Of dragons and an amazing cat

 kw: book reviews, story reviews, science fiction, anthologies, collections, short stories

The Best Science Fiction of the Year, Volume 8, edited by Neil Clarke, is big, 581 pages. If I wait until I have read it all to produce any reviews, it could be a couple of weeks. Instead, I'll review a few stories every day or two.

In marked contrast to a collection of "mainstream fiction" that I aborted and panned, just in the first five stories there are three that made me think, "I'm glad I read that," one that I give a guarded "+", and the fifth is at least so-so, but too puzzling to be enjoyable. Here I'll focus on two favorites. Remember, I am an idea guy, but I also like deft craftsmanship.

In "The Dragon Project" by Naomi Kritzer, the core idea is 3D printing of living animals, an offshoot of the trade in 3D printed organs for transplanting. It takes three iterations to produce a dragon that a rich customer will accept; shades of Goldilocks! The three are, respectively, akin to a house cat, a dog, and a pony. But they are dragons, and the "satisfactory" one can even spit fire. That's already giving away a bit too much, but this story is tremendous fun to read. We'll move on…

"The Ship Cat of the Suzaku Maru" by S.L. Huang is named Toshi, and of course he saves the day. The story is told almost from Toshi's point of view by a narrator that knows the cat's mind. The picture is a bit of a spoiler, but I couldn't let the climactic image go un-illustrated. I fiddled with four image generators, and this offering from Gemini (Imagen 3) is the best of a hundred or so (there is a fine line between under- and over-prompting such software).

I think it worthwhile to mention something from "Nobody Ever Goes Home to Zhenzhu" by Grace Chan. An atypical story of corrupt Haves vs downtrodden Have-nots, it culminates in a hacking-as-justice climax. Would that things were so simple, but it's great fun to read anyway. Interesting fight scene also.

Five down, 29 to go. I note that the lengths of the stories ranges from 5 to 49 pages (a novelette). Buckle up!