David H. > Recent Status Updates

Solstice - Kelly: Drugs and rock 'n' roll, and weird clonecest. Meh.

Duke Pasquale's Ring - Davidson: Somewhat confusing, but I just didn't enjoy the writing style or the story development.

More Than the Sum of His Parts - Haldeman: Story of a cyborg human gone "evil." Started off well, but I didn't like the plot "twist" & resolution.

Out of All Them Bright Stars - Kress: Beautiful story. I loved it.

Glory Day: Reread. Telzey & Trigger are kidnapped in some planetary struggle.

Child of the Gods: Reread. Telzey is mentally controlled. Bloodier & violent at the end.

Ti's Toys: Reread. Who's the real Telzey? Weird kidnapping.

The Symbiotes: Reread. Trigger deals with a "family" of creepy psi-parasite aliens with the help of some little friends.

Company Planet: Telzey investigates a cosmetic surgery company on a resort planet.

Resident Witch: Telzey tries to save a man being killed by his criminal brother.

*The Pork Chop Tree: A Trigger story that was incorporated as a prologue to "Compulsion," which sets up the potential horror.

Compulsion: Telzey and Trigger figure out how to communicate with the alien plant life and get them to stop affecting people.

Blood of Nalakia: Set centuries before Telzey's time, featuring apparent ancestors of the Elaigar in "The Lion Game."

The Star Hyacinths: Another non-Telzey story, featuring Dasinger of the Kyth Detective Agency as he strives to find and return the stolen gems under tough circumstances.

Goblin Night: Reread. Telzey gets caught by an evil psi and his "goblin" beast.

Sleep No More: Direct sequel to Goblin Night. Telzey is chased by a psi-beast.

The Lion Game: Reread. Telzey encounters the Elaigar aliens, but is resolved peacefullyish.

Novice: The beginning of Telzey's story! Her pet alien cat turns out to be more than she realized, and she gains her own skills.

Undercurrents: Telzey uses her new telepathy to help her friend Gonwil from some bad business (and the Psychology Service is introduced in passing).

Poltergeist: Reread. Taking a kayaking break, Telzey runs into a dangerous telepath that makes her realize that the P.S. may not be all bad.

Snow - Crowley: Grief and video and strangeness.

The Fringe - Card: A teacher with a disability is turned on by some students after a climate disaster future.

The Lake Was Full of Artificial Things - Fowler: Memory and grief and guilt.

Sailing to Byzantium - Silverberg: A man from our time is in a distant future of tourist dilettantes who travel between recreations of cities.

The Jaguar Hunter - Shepard: Hunter discovers more than he expected with a jaguar.

Dogfight - Gibson & Swanwick: Guy gets addicted to a local game.

Fermi and Frost - Pohl: A nuclear apocalypse leads to worldwide disaster, for a while.

Green Days in Brunei - Sterling: An engineer thinks he finds love in Brunei, but his horizons expand, maybe.

Avast, Abaft!: Gilbert & Sullivan meets Peter Pan, etc., as one does.

Frogskin Cap: Dying Earth story about the last curator of the museum of man.

Ninieslando: A secret country of Esperantists under No Man's Land.

The Horse of a Different Color (That You Rode in On):

The King of Where-I-Go: Reread. Brother & his psychic sister reshape history.

Thin, On the Ground: Two Texan teenagers have an adventure in Mexico.

Kindermarchen: What an utterly ridiculous pun of a story, LOL.

Why Then Ile Fit You: A dying actor with dementia experiences some strange things.

The Wolf-Man of Alcatraz: Werewolf in prison, nice guy otherwise.

"The Bravest Girl I Ever Knew . . .": Ann Darrow if she was real and made a few movies before retiring.

Calling Your Name: An accident popped the MC into an alternate version of his reality/life. Very sweet ending.

The King of Where-I-Go: Bubba and his sister grow up, but something rather special happens by the end. Great.

I've read the first 14 of the 16 stories in this collection in earlier books from Waldrop, so skipping right ahead to the final 2 stories...

A Better World's in Birth!: A classically abstruse story from Waldrop about a People's Republic in Europe in the 1870s after the success of the Revolutions of 1848. Some of the mystery was hard to figure out, but I liked the setting at least.

I've already read "A Dozen Tough Jobs"; "Fin de Cyclé"; "You *Could* Go Home Again"; "Flatfeet!"; "Major Space in the 21st Century!"; and "The Other Real World" in Waldrop's other collections this year.