Tor.com Short Fiction: March-April 2019

Tor.com releases a lot of short fiction for free on their website. But somehow I never actually read any of it until they bind it up in a digital book and I can get to it on my kindle app. It's just easier to read that way, I guess. Anyway, the Spring bundle had five stories in it.

Knowledgeable Creatures: This story hooked me from the beginning. I love a good narrator, and this world-weary canine PI was just familiar and just strange enough to hold my attention hostage. The story hints at a much wider world that I would happily read several books about. I wonder if they'll ever get written.

1/0: This was a beautiful story about the upsides of AI. So often, these stories become all doom and gloom as the computer learns more and more and attempts to "save" humanity from itself. By placing the learning AI in the hands of children in a refugee camp, this becomes a very hopeful story about the future. There's a way in which we will all be alright, so long as we can keep focusing far enough into the future.

Blue Morphos in the Garden: This was an absolutely lovely story about death and our right to choose the way our lives end. The protagonist has to choose between staying true to her own beliefs, which will hurt her husband and daughter, or going along with their traditions even though they make her uncomfortable. And then she just has to trust that her loved ones love her enough to embrace her decision.

Painless: This story reminded me of X-men's Wolverine, though it goes to a much darker place. Well, darker than the movies, I'm not sure about the comics. At any rate, it's about inherited trauma and second chances and it left me unsettled in a good way.

Mama Bruise: This story was just plain terrifying. I both wanted more from it and didn't want to read any more at all.

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