Tor.com has a rather magnificent story by Ben Burgis, called Contains Multitudes (yes, that's a Walt Whitman quote) online for your delectation.
It plays in a world where humanity fought, and nearly (?) lost a war with a cosmic invader (some kind of yellow squid, it appears). The peace/cease fire conditions were that a generation of children would serve as breeding vessels for the next generation of aliens (again, see the title...).
But.
The relationship turns out to be less parasitic and more mind-meld, human and Other co-joined, talking more "we" than "I"...
Charles Stross has posted a short story called Bit Rot on his blog - apparently this is the missing link between Saturn's Children (review here) and the soon-to-be-released Neptune's Brood (sorry, haven't read it yet).
It's available from his blog (see link above, below, and on the picture to the right) in ePub, Kindle, and HTML format.
The short is entertaining enough if not overly complex, but is, at least for me, screaming for more (and no, I don't think Charlie will find time to flesh this thread out anytime soon).
All I can add is that, to my knowledge, this is the first non-US/UK Nebula winner, my congratualations, and a strong recommendation to amble over to Clarkesworld and read the story!
When I first read (and linked to) Paul Cornell's Hugo-nominated short story The Copenhagen Interpretation I was not aware that this was the 3rd instalment in a series centred around Major Jonathan Hamilton, a secret agent/spy/soldier in a British Army and a world very much unlike our own, with it's own technology (there's a slight whiff of Steampunk here), which I find rather fascinating (I suggested to Paul that he turn the story into a book, without even realizing it was a series of short stories already!).
Anyway, without further ado, here are the stories:
When I first read (
