Every once in a while, you come across a story that does interesting things with your childhood. This, by Holly Mintzer, is one of those.

In the weeks that followed, it got harder to treat Kermit like a school project. He spent a lot of his time with Brian, who claimed to need to do a bunch of unspecified adjustments to the robot, although this mostly seemed to entail Kermit being shown off to all Brian’s friends. Anji didn’t mind it too much, though, because it gave her more time to try and puzzle out Kermit’s code, and also it meant that Kermit acquired a very small banjo and several sets of little clothes from Muppet fans among Brian’s friends. And that seemed to make Kermit happy.

That was the freaky thing: Anji had designed a bot that could seem to be happy. She wasn’t supposed to be able to do that. She was way, way outside the parameters of her project now, into territory that people who studied AI for a living hadn’t covered anywhere Anji could find. Because Kermit could, in fact, make jokes—and if he was mimicking them, the originals weren’t in the footage Anji had fed him—and he could noodle around on the banjo in a way that sounded nothing like the precision of music-playing AIs Anji had heard. And he could also do things that freaked Anji out on a deep and meaningful personal level, like the afternoon when Kermit, perched on the edge of the bed in Anji’s dorm, stopped strumming his banjo and sighed wistfully.

“You know, I sure do miss Fozzie,” he announced, and Anji stopped typing mid-keystroke.

“What did you say?” Anji asked, trying not to sound as startled as she felt.

“Oh, it’s not that I don’t like it here, Anji. You and Brian are awfully nice. But Fozzie’s my best friend, you know? After a while, you get to miss things. The squeak of a rubber chicken. The smell of custard pie on fur. Little things like that.”

He sighed again, and went back to strumming his banjo. Anji waited five minutes, excused herself, and ran full-tilt across campus to Brian’s dorm.

He answered the door, looking concerned. Well, Anji had been hammering on it pretty hard. “What’s the matter? Is Kermit okay?”

“Brian, I think we invented sentient AI.” Anji tried not to sound like she was panicking. She totally was, though. “We weren’t supposed to invent sentient AI! I was just supposed to get a passing grade! Now there’s an artificial life-form in my dorm room who plays the banjo!”

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My friend Lynne Thomas has had a busy year. The second book she edited came out, the third went to the publisher, and she won a Hugo award for the first. On top of all that, she recently started editing Apex Magazine. Her first issue came out in November. This story, the first professional sale by Michael Pevzner, is in the current issue.

“It tried to convince us, too, when we arrived,” says the man, an understanding look in his brown eyes. “Me and Lia and Mark and little Taiho. But we aren’t fools. We figured out its plan. And you know how? Because the City is empty! Look at it, there’s nobody here.” He taps his temple with his finger, proud of himself. “If it’s all like it says, if it was really designed as the next step of evolution, then why the hell is it empty? Huh?” The man is pleased with himself. “No, buddy, you can’t fool me. It’s all lies. Lies and hogwash. I don’t know what happened to the previous city, what happened to the people who used to live here, but the previous city is gone. What you see here now—it’s a predator that set up a lair for itself here, and it uses the old mechanisms of the city to bring itself new prey.”

The orchestra becomes stronger. I see the woman’s face again—her perfect, gentle face—appearing out of the fog of exhaustion that films my eyes. She smiles at me. She whispers something to me, but I can’t understand what it is. I am drawn again into the dance of voices, I feel its softness enwrapping me; I want to fall into it—and sleep, sleep, sleep…

“I want to go to the Temple,” I say in a weak but stable voice.

“Didn’t you listen to me at all, or what!”’ shouts the man. “The Temple is a lie! The Temple is the monster’s maw, the City will devour you! Don’t you get it!”

The woman continues to smile at me.

“You can’t stop me,” I say.

“Oh, I can. I can and I will. I don’t care what you want and what you don’t want, but I’m not intending to feed the beast.” He rises from his stool and exits the room, and I hear him shutting the heavy door behind him and locking it.

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John M. Ford was called “Mike” by his friends. To con-goers, he was known as that guy you could spend hours talking to, not know what it was you ended up talking about, and not care. To his fans, he was frequently known as the guy who not only wrote the best Star Trek novel ever, but also made that mean something. This, like any other piece of his work, is nothing like that, except that it’s pure Mike.

“What, Sherez, must you polish your own teeth now? I’ve given Emael orders that you’re not to go three days without a filing.”

“Your sson fears me,” said the dragon. “He thinkss I sshall ssnap him up.”

“So did I, when I was no bigger than your fang. Emael wears a sword now. He can wield a rasp.”

“But you will not chain your sson to the sstair, as your father did you, will you, Owen? He iss no coward, your sson. Only young, and uncertain.”

“He will be Count one day, Sherez, and he must know you.”

“No.”

Owen stared. “What do you mean by that? What is going to happen to my son?”

“I do not know, Owen.”

“Not . . . know?” The Count looked at the dragon’s head, twice Owen’s own height, and behind it the hunched scaly back and thick hind legs. The vestigial wings were folded flat, fanning open and shut slightly as Sherez breathed. What a creature is dragon, the poets sang, though for his wisdom he resigned the air to crawl . . . Years ago, a traveling artificer had displayed a whole dragon brain, preserved in smelly liquid. The arms of three men could not span it round. How could that brain–

As the mazes of the dragonium wound above and below, that brain coiled through time; time past, time future. All moments were one to a dragon, tomorrow as real as yesterday, this very instant the same to it as last year or next generation. Sherez could tell Owen the hour of the Count’s death, had he only the courage to ask.

How could that brain not know?

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My friend Kelly McCullough has a new series launching this Tuesday with the book Broken Blade. (You can read the first chapter here, and if you’re in the Twin Cities, you can see the book launch events here.) Having just read the third book in this series, I can confidently say that I love how this series treats its gods. This doesn’t surprise me at all. Kelly’s always had an irreverent touch, as this story can attest.

“Excuse me sir,” said Slither, but do you have an invita–” Slither trailed off as the man turned his one eye on him. There was destiny in that gaze, or at least all the bad parts, and Slither changed his tack. “Er, that is… Um. We’d prefer it if no one brought pets.”

The eye held him for a moment longer and then the man bobbed his head once. “Hugin, Munin, wait with Sleipner.” The ravens leapt into the air and flew outside.

“Thank you,” gulped Slither.

He would have gone on, but just then he was distracted by the arrival of another guest. At least, Slither assumed she was another guest. He certainly wasn’t going to ask for her invitation. There was something menacing about her. He couldn’t really put his finger on what it was, but the necklace of skulls was high on the list. So was the feeling that she hadn’t got quite the right number of arms.

With the next arrival, Slither completely gave up on trying to screen the guests and fled to the kitchens. What, after all, do you say to a man wearing a jackal’s head. But the kitchen didn’t seem to be much of a refuge. Not with Eris dominating it. She was a beautiful woman with long golden hair and a very tight, very thin, white tunic. The bandage over her eyes was even thinner, and Slither would almost swear that she winked at him when he entered.

A few minutes of that sent him back out to the hall. He wanted to have a word with Thurible. It took a few minutes, but Slither eventually spotted the wizard. He was escorting an elderly bald man to a seat at the high table. The man was wearing a simple white robe, and his hands shook with a palsy of some kind. Slither pounced. The man was definitely not on the guest list. More importantly, he didn’t intimidate Slither in least.

“Here Thurible, what’s this. I want to have a word with you. There seems to be odd goings-on. But first, I’d like to see this fellow’s invite. I don’t remember-” Slither stopped in mid-sentence when the old man handed him a folded piece of paper. Slither opened it.

“Plato,” it said, “old dog of a philosopher. If you would see your thoughts embodied, come to my dinner. Eris.”

“What else did you want?” asked Thurible.

“Oh never mind,” said Slither. “I’ll be in the pantry. Send a page to fetch me when the meal is ready.”

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Nancy Fulda is an editor and short story author who is, as so many do, working on a novel. Hopefully it will be as good and as thought-provoking as this story.

“Would there be side effects?” My father asks.  In the oppressive heat of the evening, I hear the quiet Zzzapof his shoulder laser as it targets mosquitoes.  The device is not as effective as it was two years ago: the mosquitoes are getting faster.

My father is a believer in technology, and that is why he contacted the research institute.  He wants to fix me.  He is certain there is a way.

“There would be no side effects in the traditional sense,”the specialist says.  I like him even though his presence makes me uncomfortable.  He chooses his words very precisely.  “We’re talking about direct synaptic grafting, not drugs.  The process is akin to bending a sapling to influence the shape of the grown tree.  We boost the strength of key dendritic connections and allow brain development to continue naturally. Young neurons are very malleable.”

“And you’ve done this before?”  I do not have to look to know my mother is frowning.

My mother does not trust technology.  She has spent the last ten years trying to coax me into social behavior by gentler means.  She loves me, but she does not understand me.  She thinks I cannot be happy unless I am smiling and laughing and running along the beach with other teenagers.

“The procedure is still new, but our first subject was a young woman about the same age as your daughter.  Afterwards, she integrated wonderfully.  She was never an exceptional student, but she began speaking more and had an easier time following classroom procedure.”

“What about Hannah’s…talents?”my mother asks.  I know she is thinking about my dancing; also the way I remember facts and numbers without trying. “Would she lose those?”

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John Scalzi mentioned this story earlier this week, in his post on the Penn State football rape debacle. It had been a very long time since I’d read it. It was time again.

When I was in the same room as Ursula Le Guin, my brain simply refused to accept the fact that it was happening. I’ve met New York Times bestselling authors, chatted with them about dogs and refrigerators. Being starstruck doesn’t happen to me. But there was a woman who has, perhaps more than any other, perfected the art of using the unreal to tell us about ourselves. Just right over there. And that was itself completely unreal.

He finishes, and slowly lowers his hands holding the wooden flute.

As if that little private silence were the signal, all at once a trumpet sounds from the pavilion near the starting line: imperious, melancholy, piercing. The horses rear on their slender legs, and some of them neigh in answer. Sober-faced, the young riders stroke the horses’ necks and soothe them, whispering. “Quiet, quiet, there my beauty, my hope…” They begin to form in rank along the starting line. The crowds along the racecourse are like a field of grass and flowers in the wind. The Festival of Summer has begun.

Do you believe? Do you accept the festival, the city, the joy? No? Then let me describe one more thing.

In a basement under one of the beautiful public buildings of Omelas, or perhaps in the cellar of one of its spacious private homes, there is a room. It has one locked door, and no window. A little light seeps in dustily between cracks in the boards, secondhand from a cobwebbed window somewhere across the cellar. In one corner of the little room a couple of mops, with stiff, clotted, foul-smelling heads, stand near a rusty bucket. The floor is dirt, a little damp to the touch, as cellar dirt usually is.

The room is about three paces long and two wide: a mere broom closet or disused tool room. In the room, a child is sitting. It could be a boy or a girl. It looks about six, but actually is nearly ten. It is feeble-minded. Perhaps it was born defective, or perhaps it has become imbecile through fear, malnutrition, and neglect.

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Octavia Butler didn’t like writing short stories, but when she did, well, this one won basically all the genre awards in the year it came out.

“You should take more,” T’Gatoi said. Why are you such a hurry to be old?”

My mother said nothing.

“I like being able to come here,” T’Gatoi said. “This place is a refuge because of you, yet you won’t take care of yourself.”

T’Gatoi was hounded on the outside. Her people wanted more of us made available. Only she and her political faction stood between us and the hordes who did not understand why there was a Preserve – why any Terran could not be courted, paid, drafted, in some way made available to them. Or they did understand, but in their desperation, they did not care. She parceled us out to the desperate and sold us to the rich and powerful for their political support. Thus, we were necessities, status symbols, and an independent people. She oversaw the joining of families, putting an end to the final remnants of the earlier system of breaking up Terran families to suit impatient Tlic. I had lived outside with her. I had seen the desperate eagerness in the way some people looked at me. It was a little frightening to know that only she stood between us and that desperation that could so easily swallow us. My mother would look at her sometimes and say to me, “Take care of her.” And I would remember that she too had been outside, had seen.

Now T’Gatoi used four of her limbs to push me away from her onto the floor. “Go on, Gan,” she said. “Sit down there with your sisters and enjoy not being sober. You had most of the egg. Lien, come warm me.”

“Nothing can buy him from me.” Sober, she would not have permitted herself to refer to such things.

“Nothing,” T’Gatoi agreed, humoring her.

“Did you think I would sell him for eggs? For long life? My son?”

“Not for anything,” T’Gatoi said, stroking my mother’s shoulders, toying with her long, graying hair.

I would like to have touched my mother, shared that moment with her. She would take my hand if I touched her now. Freed by the egg and the sting, she would smile and perhaps say things long held in. But tomorrow, she would remember all this as a humiliation. I did not want to be part of a remembered humiliation. Best just be still and know she loved me under all the duty and pride and pain.

“Xuan Hoa, take off her shoes,” T’Gatoi said. “In a little while I’ll sting her again and she can sleep.”

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Carrie Vaughn first came to my attention six years ago this weekend, when her publisher gave away copies of her debut novel at the World Fantasy Convention. Even with a relatively small convention, that’s an expense. As it turns out, however, it was an investment that paid off. Carrie is both prolific and highly readable, as this short story demonstrates.

She spit in his direction, a bloodied gob of mucus. Couldn’t tell if she managed to hit anything. “Bastard,” someone muttered.

“Do it,” Alan said in a low voice. “Tell him.”

“No.” Live. That’s an order. But he wasn’t the captain anymore if he didn’t have a ship.

Chains clinked—Alan straightening. When he spoke, his voice was clear, commanding. God, he was still the captain, damn him.

“My first officer cannot sign your confession, Marshal.”

“Why not?”

“I’ll tell you alone. Tell your men to leave.” The Marshal frowned, and Alan said, “For God’s sake, what can I do to you now? I give you my word this is no trick.”

The Marshal sent his men away, so the three of them were alone. And Alan told him.

“The name is wrong.”

“On the contrary, I have all Gregory Lark’s aliases listed—”

“Grace Lark. Her name is Grace Lark.”

She closed her eyes. It was all over now. They’d still kill Alan, but she would have to live. And remember.

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Strange Horizons magazine has recently successfully completed its annual fund drive. It was a near thing, coming up to the last few hours. Donation-funded fiction is a risky thing, but it works for Strange Horizons in part because they keep bringing us stories like this one from D J Muir.

As she waves the heating coils to life under the cauldron, and sets the teapots and cups on their trays, she worries what today will bring. Like the Tyrant seeking out her talents, this worry is something new. Since her mother died five years ago, Jinli has never had to worry about the future—at least, not the short future, the few-days-ahead future—because when she thinks forward she can direct her thoughts to a time and place and see it with absolute clarity.

Only this afternoon is a storm of fragments which fly like snowflakes in a blizzard, a broken whiteout time. She can hear, see, smell, touch nothing. And when she thinks of tomorrow, she sees fractured images, as though each shard of a broken screen were playing a different vid, and she hears shattered soundtracks screech like sirens. There will be a tomorrow; but for the first time, what tomorrow will be she cannot say.

The last clear moment she foresees is this afternoon. She sees the Tyrant, the bald crown of his head gleaming, and he will be asking her father to bring her out, and then everything dissolves.

Only a few people know that Jinli can see futures. Only she knows that today she cannot.

Her father enters the kitchen smiling, come to fetch more cups to set on the tables. He and the Tyrant are of an age, but his hair is still thick and black; the teahouse has aged him less than the conquest of worlds has weighed on his former comrade. Father has lived a gentle life in the years between.

“Father,” says Jinli, “you will need the hao ryl this afternoon. He will be coming today, and he will want to play.”

She doesn’t have to say who he is; Father knows, and his smile fades a little.

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Sherwood Smith writes mostly fantasy, for both young adults and readers who would prefer not to be considered young. While many of these are set in classical fantasy worlds, the stories are not always what you would expect from those worlds.

Both children looked weary, Tam thought, as he sipped again from his tankard.

He looked up, met the mother’s gaze.  She, too, looked weary. Both weary and tense. “Where you from?” he asked.

Her smile was a mere thinning of the lips, a quick glimpse of self-mockery.  “We make our home wherever we happen to find ourselves.”  So saying she laid her fork and knife neatly across her plate, piled it atop her children’s, and then pulled from her own tote-bag some sewing.

The door opened then, bringing a gust of chill air.  Nelath and the two children all looked that way, quick as startled birds.  The newcomer, an old man, shuffled in and addressed the innkeeper in a low voice.

Curious, Tam strained to hear, but only a couple of words carried: “Horse,” “foal.”

Nelath dropped her gaze to her sewing, and she started a hem with fast and neat stitches.  She was even faster than his own mother had been, Tam realized, her stitches marvelously fine.

Her children, unbidden, bent dark, curly heads back to their tasks.

“You’re waiting for someone,” Tam said, putting together the clues at last.

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