I'm really bad at getting to short stories - my middle-aged presbyopia makes reading magazines difficult, so I tend to catch up on this year's short fiction by reading next year's Hugo nominees (and occasionally Year's Best anthologies). This is a set of ten short stories from PS Publishing's PostScripts magazine sent to BSFA members three years ago, which I have only now got around to reading.

It wouldn't really have moved me o take out a subscription. The clear majority of the stories in the anthology are horror rather than sf, and frankly gave me bad dreams last night. Only one of the ten is by a woman (Lisa Tuttle). Of the more sfnal stories, I had read Peter Hamilton's "Footvote", with his trademark misogyny and Europhobia, in a Dozois anthology; the only other one that made much of an impact on me was Stephen Baxter's "Eagle Song", which also has familiar themes from that author (grand sweeping historical montages, incomprehensible aliens) with some originality of format but ending the story only halfway through. Sorry if this sounds grumpy - this came for free, and sometimes you get what you pay for.