E-Mails From The Future by Robert J Sawyer

This was a fun little email exchange with an agent negotiating a writing contract for an author.

The exercise in this story is projecting what the world will be like 10 years in the future.

Making it even more fun was that it was written in 2008.

Some of Sawyer's ideas are still a ways out, while much of what is in the story is not that far fetched any more.

A nice little chocolate mint of a story at the end of a lovely banquet of interesting and entertaining short stories.

Well done sir.  Well done.

Hello, Hello by Seanan McGuire

This was a charming and warm story about a mother of young children who is a computer scientist specializing in language translation AI programming.

She has a sister who is deaf and uses an AI that is programmed to translate American sign language.

Communication is done primarily over Skype and the use of avatars is commonplace.  One day she gets a call, from her sister's number, but instead of her sister's avatar there is an image of a default face which is having trouble communicating.

The kids are taken by this stranger, finding he or she funny, and they enjoy trying to talk with it.  This makes the mother very nervous.

With a bit of digging the truth is discovered which, in turn, may create a new market for translation AIs.

Like I said, charming, even though the twist was easy to figure out, I did like how the story moved beyond the telling of the mystery.

Seanan McGuire's website - http://www.seananmcguire.com/

Seanan McGuire