Editor David Afsharirad has announced the table of contents for The Year’s Best Military & Adventure SF, Volume 5, which will be available June 4 from Baen Books.
- “Love in the Time of Interstellar War” by Brendan DuBois
- “Going Dark” by Richard Fox
- “Scrapyard Ship” by Felix R. Savage
- “Broken Wings” by William Ledbetter
- “A Song of Home, the Organ Grinds” by James Beamon
- “Once on the Blue Moon” by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
- “Crash-Site” by Brian Trent
- “Thirty-three Percent Joe” by Suzanne Palmer
- “Hate in the Darkness” by Michael Z. Williamson
- “Homunculus” by Stephen Lawson
- “Not Made for Us” by Christopher Ruocchio
- “The Erkennen Job” by Chris Pourteau
Once the book is release there will be interactive reader voting to select one story from this anthology as the winner of The Best Military and Adventure Science Fiction Reader’s Choice Award, presented at Dragon Con in Summer 2019. The book is currently available for pre-order from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, the Austin independent bookstore Book People and elsewhere.
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Of those I’ve read “Thirty-three Percent Joe” by Suzanne Palmer, which is a funny story from a clever perspective – a soldier’s replacement cybernetic parts conspire to keep him in one piece (or at least stop him losing any more pieces).
http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/palmer_10_18/
I enjoyed “Thirty-three Percent Joe” too. There seem to have been a lot of really good stories featuring AI/bots/cybernetic parts in the last few years.
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@Lorien Gray: I wonder if those were disproportionately MilSF stories? I’m sure this is due at least in part to the number of people injured in war getting advanced prosthetics and who would would’ve been less able without them. Which makes me wonder what non-war aspects of life are contributing to it, too.
It’s a pleasant idea! Like the old Reader’s Digest series, “I am Joe’s Coccyx”, but with understudies instead of stars. I’d like to think my replacement parts were ganging up on my behalf, but none of mine are bright enough. That, or else they resent my attitude of superiority and they are working against me. There’s more evidence for that, really.
@John A Arkansawyer: I’m getting to the stage where my original organic parts are out to get me. 😉
@Loren Gray: I’ve noticed the same thing myself. Are they mad at us, I wonder? Or are they just scared of losing their turf as we are rebuilt Better, Stronger, Faster?
“A Song of Home, the Organ Grinds” by James Beamon was great.
Surprised to see I’ve read five of these. “Thirty-three Percent Joe” by Suzanne Palmer is on my Hugo ballot for novelette.
I thought the rest of the ones I’ve read were okay. The Ledbetter and Trent were in F&SF. The Rusch was in Infinity’s End (ed. by Jonathan Strahan – I recommend all of the Infinity anthologies). “A Song of Home, the Organ Grinds” by James Beamon is at Lightspeed.
Haven’t read it, but I see “Homunculus” by Stephen Lawson is online at Baen.
“Thirty-Three Percent Joe” by Suzette Palmer and “A Song of Home, the Organ Grinds” by James Beamon were both good stories. Haven’t read any of the others, though there is a lively discussion about “Going Dark” going on over at Cam’s blog.