Usman T. Malik, “The Vaporization Enthalpy of a Peculiar Pakistani Family.” Medium, October 22, 2014 (originally in Michael Bailey (ed.), Qualia Nous, Written Backwards, 2014).
This shares the same handicap as the previous Malik story, in that it feels like more of an excerpt rather than a complete story. Malik here uses the gimmick of starting each chapter of this story with an abstract about the various stages of matter, mimicking what’s happening to the protagonist in it. Again like the previous story, it’s set in Pakistan and revolves around the intersection of religion and modernity. It’s very now, which may date it in a decade, but that has gotten it nominated for the Nebula, not undeservedly.
Tim Maughan, “Four Days of Christmas.” Vice, December 24, 2014.
Inspired by an article appearing in the same month as Maughan wrote this story, about the intricaties of the Chinese manufacturing process that feeds the world its cheap plastic crap. This is a great old-fashioned anti-capitalist story taking that process to its logical conclusion a decade or so in the future, through four vignettes, the last one set somewhat later. Quick writing to get it out so fast.
This is the first and only story on the list published in Motherboard, the guys who launched a new sf imprint because nobody else was doing good science fiction online. To be honest, it is the sort of Sterlingesque story they were looking to publish, so good on them. Considering Ken Liu’s “The Long Haul, From the ANNALS OF TRANSPORTATION, The Pacific Monthly, May 2009”, which this resembles somewhat in its approach was published in tired old Clarkesworld you wonder how necessary it really was to set this up…
Sandra McDonald, “Selfie.” Lightspeed, May 2014.
I wanted to like this more than I could. There was an interesting idea here, of having a robot double that could take an implant of your memories then go off to do something independently you couldn’t or wouldn’t do yourself, then come back to reintegrate its memories in yours. Not necessarily all that new an idea, but naming it a selfie is brilliantly obvious. The problem was that the plot was too predictable as well as saddled up with all sorts of cruft (time travel) not really needed to tell it. A disappointment.
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