Sucker Punch, by Eric S. Raymond

Published in Riding the Red Horse, Castalia House, December 2014

Eric S. Raymond is a 2015 nominee for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer.

This is a perfectly competently written MilSF...vignette. It's not a story. It describes a couple of important and unfortunate advances in military weapons and tactics, and presents the resulting dilemma quite poignantly.

It also starts off with a good deal of weapons porn. That's off-putting for me; for its intended audience, it's very much wanted.

I'm left with the feeling that this one very short piece is not enough for me to assess Mr. Raymond as Best New Writer, but I haven't found anything else by him. I don't have much to say except that if this is the kind of story you like, you will like this story, and it might count as a point in favor of buying this collection.

The Deaths of Tao (The Lives of Tao #2), by Wesley Chu

Angry Robot Books, ISBN 9780857663320, October 2013

Wesley Chu is a nominee for the 2015 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer.

I did not expect to like this book.

Honestly.

Invisible energy-being aliens that live as parasites inside human beings, and have been manipulating human history and evolution since at least Gigantopithecus. Two factions, one of which regards human beings simply as tools, and is happy to advance their plan of preserving themselves as a species and, maybe, getting home to Quasar, where they from millions of years ago, and the other which is friendly to humans and wants to advance their plans in ways helpful to both species.

The Stars Came Back, by Rolf Nelson

Castalia House, January 2014

Rolf Nelson is a 2015 nominee for the John W. Campbell Best New Writer Award.

It's a movie script that "morphed into a novel." Except no, it didn't. So it has none of the sights, sounds, and actors that make a move or tv show work, and none of the narrative features that make novels work. Here's the script; you the reader do all the work.

Helton Strom has failed at most things he's tried; the script opens with him managing to crash a flight simulator while doing a crash simulation program. Crashes it in the sense of doing serious damage to it. How? Who knows?

Murder World: Kaiju Dawn, by Jason Cordova and Eric S. Brown

Severed Press, May 2014

Jason Cordova is a nominee for the 2015 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer.

The shady captain of a merchant starship accepts a job from a secretive government agency, retrieving the database of a spy ship that crashed on Gorgon IV, a.k.a. Murder World. It's apparently not the first time Vincente Huerta has accepted dubious jobs from dubious clients or from the military before, and he'd probably be better off financially if he didn't drink a good deal of the profits. He also has at least one ex-wife he owes a substantial amount of money to. It's his saving grace that he has Jasmine, his pilot and a thoroughly kickass woman with no apparent reason to put up with him. She could surely get a better job!

After an encounter with the ex-wife to hire mercenaries, and another stop to buy fuel from a stoner gang called the Wild Ones (no, really, their security is so good their guy on watch is smoking a reefer on duty, but it's okay because they are all badass fighters like Jasmine), the Fancy zips off to Gorgon IV.

Hill 142, by Jason Cordova

Jason Cordova is a 2015 nominee for the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best New Writer.

This is a single, small battle of World War One, with the Germans equipped with giant, venomous spiders as cavalry mounts, and the Americans equipped with giant (2000-pound) lion as mounts. There's no explanation of why or how, other than a reference to a breeding program for the lions in Texas, There's also no indication of how this affects the war, other than sending the surviving soldiers home with more fantastical stories to tell.

So what's the point? I have no idea.

Not recommended.

Flight of the Kikayon, by Kary English

originally appeared in the Grantville Gazette in July of 2013

Kary English is a nominee for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer.

This story is a rare treat in the 2015 Hugo Voters packet.

Lydia is the wife of the man who perfected clones as backup/substitute mothers for wealthy women too busy to care for their own children, who don't want to be seen to be leaving their children to the care of servants. Since they are vat-grown clones of the women themselves, the substitution isn't obvious. Since Lydia's husband Donnie got the clones ruled non-people, and neural implants keep them bonded to and under the control of their originals, there are no worker complaints. The clones are physically identical, but deferential and obedient.

And this did not go where I expected it to go. Lydia, Donnie, Cara (the clone), and their situation all prove to be far more interesting than I expected. I'll be looking for more by Kary English in the future.

Recommended.

Departure Gate 34B, by Kary English

originally appeared in Daily Science Fiction on August 18, 2015

Kary English is a nominee for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer.

This is a gentle, melancholy story about a ghost who doesn't know they're now a ghost, and the surviving spouse who still loves, but is ready to move on. Enjoyable, even if not a stand-out.