Overall this double issue is not as riveting as others have been, despite the presence of some great stories from Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Jack Dann, and Charlie Jane Anders. ( )

A big double issue of stories, and one of the best issues of the year despite a couple stories that didn't work at all for me. There are 6 novelettes and 7 short stories as well as quite a few poems and various columns and essays. The story fiction is:

The Time Travel Club • novelette by Charlie Jane Anders
Memories of Earth • shortstory by Neal Asher
When the Rain Comes • shortstory by Ian McHugh
Grounded • novelette by Meg Pontecorvo
Adventures in Cognitive Homogamy: A Love Story • shortstory by Paul Di Filippo
A Very Small Dispensation • shortstory by Sheila Finch
Waiting for Medusa • shortstory by Jack Dann
Quantum Orpheus, at the Light Cone's Apex • novelette by Igor Teper
No Others are Genuine • novelette by Gregory Frost
The Wildfires of Antarctica • shortstory by Alan DeNiro
Deep Diving • novelette by Joel Richards
Within These Well-Scrubbed Walls • shortstory by Ian Creasey
Encounter on Starbase Kappa • Diving Universe • novelette by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Brief comments:

Charlie Jane Anders's Asimov debut "The Time Travel Club" is mostly a story about an odd group of friends. Honestly I got bored - this didn't do much for me. I think this is an example of the sort of stories that just aren't a good match for me as a reader.

"Memories of Earth" by Neal Asher is a short interesting piece that feels longer since so much seems to be packed into this. The reader is almost immediately thrown into the action where a terra-forming team comes under attack. Less than half the crew survive and the guy in charge who seems to have been a rather superhuman cyborg has been badly damaged. He and some crew continue to work at building an earth-like place as he slowly dies. Pretty good story.

"When the Rain Comes" is kind of a cool little story of those left behind when others went to the stars. Those left remember with song and stories. I'm not sure the environment these people are in makes sense, but given that this is pretty short Ian McHugh did a good job with this in only a few pages.

I thought I might get an overload of adolescent rebellion when I first started "Grounded" by Meg Pontecorvo, but the angst was pretty appropriate. I'm not quite sure how Xam tells us this story, but she does so in a first person narrative. I think she's in middle school, and her Mom really embarrasses her with paranoia about some strange stuff going on. Mom is not really paranoid - just being Mom - as the schools have quarantine buses for taking the kids home and so on. Xam's mom walks around in an enviro suit and expects Xam to do so as well. When they get home they go through a decontamination procedure so the funny stuff has been going on for a while obviously. We miss the backstory here, just jumping in with all these petals falling from the sky. Enjoyable story for what it is.

“Adventures in Cognitive Homogamy: A Love Story” is by Paul Di Filippo. This is a moment in time of the ever travelling "Handsome Kioga Matson." The first few pages kind of put me off and did little to interest me. I found myself skimming and eventually skipped the last few pages of the story.

In “A Very Small Dispensation,” Sheila Finch spins a tale about little Patty Reed of the Donner party and perhaps why death did not stop for her during that harsh winter. The story isn't exactly true to history, and we are never told it was the Donner Party, although it is obvious. Nevertheless, an interesting story is told and the end is done well, not really knowing what will happen. I liked it.

Do you know what love is? Sure I know. A boy loves his dog. In this update and homage to Harlan Ellison, Jack Dann gives us a different, modern take on "A Boy and His Dog". His story "Waiting for Medusa" is much much grittier if my memory is right, and not exactly the same story. It goes a liitle too far to the dark side for fiction I expect from Asimov's, but I thought it was well done. Then end bothered me, as I'm sure it was supposed to.

In “Quantum Orpheus, at the Light Cone’s Apex” by Igor Teper, Abe discovers that a quantum computer he has been programming to assist with a deep space probe project is becoming sentient. There is another story within this where Abe reconnects with his estranged daughter to assist him with ideas for helping the computer develop. The two parts progress. I thought this was an excellent story.

I would call "No Others are Genuine" by Gregory Frost a horror story, set in the days of the Edison wax cylinder player. A young boy has a crush on a resident of the boarding house he lives in with his mother. He spends time with her at a music store where she works. This is all well written and had my interest from the start. It was one of my favorite stories in this issue. However, I think it would probably fit better in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, instead of Asimov's.

In the future of "The Wildfires of Antarctica," a short story by Alan DeNiro, art is something different than it is now. This again felt like a horror story, but it is clearly a science fiction horror story about something that is really creepy.

Joel Richards's "Deep Diving" is set in the far future aboard a starship. There's a lot of stuff packed into this story about a sort of mind reader who becomes part of a murder investigation and more. Who the murderer was, was rather surprising to me and made the story that much more interesting. Pretty good here.

"Within These Well-Scrubbed Walls" is a good story by Ian Creasey. A man deals with the loss of his mother and finds something unexpected among his mother's and his own childhood possessions.

"Encounter on Starbase Kappa" is a companion piece to the story "The Application of Hope" by KKR that appeared in the August 2013 issue of Asimov's. In the prior story a ship had disappeared. Here we find out what happened to it. I felt this was a stronger story than "The Application of Hope." The Captain and his crew are lost in several ways and Captain Cooper works to get back on track. ( )

Overall this double issue is not as riveting as others have been, despite the presence of some great stories from Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Jack Dann, and Charlie Jane Anders. ( )