A short original science fiction story, which I enjoyed for its dreamy atmosphere rather than for its plot.

I cannot move for itching and dare not try to use my arms. But I can smell the greenness, the succulent wet of unfolding leaves. Isn’t that what I came here for?

Borders of Infinity [story] is a short story that was originally published (along with two other short stories: The Labyrinth and The Mountains of Mourning) in Borders of Infinity [novel], which is part of the Vorkosigan series by Lois McMaster Bujold. I’m not sure how much sense this will make out of sequence, but it will still be excellent. Since Borders of Infinity [novel] is now out of print, at least in North America, it’s nice that it’s becoming available online.

“Thanks,” croaked Miles. A week ago, or in a previous lifetime, depending on how you counted time, Miles had dawdled over a selection of wines, dissatisfied with this or that nuance of flavor. His lips cracked as he grinned in memory. He drank. It was perfectly ordinary water, lukewarm, faintly redolent of chlorine and sulfur. A refined body, but the bouquet is a bit presumptuous….

The Mountains of Mourning is a short story that was originally published (along with two other short stories) in Borders of Infinity, which is part of the Miles Vorkosigan series by Lois McMaster Bujold. It’s a really fantastic series; I recommend every book in the series highly. This story makes most sense if you read it as part of the series, but I think it stands very well on its own, too.

Miles grinned wolfishly. “Oh, Karal, I’m a one-man band, I am. I’m a parade.”

“As you say, just so. Ordinary people need extraordinary examples. So they can say to themselves, well, if he can do that, I can surely do this. No excuses.”

“No quarter, yes, I know that game. Been playing it all my life.”

“I think,” said Karal, “Barrayar needs you. To go on being just what you are.”

“Barrayar will eat me, if it can.”

“Yes,” said Karal, his eyes on the horizon, “so it will.” His gaze fell to the graves at his feet. “But it swallows us all in the end, doesn’t it?”

BDSM warning for bondage, mostly.

Can a leatherman find happiness in the suburbs? This series follows the adventures of a suburbanite with leather boots and a hidden hanky.

You know, one of the things I love about this author is how well she writes in the first person. Her character in this story has an incredidbly unobtrusive narrative voice. Only two stories so far; Clothesline is very good but Spontaneous is much better.

Written in the form of a news article. A reporter is invited to witness a decidedly amateur attempt at mediation between a 15-year-old rapist and his 13-year-old victim. I can easily belive this as a real newspaper piece, and I don’t think the story would have worked as well in any other form.

To Huard, priest of the tribe of the Feasters, under the care of the City Priest, under the care of the High Priest of the Northern Peninsula:

This letter is borne to you by Prosper, who until a few hours ago held the honored position of City Priest, but who has been stripped by the High Priest of his title and of his priesthood, and who has been placed under the God’s curse. The sentence given to him was exile from the Capital Territory and from the God’s presence for one year’s time.

I can’t think of anything to say to explain this story, so I’ll just say that it’s very, very good.

The only quarrel I have with this story is the narrator is called Bert, a name I don’t particularly care for. Parhelion makes up for this with some of the best writing around.

When his mother dies, 16-year-old Rory Norick is forced to live with the father he has never known or wanted to know. He leaved his home in Nevada behind and moves to the Arizona desert. The fact that Rory is gay doesn’t make him any happier about going to live with strangers.

Like all DomLuka’s stories, it’s the characters that make Desert Dropping so appealing.

My favourite of the three stories I’ve read by DomLuka.

This is the story of seventeen-year-old Quinn Moore. He has a loving family, good friends and a girlfriend he’s deemed as perfect. Quinn’s also gay, not that he’s about to admit it. He likes things just the way they are, thank you. But then he meets Jude Landon, and everything in Quinn’s comfortable world is turned upside down.

Quinn is a really great character. I think I like him so much because he’s very human; he’s always panicking and doing silly things, and making his life a lot more complicated than it needs to be.

Follow-up to my recommendation of The Administration.

The following is part of another Administration novel, Good Citizens. This is set in the Administration, but has an entirely new cast of characters, taking the spotlight away from the corporate world, and the offices and I&I, and turning it onto citizens at the other end of the Administration’s social scale. There is no guarantee it will be finished, and may be revised or removed at any time—read at your own risk. At the moment I’m not working on any Administration stories, so Good Citizens is unlikely to be finished in the forseeable future.

Even though it isn’t and may never be finished, Good Citizens is an incredible read. When I read The Administration, I had a hard time really feeling the resister point of view. I understood it intellectually, but not viscerally.

But now I get it.

I fervently wish to see this story finished, although I’m afraid it probably won’t be. It hasn’t been updated since late 2003, anyway, so don’t look forward to new material anytime soon.

ETA: Seems to have been removed from Manna’s site, although I couldn’t find anything there saying why.

ETA: Good Citizens is no longer available online. Manna has said that she’s done some work on it lately, so it may eventually be finished, and possibly published, along with the main Administration series.