Compelling Science Fiction Issue 12

By John M. Campbell, Jim Meeks-Johnson, Santiago Belluco, and more

2018

First Published

3.92

Average Rating

Number of Pages

2H54M

Audio Length

This issue starts with Deborah Davitt's "The Lonely Dark". Under a mountain of crushing debt, an asteroid miner faces hardships he never anticipated (5950 words). Our second story is "False Identity" by John M. Campbell. In it, a detective has to deal with a suspect who performs brain surgery to alter behavior (6000 words). The third story this issue, Jim Meeks-Johnson's "The Mojo Economy," is a story about devices brought by aliens to humanity. These devices can make life easier for everyone, and the aliens only ask that each human use their device to fulfill a few assigned jobs every day. How will society change as a result? (3700 words). Next we have "The Forest Eats" by Santiago Belluco. This one is about a man who goes searching for a disease cure in a biological waste dump. He finds more than he bargained for. (6100 words). Our fifth and final story is "Utility" by Jack Nicholls. In a far future post-scarcity society, individual utility is judged very differently. When a hero astronaut returns to earth, he will need the help of a reluctant local to adjust (4300 words).

Avg Rating

3.92

Number of Ratings

5 STARS

42%

4 STARS

25%

3 STARS

17%

2 STARS

17%

1 STARS

goodreads

Authors

Jim is best known for his ongoing Entangled Galaxy Series and imaginative short stories. Jim's other published works of fiction include Thunderstone in the Six Worlds anthology (2016) and By the Numbers in the e-zine Aurorawolf.com (2015). Five of his short stories were awarded Honorable Mentions by the L Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future contest. Jim became an avid science fiction reader at the age of ten when he discovered Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers in the local Carnegie Library. He went on to get degrees in mathematics and psychology in order to help Hari Seldon invent Psychohistory. However, Seldon didn’t need Jim's help, so Jim took a job writing computer software for medical research in Indianapolis, where he lives with his wife and a variable number of foster kids. Jim kept finding wayward science fiction story ideas hiding in science magazines, on the news, or just about anywhere in daily life. Someone needed to capture them, so in 2010 he started writing. Since then, he has participated in numerous writers' workshops, has been a slush pile reader for Flash Fiction Online, and is a futurist writer for SciFutures.