Clarkesworld Podcast April 2013: Finisterra (David Moles)

Finisterra (David Moles)

The text version can be found here.

Read by Kate Baker

An engineer seeking a new life signs up with hardened criminals, only to discover their crimes don't stop at a bit of poaching.

So, the details that kept yanking me out of this were all world building on Earth, specifically details like

[...]the Nazarios, like the other Christians of Punta Aguila, however valued, however ancient their roots, knew that they lived there only on sufferance.

and

a slow, patient, reliable thing that dated from before the founding of the London Caliphate.

And it does seem to be the Punta Aquila in the Dominican Republic.

Could be the sort of detail tossed as "look, the world changed" but in a 2007 story, a casual reader might be forgiven for hearing Eurabia dogwhistles.

First published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, December 2007.

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Escape: The Adaptive Ultimate (Stanley G. Weinbaum, as "John Jessel"))

The Adaptive Ultimate (Stanley G. Weinbaum, as "John Jessel"))

An earnest doctor, eager to offer humanity a discover that would render us immune to most of life's travails, discovers to his horror the dying woman he tried it on has become the greatest monster imaginable, a woman with power!

Yeah, so this pretty awful in pretty much every conceivable way. Although I do take the point that it's probably best not to use instant immortal juice on someone who seems to be a sociopath.

I did like how the two doctors discuss how horrid she looks right in front of the dying woman. Bedside manner: as mythical in this time as medical ethics.

Not Oh David Gerrold No

Because frankly this just reflects one of the core truths about SF, which is that it is not and has never been about 'power to the people', which is which why there are so many aristocracies in science fiction.

Facebook warning

The problem with the net is just anyone is allowed on it. Oh, for the days when computers were a reliable class marker and the Right People didn't have to share the net with those sorts.

The Science Fiction Book Club Reviews Revisited: January 2001

Lists courtesy of Andrew Wheeler.

Contents for anthologies and omnibuses from the Locus Index to Science Fiction www.locusmag.com/index/
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The illustration in the upper right

Is my little device.

Thanks to Steve Bowers and Randy McDonald for pointing this out.