ZNAK SAGITE — više od fantastike — edicija, časopis, knjižara...

Elem, za Miću i ostale ljubitelje kratke proze, evo jedne simpa priče iz majskog Klarksvorlda. Autor je Cat Rambo, priča se zove Whose Face this is I do not know a izgleda da je i prilično zapažena, na raznim SF&F mestima.

U pitanju je varijacija na temu Ostrvo dr. Moroa.

Bilo je već slične teme, al' ajd':

G. D. Falksen - The Strange Case of Mr. Salad Monday

http://www.tor.com/stories/2009/10/mr-salad-monday

E, usporite... 

Ova je isto super priča: Christopher L. Bennett - Home Is Where the Hub Is, ali nigde da je nađem. Objavljena, inače, u decembarskom Analogu 2010.

jah, sad se prisetih Mr. Salad Monday, njega sam svojedobno okačila u onu biblioteku...  najs. Nego, Mića ne može da prati tempo žešći od 3 pričuljka nedeljno, pa iduća stiže tek za vikend. 

Dobro, ovo baš i nije priča... ali kao da i jeste.

Hannu Rajaniemi - The Quantum Thief (Excerpt)

http://www.tor.com/stories/2011/05/excerpt-the-quantum-thief-by-hannu-rajaniemi

Imam i knjigu, ali vremena nemam 

Cory Doctorow - The Jammie Dodgers and the Adventure of the Leicester Square Screening

Bruce Bethke - Cyberpunk

Hocu ovde samo nove priče - 'ajde, do tri godina stare...
Za one starije, može drugi topik.
Ovde sam hteo da se bavimo savremenim stanjem u kratkoj priči...

Stanje je, rekla bih, vrlo dobro, pa još sa ružičastim tendencijama u kratkoročnoj prognozi. 

Kao prvo, na netu je dostupna ogromna količina kratke proze za besplatno skidanje: uz proverenu ekipu stare magazinske garde koji su se apgrejdovali u e-format, moji favoriti su Interzona i Klarksvorld, i drago mi je da vidim kako mnoge od tih priča završe u šortlistinzima za veće nagrade u konkurenciji kratke priče; onda, ima puno žanrovskih blogova i e-zina sa masom cakum novog materijala, to uz fosilizovane biblioteke kakve su bile u modi na smeni vekova; pa onda imaš i autorske blogove + sajtove koji nude kratku prozu, a ponekad i sami izdavači to rade, samo što mi sve to ispadne sporadično i raštrkano, jer bi takva mesta trebalo redovito (nedeljno) overavati, a za to retko kad imam dovoljno vremena. A tek posle svog tog obilnog fribija na koji ladno može da ti ode više od 2-3 sata dnevno, tek onda dolaze višnje za šlag: antologije, svakorazne i svakovrsne, od klasičnih d' best of, pa do žanrovskih i tematskih mamuta, uglavnom iz vrednih ruku velikih uredničkih faca, plus kul autsajderske zbirčice kao što je bio MOD, recimo, ili ona perfektna Gejman/Sarantonio kolekcija, i tako to...

Sve u svemu, dovoljno materijala za full time job 8 sati čitanja dnevno... eto,  živimo u stvarno magičnim vremenima, trebalo bi tu iskoristiti ceo maksimum... 

U to ime: Nina Allan - Flying in the Face of God 

Elem, Robopocalypse je zapravo tematska zbirka, koja se vrlo vešto kamuflirala u roman. Wilsonova sklonost za kratku formu pretvorila je ovu zbirku - inače prilično palpičnu i ne odveć originalnu - u veoma čitljiv kolaž prijemčivih izveštaja očevidaca i učesnika apokalipse podivljalih AI tvorevina. Sve u svemu, vrlo zabavno štivo za ljubitelje kratke forme a ako Spilberg od ovoga zaista napravi film, ima svakako više potencijala negoli Asimovljeva I, Robot kolekcija, iako je, bar meni, Asimov imao pošteniju nameru i ozbiljniji pristup u predočavanju AI svetonazora. U 34 pojedinačne priče, daje se isto toliko tačaka gledišta i zato je svaka prilično unikatna po pitanju stila i izraza, i rezultat je prilično uspešna egzibicija... stilska vežba, da, ali od one vrste koju je vrlo zabavno čitati.  

Elem, ovo je ko stvoreno za ljubitelje kratke proze.

U svrhu promocije Gathered Dust and Others (W. H. Pugmire), izdavač Dark Regions Press nudi pdf jedne priče iz te kolekcije: The Woven Offspring

Ket Valente postavila prikvel-novelu za Devojčicu koja je oplovila Vilistan u čamcu sopstvene izrade:
http://www.tor.com/stories/2011/07/the-girl-who-ruled-fairylandfor-a-little-while

Na solaris blogu, u promociji antologije horor antologije The End of the Line (ed. Jonathan Oliver) stavljen je pdf fajl priče "The Lure" - Nicholas Royle.

I antologija i sama priča su se obrele na užoj listi za British Fantasy Awards 2011, a to je samo po sebi dovoljna preporuka.

Da malko privirimo i u morbidnije varijante horora:

Brittle Sticks and Old Rope, Alan M. Clark, iz njegove zbirke Boneyard Babies,

u izdanju Lejzi Fašist Presa (a koga drugog?  )

Novi Fantasy Magazine nudi The World Is Cruel, My Daughter - Cory Skerry

Onlajn ili oflajn, audio ili pdf, ko kako voli. Fri end ligl.

Hugo Nomination for Best Short Story 2009.

Mary Robinette Kowal - Evil Robot Monkey

N. K. Jemisin: Non-Zero Probabilities

Da osvežimo malo i topik za sirotu kratku SF priču... 

Daily Science Fiction nudi baš to, po jednu kratku SF priču, svaki dan. Pretplata je besplatna a priče se mogu overiti i direktno na njihovom sajtu DSF: 

Or We Will All Hang Separately by Nancy Jane Moore


http://futurismic.com/2010/08/02/new-fiction-or-we-will-all-hang-separately-by-nancy-jane-moore/

George R. Galuschak - Counting Cracks

Catastrophe Baker and the Fall of the House of Usher – Mike Resnick

Marrisa Meyer: Glitches

Grayson Bray Morris - A Puddle of Dead

Year's Best 'Tis the season for the announcement of Year's Best short fiction tables of contents (and for all manner of other best-of-the-year lists, but let's ignore those for now). Over the past few weeks we've had the contents for Jonathan Strahan's Year's Best SF and Fantasy 6, Gardner Dozois' Year's Best SF 29, and Rich Horton's Year's Best SF and Fantasy 2012. That leaves the Hartwell/Cramer volumes, and Ellen Datlow's Year's Best Horror, and probably a couple of others that I'm not thinking of right now; but I thought it would be fun to see what patterns, if any, are emerging.
Overall 78 stories have been selected to fill 95 slots, with 15 stories being selected for more than one volume and 2 being selected for all three volumes. So the best of the best so far are:

   
• "A Small Price to Pay for Birdsong" by KJ Parker (Subterranean; in Strahan/Horton)
• "After the Apocalypse" by Maureen F. McHugh (After the Apocalypse; in Strahan/Dozois)
• "Canterbury Hollow" by Chris Lawson (F&SF; in Horton/Dozois)
• "Digging" by Ian McDonald (Life on Mars; in Strahan/Dozois)
• "Ghostweight" by Yoon Ha Lee (Clarkesworld; in Horton/Dozois)
• "Martian Heart" by John Barnes (Life on Mars; in Horton/Dozois)
• "The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees" by E. Lily Yu (Clarkesworld; in Strahan/Horton)
• "The Choice" by Paul McAuley (Asimov's; in Strahan/Horton/Dozois)
• "The Dala Horse" by Michael Swanwick (Tor.com; in Strahan/Dozois)
• "The Invasion of Venus" by Stephen Baxter (Engineering Infinity; in Strahan/Dozois)
• "The Man Who Bridged the Mist" by Kij Johnson (Asimov's; in Strahan/Horton/Dozois)
• "The Smell of Orange Groves" by Lavie Tidhar (Clarkesworld; in Horton/Dozois)
• "What We Found" by Geoff Ryman (F&SF; in Strahan/Dozois)
• "Woman Leaves Room" by Robert Reed (Lightspeed; in Strahan/Horton)
• "Younger Women" by Karen Joy Fowler (Subterranean; in Strahan/Horton)

In total that's 5 overlaps between Strahan and Horton, 6 between Dozois and Horton, and 7 between Strahan and Dozois. Also of note is the fact that Catherynne M. Valente appears with a different story in each volume -- "The Girl Who Ruled Fairyland, For a Little While" (Tor.com) in Horton, "White Lines on a Green Field" (Subterranean) in Strahan, and "Silently and Very Fast" (WSFA Press/Clarkesworld) in Dozois. Asimov's is the most-reprinted venue, as I think it has been for the past few years, with 9 different stories selected (and both of the triple-reprint stories came from Asimov's, of course); F&SF is close behind with 8 reprints, followed by Eclipse 4 on 6. What else? Of the 78 stories reprinted, 45 (58%) were by men; Horton has the lowest proportion of stories by men, 41%, and Dozois has the highest, 80%.
And, of course, we're delighted that Rich Horton selected two Strange Horizons stories for his book: "Widows in the World" by Gavin Grant, and "The Last Sophia" by C.S.E. Cooney. Congratulations to them, and to all the other authors being reprinted.
(And personally speaking I'm also pleased that Horton has also picked up the title story from Nina Allan's The Silver Wind. And for yet another perspective, see Lois Tilton's review of 2011 short fiction.)

Jedna od najboljih priča što sam pročitao od neke spisateljice. Novela je ustvari, ali svakako vredna čitanja. Baš baš baš me raspametila. Ne znam da li radi link, ali je ovo A MUST MUST MUST MUST READ. U pitanju je novela BAZEN, od Joko Ogave. Damn, naježio sam se koliko je ovo dobra stvar. U svakom slučaju, ako prvi link ne bude radio (preskočite par strana, priča je u PDF konvertovana iz epuba, pa je prvih nekoliko strana prazno) onda kliknite na donji link da downloadujete novelu u epub formatu.

----------------------------

Čitati online:

http://dw4.convertfiles.com/files/0274128001324308130/yoko%20ogawa%20-%20the%20diving%20pool.pdf

----------------------------

Link za download epub:

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=39KTW75X

Andrew Penn Romine: The Parting Glass

 

   
• @Eschatology: "Judgment Day" by Gary Cuba
• @Daily Science Fiction: "Things Exist by Imitation of Numbers" by Benjamin Rosenbaum
• @Daily Science Fiction: "Into the Forest" by Dana Dupont
• @Daily Science Fiction: "Sixty-one by Seventy" by K.G. Jewell
• @Flash Fiction Online: "Sea Ink" by Jennifer Linnaea
• @Flash Fiction Online: "To Fly a Pig in the Dorseny Sky" by Tom Crosshill
• @Flash Fiction Online: "AI Robot" by Patrick Dey
• @IGMS: "Story with Pictures and Conversation" by Brontops Baruq
• @Weird Fiction Review: "Loob" by Bob Leman
• @Weird Year: "Subway" by Eric Suhem
• Words without Borders – January 2012 – "Apocalpyse"
• @YesterYear Fiction: "Cuy" by Michele Markarian
• @Author's Site: "Fields of Gold" by  Rachel Swirsky
• @Author's Site: "The Taste of Promises" by  Rachel Swirsky

 Our Lady of White Trash - Christopher Slatsky

The Man Who Bridged the Mist - Kij Johnson


(nominovano za Nebulu 2011)

Be sure to read
the exciting conclusion
in our October/November double issue
on sale now.

ne razumem... 

gde si to našla?

Na ovom linku, pri dnu strane:

Quote from: LiBeat on 29-02-2012, 17:48:27
The Man Who Bridged the Mist - Kij Johnson


(nominovano za Nebulu 2011)

Ili sam pogrešno shvatila, i priča je cela? (i dalje sam u poslu, pa ne mogu odmah da je pročitam)

Kaži mi šta vidiš kao poslednju reč priče kada ti se strana kompletno učita.

"cry".



He entered his room and shut the door, leaned his back to it as if holding the world out. Someone had already been in his room: a lamp had been lit against the darkness, a fire laid, and bread and cheese and a tankard of ale set by the window to stay cool.
He began to cry.
Copyright © 2011 Kij Johnson

Be sure to read
the exciting conclusion
in our October/November double issue
on sale now.

ne razumem zašto... meni sve lepo i fino i uredno otvori do kraja.


postovaću je ovde.

Kit came to Nearside with two trunks and an oiled-cloth folio full of plans for the bridge across the mist. His trunks lay tumbled like stones at his feet, where the mailcoach guard had dropped them. The folio he held close, away from the drying mud of yesterday's storm.[/size]
Nearside was small, especially to a man of the capital, where buildings towered seven and eight stories tall, a city so large that even a vigorous walker could not cross it in half a day. Here hard-packed dirt roads threaded through irregular spaces scattered with structures and fences. Even the inn was plain, two stories of golden limestone and blue slate tiles, with (he could smell) some sort of animals living behind it. On the sign overhead, a flat, pale blue fish very like a ray curveted against a black background.[/font]
[/size]A brightly dressed woman stood by the inn's door. Her skin and eyes were pale, almost colorless. "Excuse me," Kit said. "Where can I find the ferry to take me across the mist?" He could feel himself being weighed, but amiably: a stranger, small and very dark, in gray—a man from the east.
[/size]The woman smiled. "Well, the ferries are both at the upper dock. But I expect what you really want is someone to oar the ferry, yes? Rasali Ferry came over from Farside last night. She's the one you'll want to talk to. She spends a lot of time at The Deer's Heart. But you wouldn't like The Heart, sir," she added. "It's not nearly as nice as The Fish here. Are you looking for a room?"
[/size] "I'll be staying in Farside tonight," Kit said apologetically. He didn't want to seem arrogant. The invisible web of connections he would need for his work started here, with this first impression, with all the first impressions of the next few days.
[/size] "That's what you think," the woman said. "I'm guessing it'll be a day or two, or more, before Rasali goes back. Valo Ferry might, but he doesn't cross so often."
[/size]"I could buy out the trip's fares, if that's why she's waiting."
[/size]"It's not that," the woman said. "She won't cross the mist 'til she's ready. Until it tells her she can go, if you follow me. But you can ask, I suppose."
[/size]Kit didn't follow, but he nodded anyway. "Where's The Deer's Heart?"
[/size]She pointed. "Left, then right, then down by the little boat yard."
[/size]"Thank you," Kit said. "May I leave my trunks here until I work things out with her?"
[/size]"We always stow for travelers." The woman grinned. "And cater to them, too, when they find out there's no way across the mist today."
[/size]
[/size]The Deer's Heart was smaller than The Fish, and livelier. At midday the oak-shaded tables in the beer garden beside the inn were clustered with light-skinned people in brilliant clothes, drinking and tossing comments over the low fence into the boat yard next door, where, half lost in steam, a youth and two women bent planks to form the hull of a small flat-bellied boat. When Kit spoke to a man carrying two mugs of something that looked like mud and smelled of yeast, the man gestured at the yard with his chin. "Ferrys are over there. Rasali's the one in red," he said as he walked away.
[/size]"The one in red" was tall, her skin as pale as that of the rest of the locals, with a black braid so long that she had looped it around her neck to keep it out of the way. Her shoulders flexed in the sunlight as she and the youth forced a curved plank to take the skeletal hull's shape. The other woman, slightly shorter, with the ash-blond hair so common here, forced an augur through the plank and into a rib, then hammered a peg into the hole she'd made. After three pegs, the boatwrights straightened. The plank held. Strong, Kit thought; I wonder if I can get them for the bridge?
[/size]"Rasali!" a voice bellowed, almost in Kit's ear. "Man here's looking for you." Kit turned in time to see the man with the mugs gesturing, again with his chin. He sighed and walked to the waist-high fence. The boatwrights stopped to drink from blueware bowls before the one in red and the youth came over.
[/size]"I'm Rasali Ferry of Farside," the woman said. Her voice was softer and higher than he had expected of a woman as strong as she, with the fluid vowels of the local accent. She nodded to the boy beside her: "Valo Ferry of Farside, my brother's eldest." Valo was more a young man than a boy, lighter-haired than Rasali and slightly taller. They had the same heavy eyebrows and direct amber eyes.
[/size]"Kit Meinem of Atyar," Kit said.
[/size]Valo asked, "What sort of name is Meinem? It doesn't mean anything."
[/size]"In the capital, we take our names differently than you."
[/size]"Oh, like Jenner Ellar." Valo nodded. "I guessed you were from the capital—your clothes and your skin."
[/size]Rasali said, "What can we do for you, Kit Meinem of Atyar?"
[/size]"I need to get to Farside today," Kit said.
[/size]Rasali shook her head. "I can't take you. I just got here, and it's too soon. Perhaps Valo?"
[/size]The youth tipped his head to one side, his expression suddenly abstract, as though he were listening to something too faint to hear clearly. He shook his head. "No, not today."
[/size]"I can buy out the fares, if that helps. It's Jenner Ellar I am here to see."
[/size]Valo looked interested but said, "No," to Rasali, and she added, "What's so important that it can't wait a few days?"
[/size]Better now than later, Kit thought. "I am replacing Teniant Planner as the lead engineer and architect for construction of the bridge over the mist. We will start work again as soon as I've reviewed everything. And had a chance to talk to Jenner." He watched their faces.
[/size]Rasali said, "It's been a year since Teniant died—I was starting to think Empire had forgotten all about us, and your deliveries would be here 'til the iron rusted away."
[/size]"Jenner Ellar's not taking over?" Valo asked, frowning.
[/size]"The new Department of Roads cartel is in my name," Kit said. "but I hope Jenner will remain as my second. You can see why I would like to meet him as soon as is possible, of course. He will—"
[/size]Valo burst out, "You're going to take over from Jenner, after he's worked so hard on this? And what about us? What about our work?" His cheeks were flushed an angry red. How do they conceal anything with skin like that? Kit thought.
[/size]"Valo," Rasali said, a warning tone in her voice. Flushing darker still, the youth turned and strode away. Rasali snorted but said only: "Boys. He likes Jenner, and he has issues about the bridge, anyway."

[/font]

That was worth addressing. Later. "So, what will it take to get you to carry me across the mist, Rasali Ferry of Farside? The project will pay anything reasonable."[/size]
"I cannot," she said. "Not today, not tomorrow. You'll have to wait."[/font]
[/size]"Why?" Kit asked: reasonably enough, he thought, but she eyed him for a long moment, as if deciding whether to be annoyed.
[/size]"Have you gone across mist before?" she said at last.
[/size]"Of course."
[/size]"Not the river," she said.
[/size]"Not the river," he agreed. "It's a quarter mile across here, yes?"
[/size]"Oh, yes." She smiled suddenly: white even teeth and warmth like sunlight in her eyes. "Let's go down, and perhaps I can explain things better there." She jumped the fence with a single powerful motion, landing beside him to a chorus of cheers and shouts from the inn garden's patrons. She made an exaggerated bow, then gestured to Kit to follow her. She was well-liked, clearly. Her opinion would matter.
[/size]The boat yard was heavily shaded by low-hanging oaks and chestnuts, and bounded on the east by an open-walled shelter filled with barrels and stacks of lumber. Rasali waved at the third boat maker, who was still putting her tools away. "Tilisk Boatwright of Nearside. My brother's wife," she said to Kit. "She makes skiffs with us, but she won't ferry. She's not born to it as Valo and I are."
[/size]"Where's your brother?" Kit asked.
[/size]"Dead," Rasali said, and lengthened her stride.
[/size]They walked a few streets over and then climbed a long, even ridge perhaps eighty feet high, too regular to be natural. A levee, Kit thought, and distracted himself from the steep path by estimating the volume of earth and the labor that had been required to build it. Decades, perhaps, but how long ago? How long was it? The levee was treeless. The only feature was a slender wood tower hung with flags. It was probably for signaling across the mist to Farside, since it appeared too fragile for anything else. They had storms out here, Kit knew; there'd been one the night before, which had left the path muddy. How often was the tower struck by lightning?
[/size]Rasali stopped. "There."
[/size]Kit had been watching his feet. He looked up and nearly cried out as light lanced his suddenly tearing eyes. He fell back a step and shielded his face. What had blinded him was an immense band of white mist reflecting the morning sun.
[/size]Kit had never seen the mist river itself, though he'd bridged mist before this, two simple post-and-beam structures over gorges closer to the capital. From his work in Atyar, he knew what was to be known. It was not water, or anything like. It did not flow, but formed somehow in the deep gorge of the great riverbed before him. It found its way many hundreds of miles north, up through a hundred narrowing mist creeks and streams before failing at last, in shreds of drying foam that left bare patches of earth where they collected.
[/size]The mist stretched to the south as well, a deepening, thickening band that poured out at last from the river's mouth two thousand miles south, and formed the mist ocean, which lay on the face of the salt-water ocean. Water had to follow the river's bed to run somewhere beneath, or through, the mist, but there was no way to prove this.
[/size]There was mist nowhere but this river and its streams and sea; but the mist split Empire in half.
[/size]After a moment, the pain in Kit's eyes grew less, and he opened them again. The river was a quarter-mile across where they stood, a great gash of light between the levees. It seemed nearly featureless, blazing under the sun like a river of cream or of bleached silk, but as his eyes accustomed themselves, he saw the surface was not smooth but heaped and hollowed, and that it shifted slowly, almost indiscernibly, as he watched.
[/size]Rasali stepped forward, and Kit started. "I'm sorry," he said with a laugh. "How long have I been staring? It's just—I had no idea."
[/size]"No one does," Rasali said. Her eyes when he met them were amused.
[/size]The east and west levees were nearly identical, each treeless and scrub-covered, with a signal tower. The levee on their side ran down to a narrow bare bank half a dozen yards wide. There was a wooden dock and a boat ramp, a rough switchback leading down to them. Two large boats had been pulled onto the bank. Another, smaller dock was visible a hundred yards upstream, attended by a clutter of boats, sheds, and indeterminate piles covered in tarps.
[/size]"Let's go down." Rasali led the way, her words coming back to him over her shoulder. "The little ferry is Valo's. Pearlfinder. The Tranquil Crossing's mine." Her voice warmed when she said the name. "Eighteen feet long, eight wide. Mostly pine, but a purpleheart keel and pearwood headpiece. You can't see it from here, but the hull's sheathed in blue-dyed fish-skin. I can carry three horses or a ton and a half of cartage or fifteen passengers. Or various combinations. I once carried twenty-four hunting dogs and two handlers. Never again."
[/size]A steady, light breeze eased down from the north, channeled by the levees. The air had a smell, not unpleasant but a little sour, wild. "How can you manage a boat like this alone? Are you that strong?"
[/size]"It's as big as I can handle," she said, "but Valo helps sometimes, for really unwieldy loads. You don't paddle through mist. I mostly just coax the Crossing to where I want it to go. Anyway, the bigger the boat, the more likely that the Big Ones will notice it; though if you do run into a fish, the smaller the boat, the easier it is to swamp. Here we are."
[/size]They stood on the bank. The mist streams he had bridged had not prepared him for anything like this. Those were tidy little flows, more like fog collecting in hollows than this. From their angle, the river no longer seemed a smooth flow of creamy whiteness, nor even gently heaped clouds. The mist forced itself into hillocks and hollows, tight slopes perhaps twenty feet high that folded into one another. It had a surface, but it was irregular, cracked in places, translucent in others. The surface didn't seem as clearly defined as that between water and air.
[/size]"How can you move on this?" Kit said, fascinated. "Or even float?" The hillock immediately before them was flattening as he watched. Beyond it something like a vale stretched out for a few dozen yards before turning and becoming lost to his eyes.
[/size]"Well, I can't, not today," Rasali said. She sat on the gunwale of her boat, one leg swinging, watching him. "I can't push the Crossing up those slopes or find a safe path, unless the mist shows me the way. If I went today, I know—I know—" she tapped her belly— "that I would find myself stranded on a pinnacle or lost in a hole. That's why I can't take you today, Kit Meinem of Atyar."
[/size]* * *
[/size]When Kit was a child, he had not been good with other people. He was small and easy to tease or ignore, and then he was sick for much of his seventh year and had to leave his crèche before the usual time, to convalesce in his mother's house. None of the children of the crèche came to visit him, but he didn't mind that: he had books and puzzles, and whole quires of blank paper that his mother didn't mind him defacing.
[/size]The clock in the room in which he slept didn't work, so one day he used his penknife to take it apart. He arranged the wheels and cogs and springs in neat rows on the quilt in his room, by type and then by size; by materials; by weight; by shape. He liked holding the tiny pieces, thinking of how they might have been formed and how they worked together. The patterns they made were interesting, but he knew the best pattern would be the working one, when they were all put back into their right places and the clock performed its task again. He had to think that the clock would be happier that way, too.
[/size]He tried to rebuild the clock before his mother came upstairs from her counting house at the end of the day, but when he had reassembled things, there remained a pile of unused parts and it still didn't work; so he shut the clock up and hoped she wouldn't notice that it wasn't ticking. Four days more of trying things during the day and concealing his failures at night; and on the fifth day, the clock started again. One piece hadn't fit anywhere, a small brass cog. Kit still carried that cog in his pen case.
[/size]
[/size]Late that afternoon, Kit returned to the river's edge. It was hotter; the mud had dried to cracked dust, and the air smelled like old rags left in water too long. He saw no one at the ferry dock, but at the fisher's dock upstream people were gathering, a score or more of men and women, with children running about.
[/size]The clutter looked even more disorganized as he approached. The fishing boats were fat little coracles of leather stretched on frames, tipped bottom up to the sun and looking like giant warts. The mist had dropped so that he could see a band of exposed rock below the bank. The dock's pilings were clearly visible, which were not vertical but set at an angle: a cantilevered deck braced into the stone underlying the bank. The wooden pilings had been sheathed in metal.
[/size]He approached a silver-haired woman doing something with a treble hook as long as her hand. "What are you catching with that?" he said.
[/size]Her forehead was wrinkled when she looked up, but she smiled when she saw him. "Oh, you're a stranger. From Atyar, dressed like that. Am I right? We catch fish . . . ." Still holding the hook, she extended her arms as far as they would stretch. "Bigger than that, some of them. Looks like more storms, so they're going to be biting tonight. I'm Meg Threehooks. Of Nearside, obviously."
[/size]"Kit Meinem of Atyar. I take it you can't find a bottom?" He pointed to the pilings.
[/size]Jen Threehooks followed his glance. "It's there somewhere, but it's a long way down, and we can't sink pilings because the mist dissolves the wood. Oh, and fish eat it. Same thing with our ropes, the boats, us—anything but metal and rock, really." She knotted a line around the hook eye. The cord was dark and didn't look heavy enough for anything Kit could imagine catching on hooks that size.
[/size] "What are these made of, then?" He squatted to look at the framing under one of the coracles.
[/size]"Careful, that one's mine," Meg said. "The hides—well, and all the ropes—are fish-skin. Mist fish, not water fish. Tanning takes off some of the slime, so they don't last forever either, not if they're immersed." She made a face. "We have a saying: foul as fish-slime. That's pretty nasty, you'll see."
[/size]"I need to get to Farside," Kit said. "Could I hire you to carry me across?"
[/size]"In my boat?" She snorted. "No, fishers stay close to shore. Go see Rasali Ferry. Or Valo."
[/size]"I saw her," he said ruefully.
[/size]"Thought so. You must be the new architect—city folk are always so impatient. You're so eager to be dinner for a Big One? If Rasali doesn't want to go, then don't go, stands to reason."
[/size]Kit was footsore and frustrated by the time he returned to The Fish. His trunks were already upstairs, in a small cheerful room overwhelmed by a table that nearly filled it, with a stiflingly hot cupboard bed. When Kit spoke to the woman he'd talked to earlier, Brana Keep, the owner of The Fish (its real name turned out to be The Big One's Delight)—laughed. "Rasali's as hard to shift as bedrock," she said. "And, truly, you would not be comfortable at The Heart."

[/size][/font]

By the next morning, when Kit came downstairs to break his fast on flatbread and pepper-rubbed fish, everyone appeared to know everything about him, especially his task. He had wondered whether there would be resistance to the project, but if there had been any, it was gone now. There were a few complaints, mostly about slow payments, a universal issue for public works; but none at all about the labor or organization. Most in the taproom seemed not to mind the bridge, and the feeling everywhere he went in town was optimistic. He'd run into more resistance elsewhere, building the small bridges.[/size]
"Well, why should we be concerned?" Brana Keep said to Kit. "You're bringing in people to work, yes? So we'll be selling room and board and clothes and beer to them. And you'll be hiring some of us, and everyone will do well while you're building this bridge of yours. I plan to be wading ankle-deep through gold by the time this is done."[/font]
[/size]"And after," Kit said, "when the bridge is complete—think of it, the first real link between the east and west sides of Empire. The only place for three thousand miles where people and trade can cross the mist easily, safely, whenever they wish. You'll be the heart of Empire in ten years. Five." He laughed a little, embarrassed by the passion that shook his voice.
[/size]"Yes, well," Brana Keep said, in the easy way of a woman who makes her living by not antagonizing customers, "we'll make that harness when the colt is born."
[/size]For the next six days, Kit explored the town and surrounding countryside.
[/size]He met the masons, a brother and sister that Teniant had selected before her death to oversee the pillar and anchorage construction on Nearside. They were quiet but competent, and Kit was comfortable not replacing them.
[/size]Kit also spoke with the Nearside rope-makers, and performed tests on their fish-skin ropes and cables, which turned out even stronger than he had hoped, with excellent resistance to rot, and catastrophic and slow failure. The makers told him that the rope stretched for its first two years in use, which made it ineligible to replace the immense chains that would bear the bridge's weight; but it could replace the thousands of vertical suspender chains that would support the roadbed, with a great saving in weight.
[/size]He spent much of his time watching the mist. It changed character unpredictably: a smooth rippled flow; hours later, a badland of shredding foam; still later, a field of steep dunes that joined and shifted as he watched. There was nothing level about the mist's surface, but he thought that the river generally dropped in its bed each day under the sun, and rose after dark.
[/size]The winds were more predictable. Hedged between the levees, they streamed southward each morning and north each evening, growing stronger toward midday and dusk, and falling away entirely in the afternoons and at night. They did not seem to affect the mist much, though they did tear shreds off that landed on the banks as dried foam.
[/size]The winds meant that there would be more dynamic load on the bridge than Teniant Planner had predicted. Kit would never criticize her work publicly and he gladly acknowledged her brilliant interpersonal skills, which had brought the town into cheerful collaboration, but he was grateful that her bridge had not been built as designed.
[/size]He examined the mist more closely, as well, by lifting a piece from the river's surface on the end of an oar. The mist was stiffer than it looked, and in bright light he thought he could see tiny shapes, perhaps creatures or plants or something altogether different. There were microscopes in the city, and people who studied these things; but he had never bothered to learn more, interested only in the structure that would bridge it. In any case, living things interested him less than structures.
[/size]Nights, Kit worked on the table in his room. Teniant's plans had to be revised. He opened the folios and cases she had left behind and read everything he found there. He wrote letters, wrote lists, wrote schedules, made duplicates of everything, sent to the capital for someone to do all the subsequent copying. His new plans for the bridge began to take shape, and he started to glimpse the invisible architecture that was the management of the vast project.
[/size]He did not see Rasali Ferry, except to ask each morning whether they might travel that day. The answer was always no.
[/size]
[/size]One afternoon, when the clouds were heaping into anvils filled with rain, he walked up to the building site half a mile north of Nearside. For two years, off and on, carts had tracked south on the Hoic Mine road and the West River Road, leaving limestone blocks and iron bars in untidy heaps. Huge dismantled shear-legs lay beside a caretaker's wattle-and-daub hut. There were thousands of large rectangular blocks.
[/size]Kit examined some of the blocks. Limestone was often too chossy for large-scale construction, but this rock was sound, with no apparent flaws or fractures. There were not enough, of course, but undoubtedly more had been quarried. He had written to order resumption of deliveries, and they would start arriving soon.
[/size]Delivered years too early, the iron trusses that would eventually support the roadbed were stacked neatly, painted black to protect them from moisture, covered in oiled tarps, and raised from the ground on planks. Sheep grazed the knee-high grass that grew everywhere. When one of the sheep eyed him incuriously, Kit found himself bowing. "Forgive the intrusion, sir," he said and laughed: too old to be talking to sheep.
[/size]The test pit was still open, a ladder on the ground nearby. Weeds clung when he moved the ladder as if reluctant to release it. He descended.
[/size]The pasture had not been noisy, but he was startled when he dropped below ground level and the insects and whispering grasses were suddenly silenced. The soil around him was striated shades of dun and dull yellow. Halfway down, he sliced a wedge free with his knife: lots of clay; good foundation soil, as he had been informed. The pit's bottom, some twenty feet down, looked like the walls, but crouching to dig at the dirt between his feet with his knife, he hit rock almost immediately. It seemed to be shale. He wondered how far down the water table was: did the Nearsiders find it difficult to dig wells? Did the mist ever backwash into one? There were people at University in Atyar who were trying to understand mist, but there was still so much that could not be examined or quantified.
[/size]He collected a rock to look at it in better light, and climbed from the pit in time to see a teamster leading four mules, her wagon groaning under the weight of the first new blocks. A handful of Nearsider men and women followed, rolling their shoulders and popping their joints. They called out greetings, and he walked across to them.
[/size]When he got back to The Fish hours later, exhausted from helping unload the cart and soaked from the storm that had started while he did so, there was a message from Rasali. Dusk was all it said.
[/size]* * *
[/size]Kit was stiff and irritable when he left for the Tranquil Crossing. He had hired a carrier from The Fish to haul one of his trunks down to the dock, but the others remained in his room, which he would probably keep until the bridge was done. He carried his folio of plans and paperwork himself. He was leaving duplicates of everything on Nearside, but after so much work, it was hard to trust any of it to the hands of others.
[/size]The storm was over and the clouds were moving past, leaving the sky every shade between lavender and a rich purple-blue. The large moon was a crescent in the west; the smaller a half circle immediately overhead. In the fading light, the mist was a dark, smoky streak. The air smelled fresh. Kit's mood lightened, and he half-trotted down the final path.
[/size]His fellow passengers were there before him: a prosperous-looking man with a litter of piglets in a woven wicker cage (Tengon whites, the man confided, the best bloodline in all Empire); a woman in the dark clothes fashionable in the capital, with brass-bound document cases and a folio very like Kit's; two traders with many cartons of powdered pigment; a mail courier with locked leather satchels and two guards. Nervous about their first crossing, Uni and Tom Mason greeted Kit when he arrived.
[/size]In the gathering darkness, the mist looked like bristling, tight-folded hills and coulees. Swifts darted just above it, using the wind flowing up the valley, searching for insects, he supposed. Once a sudden black shape, too quick to see clearly, appeared from below; then it, and one of the birds, was gone.
[/size]The voices of the fishers at their dock carried to him. They launched their boats, and he watched one, and then another, and then a gaggle of the little coracles push themselves up a slope of the mist. There were no lamps.
[/size]"Ready, everyone?" Kit had not heard Rasali approach. She swung down into the ferry. "Hand me your gear."
[/size]Stowing and embarkation were quick, though the piglets complained. Kit strained his eyes, but the coracles could no longer be seen. When he noticed Rasali waiting for him, he apologized. "I guess the fish are biting."
[/size]Rasali glanced at the river as she stowed his trunk. "Small ones. A couple of feet long only. The fishers like them bigger, five or six feet, though they don't want them too big, either. But they're not fish, not what you think fish are. Hand me that."
[/size]He hesitated a moment, then gave her the folio before stepping into the ferry. The boat sidled at his weight, but sluggishly: a carthorse instead of a riding mare. His stomach lurched. "Oh!" he said.
[/size]"What?" one of the traders asked nervously. Rasali untied the rope holding them to the dock.
[/size]Kit swallowed. "I had forgotten. The motion of the boat. It's not like water at all."
[/size]He did not mention his fear, but there was no need. The others murmured assent. The courier, her dark face sharp-edged as a hawk, growled, "Every time I do this, it surprises me. I dislike it."
[/size]Rasali unshipped a scull and slid the great triangular blade into the mist, which parted reluctantly. "I've been on mist more than water, but I remember the way water felt. Quick and jittery. This is better."
[/size]"Only to you, Rasali Ferry," Uni Mason said.
[/size]"Water's safer," the man with the piglets said.
[/size]Rasali leaned into the oar, and the boat slid away from the dock. "Anything is safe until it kills you."
[/size]The mist absorbed the quiet sounds of shore almost immediately. One of Kit's first projects had been a stone single-arch bridge over water, far to the north in Eskje province. He had visited before construction started. He was there for five days more than he had expected, caught by a snowstorm that left nearly two feet on the ground. This reminded him of those snowy moonless nights, the air as thick and silencing as a pillow on the ears.
[/size]Rasali did not scull so much as steer. It was hard to see far in any direction except up, but perhaps it was true that the mist spoke to her, for she seemed to know where to position the boat for the mist to carry it forward. She followed a small valley until it started to flatten and then mound up.The Tranquil Crossing tipped slightly as it slid a few feet to port. The mail carrier made a noise, and immediately stifled it.
[/size]Mist was a misnomer. It was denser than it seemed, and sometimes the boat seemed not to move through it so much as over its surface. Tonight it seemed like sea-wrack, the dirty foam that strong winds could whip from ocean waves. Kit reached a hand over the boat's side. The mist piled against his hand, almost dry to the touch, sliding up his forearm with a sensation he could not immediately identify. When he realized it was prickling, he snatched his arm back in and rubbed it on a fold of his coat. The skin burned. Caustic, of course.
[/size]The man with the pigs whispered, "Will they come if we talk or make noise?"
[/size]"Not to talking, or pigs' squealing," Rasali said. "They seem to like low noises. They'll rise to thunder sometimes."
[/size]One of the traders said, "What are they if they're not really fish? What do they look like?" Her voice shook. The mist was weighing on them all: all but Rasali.
[/size]"If you want to know you'll have to see one for yourself," Rasali said. "Or try to get a fisher to tell you. They gut and fillet them over the sides of their boats. No one else sees much but meat wrapped in paper, or rolls of black skin for the rope-makers and tanners."
[/size]"You've seen them," Kit said.
[/size]"They're broad and flat. But ugly . . . "
[/size]"And Big Ones?" Kit asked.
[/size]Her voice was harsh. "Them, we don't talk about here."
[/size]No one spoke for a time. Mist—foam—heaped up at the boat's prow and parted, eased to the sides with an almost inaudible hissing. Once the mist off the port side heaved, and something dark broke the surface for a moment, followed by other dark somethings; but the somethings were not close enough to see well. One of the merchants cried without a sound or movement, the tears on his face the only evidence.
[/size]The Farside levee showed at last, a black mass that didn't get any closer for what felt like hours. Fighting his fear, Kit leaned over the side, keeping his face away from the surface. "It can't really be bottomless," he said, half to himself. "What's under it?"
[/size]"You wouldn't hit the bottom, anyway," Rasali said.
[/size]The Tranquil Crossing eased up a long swell of mist and into a hollow. Rasali pointed the ferry along a crease and eased it forward. And then they were suddenly a stone's throw from the Farside dock and the light of its torches.
[/size]People on the dock moved as they approached. Just loudly enough to carry, a soft baritone voice called, "Rasali?"
[/size]She called back, "Ten this time, Pen."
[/size]"Anyone need carriers?" A different voice. Several passengers responded.
[/size]Rasali shipped the scull while the ferry was still some feet away from the dock, and allowed it to ease forward under its own momentum. She stepped to the prow and picked up a coiled rope there, tossing one end across the narrowing distance. Someone on the dock caught it and pulled the boat in, and in a very few moments, the ferry was snug against the dock.
[/size]Disembarking and payment was quicker than embarkation had been. Kit was the last off, and after a brief discussion he hired a carrier to haul his trunk to an inn in town. He turned to say farewell to Rasali. She and the man—Pen, Kit remembered—were untying the boat. "You're not going back already," he said.
[/size] "Oh, no." Her voice sounded loose, content, relaxed. Kit hadn't known how tense she was. "We're just going to tow the boat over to where the Twins will pull it out." She waved with one hand to the boat launch. A pair of white oxen gleamed in the night, at their heads a woman hardly darker.
[/size]"Wait," Kit said to Uni Mason and handed her his folio. "Please tell the innkeeper I'll be there soon." He turned back to Rasali. "May I help?"
[/size]In the darkness, he felt more than saw her smile. "Always."[/font]

A ostatak? 

neće da otvori stranu dalje od ovoga...    problem je do mog interneta.

 

Honorable Mentions in The Best Horror of the Year volume four
ellen_datlow  March 17th, 11:26

For those of you who can't wait, here's the list of Honorable Mentions that will be appearing in The Best Horror of the Year volume four (I'll post the full list at a later date):

Atkins, Peter "Dancing Like We're Dumb," Rumours of the Marvellous.
Ballingrud, Nathan "Sunbleached," Teeth.            
Barron, Laird "The Carrion Gods in Their Heaven," Supernatural Noir. 
Barron, Laird "The Men From Porlock," (novella) The Book of Cthulhu.
Barron, Laird "The Siphon,"    Blood and Other Cravings.   
Baxter, Alan "Punishment of the Sun," Dead Red Heart.
Bear, Elizabeth "Needles," Blood and Other Cravings.
Bowes, Richard "Blood Yesterday, Blood Tomorrow," Blood and Other Cravings.
Braunbeck, Gary A. "And Still You Wonder Why Our First ..."The Monster's Corner.
Carroll, Jonathan "East of Furious," Conjunctions: 56, Terra Incognita.
Colangelo, Michael R. "Blacklight,"    Chilling Tales.   
Cowdrey, Albert E. "The Bogle," F&SF January/February.
Davidson, Craig "The Burn," The Cincinnati Review, April.       
Dowling, Terry "The Shaddowesbox," Ghosts By Gaslight.          
Fowler, Christopher "An Injustice," House of Fear.      
Frost, Gregory "The Dingus," Supernatural Noir.         
Gresh, Lois "Wee Sweet Girlies," Eldritch Evolutions.
Hand, Elizabeth "Near Zennor," (novella) A Book of Horrors.
Hand, Elizabeth "Uncle Lou," Conjunctions 57: Kin.
Harwood, John "Face to Face," Ghosts by Gaslight.               
Hirshberg, Glen "After-Words," The Janus Tree and Other Stories.         
Hodge, Brian "Hate the Sinner, Love the Sin," Picking the Bones.    
Hodge, Brian "Scars in Progress," Demons.       
Johnstone, Carole "Electric Dreams," Black Static 23, July/August.   
Jones, Stephen Graham "Little Monsters," Creatures: Thirty Years of Monsters.
Kiernan, Caitlín R. "The Maltese Unicorn," Supernatural Noir. 
King, Stephen "Under the Weather," Full Dark, No Stars.   
Langan, John "The Third Always Beside You," Blood and Other Cravings.      
Langan, John"TheUnbearable Proximity of Mr.Dunn's Balloons,"Ghosts by Gaslight.
Lees, Tim "Durgen's Party," Black Static 22, April/May.   
McMahon, Gary "What They Hear in the Dark," chapbook.
Miéville, China "Covehithe," Guardian May.
Nate Southard "The Blisters on My Heart," Supernatural Noir. 
Oliver, Reggie "A Child's Problem," (novella) A Book of Horrors.   
Oliver, Reggie "Dancer in the Dark," Mrs Midnight and Other Stories.   
Oliver, Reggie "Hand to Mouth," Haunts: Reliquaries of the Dead.       
Partridge, Norman "Vampire Lake," Subterranean Tales of Dark Fantasy 2.     
Piccirilli, Tom "But For Scars," Supernatural Noir.     
Pinborough, Sarah "The Screaming Room," The Monster's Corner.   
Shearman, Robert "Alice Through the Plastic Sheet," A Book of Horrors.
Shepard, Lucius "Ditch Witch," Supernatural Noir.
Smith, Michael Marshall "Sad, Dark Thing," A Book of Horrors.     
Stalter, K. Harding "A Summer's Day," Black Static 24.         
Tem, Melanie "Afraid of Snakes," Portents.   
Thomas, Lee "Comfortable in Her Skin," Supernatural Noir. 
Travis, Tia V. "Still," Portents.
Tremblay, Paul G. "The Getaway," Supernatural Noir.         
Valentine, Genevieve "Bufonidae," Phantasmagorium #1.         
Wall, Alan "The Salt of Eliza," Black Static 22, April/May.   
Warren, Kaaron "All You Can Do is Breathe," Blood and Other Cravings

Slatko... 

http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/a-game-of-rats-and-dragon/

Ima li neke veze sa starom dobrom The Game of Rats and Dragons Kordvajnera Smita?

Nisam čitala Smitovu priču  , pogledala Wikipediju, od Smita su preuzeti naslov i odnos između protagoniste i njegovog ne-ljudskog partnera u lovu na čudovišta (bar koliko mogu da procenim bez čitanja Smitove priče).