Haunting and beautiful, the story captures an India full of AI's and makes a powerful testament of love and betrayal. I am fully reminded why I have loved his other works so much. I am going to have to come back later and give this author a serious investment in time. ( )

The July 2006 issue of Asimov's Science Fiction contains 2 novelettes and 6 short stories as well as several columns and book reviews. Overall I thought this was a pretty good issue, with a mix of reasonably good stories. One story really kicks this into the above average category.

The monthly editorial by Sheila Williams mostly discusses her own annual celebration of a "moon day" each July. The cover painting for this issue was done by Alan Bean, who was on the second lunar landing mission (Apollo 12) and was the fourth man to walk on the moon. The painting depicts Charlie Duke, the lunar module pilot of Apollo 16.

Paul Di Filippo's book review column also seems better than his usual, and focuses on recent releases (for 2006) of books by British authors.

The fiction stories, in order, are:

Nano Comes to Clifford Falls • shortstory by Nancy Kress
You Will Go to the Moon • shortstory by William Preston
The World and Alice • novelette by L. Timmel Duchamp
Bitterseed • shortstory by Ted Kosmatka
Impossible Dreams • shortstory by Tim Pratt
Snail Stones • shortstory by Paul Melko
Fireflies • shortstory by Kathe Koja
The Djinn's Wife • novelette by Ian McDonald

The first story, Nancy Kress's "Nano Comes to Clifford Falls", is one of those be careful what you wish for tales. There's a moral to this somewhat heavy handed story. Machines can make everything for you for free, so why work? The economy and society collapses of course. The story was enjoyable. It also was selected for David Hartwell's Year's Best SF 12 anthology

"You will go to the moon" by William Preston is a rather sad bittersweet tale of a man dealing with his parents ageing and having moved first away from the town he grew up in, and then to a retirement colony on the moon. Going to the moon serves also as a sort of metaphor for the distance and separation that occurs with families. That part and trying to figure his own place in a changing world makes this good but not outstanding.

Duchamp's "The World and Alice" is an odd and sad story. I didn't really like it at first but gradually warmed to it, though I never understood it, and can't really say I liked it. We meet Alice as a young girl who was born very premature (at the very border of survivability) and sees herself as someone who God didn't intend to be in the world, or who is unaware of her because she wasn't supposed to be there. She feels ungrounded to the world and seeks anchors. There is this whole other time warp thing going on where Alice meets herself at points in her life which generates mental gnashing or something, but the "other Alice" doesn't really seem to be able to help herself. Then the rather surprise ending comes. Interesting reading.

"Bitterseed" by Ted Kosmatka is a survival/journey tale on another planet, tied to a Cain and Abel sort of story, in this case Eli and Marc. I found the journey really interesting and liked the story.

"Impossible Dreams" by Tim Pratt is a very cute, romantic and enjoyable story that intentionally reads like an episode of the Twilight Zone, only this one has a happy ending. A movie geek happens upon a new video store in his neighborhood, one that appears and disappears each evening for a short period of time, one he decides has slid over from an alternate reality. It has lost masterpieces, movies that were never made, and so on. He falls for the video store clerk who is a movie buff herself. Nice little tale.

Paul Melko's boy adventure story "Snail Stones" was also nice. Two boys on another world rescue a native inhabitant that has been kept in captivity by a rather nasty fellow.

Kathe Koja's "Fireflies" is a very short sad piece about a scientist who is apparently dying and an old friend and lover there to comfort her. I didn't really care for this, but some people might.

The highlight of this issue is "The Djinn's Wife" by Ian McDonald. This story was selected for a couple of the best of the year anthologies. It also later appeared in MCDonald's Cyberabad collection of stories. This was a very original story about an Indian dancer who marries an AI. This is told in an almost fairytale magical fashion like an arabian nights story. I really liked it. Unsurprising to me it won the 2007 Hugo for best novelette against serious competition (Paolo Bacigalupi's "Yellow Card Man", which lost, was a little better I think). ( )