1) Persephone Descending". I thought it was a brilliant hard SF story, of a caliber that is difficult to find in these days. Persephone was the vegetation goddess, and the queen of the underworld, therefore the title is perfect for the female main character of this story. Combining Venus habitat science with Quebec history - how come I never thought of doing that before?! 4/5 stars2) "Superior Sapience", Robert Chase. It drew me in from the start. It's a gripping story about intelligence augment...

Continuing the trend from last month's issue, this is yet another solid collection of stories and articles. Among this issue's highlights are "Persephone Descending", "Superior Sapience", "An Exercise In Motivation", "Elysia, Elysium" and "Mercy, Killer". Really, Arlan Andrews' "Flow" is the only disappointment this month. But it does have some interesting concept and Andrews did a nice job of world-building, so it's not a complete waste of time. Let's hope "Analog" can continue to put out stron...

"Flow" by Arlan Andrews Sr.: 2 stars"Persephone Descending" by Derek Kunsken: 5 stars"Superior Sapience" by Robert R. Chase: 3 1/2 stars"An Exercise in Motivation" by Ian Creasey: 3 stars"Habeas Corpus Callosum" by Jay Werkheiser: 3 1/2 stars"Conquest" by Bud Sparhawk: 4 stars"Elysia Elysium" by V. G. Campen: 3 1/2 stars"Mercy, Killer" by Auston Habershaw: 4 stars

"Persephone Descending" by Derek Kunsken é um daqueles contos que não se percebe bem porque é que falha. Mas falha. Tem ingredientes interessantes. Num futuro onde até países do terceiro mundo estão a estabelecer lucrativas colónias no sistema solar a recém-independente nação do Quebec, num gesto grandiloquente, decide colonizar estabelecer colónias em Vénus. O conto tem um extraordinário sentido paisagístico, com descrições rigorosas e realistas mas de tirar o fôlego da paisagem venusiana. A av...

Arlan Andrews' "Flow" was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novella (a story with a word count between 17,500 words and 40,000 words).  "Flow" was originally published in the November issue of Analog and has since been posted on Analog's site (here). This review is part of my effort to read and evaluate the 2015 Hugo nominees prior to the final vote later this year. I've previously reviewed "Totaled" by Kary English, and I'll post link other reviews as I write them."Flow" is an intriguing st...

Story about a young man, Rist, who sells ice for living but has a yearning for adventure. He gets a lift from the next iceberg and travels down the river to find a whole new world.The premise of the novella is interesting: it seems to be happening during or right after an ice age, and the hero of the story lives up north under eternal clouds. There's plenty of potential for exploring the effects this has on their culture and world view, and much of the story is based on the differences of these

Rist, a native of the Misty Sky Lands, sells ice as a trade, but seeking adventure, travels with a crew downriver on an iceberg. His people live under a sky of eternal clouds in severely cold weather, and his religion and his culture are challenged when he encounters a land of sunshine and people who worship the disc in the sky that Rist cannot bear to look upon.I really enjoy fiction that allows the reader to see herself from a new perspective, and Rist as an ignorant but eager visitor to the l...

Read for the 2015 HugosI'm having a hard time thinking of what to say about this one. I think it followed so many sci-fi tropes for no reason at all that I just couldn't enjoy it. I had to force myself to read it. I never found the story particularly compelling at all.It's a pretty typical fish-out-of-water story. The main character, Rist, goes to a society that is totally different than his own. It's a society that we, as readers, understand, but he doesn't. Fine. That kind of story can be writ...

8 • Persephone Descending • 16 pages by Derek Kunsken Fair/Good. An exploration of Venus leads to a critical situation. There is a minor portion of the plot dealing with the Earth/colony relations, but mostly an adventure into Venus's atmosphere.29 • Superior Sapience • 11 pages by Robert R. Chase VG/Excellent. A company is using Autistic people to help predict business trends. Barrett is a supervisor, a glorified babysitter really. A worker relates her enigmatic dream to Barrett. He starts inve...

I don’t know if Flow is supposed to be part of a longer story, but it reads like it. Rist comes from a short, Eskimo-like folk living in a frozen land with constant cloud cover. He jumps on a chance to accompany the party that rides chunks of iceberg down the river to warmer lands to sell. Most of the story is in the culture clash as Rist interacts with the strange (to him) warmlanders.Rist’s people are short (and the women flat-chested). Their eyes are accustomed to the lack of sunlight, necess...

I'm not sure what the point of this story was. It started off as a travelog, and a somewhat misogynistic one at that (the author doesn't even seem to be able to write the words woman or women - just "wen"). Then the protagonist did something really stupid, despite being told not to, so he had to run away. And then it doesn't even finish properly. That's an hour and a bit of my life that I won't be getting back. About the only positive was it was free in the Hugo pack, so I didn't waste any actua...

This issue is notable above all for "Persephone Descending" by Derek Kunsken, one of the most enjoyable SF stories I've read in awhile. Mixing hard science with a simple compelling plot, a greatly rendered female character, and a cultural setting that attracted me, this was a gem. Otherwise in the issue, a pair of AI stories were good and "Elysia Elysium" I could relate to, already strongly disliking sunshine as I do now.

It's written well enough to make a pleasant read, but somewhat lacking overall. Not much happens, when it does someone is there to explain it to the protagonist, things work out too well, and then it ends. A lot of good ideas in there, but nothing really shines. Maybe Mr. Andrews needs more textual space to work in to develop his stories more.

Read as a nominee for the 2015 Hugos.This is not worthy of a Hugo Award. It's not a bad story - I liked aspects of the worldbuilding, I liked aspects of the plot (what little there was), and despite pretty clearly being a set-up for a sequel, I actually quite liked the ending.That said, there was bad dialogue, a number of logical inconsistencies, no women as anything other than sex objects, and irritating repetition.The point where this lost me was when the people who live under 100% cloud cover...

This 2015 Hugo Award nominee is an interesting and fascinating short story. Despite being featured in the infamous puppy slate, I actually liked it. I believe it has a lot of potential, even if it reads like a chapter of a long story, where the author is adroitly crafting an entire world populated by many interesting cultures, to set up the scene for what is coming next... but nothing come next. The story is interrupted almost at a cliff hanger, leaving the reader curious to know what is happeni...

2015 Hugo Novella Nominee: "Flow" by Arlan Andrews, Sr. 24 pages.This is apparently the second in a series. It is clearly an excerpt from a longer work. There is definitely no resolution; it just stops with a literal cliffhanger.Using heavy exposition, particularly in the early going, this story tells of an alternate Earth where a Bronze Age aborigine travels to a 19th Century city as part of a trade expedition to deliver an iceberg from his northern mountain home via river. I kept waiting for s...

"Flow" by Arlan Andrews, 3/5 stars, read 04/15/2015A young man lives an insulated life with his people in a dark, frigid land. When the opportunity arises to travel to see some of the outside world, Rist eagerly joins a group riding an iceberg to a warm climate with exotic people and strange customs.My problem with many short stories, including this one, is that they often seem less a complete tale than as an introduction to a novel. It took me some time to "bond" with Rist as a character, but b...

I read this as part of the 2015 Hugo Awards packet (it was nominated for Best Novella).I actually gave it 2.5 of 5 (no half-stars here!) Sci-Fi/Fantasy of a future Earth (maybe?) where humans have split into pretty different phenotypes. This is a pretty standard newbie-to-a-culture story, with a few cool ideas (a group of farsighted people use carvings instead of writing to overcome their eyesight), but it seemed like an excerpt more than a full story.

Some interesting world building, although the story of a naive or ignorant youth discovering a wider world has already been told many times. The author offers us hints of further mysteries, and this becomes a problem."Flow" seems incomplete, obviously part of a larger story, and in the end is too slight to stand alone.

Rather confused about this novella. It reads like a fragment and is a fairly commonplace "fish out of water" story of a man from the "cold lands" who journeys into the "warm lands". Not a lot in the way of plot, and a few mildly interesting pieces of world-building, but nothing extraordinary. It could be interesting as a portion of a novel, but it seemed unfinished and aimless as a novella.