Review of EJ Sidle, “Minor Mortalities”, Luna Station Quarterly 42 (2020): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
As the opening line of this story tells us, “Theo Everett is not a hitman”. His quarry, Alec Whitemore, is a werewolf — and having a panic attack.
I liked the way the story opened, and the way Theo conscientiously helped Alec through his anxiety. But then Sidle introduced the “wolves imprint on their soul mates” trope, and…I have to admit, I kind of lost interest.
Review of Allen Lang, “Fuel Me Once”, Analog Science Fiction and Fact July/August (2020): 116–117 (Kindle) – Purchase Here. Reviewed by John Atom.
Contains spoilers.
Two businessmen meet at a bar and strike a deal to start a daring collaboration. They’ll build a fleet of heavy cruisers to extract oil from Saturn’s moon Titan.
Lang’s story has some nice and snappy dialogue that helps the reader get in the headspace of the two main characters. It’s reminiscent of the 40s gangster and noir movies, an appropriate style for this story. Unfortunately, the story’s premise lacks plausibility. It’s extremely unlikely that the characters would be able to efficiently extract hydrocarbon fuels from Titan and bring them to earth with conventional (hydrocarbon-based) methods of transportation.
If you can get past the plausibility issues, “Fuel Me Once” is a fun story to read.
Review of Prashanth Srivasta, “Seven Dreams of a Valley”, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Issue 307 (July 2, 2020):listen online. Reviewed by Richard Lohmeyer.
Appropriately enough, this is a dream-like story told from the point of view of a night watchman in a prison where, “when prisoners dream, it is only the walls that bear witness.” However, when Kalmashi, an accused witch and rebel is captured, something more seems to be at work. Though the guards are warned that even to look at Kalmashi is dangerous, they can’t help themselves. Perhaps for this reason, or perhaps because the night watchman is kind to Kalmashi at different times, he dreams (possibly as a reward) seven times over seven nights about the valley of Kashmira and its people. Or at least he seems to. But is his so-called waking life a dream, too? Where does reality end and dream begin? I’ve read the story twice and am more and more impressed by how successful the story is at blurring the line between what’s real and what isn’t. In any case, this is a story that’s worth reading again and again.
Review of Aimee Ogden, “Buttercream and Broken Wings”, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Issue 307 (July 2, 2020): read online. Reviewed by Richard Lohmeyer.
I’m a fan of Aimee Ogden, whose memorable “Never a Butterfly Nor a Moth with Moon-painted Wings” was one of the highlights of BCS’s over-sized 300th issue. Ogden’s latest story features Willowbright, an independent-minded, down-on-her-luck fairy due to the death of an old widow who had often left out food and drink for her. Now “alone, unserved by human hands,” Willowbright’s future is grim unless she can find some other human patron. Toward that end, she provides magical favors for a girl in exchange for food and an unusual refuge from the cold. She also meets a wild fairy who provides unexpected aid in Willowbright’s direst moment. Overall, it’s a good story, if a bit open-ended. Perhaps Ms. Ogden plans to treat us to a sequel.
Review of Alec Nevala-Lee, “Retention”, Analog Science Fiction and Fact July/August (2020): 108–112 (Kindle) – Purchase Here. Reviewed by John Atom.
Contains spoilers.
Perry is on a phone call with the customer service of his home security system trying in vain to cancel his service. The customer service rep, Lisa, refuses his request with roundabout arguments regarding the value of the security service. In a rather unsurprising twist, Lisa turns out to be a bot programmed to never allow customers to cancel their service. A bit later we find out that Perry is also an AI, the user profile is his the “real” Perry, and he desperately wants to be terminated. With neither side willing to back down, the two bots are destined to continue their pointless exchange forever.
I have not seen many science fiction stories that deal with the philosophy of Existentialism (or Absurdism, if you will) as explicitly “Retention” does, even quoting a direct passage from the Albert Camus’ seminal essay, “The Myth of Sisyphus.” “Retention” is yet another take on the Sisyphus trope. Just as one must imagine Sisyphus happy carrying the boulder up the mountain, so they must accept that Perry and Lisa are satisfied with their eternal back-and-forth. The author cleverly makes the protagonists of his story AIs, where the idea of fate (or determinism) is easier to conceptualize. And rather than making the plot a straightforward allegory (as many stories of this kind default to), Nevala-Lee manages to craft a clever and entertaining tale around Camus’ philosophical thesis, with humor and even a couple of twists around the corners. It does not add very much to the ideology that it’s inspired from, but it is nevertheless an interesting take on it.
But you won’t cancel me?
It’s against my programming. You’re still a customer. I wish it would be different.
But you’re not going to give up. Neither am I. It’s against my programming, too.
Overall, “Retention” was a really enjoyable story, one of the best in the issue.
Review of Dianne M. Williams, “Accidental Kaiju”, Luna Station Quarterly 42 (2020): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
13-year-old Grendela dreams of becoming not another kaiju (a type of great Japanese monster) like her father and grandfather but an environmental scientist. Maybe there’s more to being a lava monster than smashing buildings and destroying cities. Maybe she could use her special knowledge of volcanos to help power cities rather than destroy them. But unfortunately, her little experiment didn’t go as planned.
This was a cute little story about hopes and dreams and how sometimes when one is a teenager one needs a little help and understanding from their parents and grandparents.
(First published in The Confabulator Cafe, 2016).
Review of Rachel Brittain, “Moonlight Plastics”, Luna Station Quarterly 42 (2020): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
I found this story a little too in the mind of the MC, Sana — there was a lot of reflection and recrimination and meta content that would’ve made sense if I were properly situated in Sana’s world, but unfortunately, I wasn’t. So I had a hard time putting together all the pieces to figure out who she was and what she was doing, and why it mattered.
I also struggled with the abrupt shift in tone: It started off as a commentary on our modern-day tendency to flood the ocean with plastics, and then suddenly it jumped left and became a mermaid romance.
All in all, not the story for me.
Review of P. K. Torrens, “Nanoscopic Nemesis”, Analog Science Fiction and Fact July/August (2020): 106–107 (Kindle) – Purchase Here. Reviewed by John Atom.
Contains spoilers.
The story is told from the perspective of a medical nanobot performing a tumor excision surgery on a patient. Realizing that the tumor has metastasized, the nanobot proceeds to find its source and eradicate it.
Generally speaking, I’m not a fan of the “AI with a personality” – or “AI with attitude” – types of stories, especially when the AIs in question are depicted in a fairly realistic manner (as they are here). Certain lines like “I want to crack a beer open because that’s what my programmer does” or “My processor purrs” or “The liquid nitrogen washes over my RAM like a cool wave over a scorching beach” feel out of place in a story like this. Such a style is superfluous to the narrative.
That aside, I really appreciated the detail with which the author treated the hypothetical subject of nanobot surgery in the story. The author clearly knows his stuff and does a great job at delineating (in just enough detail) the innards of a technology that will quite possibly exist in the future. Medical nanobots are perhaps the first truly tangible “miracle drug” that science fiction has conceived, and well-crafted stories about them are always welcome.
Review of Rich Larson, “Lowlife Orbit”, Analog Science Fiction and Fact July/August (2020): 94–95 (Kindle) – Purchase Here. Reviewed by John Atom.
Contains spoilers.
Earth is slowly dying, and in an effort to provide a new home for humanity, the governments of Earth have started terraforming Mars. Unbeknownst to many, however, this process will take a long time: up to 1000 years. That is why a team of smugglers – uncle and nephew – have decided that it is OK to steal some of the terraforming materials in low-Earth orbit and sell them in the black market for profit. The uncle has no moral qualms about the operations since he believes the Mars terraforming project is nothing but a pipe dream. On the other hand, the nephew is more apprehensive about the future. However long it takes, he argues, one day Mars might be the new home of Humanity.
A thousand years means nothing to the human brain […] We evolved to deal in seconds. Minutes. Days. Years. A millennium, we’re not equipped to imagine that.
Despite its brevity (~1000 words), “Lowlife Orbit” is a story with a lot to unpack. It simultaneously deals with human shortsightedness, as well as the human tendency to ignore the problem at hand. In Larson’s version of the (near) future, Earth is presumably ravaged by climate change and humanity has given up trying to fix it. Instead, they’ve piled all their hopes on the possibility of a habitable Mars. At the same time, the protagonist of the story can’t help but point out the futility of that hope. Whether it is because of indifference, pessimism, or simply pragmatism for the present, he resigns into a sort of unhealthy apathy that satisfies neither side of the argument. As usual, Larson is able to imbue a lot of personality into his characters in a brief and concise manner. The story ends with a glimmer of optimism, before circling back to the same status quo.
Review of William Broom, “Kill the Witchman”, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Issue 306 (June 18, 2020): read online. Reviewed by Richard Lohmeyer.
This is a story about the malleability and unreliability of memory. Dumu, the narrator, initially knows neither his name, his past, nor his motives. He is nevertheless in relentless pursuit of the witchman, Ketan, who has the power to implant false memories in anyone’s mind. “This is the power of a witchman: memory is wet clay in his hands. What you remember is what he wishes you to remember, and nothing else.” What Dumu comes to remember is that he is Ketan’s brother and that Ketan’s son, Nazd, is his much-loved nephew. But are these “facts” true, Dumu wonders, or false memories implanted by the witchman? This question—What is real?—is one readers must grapple with, too. It makes the story a somewhat frustrating read, since nothing in it can be taken at face value. Yet Broom is a talented writer and his story forces readers to confront the slipperiness of our own memories and what that implies about our own perception of reality.
SFF Reviews