds himself even wealthier than before. He contacts former lovers and friends to see whether they know him. It is a nice background for the story, which is quite well told, but it's more a sequence of vignettes than an actual tale with a cohesive plot. ***+
Where There's Life • novelette by John Vester [as by John J. Vester]
Humans are studying Mars while the last Martian creatures are trying to find water from deep below ground. Water has been running out (I wonder where the deep water is going, as it isn’t prone to evaporate like surface water). A comet is going to hit Earth, which would leave the Martian colonists stranded and alone; some even consider returning to Earth (Why? To die there?). One human encounters the Martian creatures and brings them to "normal" pressure and temperature — surely that couldn't harm them! The story is based on huge coincidences and criminally stupid actions. Not very good. **
The Chrysalis Pool • short story by Sean McMullen
A young man who enjoys running alone sees a beautiful, naked water nymph in almost any body of water he runs beside. A psychologist tries to analyze what is going on with a portable EEG scanner (and the tech who built the apparatus installed a camera as well). Will the camera capture the nymph? OK story, but the details of the EEG don't make much sense. ***
A Skyful of Wings • short story by Aimee Ogden
A seed ship is on its way to drop a carefully calculated selection of Earth species when it suffers a malfunction and cannot make the stop — but it can still drop the seedling pods (I'm not sure how it would work with speed differences). The crew has one chance: they must drop some species and travel hibernated in pods. Apparently, every animal species has just one pod (doesn’t make much sense from the redundancy point of view). An OK story, more than a bit hurried. ***-
Going Small • short story by Jacob C. Cockcroft
Earth is going to be destroyed by a giant meteor. Humanity has built a very tiny ship with a powerful AI with robotic capacity containing human embryos and is going to send it to another solar system. The AI is a bit bored during the travel but the ship arrives safe and sound. The narrative is just a description of events, more or less — which doesn’t even really make sense. Why build just one ship? It is not as though there were not sufficient resources to build more than one — and after the ship design was proved to be viable, such ships could have been built by the hundreds. Also, why not turn down the “clock speed” of the AI for the duration of the travel? ***
Casualties of the Quake • short story by Wang Yuan
A man travels back in time to before the earthquake that killed his son. Can he alter the events? If so, what are the consequences? It's an OK, bittersweet story. ***
The Home of the King • short story by Dan Reade
A reporter interviews a famous boxer who has reskinned — that is, transferred his mind to a new, healthy body. The story examines his background, the reporter’s background, and dives deep into what reskinning means for sports in general and boxing in particular. It's a boring story that was written as though boxing were an honorable and admirable pursuit instead of a barbaric thing which should have been outlawed decades ago as something which normalizes violence. **½
Seeding the Mountain • novelette by Maggie Clark [as by M. L. Clark]
Nanotech has malfunctioned at several places in the world and they are at least partly under quarantine. One place is a mountain in Guatemala. People living nearby are trying to survive even if some strange and dangerous things are happening. I didn’t get into this story; the writing was thick and hard to read, and the characters seemed to discuss things endlessly. It felt far too long. **+
The Writhing Tentacles of History • short story by Jay Werkheiser
Future descendants of squids dig up strange fossils of a mammal that looks like it walked on two feet, which doesn’t make any sense to them. It's an interesting society with fascinating creatures. Surely there would be massive amounts of physical remains of humanity — glass and ceramics are very resilient. ***
The Boy Who Went to Mars • short story by Mary Soon Lee
The son of a billionaire has lived without any real contact with his father. The father is establishing a Mars colony and asks his son to join it. The son is good in science and engineering, and really wants to join, but he isn’t keen on being with his absentee father. Eventually — at his mother's urging — he relents and goes to Mars. It's a pretty good story, even though it is too short and gives only glimpses of what happens. ***½
The Treasure of the Lugar Morto • short story by Alan Dean Foster
The archeologists are after a fabulous treasure. The find in under the remains of an apparent shopping mall: an untouched seed bank full of seeds which are unmeasurable valuable in a post collapse world. An ok story. ***
I, Bigfoot • novelette by Sarina Dorie
A bigfoot whose name is Bigfoot is interested in humans and goes on a scavenger expedition to the suburbs. He is especially interested in National Geographic magazines featuring Jane Goodall. He helps a young runaway who is almost raped. The leader of his tribe is not happy about the contact with humans. It's a pretty nice warm-hearted story. However, the psychology of the bigfeet is practically exactly human, which felt pretty strange. ***½
Draiken Dies • [Draiken] • novella by Adam-Troy Castro
Continues (and finishes?) an earlier series of stories. A retired spy has been chasing the spy organization that had once used him. Now his female companion has arrived on a planet where the organization has its headquarters. The spy organization captures her, fills her with truth serums and monitoring equipment, and asks where her companion is. She tells them that she killed him. Why? What is her angle? She can’t lie, so she apparently really killed him — but why come to the planet where the risk of capture is extremely high? Like most of the rest of the series, it is a very good story, smoothly written and exciting. ****-
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