TL;DR A good collection of SF stories.

This is a collection that’s loosely about re-invention and rediscovery (like, New Year’s resolutions), featuring a mix of what looks like established writers and new. To run through just some of the ideas in here: Alter-you who is so much better at, like, everything, in *Better Me is Fun at Parties*, by F. E. Choe; a new beginning for sisters with a very toxic relationship in *The Holy Daughters of Eng Mac*, by C. R. Kellogg; ambition, and ways to get what you want in Shannon Spieler’s *A Facade of Faith*; running for the hills after an alien invasion in *A Thousand Gomorrahs* by Darryl Gregory; a reworking of Cinder Ella (:)) in Julie Danvers’s *Ugly*; a supernatural event (alien abduction, maybe?) in the desert, beautifully described, in Rowan Copley’s *Aurora Deserti*; Hades and Persephone in Alec J. Marsh’s *Katabasis*; and extreme bodysculpting and/or dysmorphia in *The Ravishing Moon Princess* by Charlotte Ahlin (great ending).

There’s an eel person in Sophia Tao’s *The Catadromous Nature of Eel*; interspecies love in Adianu Etinose’s *The (Re)Creation of New Terraform*; love across timelines, and toxicity, in Brigitte Winter’s *Redo*; more time travel in *All the Time in the World and None at All* by Allison Pottern; a beautiful story about future medical science in *Fracture*, by Melinda A. Smith; dimensional escapism in Victor Pope’s *Wave Walkers* (I would totally want to go there), which reminded me, of course, of Abbott’s *Flatland*; and you may already know (I did) Elizabeth Bear’s *No Moon and Flat Calm*, about postgrad apprentices who arrive at a space station in crisis.

Catherine Castellani’s *Spaced* is an excellent story on being an outsider and still making it. *Athena’s Voyage* by Nick DePasquale is about my favourite thing in the world, sentient spaceships (OpenAI has nothing on this, so far). A. E. Kirchoff’s *My Lover’s Music Box* is a melancholy story about death and a kind of afterlife. And doesn’t *chat_transcript_elsie_user260916_2189-12-13T21-18-32.661Z* have the best title? I enjoyed Ash Howell’s story about an uploaded consciousness, and how the ending suggests more. And then Chris Campbell's story of the last person and possible simulated realities, *Ada the Last Daughter: On Blackhole Cosmology and Computation*.

All of these stories are super imaginative with many interesting ideas—as all SF should be—and fun to read. Of course, as happens with collections, I didn’t enjoy every single story. No matter: if you enjoy SF, you’ll enjoy this unique collection. Recommended.

Thanks to Victory Editing NetGalley Co-op/NetGalley and Immortal Jellyfish Press for DRC access.