Science Fiction Reader

Reality Conditions: Short Mathematical Fiction (2005)

by Alex Kasman

Where can you hear an old man in a nursing home tell of how he disproved Goldbach’s Conjecture as part of an undergraduate research project, get inside the mind of James Clerk Maxwell as he discovers electro-magnetic waves, witness the 19th century’s greatest mathematician finally get the credit she was denied by sexism and murder? In “Reality Conditions,” a collection of short stories spanning a variety of genres, you can share in these and other fictional mathematical experiences. Each story is a mathematical journey designed to entertain, educate and tantalize. There is something here for everyone: humor, drama, the little details to the big picture, science fiction to true histories. Through these stories, those with little mathematical background will encounter some of the most interesting parts of the field of mathematics for the first time. Even professional mathematicians will be captivated by ideas that take us to the limits of knowledge, addressing the questions of how mathematics is related to the human mind and how it is related to reality. The book is perfect for leisure reading. Join one of the leading experts in the area of mathematical fiction as he takes us on a whirlwind tour of mathematics, both real and imaginary.

-from Amazon.com’s description

*I found the idea of math-fi an interesting niche.

The Future is Japanese (2012)

An attempt to bridge the gap between Western and Japanese SF and fantasy. Many of our Japanese contributors wrote pieces specifically for this project —their work is appearing in translation here before being published in their native language. And the Western writers, many of whom have some personal connection to Japan, pulled out all the aesthetic stops. Yes, there are virtual worlds and kanji and even a squadron of giant mecha, and the stories are as authentic as they are fantastical. SF writers have always explored strange new worlds —with The Future is Japanese, we explore our own.

— from the Introduction by Nick Mamatas

Includes shorts by Project Itoh, Issui Ogawa, Bruce Sterling, and 10 others.

Today’s thrift store find.

Miracle and Other Christmas Stories

by Connie Willis

Connie Willis loves Christmas. “I even like the parts most people hate—shopping in crowded malls and reading Christmas newsletters and seeing relatives and standing in baggage check-in lines at the airport. Okay, I lied. Nobody likes standing in baggage check-in lines,” she writes. Willis knows it’s hard to write good Christmas stories: the subject matter is limited, the writer has to balance between sentiment and skepticism, and too many fall into the Victorian habit of killing off saintly children and poor people. Here she presents eight marvelous Christmas tales, two of which appear for the first time.

The stories range from “The Pony,” about a psychotherapist who doesn’t believe that Christmas gifts can answer our deepest longings, and “Inn,” in which a choir member rehearsing for the Christmas pageant becomes part of the original Christmas story, to “Newsletter,” where an invasion of parasitic creatures causes unusually good behavior in their hosts, and “Epiphany,” a story of three unlikely Magi following signs through a North American winter toward the returned Jesus Christ. “Miracle” is a comic romance echoing Willis’s favorite Yuletide movie, Miracle on 34th Street, and “Catspaw” is a homage to the traditional Christmas murder mystery with a sly, science-fictional twist. The collection also includes “In Coppelius’ Toyshop,” in which a bad guy is trapped in Toyland, and “Adaptation,” a Dickensian story about what it means to keep Christmas in your heart.

Those who want only SF stories may find this collection lacking, but anyone who enjoys complex tales with true Christmas spirit will treasure it. —Nona Vero

-from Amazon.com

Third Class Superhero (2006)by Charles Yu

Issues of identity and insecurity simmer throughout Yu’s debut collection, an imaginative excursion into the burrow Kafka built. In “My Last Days as Me,” the unnamed star of the hit TV show Me and My Mother chafes at the recasting of his onscreen mother and eradicates the line between actor and character. The unnamed man in “Man of Quiet Desperation Goes on Short Vacation” evaluates his existential condition as frequently as a time-obsessed man checks his watch. And in the title story, “Moisture Man” strives to improve his position in the superhero hierarchy, which means constant self-appraisal and comparison to his more successful counterparts (“fireball shooters. A few are ice makers. Half a dozen telepath/empaths”). Yu flirts with formal experimentation—”Problems for Self-Study” unfolds as a complicated multiple choice test, for example—but tempers his fantastical constructions with level prose. (The first two paragraphs of “The Man Who Became Himself” are “He was turning into something unspeakable” and “At the office, people avoided the issue.”) There is abundant humor, though, and Yu allows the reader to feel pathos without patronization; a neat trick, in a compulsively readable collection. (Sept.)
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taken from Amazon.com

I have had too much work to read any novels recently. It is stretching the imagination to call this strictly science fiction (unless you label anything dealing with superheros as such).

What are some of your favorite short story collections?