On "Rolls" by Alexa Mergen (1184 words) ***

This short piece excels in description. Having spent the first half of my life out west, it was wonderful to read someone's account of that fine desert and of those little far-out places in between the big cities. Perhaps I've read and seen a lot of disturbing pieces lately, but I felt a certain menace under the events here. A young adult takes a trip back across the country and gets stuck, the result of a car too old (been there!). Luckily, there are a few rolls to keep the person alive. Read the story here at Jenny Mag.

On "The Metaphor Pusher" by Aaron Fox-Lerner (6:36 seconds) ****

The second of two stories featured in this edition of the monthly audio literature magazine Bound Off, Fox-Lerner's piece is about a man coming to grips with a disappointing trip to Asia and about how literature can find a home even in our day-to-day experience. A street-side vendor pushes not watches but metaphors. (Reminds me a bit of a man back in California who would offer to write a poem for people: that was what he was selling on the street.) Listen to the story here at Bound Off.

On "Ender's Game" by Orson Scott Card ****

This one came highly recommended by someone when I noted that I was going to do a classic science fiction list. No doubt, this is one of the newest books on said list, but I did want some newer contemporary writers represented. I can see why the book was recommended. It's a great book in terms of propelling one along as a reader to want to read more and more.

The story is essentially that of Ender Wiggin, a child who is drafted into the army at the age of six. This is a world that is looking for a superhero, and Ender is just that, as were potentially his two siblings, Peter and Valentine. The problem was that Peter was too violent, Valentine not quite what the bigwigs wanted either. So Ender is it. He's a third, in a world where couples are allowed only two children, so he's already known as an outlier. This in turn means that he's likely to be beaten up by other kids--and by Peter.

One day, faced with a mob, Ender beats up the lead kid, beats him up so badly that the kid will never threaten him again--nor anyone. That's the goal. But he feels guilty about treating others like so, the way Peter would. So Ender has, in addition to proclivities to violence, a kind of empathy to tame it.

Along come the generals to take him off to battle academy. The academy essentially consists of playing battle games in zero gravity--something akin to laser tag of sorts. In between, there are classes and video games. As technically too young for the school, Ender is again an outsider, prone to getting beaten up. However, he's savvy, knows how to work the politics so that he gets what he wants, over and over. And he's good at the games too, which lends him respect, even when he's told, for example, not to fight.

Eventually, he works his way up at the school and then is promoted to commander school, where the battles become huge simulations of actual battles with the buggers, as they are known.

This is why Eros (i.e., Earth) needs a superhero. Twice, the buggers tried to invade Eros, and both times they barely were repelled. Unless humans prepare for the next onslaught and have a brilliant commander, there is no hope. Ender is that hope. And with each command battle, Ender proves why he is.

There are a few tricks Card drops in near the end of the book that I won't reveal here. Suffice to say that the ever-feeling Ender is a reluctant warrior.

Card treats his children like adults--or in other words, he writes them as if they are adults. They are precocious, and they aren't allowed to be children in this particular world, but still, they don't come across to me quite the way kids would, and in that sense, I had something of a hard time with the characterizations in this book. But if you can accept that or get beyond it, the story is an intriguing one. And the characters were well enough drawn that I actually found myself caring about them, despite how fantastic they seemed.

On "The Guava Tree" by Darshan Baral (1755 words) ***

Mrs. Uprety has a tree that she takes much pride in, so much pride that she doesn't allow anyone to touch it, not even her husband. The results of this pride come to full bear when some neighborhood boys decide to eat a few pieces. Read the story here at Jenny Mag.

On "You Thrive Now" by Jordan Rossen and Paul Rossen (4928 words) ***

Vella is shaking, and so is her mom. Her mom is in an advanced state of Parkinson's, and Vella, not quite forty, fears that she is on her way toward the same. Meanwhile, she works trying to sell subscriptions to a theater, thinking back on a past in which she was sort of an actress, a past in which she might have had love, and trying to piece together what little of life might remain for her in the future. Settle for an alcoholic boyfriend? Sing for a convalescent home? Her mom's boyfriend seems to be doing much the same, clinging on to the memory of her mom more that the sick woman herself. Read the story here at Baltimore Review.

On "Second Foundation" by Isaac Asimov ***

This final book in Asimov's Foundation Trilogy is essentially a high-tech tale of hide-and-go-seek. It recounts the story of a band of fellows from the First Foundation attempting to find the location of the Second Foundation, and the Second Foundation attempting to remain hidden. Way back in the first book of the trilogy, a man named Hari Selden founded the Foundation as a means to maintain scientific know-how amid a crumbling empire so that civilization goes into the dark ages for a few hundred years rather than a few thousand. The Foundation is founded around men with a lot of physical scientific knowledge. Selden, himself, was a mathematician, but he used it to create sets of probabilities that could predict the future, and as becomes clear by the second book in the series, to control people's minds.

That there is a Second Foundation on the opposite side of the galaxy is a myth or rumor that has long existed. This Second Foundation, the rumor goes, belongs to people who can control minds and predict the future but who do not have any technical know-how.

A band of fellows come to the conclusion that such a foundation exists and decide that they must discover and destroy it so that the First Foundation will not falter.

Meanwhile, the Second Foundation is worried. It's worried because the future that has been foretold has been messed up by an individual. As a result, the probability that the galaxy will descend into complete chaos has risen to heights that demand action.

Since readers know that there is a Second Foundation, the book is intriguing mostly because readers don't know the actual location of the Second Foundation. Like the First Foundationers in search of it, readers move forward with excitement to see if the place where this foundation exist will ever be found. Asimov throws a number of twist endings in toward the last few chapters, as the First Foundationers reach various conclusions: that the Foundation doesn't exist, that it does and it's scattered or all among us, and so on. Each option seems plausible. But readers are in on an irony that the poor First Foundationers are not.

If the trilogy is seen as an exploration of fate versus choice, Asimov's answer seems to come down slightly in favor of fate. But to say that he wholly embraces fate would be difficult. After all, the probabilities, once the appearance of the Mule occurs in book 2, are stacked against what Selden had predicted mathematically, so to keep such events in line, they must be perennially fine-tuned by a set of men who pull strings. If so, then someone somewhere pulling the strings still have free choice, even if those being pulled along do not.

On "Forecast" by Jen Bergmark (715 words) ****

The nervous preparation for a date--that's what this story is about, that anticipation and possible disappointment. OkCupid poses a question regarding whether a first date or an interview makes you more nervous. I choose the latter. Dates are supposed to be fun, so I don't tend to view them as something to be nervous about. The harder part for me is getting the date--that first call (will she answer?); that request (will she accept)--so if I'm actually going out, I'm quite relieved. But I know some people get quite nervous about dates, more than about jobs. What's interesting for me is once I'm on the date sometimes I'll feel a certain staidness, an inability to be myself--especially if I really like the girl and think there's potential. That's why not getting a second date makes me so depressed in such situations. But I'm sure that this woman, in making preparation, feels much the same way--only before the date even happens. Bergmark here does a magnificent job of catching that awkwardness. Read it here at Platte Valley Review.

On "Foundation and Empire" by Isaac Asimov **

This second book in Asimov's Foundation Trilogy covers the history of the Foundation as it rises to power and the Empire as it makes its final decline. Or rather, that is the story it tells in its first section. After that, the tale becomes mostly one about the Foundation.

Taking the story up where he left off, Asimov recounts how the Empire falls through means that are entirely predictable and beyond the control of any one person. A trader sets out to save the Foundation by destroying the Empire and learns later that his actions have no bearing on the Empire's eventual fall and Foundation's triumph. The seeds of the Empire's failure had already been planted and would flower no matter who came about.

Asimov debunks this idea, however, in the book's second half. Years pass, and the Foundation's rulers become greedy and selfish. A set of traders set out to overthrow this ruling class. However, in the midst of their planning, a mutant arises who goes by the name the Mule. This mutant has raised an army that quickly overwhelms the Foundation's strongholds, and now the traders throw their lot in with the Foundation rather than against it.

But the Mule is indominatable. Unpredicted in Hari Selden's mathematical proclamation of future history, this one man DOES make a difference, shattering the Foundation and bringing all under his control, including remnants of the old Empire. Society will not be what Selden had predicted, because one man can change history.

Asimov focuses then on a small cast of characters, including a clown who has escaped from the Mule and who chums along with some traders and a psychohistorian. They are on a quest to find the Secound Foundation, a set of psychohistorians (rather than the physical scientists of the First Foundation), both of whom were set up at the end of the previous Empire to guard society and bring about a universal government and peace faster than would be possible if chaos were let reign. The final chapters bring some surprises and major diagesis of the various ideas and themes. This is much more a book of ideas than of fine or interesting writing and characterization.

On "Winner Take Nothing" by Philip Gardner (5849 words) ***

So the story seems a bit far-fetched--it's still good reading. The narrator is a musician whose band played around a bit in a not-so-distant past, played around enough that the musician has a paternity suit on his hands from a woman he can't remember. This is a tale that, like it's title, focuses on some not so well-off segments of society, everyone just getting by. Read it here at the Baltimore Review.

On "A Hard Bed" by Princess Perry (6176 words) ****

Here's a bit of historical fiction for you. The Pembers are poor black folk trying to make a good of it on a farm. Joh Pember seduces Molly, and that's just the beginning of the end of any dreams they might have. Molly, pregnant, will not get to go to school to be nurse, if Namon, Joh's brother, gets to make the decision. What Namon suffers at the hands of the whites in town he turns on his own family. Read the story here at Kweli Journal.

On "Foundation" by Isaac Asimov ***

The first in a trilogy, this novel is more focused on plot than on individual characters, and more focused on theme than on much of anything else. Asimov essentially sets out to tell the history of a galactic society, and this history has smackings of the history of Western civilization. I'm reminded a lot of the history of the Roman Empire. In terms of novels, I'm reminded of multigenerational novels, like Naguib Mahfouz's The Harafish.

We begin at a time when a single empire dominates the galaxy. Unfortunately, its power is waning. But historical forces, at least from the perspective of the novel, are predictable. And one psychohistorian, as such people are called, has figured out, via math and science, what the future holds. Follow his advice, and when the empire falls, it will reestablish itself in a thousand years; don't follow it, and the empire won't return for thirty thousand years. Luckily, he's smart enough to have been able also to predict how the rulers of the empire will react. They banish him to the outskirts of the empire, but they allow him to create an encyclopedia, which will store all of society's knowledge (the idea of such a book seems, in a way, rather antiquated now, in our Internet age).

True to form, the Foundation, as it is called, does retain scientific knowledge. But it does so without much in the way of control over the planet where it is centered. Meanwhile, the edges of the empire have collapsed, and in its place, are now a set of warring planets. The Foundation remains, however, through clever politics, playing one planet against another--and also by forging a religion. The religion gives it power in a soft sense but not a hard sense (think Catholicism of the Middle Ages). The priests control the masses, and the ruling class dare not stray too far from what the heads of the religion (i.e., the Foundation) wants.

As time moves forward, however, religion's influence begins to wane in favor of traders (capitalism, mercantilism, etc.). Now it is these men who play one planet against another, introducing technologies in order to further the Foundation's control.

A book of ideas more than characters, the piece focuses on three main crises. One doesn't end up caring much about any of the people involved, but as a book of ideas, it is fairly interesting.

On "Futures" by Matthew Burnside (668 words) ***

Okay, so you have some options here. You've just hit a jogger while driving. This isn't an easy topic to write about. I've tried. It's hard to put one's self in the mind of someone who's just done something so utterly life-redefining. Burnside manages to do it four times. You pick. Read the options here at LitnImage.

On "The Little Girl With Budding Breasts and a Bubblegum Laugh" by A. Igoni Barrett (5804 words) ****

A friend recently asked why I like the book Lolita and whether I sympathized with the main character. Does one have to sympathize with a main character? I'm not convinced one does. Still there's a certain sick hopelessness, a pitifulness, to such characters. Writing about subjects like incest or pedophilia is almost always of a disturbing nature, and this story is no exception. Here a man falls for his cousin fifteen years his junior. He's got no business living in the same house with her, and reading as the events unfold is downright icky. She's a spoiled teen; he's nearing thirty. The decisions he makes, mostly based around her, become increasingly more disturbing and also secretive. If you have the stomach, you can read the story here at Kweli Journal.

On "2001" by Arthur C. Clarke ****

Reading the prefatory material to this book, it sounds as if Clarke actually wrote the screenplay to the film with the director Stanley Kubrick before he wrote the book. So in a sense, this book is an adaptation or an extended treatment. And it's impossible not to compare the two works. One is a classic movie, engaging in parts and a mind trip in others. Clarke's book lays out the principles of the movie in my more dogmatic and thus less-interesting form. That's not to say that the book isn't intriguing in its own right.

Take, for example, the beginning sections of the film and the book, which deal with prehistoric man. I find those sections of the film rather dull. For one, one doesn't quite understand what's going on among these prelinguistic apes, and such doesn't make for the most-compelling viewing. In the book, the thoughts of the lead ape are described in detail, and you get the sense of discovery that early pre-man has hit upon: hunting, not just gathering; tools; killing others.

Skip ahead to the future, and man is out exploring space. When a strange monolith is discovered on the moon, similar to the one that the apes discovered, the United States decides to send men to Saturn to study the monolith's possible origins. Here, the film and book fairly well match each other, though the book goes into more detail. Clarke is masterful in predicting future technological advances, though some things seem strangely anachronistic as well (a video phone hooked up by cables?). Both the film and movie do a good job of explaining how technically some things might be accomplished, given enough manpower and will.

This middle section if the most-compelling part of both works, as a computer that runs the spaceship that is taking five astronauts to one of Saturn's moons decides that its human counterparts aren't up to the job--and that their presence threatens its own existence. Herein, Dave Bowman does all he can to save his crew, himself, and his mission, as the plot centers on man versus self-cognizant machine.

It's the last section that I was most curious to see "adapted." In the film, this becomes a masterful 1970s tripout. What in the world could Clarke have done in the book? Well, it becomes a description of the universe and of the possible origins of man--a lecture of sorts, of far less interest. And of the ultimate ending? In the movie, with less explanation, the scenes of Bowman hanging out in a room are mysterious and strange. In the book, all of this is explained. Strange, sure, but not as mysterious. In all the tripout is replaced with something much more in keeping with science fiction and with the thoughts of someone whose done a lot of thinking about the subject of intelligence, which makes for much less ambiguity and thus for something that is not quite as much of a classic.

On "Bar Beach Show" by E. C. Osondu (3375 words) ***

I haven't read too much literature from Africa, but among that which I have read, there is often a kind of simplicity and sadness. The stories are of people struggling to make a living amid poverty and lack of work, of pride and joy in small things. In this tale, a young man defies his father in his desire to become a musician--and ultimately a crook. In a nation where there is little justice, the crook, depending on a person's point of view, may be considered a government critic or simply a barbarian beating up on who he can. Father takes on stand, son another. The results are expectedly tragic. Read the story here at Fifty-Two Stories.

On "Always the Same Dream" by Andy Mozina (1961 words) ****

This piece reminds me a bit of Mike Birbiglia's work, perhaps because it has to do with sleep, and because sleep dysfunctions had a major role in Birbiglia's movie, I tend to associate them together. The story also has the kind of kooky humor that Birbiglia has as well. A man with a brain dysfunction has repeated dreams--strange ones at that. The stories worth reading just for those. Check them out here at Diagram.

On "Return from the Stars" by Stanislaw Lem *****

I think of Lem as the author of Solaris, and as such (because of the movies), I think of him as the writer of slow theme-heavy, deep-thinking science fiction, even though until now I had never read him. But the novel, as written here, fits within those preconceptions--perhaps, not quite as slow as the Solaris movies but certainly not heavy on plot.

Hal Bregg has returned from a mission into the nether regions of the galaxy, one that tried the limits of human ability (to become a pilot for the mission, he had to undergo a series of tests that involved severe isolation, including one in which an astronaut is left untethered and away from any spacecraft or station in a spacesuit in the middle of space for an undetermined amount of time; most men go crazy). As such, while he has aged only a few years (he's now in his forties), the earth he returns to has aged 150 years--and it is very different, so different that the return of those on his mission is barely mentioned in media reports. Technology has far outstripped Bregg's period, and interest in the stars has fallen by the wayside.

The first hundred pages or so of this book involve mostly Bregg's exploration of this new earth, a place that is a technological utopia. Cities are built on levels stretching to the sky, with television screens standing in for the outdoors. Gravity has been conquered, allowing crafts to be built that, even if they manage to crash, are perfectly suited to keeping anything inside from being damaged. Robots have taken over doing most daily tasks, leaving humans to relax or to oversee the overseeing robots. Life-time marriage has been replaced by temporal contracts that can be renewed for periods of time. But most important, man's baser instincts have been conquered through a medical procedure that removes aggression from the human body. There are no more wars, no more violent crimes--but neither is there much in the way of desire to explore other worlds or to accomplish feats no one else has ever achieved. Fear grips man as much as sheer apathy.

In this sense, Bregg is confronted with a different vision of life, one he does not initially like. Is the cost of conquering human passion worth the loss of that passion? What's more, what was the value of Bregg's journey to the stars if no one appreciates it now, and if technology itself has now made trips like Bregg's conceptually utterly easy to accomplish (even if no one has an interest in pursuing them)?

In time, Bregg meets up with a crew member for a little boxing match (boxing being an aggressive sport no one has any interest in now, other than those who have not gone through the medical procedure). He meets a woman for whom he develops quick feelings, and he marries her. And finally, he meets another old crew member and learns that in fact another trip to the stars is being planned. Will Bregg go?

The world has rubbed off on Bregg, and he's come to see exploration as pointless. But his faith in it seems to be somewhat restored by his old colleague, who denotes that man's need to explore is not based on what riches he will bring back from his voyage (did the antarctic explorers expect to find gold at the South Pole?) but on the need to accomplish grand feats and to know what is out there. Were the universe a big black blank instead of a place full of stars and alternate worlds, men would still go into the blackness to see what was there. And Bregg, taking a walk afterward, seems to recognize again that sense of wonder he had as a child.

On "Clínica Tikal" by Vanessa Blakeslee (5921 words) ***

I'm not much into pure science fiction, but this Blakeslee's piece does such a good job of telling a story that I felt it worthy to share here. We start in Latin America, with a woman who visits a soothsayer regularly. This woman is told that she has a cyst that must be removed immediately if she is to ever have children. She is to go, not to the best doctors in Guatemala, and not to New York City. She is to go rather to a mysterious place that the soothsayer writes out for her on the card. The place, as we find out (as we in fact expect), turns out to be much more than a great medical establishment. Read the story here at Ascent.

On "Always the Same. Till it is Not." by Cecil Castellucci (1796 words) ***

Here's a tale that essentially mimics evolution in its style. We read as a person moves from merely caring about moving and eating to the deeper things in life. Or should one say that he evolves? Of course, being part of Apex Magazine, the tale is so simple as that. There's some kind of other worldly problem going on here. Read it here at Apex.

On "Make Do" by Molly Laich (3604 words) ****

To be young and too early focused on serious things is to scrap it all and return to some highly questionable activities. Nathan Barnes isn't doing drugs, but it seems that he wants to be. He might have a hot girlfriend and live in a nice place, but he misses the sketchy times of his past. Old times call. I love how this piece is so nonchalant about everything. It's like we're hanging out with the weirdos ourselves, and then, the big moment arrives, and we're in there too, wondering what will happen, excited not to know. Read the story here at Corium.