(Hard SF Mystery) Mickey works for the Martian Port Authority on Phobos. When a mysterious artifact goes missing, Mickey goes down to the surface to look for it. (4,200 words; Time: 14m)
Rating: ★★★☆☆, Average
Recommended By: GDozois:5"In Panic Town, on the Backward Moon," by Michael F. Flynn (edited by Bryan Thomas Schmidt), appeared in Mission: Tomorrow (RSR review), published on October 15, 2015 by Baen Books.
Mini-Review (click to view--possible spoilers)
Pro: Nice setup for a detective mystery. Plenty of clues, mostly in the form of people's names. Most of the engineering seems plausible. The last line is a reward for readers of Flynn's January Dancer series, implying that this story is part of that series.
Con: The ending disappoints; not only is the artifact not recovered, the paragraphs killing off all the characters are awful. We don't really know any of the characters well enough to care about them--including Mickey.
Other Reviews: Search Web, GoodReads.com
Con: The ending disappoints; not only is the artifact not recovered, the paragraphs killing off all the characters are awful. We don't really know any of the characters well enough to care about them--including Mickey.
Other Reviews: Search Web, GoodReads.com
Now online in Clarkesworld 140, May 2018:
ReplyDeletehttp://clarkesworldmagazine.com/flynn_05_18_reprint/