'Looking for a taste of the very best science fiction, fantasy and horror short stories around? The second of an annual series, Focus 2013 collects an elite selection of work which has received acclaim via national and international Awards shortlisting. ' (Publication summary)
'Cyborg technology, a future world where computers are alive and revered as gods and people depend on them for food and heeling. The main character desperate to take her brother's place as cyborg sacrifice. Technology mixed with mysticism' (Tsana Dolichva, Tsana's Reads).
'After the Apocalypse, Ven the android is sent away with the last surviving human child. Almost a century before, a scientist named Arvel Hem speculated that humans suffer from a “chronogenetic species-wide pathology” that has now caused mass die-offs. The boy named Solomon may be the exception. There may be others. Ven’s quest is to find Hem, who took off across the universe to avoid the conflagration he knew was coming to Earth. On the ship, Sol grows up, Ven slowly deteriorates, and so does their vessel' (Lois Tilton, Locus Online).
The narrator is a snow woman, animated by the white witch she calls her mother. When the mother leaves her she is left alone in the house with the stone horrors that seem to talk to her. Then comes the thaw, and the woman must save herself.
