2020 continues to be a rather busy one for Tor dot com, and May is no exception, with three new short stories and a novelette that's almost a novella. The pieces take on some interesting SFF contents, from the superpowered world of Wild Cards to trying to bring back extinct animals to wars that span planets and galaxies. They feature characters mostly just trying to do their jobs, and finding that those jobs are complicated by the need to please bosses who can be at times a bit authoritarian, and a bit unreasonable. But the job still needs doing, and these works find ways to keep that moving and tense. To the reviews!
Coming off a full February, Tor's March lineup relaxes a bit with just one short story and one novelette (so far, at least, assuming nothing new slips in before the end of the month). The two pieces take on some very interesting settings, though, where the world has been changed by some rather huge events. In one, some animals have become Knowledgeable, uplifted to "human levels," though the true implications of the world are much more complex than that. In the other, we return to the Wild Cards universe, where a virus makes certain people develop power, turning them into Aces...or Jokers. The stories look at people trying to get by and maybe do the right thing, though in very different ways and tones. Before I give too much away, though, let's get to the reviews!
