Forkpoints

Nebula Award winner Finch (Reading the Bones) delivers an impressive, career-spanning collection celebrating the power a single decision holds to change the shape of the world. Some of the 12 stories focus in on those pivotal moments; the gripping “Not This Tide” leaps between the inexplicable supernatural experiences of a girl and her father in WWII England, and the year 2035, in which the now-elderly woman is a renowned world peace activist. Others place the fateful decision in the background and chart the consequences, like the wistful “The Old Man and C,” which imagines a world where Albert Einstein followed his talent for violin instead of physics. Fans of Finch’s Xenolinguist stories will enjoy encountering the author at her lyrical best in “Sequoia Dreams,” about alien visitors who have a profound ecological message to convey, and “Czerny at Midnight,” in which a marine biologist’s autistic son communicates with an octopus through music. Though pieces like “Forkpoints” and “Where Two or Three” are weakened by plentiful hints that there are better stories happening in the background, this collection as a whole is delightfully cohesive and thought-provoking. It’s a showcase of a legend at her finest. (June)