Keith Roberts - Drek Yarman

Part three of three. Everything falls apart. Drek Yarman becomes a First Mate on the biggest Kiteship, gets married and has children. But his life is ruined by his other sister, Sinki. We learn more of the genocidalaims of the insane Ultra faction. The final scene, revealed at the start, has Drek dying getting his Kiteship away from Fishgard which is in flames as the Ultras take over. The two narratives finally end as Helman reveals a secret. A very dark, rich, moving work. A classic in the post-holocaust canon.

Charles Stross - A colder war

The story is a series of vignettes centred on the experiences of Roger Jourgensen, a family man, who is also a US government spook, monitoring the real struggle going on in the Cold War,and who is deeply affected by what he sees. This real struggle centres around the usage of alien lifeforms and relics, on Earth since before the dinosaurs. These lifeforms are so alien as to be things of nightmare fantasy or religious evil. They cannot reliably be controlled and killing them, even with a dedicated bomber wing using special plutonium nukes, is unlikely. On this alternate Earth, where Colonel Oliver North is a key figure in this Colder War, things go badly wrong. A classic, which opens up a new perspective on the boundary between science fiction and fantasy.

Eric Brown - The miracle at Kallithea

Sinclair, a drunken, broken artist (aren't they all) was deeply affected by his daughter's death. Moping on a Grecian island, he is visited by a fan, who turns out to be a research scientist, looking to use Sinclair to test a device which views alternate versions of Earth. Through this device Sinclair sees his daughter alive....Evocative but predictable.

Jack Deighton - SHIFT

SHIFT is a new form of instant interstellar travel, in which molecules are broken down in one location and then reassembled at another. An ex-dock yard worker mourns the last spaceship built, the Last Empress, because of this development. Perhaps because the future described here (inevitably) lacks realism, the story does not get the emotional depth it seeks. ( )