New Under the Sun

by ,

eBook, 190 pages

English language

Published Oct. 27, 2013 by Phoenix Pick.

ISBN:
978-1-61242-124-7
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ASIN:
B00G8OUBXS
ISFDB ID:
1663184

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3 stars (1 review)

Set in the near future, Nancy Kress’ story gives us a world increasingly hostile to new ideas as religious fundamentalism dictates social agenda and where the primary use of science is to bolster these very same uncompromising attitudes. Annabel Lee is a child of this society, but unique. She has been infected by a long-dormant alien parasite. But this “infection” may be the only hope for the world, if she can survive long enough.

Therese Pieczynski’s companion piece predates the world Nancy Kress gives us and takes us to back to 1980s Nicaragua, where a strange demon lurks.

2 editions

reviewed New Under the Sun by Nancy Kress

Standard Kress fare

3 stars

Kress likes to do "what if human bodies were changed..." stories. This one is: what if a symbiotic species inhabited a human such that it could make changes to the host but the person and symbiote could only communicate in a general sense. So the symbiote can make its host able to spit toxic saliva when threatened, or change the host's pigment and apparent age, etc. Set in an era where there's a breakdown in civil society because large numbers of US residents believe in witches (and want to burn them at the stake).

The Pieczynski piece features a woman in 1980s Sandinista Nicaragua who focuses the energy of the fighting between Contras and Sandinistas and turns it into sentient whirlwinds and golems.

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