REVIEW: “One Cloud at a Time: A Radio Play” by Priyanka Jha and Nanna Bach-Møller

Review of Priyanka Jha and Nanna Bach-Møller, “One Cloud at a Time: A Radio Play”, in Around Distant Suns, ed. by Emma Johanna Puranen (Guardbridge Books, 2021): 21-31. — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

This play was simply a joy to read. It was written as a dialogue between two scientists, one named Bach, one named Møller, and it moves from the intimate and mundane (trying to create life; trying to decide what to eat for dinner) to the tragic and serious (we try not to think about how often scientists are paid to keep their mouths shut, or the lengths governments will go to shut them up.)

If you’ve ever been bothered at the way conspiracies can take hold in people’s minds, forcing out the understanding that scientific knowledge can bring, this is a piece for you!

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment

REVIEW: “Soonest Mended” by Honor Hamlet and Till Kaeufer

Review of Honor Hamlet and Till Kaeufer, “Soonest Mended”, in Around Distant Suns, ed. by Emma Johanna Puranen (Guardbridge Books, 2021): 17-20 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

I have pretty narrow tastes when it comes to poetry, and I’ll admit this one wasn’t exactly my cup of tea; it was a bit too “post-modern”, I think, for my tastes — unsurprising because Hamlet and Kaeufer’s collaboration is one of the closest, with Kaeufer contributing a machine learning programming that actual wrote a line of the poem! But what I loved, and which makes poems like this such a wonderful contribution to the volume, was what the poet and the scientist said in their collaboration notes: “While writing a poem, you’re constantly asking if the information in the previous line is relevant enough to trigger a reaction in the next line” (p. 20). What I want from my fiction and poetry is something that makes me think about things differently, and I got that.

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment

REVIEW: “Glossary” by Emma Bussi and Christiane Helling

Review of Emma Bussi and Christiane Helling, “The Stripped Core”, in Around Distant Suns, ed. by Emma Johanna Puranen (Guardbridge Books, 2021): 11-15 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

This was a lovely long-form poem full of the struggle of trying to express onself through words that other people will understand — whether this is writing a scientific paper about atmospheres on worlds we can visit only in imagination or it’s writing a poem about trying to express oneself through words that other people will understand. 🙂

I really loved it, and felt a lot of sympathy with both the poet and the scientist.

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment

REVIEW: “The Stripped Core” by Colin Bramwell and Dominic Samra

Review of Colin Bramwell and Dominic Samra, “The Stripped Core”, in Around Distant Suns, ed. by Emma Johanna Puranen (Guardbridge Books, 2021): 1-10 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

The “stripped core” at the center of this story serves a dual purpose: It is both a scientific description of what lies at the center of a gas giant, and an allegory for a model of education used in the boarding school that Alex, the main character, is sent to. I read this story, and its description of “cryoeducation tanks”, wherein students are submerged in a cryogenically-induced unconsciousness in order to absorb learning directly, just a day after reading this opinion piece about a windowless dormatory built for 4,500 students, which comments that “Perhaps in the future students can be cryogenically frozen at night, then efficiently stacked using the storage and retrieval systems of an Amazon distribution centre, before being defrosted in time for their morning slurp of laboratory-made food substitute.” On the one hand, there’s something very macabre and dystopian about this sort of future. On the other hand, the way Bramwell developed the story into something quite cooperative and potentially glorious was really satisfying.

The short commentary pieces by Bramwell and Samra both emphasise the importance of good science communication, and the way that stories can be used to inspire the next generation of scientists. I think this piece did a good job of doing both.

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment

REVIEW: Around Distant Suns edited by Emma Johanna Puranen

Review of Emma Johanna Puranen, ed., Around Distant Suns (Guardbridge Books, 2021) — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

The premise of this anthology is “what would happen if the creators of science fiction had dedicated science consultants that they could go to with all their scientific questions?” The scientists in question are based at St Andrews Centre for Exoplanet Science, and the writers in the School of English at St Andrews University, and Emma Johanna Puranen, science consultant and member of the Centre, is the one who brought the pairs together and edited the collection. The result is nine stories that emphasise both how important it can be to “get the science right” (even if not all the science needs to be right in fiction) and how similar the scientific and creative processes are, especially in science fiction: Both the scientist and the author are making models of how the world could be.

Each scientist/author pair met multiple times over the course of the creation of the stories that are published here. The stories were intended to be science driven — initial meetings were for the scientists to speak to the authors about their own research, to collectively and collaboratively find ideas that lend themselves to fictional exploration — but the goal was not to cloak science communication in a fictive guise, but instead to use the power of fiction to explore new ideas, new questions, new lands. The result is this anthology of stories, poetry, and plays, each of which is accompanied by reflections on the creation of the piece by both the writer and the scientist. A fantastic collection representing the very best of collaboration, this is the sort of book that makes me go “I want to do that” — I want to read stories like this, write stories like this, edit collections like this. I hope Puranen does another volume next year!

As is usual, we’ll review each story individually and link the reviews back here as they are published.

Sara L. Uckelman9 Comments

REVIEW: “Promises We Made Under A Brick-Dark Sky” by Karen Osborne

Review of Karen Osborne, “Promises We Made Under A Brick-Dark Sky”, Clarkesworld Issue 178, July (2021): Read Online. Reviewed by Myra Naik.

Just beautiful. This issue starts off strong and how! Our narrator is a strong, courageous woman and contributes greatly to the beauty of this story.

I’ve said beauty twice already, and I realize that this story really is deserving of that adjective, though the description of the world and the lives lived within it are often anything but.

Osborne’s vivid imagery and fresh descriptions add a different texture to the story, and her clever use of language reveals all in due time. A stark world, a type of God, fear and mistrust, love, code and prayer, and above all, hope.

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REVIEW: Minor Hauntings: Chilling Tales of Spectral Youth edited by Jen Baker

Review of Jen Baker, ed., Minor Hauntings: Chilling Tales of Spectral Youth (British Library, 2021) — Order here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Do you like ghost stories? Do you like haunting stories about dead children? Do you like to delve into the history of speculative fiction! This is the anthology for you! Jen Baker has collected thirteen (of course) Anglo-American and Irish stories (most written by women!) first published between 1831 and 1925 (and accompanied by a bibliography of sources cited and further reading, in case you want a bit more on the academic side of things.)

The genre of “dead children literature” is pretty popular in that era — unsurprising given the high child mortality rates — but Baker (an academic at the University of Warwick) draws a distinction between the Gothic horror of the stories in her collection with the more common “twee” (her word, p. 7) approach of many poems and elegies of the era. In these stories, the ghostly children are not returning to console or comfort their parents, but for more sinister and strange purposes. But to say more would be spoiling things!

Each story is accompanied by brief biographical information about the authors, and the original publication history of the story. As usual, we’ll link the reviews of the individual stories back to this post as they are published!

Sara L. Uckelman13 Comments

REVIEW: “Diamond Cuts” by Shaoni C. White

Review of Shaoni C. White, “Diamond Cuts”, Uncanny Magazine Issue 41 (2021): Read Online. Reviewed by Isabel Hinchliff.

The first person protagonist of “Diamond Cuts” is magically forced to perform in a two-person play where they must act out real, physical harm. When their former partner dies, their new partner, a hasty replacement with more knowledge of the outside world, makes a plan to break the spell and leave the theater. But his plan might be more likely to kill them than save them, and even if they succeed, it will have far-reaching consequences…

The story begins with a sparkling, visceral paragraph about the narrator eating a star: plucking it from the sky, biting down, and spitting out “shards of glass coated in spittle and blood.” It is terribly beautiful and remains my favorite part of the piece. From that point on, I was a little disappointed in the main plotline of the story and particularly in its conclusion. I was getting ready for an expansive space opera narrated by some sentient heavenly body that could (masochistically) consume stars, but I was given a play about magic, a story trapped within the four walls of a theater house. This subversion of expectations feels deliberate: it brings the reader into the magic of the theater for a moment, since they assume the events of the play are a real part of the story. Still, that opening set up an expectation that I felt wasn’t quite fulfilled. While the physical pain and danger of our narrator’s acting comes up throughout the piece, I wanted more exploration of what it meant to them and why it had to exist in this world. 

Without giving away the exact events of the ending, it leaves many possibilities open and revolves around a theme that doesn’t have a lot of relevance to the rest of the story. It’s just classic; you’ve likely read some version of it before. I wanted more.

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REVIEW: “Embracing the Movement” by Cristina Jurado

Review of Cristina Jurado, “Embracing the Movement”, Clarkesworld Issue 177, June (2021): Read Online. Reviewed by Myra Naik.

A fantastical tale of a strange sort of first contact. Things don’t go the way you may anticipate. There’s delicious buildup about existence in outer space and the different kinds of lives people live. It also features a very creepy payoff.

Different sorts of living spaces, structures and communication types exist in our universe. We have barely begun to understand this universe, and stories like this throw that fact into sharp relief.

A subtle queasiness exists throughout the story. If you enjoy feeling creeped out, this one will be right up your alley.

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REVIEW: “The Graveyard” by ​​Eleanor Arnason

Review of ​​Eleanor Arnason, “The Graveyard”, Uncanny Magazine Issue 41 (2021): Read Online. Reviewed by Isabel Hinchliff.

When Magnus Thorvaldsson, a Lutheran Icelandic-American, profanes a pagan graveyard with a Christain cross, the angry ghosts come clamoring to haunt a nearby farmer, Atli. Will he be able to appease the ghosts? More importantly, will he be able to appease Magnus as well?

This contemplative and humorous ghost story was a nice light read after some of the more tear-jerking and action-packed stories in this issue. While it is a little formulaic, it holds hidden gems: sprinkles of Icelandic culture, history, and literature that support the story and weave in unique elements. Between Atli’s droll, practical comments and the slightly bratty ghosts, it put a smile on my face many times. 

The story is told from the perspective of an Icelandic-American narrator rediscovering stories about her ancestral homeland, yet it features a stereotypical wealthy, meddlesome Icelandic-American character. Indirectly, it asks interesting questions. How are people raised in privileged America perceived when they try to learn about their ancestral cultures? Is there a way to do this appropriately and respectfully? While the story only hints at answers to these questions, the judgemental voices of Atli’s distant ancestors provide a fascinating backdrop for this exploration.

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