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Amazon:
An Eligible Boy by Hugo, BSFA, Sturgeon, & Philip K. Dick Award-winning UK author Ian McDonald (
ISFDB,
Wikipedia), a novelette which is 6th in his Future Fiction series of stories which tie into his "India 2047" set of science fiction tales (which were among the ones which netted him the Hugo, IIRC), this one originally appearing in the 2008 Pyr anthology Fast Forward 2 and was reprinted in the 26th annual Year's Best SF anthology edited by Gardner Dozois.
Cyrano de Bergerac goes to future India to find a wife.
An Eligible Boy is a funny and profound story focusing on a key aspect of McDonald's future India: selective abortions leading to a hugely imbalanced gender ratio. A four-to-one male to female proportion that forces many men to make desperate appeals to the few women available for marriage.
Young Jasbir had a cosmetic dental surgery and, advised by his roommate Sujay – who codes Avatars software for the popular soap opera Town and Country – decides to use an A.I. relationship coach to help him in the game of courtship on Shaadi, the world’s biggest wedding agency. Such tradition has become much more complex and difficult since the introduction of Avatars and Data Mining. But that’s just one side of the story, as the A.I.s believe that they are alive and act out the soap opera’s characters as if real; with unexpected results. Who will find love? And who will lose it all together? Most of all, who will be the perfect match of such Marriage Game upgraded version?
An Eligible Boy, with its slight humor and innovative courtship rituals, explores the new boundaries of love for both human beings and artificial beings.
Free again from the author via KDP Select @
Amazon:
Demons Hide Their Faces by multiple Hugo & Nebula Award-nominee A. A. Attanasio (
ISFDB,
Wikipedia), a collection of his previously published shorts.
Featuring seven captivating, terrifying, and poetic short stories giving form to a universe both wonderful and horrific: Visit an alternate America discovered and settled by imperial Chinese — Sleuth with a hardboiled detective in ‘30s Honolulu — Tour hell with an accidental demon hunter — Meet the Designers of our universe — Investigate the inner life of a vampire yoga instructor — Discover branch universes of evil beauty — and watch an AI confront the ghosts of our blood.