Stephen Cass

Saw this in a stack, finally got around to reading it.

Q A : Did not read. Neal Stephenson is up there with Neil Gaman in terms of authors I have absolutely no desire to hear from. Huh, both Neils. Just now realized that.

Insistence of Vision : A decent enough remake of that old Invisible Man episode of Twilight Zone. The shift from "this guy is some cursed supernatural being trapped in a garden" to "oh it's just another extremely unlikely form of punishment" kinda takes the wind out of its sails.

The Mighty Mi Tok of Beijing : Pretty amusing actually.

In Sight : Not bad. Plausible, and short enough that the blather of the two operatives doesn't start to grate.

Transitional Forms : Liked this one. Pretty well done, goes from being a story about nothing to a story about something kinda behind your back.

Pathways : Did not finish. Maybe it was trying too hard to be all trailer-park diction. Really just felt awkward to read.

Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun : Enjoyable enough, though I expected a bit more of a punch coming from Alan Steele.

The Revolution Will Not Be Refrigerated : A bit hit-and-miss, clearly written after a bender of IoT articles. Some good bits, but then there are characters named Hack-Boy.

The Cyborg and the Cemetery : Gotta love a sentient appendage. Possibly the best one in the lot.

Bootstrap : Another good one. It's a bit hand-wavy at times, but

Zero for Conduct : This one started off as hoo-boy, yet another boy-it-sucks-to-live-in-the-third-world story. But it goes somewhere interesting, once the wallowing stops and the "ok, let's use some ingenuity to solve us some problems" starts.

Pwnage : Eh, ok I guess. A bit too much like listening to people talk about their twitter and instagram feeds. Same thing was basically done better in In Sight.

Firebrand : Ah, spontaneous combustion. What would we do without you?… (mere)