When the transfer of a person’s consciousness to another planet goes wrong, a human operator of an alien technology has to make a terrible decision. This is an evocative and disturbing story…
Author: Michael Hartford
“We See Things Differently” by Bruce Sterling
An Arab journalist interviews an American rock star who has become a demagogic focal point in a declining post-imperial world. This has fascinating and troubling contemporary echoes – written in 1989, it…
“Air Raid” by John Varley
A team of time travelers intercepts an airplane moments before its crash in order to collect passengers to serve as colonists on a distant planet. A fast-paced adventure set against a truly…
“Closer” by Greg Egan
A man experiments with a variety of post-human enhancements to try to escape solipsism and experience his partner’s consciousness. More a thought experiment than a story, but inventive and strange.
“Yorrick” by Budi Darma
A student moves to an attic apartment on a quiet street hoping to connect with the beautiful girl across the street, and finds himself squeezed out from the society of the neighborhood…
“Orez” by Budi Darma
A woman whose family seems cursed by miscarriage and birth defects has a child of her own, who seems possessed by an especially rambunctious and even violent nature. This story has an…
“The Family M” by Budi Darma
A man living in a large apartment building becomes obsessed with a family living nearby, at first wishing them ill and then wishing he could participate in their love and affection. This…
“Joshua Karabish” by Budi Darma
A young man submits his sickly roommate’s poems to a contest after his roommate’s death, and feels himself afflicted by the roommate’s illness. Very much the same milieu as “The Old Man…
“The Old Man With No Name” by Budi Darma
A foreign student living in an attic apartment observes his elderly neighbors, including an old man whom he sees standing in the window across the street with a gun and with whom…
“Rogue Farm” by Charlie Stross
A farmstead is threatened by a biohacked organic collective creature with plans to launch itself to Jupiter. This is an insanely inventive and rollicking story; I enjoyed how it throws one insane…