Omphalos, by Ted Chiang

In the collection Exhalation, Knopf, May 2019

Dorothea Morrell is an archaeologist, studying the history of humanity mainly, in her case, through tree growth rings, in trees and in wood incorporated into buildings--going right back to the beginning, almost ten thousand years ago.

Because, yes, this story is set in a universe that really is less than ten thousand years ago.

In the course of her work and her travels, she meets an astronomer who tells her of a paper he's just reviewed, and, much against his wishes, had to approve because there was simply no basis for rejecting it. The science Dorothea, and the astronomer, and many others, have relied on as the bases of their faith in God, has now given them a most unsettling discovery.

The Blur in the Corner of Your Eye, by Sarah Pinsker

Uncanny Magazine, July 2019

Zanna is a mystery writer who has had her assistant rent her a cabin with no near neighbors, no internet, not even a landline phone, so that she has no distractions while she works on her latest book. The assistant, Shar, will stay in a hotel in town, checking in on Zanna daily, but giving her time and space to write. The cabin proves to be a little more basic than Zanna anticipated, but it has a desk for her to work with, and a good view from the window near the desk, and that's all she needs.

The next morning, though, when a fuse blows and she has no microwave, no coffee, and in fact there's no power at all now, that's a little too basic. She has to go down the mountain, on foot, to find her landlord, since she isn't even getting one bar of signal on her cellphone.

When she gets there, she finds her landlord, dead. He seems to have fallen, and hit his head on a rock. He also looks, from his position and the look on his face, like he was running in fear from his own house.

Emergency Skin, by N.K. Jemisin

Amazon Original Stories, September 2019

A soldier is sent from his home planet to Tellus, or as we usually call it, Earth, to obtain some vital samples. The Founders will reward him richly for this, with a real skin, a beautiful skin. Having a skin which is real and biological, rather than engineered for harsh environments is a mark of high status. And on this mission, he has, inside his head, an AI that is the consensus opinion of the Founders, the rulers of his world, and perhaps the very ones who left Earth.

As they approach Tellus, they find that the orbital junk that had been left behind is gone. The atmosphere is clean. The planet appears to be completely healthy, unlike what the AI claims it expected. The soldier is puzzled.

Then he discovers that humans are living happily on this supposedly ruined planet.

Is the AI lying? Is the AI deceived? 

It's not long before the soldier discovers facts that can't be explained away, and starts to ask questions the AI won't answer, and threatens to punish him for. We also start to learn some really interesting things about the Founders.

This is an interesting story, and an interesting world I'd like to see more of. Recommended.

I received this story as part of the Hugo Voters packet, and am reviewing it voluntarily.

The Archronology of Love, by Caroline M. Yoachim

Lightspeed Magazine, April 2019 

Dr. Saki Jones was on the way to the New Mars colony, to do research but also to join her lifelove, MJ, also a scientist with the colony.

On the way, first they learn that a plague has broken out, suspected to be from the alien artifacts found on the planet. They've been looking for a virus or something similar, as the cause, but without success. Then MJ, and the rest of the colony, are all dead.

Now their mission is to find the cause. And because they don't know how to protect themselves from the unknown cause, they need to do that from orbit. They will need to use the Chronicle, a complete, immersive record of everything that has happened on the colony, which, however, they can only access any given part of it once. Collecting the data means it's effectively erased from the Chronicle. So this needs to be done with care.