reading (Asimov's March)

I finished this month's Asimov's on Friday. The most striking bit wasn't a story, but James Patrick Kelly's "On the Net", but I posted about that earlier, so I'll go straight on to the stories. There are a couple of stories in this issue with reference to memory, but that's where the similarities end. Nick Wolven's "Lost in the Memory Place, I Found You" has a light tone veneer over dark social satire. The characters are as thin as a skin tight vinyl shirt, but that's the point, not to put too fine a point on it. John Kessel's "Clean", in contrast, has a high angst factor up front. That gets at least partially mitigated by the critical choice in the plot turning out true to character. Ian Creasey's "I was Nearly Your Mother" and Steve Bein's "The Most Important Thing in the World" both deal with the consequence of choices and dealing with the cards you've been dealt.

Perhaps my favorite this month was Nancy Fulda's "Movement". In the space of this short story there are lots of little interleaving themes and parallel movements. There is a classic old school short story last line kicker, not in the "what", but in the "how". The last line still rings true to the main character, even though the "what" gives the reader what they're begging for.

Honourable mention goes to Geoffrey A. Landis' poem "The Spirit Rover Longs to Bask in the Sunshine". I think many of us have fallen in love with the personification of these little engines that could, these ultimate underdogs in a cruel world. "If one man can stand tall, there must be some hope for us all, somewhere in the spirit of man." - Julie Covington from "War of the Worlds" (Of course, we're invading Mars not vice versa.)

4. Asimov's March 2011