"Last Report from the KSS Psychopomp" by Jennifer Brozek
I went to this one next because the title sounded interesting (although I would've gone with
Final Report of the KSS Psychopomp). I assumed it'd be something futuristic/spaceship-related, and I was right. We follow, I believe, a salvage team as they investigate a particular area of space to make claims on old spaceships. If I'm missing out on details, it's because the stakes are established in kind of a blurry, foggy way.
The story begins with dialogue, heavily used, so it took a while for me to ground myself spatially. I generally didn't have much to go on in terms of what anything looked like or what anyone looked like. The setting and characters' physical traits remained nebulous to me throughout. This doesn't "make things open to interpretation for the reader;" it leaves the details shrouded in vagueness. A piece of writing is an idea communicated to the mind of a reader. Stephen King writes this himself in his own craft book
On Writing, and he's a genre writer so there's not really a genre-based defense against this criticism. If writing is telepathy, I need to have the author's idea thoroughly cultivated on the page via words, not implications, so I can absorb that idea in the way they described it. Anything else is an excuse to not do the hard work of conveying concrete images in writing.
I also am not sure who the main character is meant to be, or who's meant to be focalizing the story. There are tiny bits of interior access, indicating an omniscient narrator, but this was pretty distancing whereas close access to one person would've been more compelling and engaging. Main thing about the story was that I just didn't care. The writing didn't teach me what or who to care about at the beginning of the story, or why. I only know that the people alive at the end are the most important because they survived. And when the Predators appeared, I was similarly underwhelmed. Here is a paragraph on the physical description that probably won't blow you away:
pg. 171
QuoteThe blurred air solidified into a humanoid creature at least two meters tall. It had reptilian skin, a broad chest, clawed hands, and a huge head with dangling appendages. Most terrifying were its red eyes and mandible mouth. It was covered in armor, weapons, bones, and other unidentifiable things. It flared its lower mandibles.
The preceding paragraph could be describing almost any creature in any universe. I emboldened a particular phrase which was a pretty obvious cop out. Instead of describing any specific visual details, giving us any type of image at all, Brozek's description amounts to "it couldn't be described." That's a cop out for a writer.
Overall it was an unaffecting, unsatisfying story. I'll probably move on to SD Perry's story next.
QuoteWhen ex-cop Harrigan spoted ex-owlf Garber at a gun show so many years later, and being so much older, how I craved for them to call a truce, grab a beer together, and talk. There's only a few people in the world who can have a conversation about a Predator, who can talk about what happened in LA. Who can truly understand what was gained and what was lost. There's stuff both probably have kept burried deep inside for a long time. And to explore none of this, and instead opt for a backstory on a comic relief character named Fernando who wants to be a movie star, was such a missed opportunity. It still makes me sad. 
I'm assuming the missed opportunities stem from the editor/publisher soliciting people who aren't really that interested in this universe, and who were given maybe a week to write one draft of their contribution.
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Rematch by Steve Perry
This was a pretty decent story for the most part, certainly my favorite in the book of the three I've read so far. If felt satisfying as a follow up to Perry's novel, Turnabout, in that he continued to be successful in the way he captures a variety of interior voices while writing in third person, which I think is a fairly advanced technique. It was fun to return to Sloane and Mary Collins again, and the new characters introduced felt like they fit into the same tone, the same world that Perry created for Turnabout. It was a true, satisfying sequel. I also really enjoyed the parallel of a man/woman partnership of hunters as Sloane and Collins represent a human man/woman partnership. It was a cool comparison, contrast.
My only gripe with the story is that halfway through it converts to mostly uninteresting physical action and then dialogue paced very quickly without balance of interior access/physical description. The final scene also ends on a line that serves as more of an eye-wink style punchline rather than a true closing to the narrative, which is cute, but hollow.
