Simon Ounsley

Brian Stableford - And he not busy being born...

Adam Zimmerman is a man with a big problem. To avoid the angst of existentialism that Heidegger expounds in Sein and Ziet, the dying that starts when we are eight years old, he wants to be immortal. A clever story that keeps reversing expectations.

Rachel Pollack - The protector

Protectors are modern shamans who seem to be pivotal in a society that has rejected space flight and even science fiction! Lynne, am ordinary housewife, thinks she is show more going mad because of weird dreams and visions. Odd story.

Michael Blumlein - The brains of rats

A series of vignettes interspersed with seeming research references on the topic of gender and the genes that determine sex. Strives for shock effect to little avail.

Pat Murphy - His vegetable wife

A farmer alone on a planet grows his own wife. A scathing attack on masculinity.

Josephine Saxton - The cup is the wine

A man and a woman are partners but feel strangely detached from one another. The ending seems hopeful.

Shirley Weinland - The final episode

A UN-sponsored fictional television series hides the reality of space exploration using convicts, but the truth wins out. show less

A disappointing mix of stories in general, although one or two stood out. In the main they reminded me too much of a type of British SF which is too wrapped up in itself, but "City of Peace" and "Mirrors and Burnstone" were particularly good.

Geoff Ryman - Love sickness, Part One

Marye is an actress living in London in the near future, after viruses have wiped out cancer, and reduced everyone's life expectancy to 30. They have also have been used to spread approved 'good' thoughts to the populace, by a Marxist government. People have their personalities 'read' by viruses and incorporated in the governing Consensus. Marye though is unhappy, possibly as a result of an immunity to the viruses. This immunity also allows her to fall in show more love with Rolfa, a female Woolie, gene-engineered for Polar environments, who wants to write music.

Brian Stableford - Sexual chemistry

Giovani Casanova, despite hs surname, grows up ugly and unloved in Manchester. However he has a genius for science and after academic success he eventually gets employed by the biotech tycoon Melmoth to create a bio-tech aphrodisiac. He is successful and starts a chain of events which sees him losing his unattractiveness to women but which soon gets out of control.

Michael Swanwick - Foresight

Due to an earlier 'event' time now flows backwards, meaning that everyone knows the future but not the past. Starts with a murder, the reasons for which are gradually revealed.

Iain Banks - A gift from the Culture

Wrobik, a citizen of the Culture, has been escaping from life on Vreccile, when he is 'persuaded', by two gangsters who have his gambling debts, to use a Culture handgun that only he can operate in an assassination. show less

David S. Garnett - The only one

Marvelous time travel story. The narrator, a nasty policeman/secret agent, falls in love with Miss Katherine over tea with her friend Miss Christina. They marry and are happy but one indiscretion wrecks things. An inventor he meets on an investigation has developed a time machine which seems to offer a new beginning....

Cherry Wilder - The decline of Sunshine

Very odd story. Sybil, a real psychic, interrupts a seance to eject a policeman masquerading as a client show more but gets an inkling of bigger trouble in store for the 'dome' covering Brisbane (aka Sunshine City) where things take place.

Charles Stross - The boys

Incredibly over-egged helping of cyberpunk in which a waif returns to a decayed orbital habitat.

Lisa Tuttle - Memories of the body

Powerful start in which a woman kills her husband at the behest of her lover. Yet it is not really her husband but a 'fax' (duplicate). What could be a Dickian tale runs out of steam.

Christopher Burns - Among the wounded

The narrator appears to be a patient in a sanatorium, but his doctor, the sinister Reismann, is interested in his dreams and the stigmata he is developing. Unsettling.

Eric Brown - The girl who died for art, and lived

Daniel alone survives, with horrific injuries, an accident in space that kills his partner. Trying to expiate his guilt by selling artworks about the crash, he meets Lin, another artist is who is slowly dying. show less