REVIEW: “Love and Dearth and the Star that Shall Not Be Named: Kom’s Story” by James Gunn

Review of James Gunn, “Love and Dearth and the Star that Shall Not Be Named: Kom’s Story”, Asimov’s Science Fiction November/December (2017): 118-125 — Purchase Here. Reviewed by Kiera Lesley.

This story is part of a series of tie-in pieces for James Gunn’s Transcendental trilogy of novels. Each tells the backstory of one character in the novels and how they came to seek the Transcendental Machine central to the novels.

A nice angle on a first contact story. Kom, a Sirian, encounters a human named Sam floating in an escape capsule near the star that his people hold to be the place where paradise for the dead is located. In learning to communicate with Sam, Kom describes the history, creation myths, culture and procreating practices of his planet and species. These conversations with Sam prompt Kom to think differently about these things and reconsider his life trajectory.

I really liked the mythology of this piece. Kom’s tales of the star that shall not be named and the beliefs attached to it by his people – the Ranians – are beautiful. I also enjoyed Kom and Sam’s conversations and the internal revelations this invoked in Kom. The shifts between recollections, current events, and creation myths are handled well, too.

However, as someone not familiar with the Transcendental novels I found the turn the story takes at the end to tie-in to the novel universe a bit abrupt. Where Kom was being sent to, why this was important, and Kom’s motivations for his quest for transcendence and the Transcendental Machine happened fast – within paragraphs – and weren’t clear to me. This left me unsatisfied with the ending. I suspect this is unlikely to be the case for a reader familiar with Gunn’s novels, but it did detract from this piece’s ability to stand on its own for me.

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REVIEW: “Afloat Above a Floor of Stars” by Tom Purdom

Review of Tom Purdom, “Afloat Above a Floor of Stars”, Asimov’s Science Fiction November/December (2017): 106-117 — Purchase Here. Reviewed by Kiera Lesley. 

You’ve been selecting women with the traits you like, whether you know it or not… Independent legacy women join our branch. Legacy men keep joining the male branch. You belong to a dying species. 

A strange story that considers gender and long-distance space travel. Revali and Kemen are to be the sole human occupants on a voyage outside the galaxy. Along the way they will undertake their own research projects and participate in a long-term research project that seeks to answer one of humanity’s most pressing questions: is the splintering of the human race inevitable with the ability to create companions with genetics and personalities compatible to the other gender? Can men only cohabit successfully with women who have been designed to please them? And vice versa? Will ‘legacy’ humans die out because they are unable to coexist successfully long-term with other genders, or because they keep ‘defecting’ to cohabit with the kind of gender partners designed for them? Will the two legacy genders just give up trying to work out relationships with their legacy counterparts as just too hard?

The trip will take them thirty-six years and involve periods of hibernation and waking, as well as gender swaps for both of them across the journey. At the end Kemen and Revali have committed to undertake a ceremony in one last ditch attempt to show humanity that, from outside the galaxy their differences are minuscule and that unity between the two factions is possible. 

The approach to gender here is an interesting one – essentially considering the question of whether men and women can ever really understand each other or cohabit for long periods of time, or if there are fundamental personality differences and tendencies that both work together and don’t. But I found it a bit binary and limited. While there is gender changing here the gender roles being considered are between ‘legacy’ men who want compliant women and legacy women who are not suitable to work with legacy men long term and have instead also created partners they can work with. In short, I would have liked a more nuanced look at gender and cross-gender relations that the premise could have provided than was covered here. Despite this, the stated conflict has been fully thought through and Purdom explores it well, using the length of the trip and the discussions between Kemen and Revali as they move through their different physical bodies to cover the problem’s intricacies.  

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REVIEW: “Skipped” by Emily Taylor

Review of Emily Taylor, “Skipped”, Asimov’s Science Fiction November/December (2017): 100-105 — Purchase Here. Reviewed by Kiera Lesley. 

“This is awkward,” I said. “But one of us has skipped.” 

Sometimes the transport architects get it wrong and you bounce through a space-time pocket in transit and swap places with another you in the multiverse. You have to sign a waiver to travel accepting the risk. It’s not common, but it’s the situation Taylor’s protagonist finds herself in and one she must live with until she reaches the transport station and is swapped back in to her own life and universe again. 

I really enjoyed this one – it’s a great example of a simple, punchy idea thought all the way through. The real story here is less about how the protagonist gets back and more about her considering the contrasts between her own universe and the life she has left behind, and the one she has found herself in. Children she did and didn’t have, partners and life trajectories, and how the moon she lives on differs to the one she finds herself in. The way the memories of the past and the experience of the present, which isn’t really ‘real’ alternate give the piece a dreamy feel, too. The reveal of the protagonist’s change in perspective and what she’s bringing back to her own universe is developed really well despite the short length of the piece and lands on a satisfying end point. 

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REVIEW: “Demon in a Copper Case” by Damon L. Wakes

Review of Damon L. Wakes, “Demon in a Copper Case”, in Myths, Monsters, and Mutations, edited by Jessica Augustsson (JayHenge Publications, 2017): 135-137. — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

When times are hard, heresy no longer seems like such a bad idea. The people of Singstoat are suffering from a decline in industry, and many people are debt-ridden and struggling. In such a context, the temptation to call upon the demon in the copper case is too strong to resist…

This was a fun little story, quickly told but with plenty of detail and characters. It’s a classic plot line but there is something satisfying in reading a good retelling of an old tale.

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment

REVIEW: “Everybody and His Mother” by Agrippina Domanski

Review of Agrippina Domanski, “Everybody and His Mother”, Luna Station Quarterly 32 (2017): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

I struggled with this one. I struggled with reading the story, to the point where I eventually gave up about half-way through, and then let it sit for another month before coming back to reread it. It’s not that it was poorly written, it’s not that it contained elements I found problematic, I just found it a difficult story to engage with. Part of it is that it seems quite atypical for Luna Station Quarterly‘s usual offerings; it very much felt like an ordinary story, of ordinary people doing ordinary things in ordinary places and that’s all it was for the first three-quarters of the story or so. In another venue, this wouldn’t have even been worth mentioning; but reading this story in a spec fic journal, I found myself waiting for more, wanting more. So I’m in the strange position of having to say that even if the story itself is good, the venue choice isn’t. It just didn’t work for me, and that ended up affecting my interaction with the story.

The story deals with the permeability of memory, and involves a lot of double-talk; I’m never quite sure what or whom to believe, never quite sure what the truth is. Part of this is because the narrator, Jemima, is not entirely reliable; part of it is simply because many useful pieces of information are omitted from where I would want to have them, or even omitted altogether. For example, both “Jack” and “the kid” play central roles both in the story and in Jemima’s life, but it was unclear for quite awhile what the relationship was between the kid and Jemima, or between the kid and Jack, or between Jack and Jemima. Clues and puzzle pieces were given, but I put them together in the wrong way, only to find a significant portion of the story later that I’d missed the mark. All of these things conspired to my finding this a difficult piece to read.

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REVIEW: “The Birding: A Fairy Tale” by Natalia Theodoridou

Review of Natalia Theodoridou, “The Birding: A Fairy Tale”, Strange Horizons 18 Dec. 2017: Read online. Reviewed by Danielle Maurer.

Fairy tales, when they’re done well, are some of the most exquisite stories to read. Even when they’re set in our world, they have an otherworldly, dreamlike quality that sets them apart. In this regard, “The Birding: A Fairy Tale” lives up to its name.

Set in modern-day Greece in the aftermath of a plague that turns its victims into birds, this short story follows a pregnant woman named Maria as she searches the plague’s wreckage for her husband. It feels like “The Birds,” if the birds were mostly peaceful and the result of humans metamorphosing.

The story is engaging from the beginning; it starts with the classic of post-apocalyptic literature and film, the highway full of empty cars a direct sign to the reader that something is not well with the world. Maria is a sympathetic protagonist, and it’s easy to put ourselves in her shoes. She makes the choices we hope we would make, and the dashes of backstory Theodoridou inserts are just enough to paint a picture of her life and loss.

I had hoped for a different, happier ending – not the “and they lived happily ever after” sort, because that would be trite, but perhaps something that suggested a way for Maria and her child to move forward in this new world of birds. While it wasn’t what I wanted, Theodoridou does deliver a denouement full of poetic lines and beautiful imagery, and in the end, that beauty is what I like most about this modern-day fairytale.

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REVIEW: “A Taste of Freedom” by Thomas Webb

Review of Thomas Webb, “A Taste of Freedom”, in Myths, Monsters, and Mutations, edited by Jessica Augustsson (JayHenge Publications, 2017): 375-378. — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

Warning: Probably not the story you want to read if you’ve suffered from abuse.

This story is told in shadows and secrecy, the story of She and of what He did to her. We never know who either of them are; this is because She doesn’t have enough sense of who she is in order to tell us more than what she does.

It’s not a pleasant story, and, to be honest, not the sort of story that I enjoy at all. I tend to think one must have a very good reason before choosing to write a story of abuse — to have some sense of what will be gained from doing so, and that this gain will outweigh any harm done by perpetuating, almost normalising, such behavior. If there was a gain in telling this story, I’m not sure I was able to see what it was.

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment

REVIEW: “Aliens and Old Gods” by Kimber Camacho

Review of Kimber Camacho, “Aliens and Old Gods”, in Myths, Monsters, and Mutations, edited by Jessica Augustsson (JayHenge Publications, 2017): 360-374. — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

I find I enjoy the longer stories in this anthology more than the shorter ones, in part because the length means there’s more meat to the story — and there’s plenty of meat in this one.

The story is constructed out of four different vignettes, of seemingly disparate events, happening in different places and different times to different people, with — at first — no clear connecting thread running through them. But by the time we finish the second one, it is clear that the titular aliens and old gods are the red thread that connects all the different events together.

A second thread that ties each of the scenes together is the narrative voice that tells them all, a voice that is clinical and almost journalistic. These scenes are told by someone who appears to be watching the events at arm’s length, almost always uninvolved and dispassionate (only sometimes turning passionate and interpretative), and who is someone who clearly knows a lot more than anyone experiencing the events. One of the aliens? One of the old gods? We won’t ever know…

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment

REVIEW: “Timewalking” by Michael Cassutt

Review of Michael Cassutt, “Timewalking”, Asimov’s Science Fiction November/December (2017): 86-99 — Purchase Here. Reviewed by Kiera Lesley. 

He, James this year, this month, this week, is not only signalling 1962 and 1974 and possibly 1988 James… he is signalling James This Week. 

A different take on a time travel story. James has begun to sleepwalk and, in an attempt to figure out what’s going on contacts an experimental company called Ikelos who attempt to cure him. Instead, they tell him that he is not in fact sleepwalking, but walking through time. This allows James to send future information back to his past self and access information in the past that his future self has left for him there. James’ future self is trying to tell him something about the decisions he makes about his start up company May Cay and their ramifications for the future. 

I enjoyed how the two intertwined storylines echoed one another thematically – the timewalking web and the ‘vineware’ plant-machine hybrid product James is creating with his start up – and how both deal with changing up current methods of passing information along. Watching the information pass between the two as the story progressed was compelling and a good use of both ideas. 

I found James’ final decision a little unsatisfying, though, it didn’t quite derive from his previous thinking and experiences enough to follow on logically for me. 

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REVIEW: “Island of Skulls” by Matt Spencer

Review of Matt Spencer, “Island of Skulls”, Broadswords and Blasters 1 (2017): 52-67 — Purchase Here. Reviewed by Yana Shepard.

Where do I start? Well, first off, I should mention the language. Personally, it doesn’t bother me, but I know plenty of people that don’t enjoy heavy use of harsh words. This heads up is for those people who would do better skipping “Island of Skulls” for that reason.

On to the main characters.

The twins are young and it shows. Ketz is easily distracted by curves and Tia is disrespectful in both her speech and behavior towards others. Granted, Ketz was being pulled into the plot by what seemed like lust filled magic, but that isn’t answered as this is a two part story. (The second half being continued in issue 2 of Broadswords and Blasters.) I think if I had gotten the chance to learn more about the twins I could have grown to like them. As a short story, however, I couldn’t get behind their attitudes. Ketz seemed more level headed than his sister, not so eager to kill, unlike Tia.

The world building was interesting. I would like to see more of that, but the twins made the story a slower read than it needed to be.

As far as story goes, I’m unsure why Tia brought Ketz along with her to check on the Island of Skulls. If he was being manipulated with sex appeal (which may or may not have been solely through magic) wouldn’t he be a threat to their mission?

Unfortunately, my question won’t get an answer until issue 2.

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