Status Updates From The Year's Best Science Fic...

The Hemingway Hoax - Haldeman: I don't normally care about Hemingway but I was really intrigued by how strange this story got. Fantastic.

Rainmaker Cometh - McDonald: Very atmospheric, pun intended.

Hot Sky - Silverberg: It could've been interesting except for the plotholes.

White City - Shiner: Hilarious. Nikola Tesla has one more trick up his sleeve.

Love and Sex Among the Invertebrates - Murphy: Sad but lovely.

Inertia - Kress: Very nicely written, though I had trouble with some of the central premise.

Learning to Be Me - Egan: Creepy creepy mind stuff. Oh boy.

Cibola - Willis: Reread. I'm not convinced this is even SF/F.

Walking the Moons - Lethem: Very brief piece, I guess it's satire.

The Coon Rolled Down and Ruptured His Larinks, A Squeezed Novel by Mr. Skunk - ab Hugh: Too graphic for me in a couple scenes, but otherwise quite fun! Animals can talk due to a plague.

Tower of Babylon - Chiang: Reread. A retelling of the Tower of Babel. Fantastic.

The Death Artist - Jablokov: Decadent art in the FUTURE!

The First Since Ancient Persia - Brunner: Special virus. Almost horror, silly ending.

The All-Consuming - Shepard & Frazier: A man obsessed with eating everything comes to an understanding.

Personal Silence - Gloss: A peace activist meets an unusual girl.

Invaders - Kessel: A meta-story about invasions & SF escapism.

The Cairene Purse - Moorcock: In a reduced future, a man looks for his sister in Aswan, who bears a tale of her own.

We See Things Differently - Sterling: Felt like a rehash of other stories I've read.

And the Angels Sing - Wilhelm: Eddie encounters some weirdness and beauty in his life, which leaves him behind.

Past Magic - MacLeod: Weird clone thing, some weird implications.

Bears Discover Fire - Bisson: Fantastic story, everyone should read.

Mr. Boy - Kelly: An absolutely gonzo story about a boy's relationship with his mother, in a way.

The Shobies' Story - Le Guin: The power of a story to ground you when all seems lost.

The Caress - Egan: Well, that's a freakin' creepy thing to do, good lord. Art for art's sake.

A Braver Thing - Sheffield: I was remarkably engaged with this story of a boy and his friend who have very different outlooks in the end.