Pat, The Shell Collector is a nice romance which features a future global warming coastal flooding effect. Sand is a future post-apocalypse or severe environmental scene; the characters are mostly scavengers who have learned how to dive through sand to explore and scavenge from the buried cities below. Beacon 23 is focused on a man who suffers from PTSD who takes a job as a light beacon operator near a treacherous asteroid field. Howey focuses on the human aspects more than scientific aspects of his stories. His book of short stories are fascinating. Not all the stories, mind you, are of interest to me, but his explanations of what triggered the writing of them and what he, at times, hopes the reader takes away from them. One rather gruesome very short story was triggered by some ballet dance friends and his proclaimed struggle with an eating disorder. I would not have put that together without his explanation of how the story came about.
I am now on to Cetaganda , but it appears skipping the short stories and novellas (including Mountains of Mourning, Borders of Infinity and Labyrinth) shows me that I am missing something. Also, I thought Cetaganda was next on the list. I missed Mirror Dance, so that is now on hold for the audio version. It looks like I am next on the list for that. I might be able to get what I am missing through an ILL. I will also check Gutenberg to see where they are with the now copywrite free Analog issues, although I doubt Bujold's short stories will be included, it is worth a look.
