First Lines of Joanna Russ' "The Zanzibar Cat"

Katy drives like a maniac; we must have been doing over 120 km/hr on those turns. She's good, though, extremely good, and I've seen her take the whole car apart and put it together again in a day."

- Joanna Russ, from "When it Changed", the first story in the collection The Zanzibar Cat.

I fell in love with Russ when I encountered her amazing story "The Dirty Little Girl" in The Hidden Side of the Moon. It's a mesmerizing story, compelling and deeply weird at the same time, and I can't stop going back to it. A few stories in, The Zanzibar Cat is not of that quality (yet?) but is still entertaining.

First Lines of Kim Stanley Robinson's "Red Moon"

"Someone had told him not to look while landing on the moon, but he was strapped in his seat right next to a window and could not help himself; he looked. Quickly he saw why he had been told not to -- the moon was doubling in size with every beat of his heart, they were headed for it at cosmic speed and would certainly vaporize on impact."

- Kim Stanley Robinson, "Red Moon". Entertaining read that starts and ends well but with a bit of a lull in the middle. Love his outlook on life.