Short Trips: 2040, ed. John Binns

Second paragraph of third story (“Thinking Warrior”, by Huw Wilkins):

I chamber a smoke round and fire it up into the air to obscure the sniper’s view, then sweep the blank-fronted tower block with the microwave radar.

Another of the Big Finish collections of Doctor Who short stories, this time all set in the year 2040 (an anagram of the year of writing, 2004, though the link is also made with the Doctor’s TARDIS being a Type 40). I didn’t think this was one of the more successful collections, with the linking narrative between the stories (about the invasion of Earth by an entity called the Ethereal) seeming to get in the way a bit. But there were a couple that I really enjoyed – “Artificial Intelligence” by Andy Campbell, a retake of Flowers for Algernon, and “Anteus” by Rebecca Levene featuring a fractured future London which seemed all too much in tune with this month’s events.

Next in sequence is Short Trips: A Christmas Treasury, edited by Paul Cornell. I have realised that because I’m reading these at one a month rather than the original publication rate, I’ll be reaching several Christmassy volumes at non-Christmassy times of the year.