kw: story reviews, science fiction, anthologies, fantasy ancestries, praying robots, ecowarriors, nanobot reconstruction, time travel
Another five stories from The Best of World SF, edited by Lavie Tidhar:
"Xingzhou" by Ng Yi-Sheng. Billed in the opening blurb as a fantastical history of Singapore: I'd never have guess if they hadn't said so. The grand"parents" of the protagonist are given short biographies: a man, a demon, a hive being, and a sentient fungus (and very high official indeed). Xingzhou seems to be on the surface of a protostar. The language is so expressive yet so ambiguous, one can't really tell. But it's hot. At some point war intervenes and the various expats are taken to Earth, where it is at least less hot.
"Prayer" by Taiyo Fujii, translated by Kamil Spychalski. More robots. This time, a triad code-named Cerberus. They guard a cryptocoin-mining ship, rather gruesomely, but carry out a sort of prayer dance prior to executing intruders.
"The Green Ship" by Francesco Verso, translated by Michael Colbert. A combination of Greenpeace and a refugee rescue organization. These folks have a converted aircraft carrier that is registered as a micronation. Rescuing refugees is increasingly necessary as the dystopian world outside Europe worsens, and giant 3D printers can erect barrier structures at the edge of sovereign ocean overnight.
"Eyes of the Crocodile" by Malena Salazar Maciá, translated by Toshiya Kamei. A race to bring corrected algorithms to a distribution place, while erring nanobots are gradually annihilating humans. Guess where the eyes in question appear?
"Bootblack" by Tade Thompson. The statement of a witness to a time traveler: a "shoeshine boy" is called a "bootblack" by the traveler, likes the term, and adopts it.
I thought about adding the country of each author's origin, but then figured it's better to leave it up to you to find out.
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