A slightly above average issue.
"Opportunity Knocks", Joyce and Stanley Schmidt (Short Story)
Apparently continues some earlier story. The first quarter is a very heavy and dense infodump, which was hard to understand. The later part was okay and involves some Halloween trick and treaters meeting an alien. The story might have worked better as a separate one, omitting the force feeding of the details (most of which weren’t even important for the story itself anyway) and slightly rewriting the end part. Even then more of a prequel than an actual story. ***-
"Threshold", Tony Ballantyne (Novelette)
A guide on an alien planet is hired to take a group of three women to see a special feature of the planet: floating swarms, which are “insect” colonies which are on flight all the time and often reacted to environment in fairly predictable manner. It turns out that the women have a more sinister agenda. A pretty good and well written story. I must wonder though: how lax immigration is on the planet if the group was able to get all those things through customs? ***½
"Chrysalis", David Brin (Short Story)
Biologists have been able reprogram human cells, first to produce new organs to replace diseased ones, later grow back limbs. What is the next step? The story is told mainly by expository dialogue, where people tell what they have done or plan to do. It feels more like a transcript than a real story. Readable and even thought provoking, though. ***+
"Each Night I Dream of Liberty", Andrew Barton (Short Story)
A some sort of agent examines shady medical research on some sort of planet. A lot of exposition, some very strange leaps of logic. Someone has aphasia - oh, he must have been a victim of weaponized aphasia some terrorists were using years ago. Someone hasn't slept; oh she must have fatal familiar insomnia - an extremely rare disease with an incidence of something like 1:10000000. I found it hard to keep track what was going on. **
"Unfolding the Multi-Cloud", Ron Collins (Short Story)
A woman misses her loved one, who works in extremely well paid work, where he uploads his consciousness to net to find new or forgotten things. He might not come back as whole. Very well written and good story heavy with metaphors. Better than most of this year’s Hugo - nominees in the short story category, which were also heavily loaded with metaphors, but that is not saying much, though. ***+
"The Hand-Havers", Mary E. Lowd (Short Story)
Underwater intelligent beings give live apparently pretty American style life with central families and strong sex taboos. The unfertilized pregnancies (for both sexes?) produce "hands", some sorts of telepathically controlled beings which help in everyday life. Adulthood comes after the birth of the first hand. A young female creature is fascinated by an older male creature, who has six hands and is very smart and resourceful. He works as a kind of inventor for the community. An ok story, somewhat rushed and too short. Also, the very middle class American values on an alien species felt pretty stupid and irritating. ***+
“The Jenregar and the Light", Dave Creek (Novella)
Continues an earlier story. Insect like aliens are invading earth. The solution which was discovered at the end of an earlier story isn't working well any more. The story is split: one half tells about an attack to Nairobi and devastation the alien hive is causing there, the other half tells about Mike Christopher, artificial man who runs in to another alien infestation. Interspaced are segments about a scientist who is discovering a new method to destroy the aliens. Is total genocide justified? Not bad, but the parts didn't much to do with each other’s. Might have worked better as two separate stories. ***+
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