Books: Spring Into SciFi 2019 Edition

(Drivebycuriosity) - I like science fiction. Unfortunately most science fiction novels disappoint. Often a writer has an interesting idea which carries a story about maybe 100 pages or less, but when she stretches the plot the story gets thinner and thinner and the text has too many fillers.  Just a minority of authors is capable to keep the tension over hundreds of pages. Therefore I usually skim collections of science fiction short stories in order to find some gems.

I just finished reading the anthology "Spring into SciFi" 2019 edition ( amazon). The collection contains 13 short stories by different authors. There are 4 gems at least:

 

"Pause" by Sam Fletcher. A family has a device which can pause time, but it can be used once in lifetime. The user can move freely around over 24 hours her personal time, while everything else is frozen. There are almost infinite ways to use this device and sometimes it can be extremely valuable. Do the protagonists waste this chance? A thrilling little fairy tale about a fascinating philosophical topic.

"Agents of Evolution" by Elizabeth Hosang. An intelligent software program, which works as an autonomous search agent on the Internet, got the order to find another intelligent program, a military logistics agent, which got lost on the World Wide Web. The story is told in first person by the AI, who painstakingly explains all the barriers it had to cross. A fascinating glance into how an AI might think and shows what hard science fiction can deliver these days.

"The Candle In the Window"  by Andrew Sweetapple. The plot begins as a kind of old fashioned adventure story but turns suddenly in something very futuristic. Amazing!

"The Price of Genetic Potential" by Alex Minns. Another piece of hard science fiction. Here a young woman has a fascinating but disturbing ability. 

I also liked "Sea Change" by Terry Sanville. A man who lives on the beach has an interesting encounter. I had problems with the ending, but Sanville can write and kept me a while on the edge. Good enough for a short story.

"Black Eyes, Luminous Monsters" by Joanna Maciejewska, a tough piece of military scifi where humans fight slimy alien monsters. Not my favorite plot idea again, but well described.

The rest of the stories may cater different tastes. In the moment of writing the Kindle version costs just $3.99 - a bargain.