Status Updates From Orbit 11

“To Plant a seed” by Hank Davis may be the best short story in the book. It’s a little hard to follow as the narrative switches back and forth between two timeframes. The question it poses is, Is science when fully engaged in future telling, worth the risk to the existing humanity? Is there a moral limit to which one must constrain scientific inquiry?
At what point, is science just playing god?

Good bye Shelley, Shirley, Charlotte, Charlene
Life is a game of cards and, in fiction, you are always dealt the Ace of Spades. But you got to play your cards right, just the same.

The summer of the Irish Sea
Not sure I get this story beyond the prima facia story line.
Traynor is an outcast, living on the run, surviving on fresh kill animals, dreaming of a place where people like him don’t need to hide near the Irish Sea. Traynor has no agency. No defenses beyond his own wits.
Traynor gets hunted down and killed by a member of the hunting class.

Doucement, Si’l vous plait. (Gently, if you please)
First person from a piece of mail’s point of view. (First mail?)
Describing how he (the mail item) gets forwarded around Europe, in search of the correct recipient.
Odd historical context narrative as a human, married to “Jane” his wife.
Even expects to be delivered to his wife eventually (from him as a human?). Fun short read.

I Remember a Winter, A one sentence story with a lot of context.
The entire moral of the story was in the last line or possibly in the last line of a paragraph near the end.
“Is there any of me, or of any of us, that isn’t just a consequence”
This will have me thinking the rest of the night.

Spectra, visceral. Just the opposite of Alien Stones. Doesn’t require much intellect, just a strong constitution to continue subjecting my psyche to the image of a human being gruesomely tortured. Not allowing myself to feel empathy for the protagonist for fear of experiencing the anguish vicariously.

Finished “Alien Stones” by Gene Wolfe.
I’ve forgotten what deep philosophical SciFi blended with real science and math is like. I hope the other 19 stories are this good.