LINKDING

<blockquote>Six months ago, the Very Large Array picked up a signal. Well, we didn’t pick it up so much as received a targeted message asking for a meeting. The senders—part of an alien civilization hurtling toward Earth in an inconceivably advanced spacecraft—had been studying our broadcasts, and that was how they learned about us, just like in the movies. The rest of it wasn’t going much like the movies. The Mapmakers—we didn’t know why they called themselves that—would land, but they would only talk to one person, and not anyone in power. No taking them to our leader. This request caused an uproar, quickly quashed because we still didn’t know what they could do or what they wanted. Apparently, one-to-one negotiation was their tradition—put two people in a room and see what they talked about. They said vast networks had been built on such beginnings. Start with the personal, work up from there. They were adamant; this was the method they always used. All we had were faulty expectations. Nobody wanted to let just one person have that much power or take that much glory. Or take the fall, was how I looked at it. Just one person couldn’t possibly represent all of us. But what choice did we have?</blockquote>

<blockquote>The anchorage appeared on my radar screen as a blip, a blotch, one bit of detritus among many. The accompanying message was gentle but persistent, an invitation repeated on loop for anyone who might pick it up: visit if you like. The politest distress call in the universe. Visit if you like, and please bring food, printer fuel, next gen wires, conversation… I forwarded the signal to Captain Rousseau. This action revealed impatience on my part, excitement, an inability to wait until after breakfast. But I couldn’t help it. Novelty. Newness. I craved it like a subterranean lizardman craved phosphor. I craved it like Captain Rousseau craved silence. Over the past year, my crew (yes, my crew, my crew, the word still sounded the way I imagine liquor tastes, warming and biting and frightening and loud)—my crew made medical deliveries to a dozen colonies. We saw titanium waterfalls and genetically enhanced caribou. We walked through bone-lined catacombs. We rode air trams through toxic jungles. We stopped a necrotic worm outbreak and vaccinated three thousand children against belly rot.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Ludmila’s vision of “the place” seemed to have been etched deep into her consciousness as it continued to exert a supreme influence on her life. It was a place that appeared at once utterly real and completely imaginary, and she devoted her life to painting it. Each painting formed a discrete fragment of its landscape; yet taken as a whole, her oeuvre constructed an impossibly detailed and vivid sense of the spellbinding place that so clearly inhabited her mind. Journalists never stopped asking her, “What do you call this place, Ludmila?” But her response, as well as the flustered and somewhat apologetic look on her face, were always the same: “There is a name for it, in my head, but it’s as if I can’t say it out loud.”</blockquote>

<blockquote>The thin gray webs stretching across Aunt Melissa’s hand hadn’t been there the night before. Her condition wasn’t supposed to be contagious, but I went to the kitchen for some latex gloves anyway. If these webs were a new stage, all the procedures might change. There was still so much we didn’t know about the alien microbes now living in her body.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Two women who have been friends since they were children—one a recovering alcoholic brought up by parents who believe they’re alien abductees, the other an orphan with an eating disorder—contend with a secret that might doom their friendship.</blockquote>

<blockquote>I’m no Penelope, and Ralph’s certainly no Odysseus. He is a cheating little rat, however. I could give you a list, but that’s sort of beside the point of this story. Point is, I’ve learned not to believe a word he says, so when he goes camping for the weekend with a buddy, I’m thinking, right, and when buddy comes back without him saying Ralph “just vanished,” I’m thinking right again, and then when he surfaces a whole week later with totally new clothes saying he’s been abducted by aliens, I say, “What’s the bitch’s name, Ralph?”</blockquote>

➤ The one with the invading alien species on earth that has an odd reproductive strategy where the females act as simulacra - inside them is created an environment that teaches the juveniles what to expect from the environment they'll be born into. Compellingly written and interestingly alien.

<blockquote>The Mars Light began as a ten-minute short that Bryan Sebold made without a crew after wrapping his Google fantasy series Anvil of the Sun. Now it’s a five-part documentary, which NASA Films released today online and in select theaters. Mr. Sebold spoke with me via Skype about shooting remotely on Mars; about working with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which runs the Mars Rover project for NASA; and about what the Mars Light is, which the documentary reveals for the first time. </blockquote>

<blockquote>“Her Scales Shine Like Music” by Rajnar Vajra is a moving science fiction novelette about an encounter and budding relationship between two aliens, one human, who are the only living creatures occupying a planet in deep space. The human is assigned to guard a valuable find, while his colleagues leave, to file a report with the company that hired them.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Presenting a new original science fiction story, “A Clean Sweep With All the Trimmings,” by author James Alan Gardner, a Damon Runyon-esque tale of courteous guys, bulletproof dolls, and the fedora-clad spacemen that bring them together.</blockquote> ➤ This is a fun story but I feel rather bad for Kitty. I want to know more of her story. And I want her to have a future where she manages to live for herself. :(

<blockquote>“Dr. Philoghast, by contrast, believes that tumors are born from entire chromosomes—monstrous chromosomes, to be sure, severely deformed by asbestos, benzene, radon, cigarette smoke, hepatitis B virus, and other carcinogens—but still chromosomes. In other words, Inez, your glioblastoma is a species unto itself, an autonomous creature living inside your head, dependent on your brain for nourishment but otherwise free to do as it wishes.”</blockquote> ➤ an odd story, and the ending is a bit confusing, but I enjoyed it nonetheless

<blockquote>At first it was a small voice, a tiny tingly voice that came by night. Ellie was almost asleep—no, she was asleep—when it arrived. It woke her. “Hello,” chirped the small voice. “Greetings, arrive Dutch, good-bye, and happy birthday. Is this the way you speak?”</blockquote>

➤ the one where aliens are appalled to discover an intelligent species made out of meat. They're all like, "MEAT, SERIOUSLY???" and agree to pretend it never happened and mark the entire sector of the galaxy unoccupied.