The Apex Book of World SF: Volume 5 (Apex World of Speculative Fiction)

A wonderful collection of speculative fiction from around the world. Ranging from Asia to Africa, Europe to the Americas, you will find much to like in many of the stories featured. My favourites include those by Vina Jie-Min Prasad, T.L. Huchu, Taiyo Fujii, Vandana Singh, Bo-young Kim, Chi Hui, Karla Schmidt and Giovanni De Feo.

• "A Series of Steaks" by Vina Jie-Min Prasad (Singapore): an entertaining story set in China where one person makes a living by printing out imitation meat to look like authentic meat. But then a big order comes in from an anonymous customer, with a threat to expose her past if she does not do the job. Forced to hire help, they then work to fulfil the order, while figuring out who the person is and how to get back at him.

• "Accursed Lineage" by Daína Chaviano (Cuba, translated by Matthew D. Goodwin): a short piece about a member of a family who is closely watching the suspicious activities of her neighbour. But it is her own behaviour and family activities which may be the strange ones in the story.

• "Nkásht íí" by Darcie Little Badger (USA/Lipan Apache): two girls of Native American heritage visit the scene of an accident that may be a crossing point between our world and the spirit world.

• "Ghostalker" by T.L. Huchu (Zimbabwe): a ghost story from Africa that initially threw me off due to the numerous Western pop culture references, but once it got going, the story was good. A girl with the 'gift' of seeing and being able to talk to ghosts passes on messages from them to the living. But she is being stalked by one ghost throughout the story and in the final confrontation, we learn why the ghost is stalking her and what it means for her future.

• "Violation of the TrueNet Security Act" by Taiyo Fujii (Japan, translated by Jim Hubbert): in a future where rogue software has taken over the internet and a parallel TrueNet has been set up, a former programmer finds his old internet server is still working. But to get it to work again properly, he may have to break the rules of the Security Act that forbid connections to former internet servers.

• "Ambiguity Machines: An Examination" by Vandana Singh (India): a story about three ambiguous apparent machines and their creators or users that span physical and mental space and are connected to each other in subtle ways.

• "Scenes from the Life of an Autocrat" by Basma Abdel Aziz (Egypt, translated by Elisabeth Jaquette): the story of an autocrat who issues decrees telling his citizens how to live their lives. As for the citizens, they follow the decrees with care and wait breathlessly for the next decrees to be issued. But then one day, an event occurs, and the autocrat finds himself at a loss as to why it could happen despite the decrees he had issued.

• "Our Dead World" by Liliana Colanzi (Bolivia, translated by Jessica Sequeira): on Mars, colonist try to survive while preparing for more people to come. The story follows one who now regrets going while seeing apparent hallucinations of life before coming to Mars.

• "An Evolutionary Myth" by Bo-young Kim (South Korea, translated by Jihyun Park & Gord Sellar): an interesting tale set in Korea in a time when the human form is fluid. The story follows a Prince who flees an attempted assassination by his uncle. As he lives in the wilderness, his body changes into a feline beast and then into a snake-like creature. But it is his final transformation that would avenge the people wronged by his uncle and help them to free themselves from his rule.

• "You Will See the Moon Rise" by Israel Alonso (Spain, translated by Steve Redwood): an initially disjointed story of a man fleeing a group of men in a war-torn city and experiences flash-backs of his lovely wife. But it is only when he meets a familiar man who may not be there that his memory slowly returns, and he recalls his previous life and achievements, and how he lost it all.

• "The Barrette Girls" by Sara Saab (Lebanon): a story of a woman who leads a group of young girls wearing barrettes (hair clips) to a secret location to perform a task. The young girls seem to be artificial and contain an unusual substance, but the story is too short to 'flesh' them out, so to speak.

• "The Calculations of Artificials" by Chi Hui (China, translated by John Chu): in a future rebuilt after nuclear wars, Actual humans live separate lives, surrounded by Artificial beings that act like real humans around the presence of Actuals, deceiving them. One Actual who is aware of the deception monitors the Artificials and tweaks their algorithms. But one day, he runs into another Actual teenager. He bends the rules and decides to keep him company. The decision would affect how the world is run, leading to violence as the world starts to break down; and perhaps to a new hope for living in the world.

• "El Cóndor del Machángara" by Ana Hurtado (Venezuela): a fantasy tale involving birds, a location overrun by the birds, some of the inhabitants desire to get rid of the birds, and the desire of some people to run away with the birds.

• "Alone, on the Wind" by Karla Schmidt (Germany, translated by Lara M. Harmon): an interesting tale set in a time and place where gravity and space don't seem to follow our rules. On one world, a flier gains her wings and joins a party hunting for water on another world. But disaster strikes, and she has to depend on the help of a grounded man to recover. They fall in love, are separated, and then meet to try to bring their worlds together again. The backstory of how the worlds came about is slowly revealed in the tale, and the reader can start to piece together what happened to separate their world in the first place.

• "The Seventh" by Eliza Victoria (Philippines): a story that starts out with a woman entering a house for the first time; only others say she hasn't. The discrepancy gets explained as the story develops into what turns into a horror tale involving a well, and feeling pain and denial to discover who she is.

• "Screamers" by Tochi Onyebuchi (Nigeria/USA): a story of a boy who occasionally follows his police father out to cases; until unusual cases of violent deaths with unknown explosive force starts to occur. As the cases continue throughout his father and then his own police career, a final case for him would see him decide whether to step away from all the violence or to accept it to see where it would lead him.

• "The Bois" by R.S.A. Garcia (Trinidad and Tobago): the story of a relationship between a girl and a man who is partially a machine (a cyborg). When the girl wanders off into a dangerous forest, the man will have to make a sacrifice in order to save what he can of her life.

• "Ugo" by Giovanni De Feo (Italy): an unusual and fascinating story of a girl who meets a boy who claims to be able to Leap into his future self and see the future that lay ahead of them: their relationship together, their ups and downs and their life together. But the tale leaves open whether the Leap means that what he knows will happen is fixed or if free will still exists for them: and what might happen if he does let her exercise her free.