Summary: Shadow Unit, 2009
Summary: Shadow Unit, 2009
[Updated to add stats from the "special Christmas story" this year, Sarah Monette's "On Faith".]
As I said last year: "Shadow Unit is a rather different online site. It markets itself as sort of an online TV series (though in words, no video): a mix, perhaps, of CSI and The X-Files. And the stories are indeed very TVish in presentation, with such TV series like tics as a very carefully mixed set of protagonists. More to the point, they are very good." The writers this year, in various mixes of solo and collaboration, were Emma Bull, Elizabeth Bear, Leah Bobet, Holly Black, Sarah Monette, and Chelsea Polk. (Over the two years Bear and Bull have been the mainstays.) There were 9 stories in 2009, 8 novellas, the other a long novelette, some 243,200 words total. There were also some extras -- "outtakes", character sketches, and so on.
The stories concern a special Federal unit that investigates crimes traceable to "anomalous" people: people with something like super powers, but also an obsession with, usually, revenge against some symbol. I have been enjoying them a great deal. There is a definite overall narrative arc, so reading in order is a good idea, though each episode does tell its own story as well.
After much debate with myself last year, I decided to list these stories as Science Fiction, though one could easily have decided to call them Fantasy, depending on how much you believe the (rather sketchy) explanation for the various anomalous powers. I will say that if anything they seem a bit more SFnal this year.
My favorite story was probably Bull's "Getaway", in which my personal favorite character (though they all are well done), Chaz Villette, on medical leave after the events of 2008, gets involved in some crimes in his home town, Las Vegas, and gets a bit of personal life of potential future interest as well. The finale, "Not Alone", by Bull, Bear, Black, and Polk, is also very good, very wrenching, with a classic TV-style cliffhanger ending.
[Updated to add stats from the "special Christmas story" this year, Sarah Monette's "On Faith".]
As I said last year: "Shadow Unit is a rather different online site. It markets itself as sort of an online TV series (though in words, no video): a mix, perhaps, of CSI and The X-Files. And the stories are indeed very TVish in presentation, with such TV series like tics as a very carefully mixed set of protagonists. More to the point, they are very good." The writers this year, in various mixes of solo and collaboration, were Emma Bull, Elizabeth Bear, Leah Bobet, Holly Black, Sarah Monette, and Chelsea Polk. (Over the two years Bear and Bull have been the mainstays.) There were 9 stories in 2009, 8 novellas, the other a long novelette, some 243,200 words total. There were also some extras -- "outtakes", character sketches, and so on.
The stories concern a special Federal unit that investigates crimes traceable to "anomalous" people: people with something like super powers, but also an obsession with, usually, revenge against some symbol. I have been enjoying them a great deal. There is a definite overall narrative arc, so reading in order is a good idea, though each episode does tell its own story as well.
After much debate with myself last year, I decided to list these stories as Science Fiction, though one could easily have decided to call them Fantasy, depending on how much you believe the (rather sketchy) explanation for the various anomalous powers. I will say that if anything they seem a bit more SFnal this year.
My favorite story was probably Bull's "Getaway", in which my personal favorite character (though they all are well done), Chaz Villette, on medical leave after the events of 2008, gets involved in some crimes in his home town, Las Vegas, and gets a bit of personal life of potential future interest as well. The finale, "Not Alone", by Bull, Bear, Black, and Polk, is also very good, very wrenching, with a classic TV-style cliffhanger ending.