REVIEW: “After the Storm” by A.M. Faller

Review of A.M. Faller, “After the Storm”, Luna Station Quarterly 47 (2021): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

“Lostara Oasis was about to run out of water”, and the Council of Seven have sent Dowsers out into the Barren to find new sources. Aza is one of them, but she’s unlike all the others: She was born outside the capital, to Feral parents who scavenged in the Barren. When she’s sent into the desert without an escort, it’s clear that no one would care too much if she died. But Aza’s too good a pilot and too good a dowser to let a single sandstorm stop her from her quest, and in the end her persistence is rewarded, as she discovers something far more important and valuable than water.

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REVIEW: “Dashing, Through the Spaceship” by Anna Martino

Review of Anna Martino, “Dashing, Through the Spaceship”, Luna Station Quarterly 47 (2021): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

I’ve been watching a lot of Star Trek lately — DS9 and Voyager, the first time for both series for me! — and when I saw that this story felt like a Star Trek episode, I mean this in the best possible way: Futuristic space-travel that’s still just close enough to now to feel real; junior officers hashing out their pecking order; amusing antics with an animal. I loved it! A truly stellar story.

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REVIEW: “Who Wants to Live Forever?” by Karen McCreedy

Review of Karen McCreedy, “Who Wants to Live Forever?”, Luna Station Quarterly 24 (2015): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

“Who wants to live forever?” they asked, and humanity—stupid, unthinking fools that we were—answered, “we do.”

Ange and Bob both work at the Euro-Asian Space Agency, which means that when the humanoid robots sent off to colonise Mars and Jupiter return to Earth offering people the opportunity to live forever — to download themselves into indestructible humanoid bodies — they’re near the top of the priority queue. Only, they never stopped to think what life would be like if all the bits that make them human that come from their corporeal bodies were gone.

This story started off pretty classic SF but continually edged its way closer and closer to horror, as McCreedy deftly illustrates what life would be like if we could, indeed, live forever. Thanks, but no thanks!

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REVIEW: “Helix” by Britt Foster

Review of Britt Foster, “Helix”, Luna Station Quarterly 46 (2021): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

“Project Chimera had gone on for fifty years and billions of dollars had poured into its evolution.” It was supposed to be “the pinnacle of human achievement,” and yet instead, Dr. Magdalena Santos is told that the project is being such down, with immediate effect, leaving her in charge of destroying the project’s assets.

It takes a very special scientist to destroy the results of a research project, especially one that had been going so well, and the question the story revolves around is: Is Dr. Santos one of those special ones? Or, if she isn’t, will she get away with it? On the one hand, it’s clear that we’re meant to root for her to not destroy the assets. On the other hand, it’s not at all clear that those who want to shut the project down are in the wrong. The delightful tension between these two threads means that the ending is not entirely comfortable at all.

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REVIEW: “A Moral Majority” by Nikoline Kaiser

Review of Nikoline Kaiser, “A Moral Majority”, Luna Station Quarterly 46 (2021): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

This was a very different sort of love story than the one in “Forestborn” (read the review), but every bit as lovely, and the way it was underpinned by the collective will, of the entire town of Goldville, to do the right thing in support of Angela and Marigold in their time of need was something quite special. If Kaiser weaves this strength of moral virtue into the rest of her writing, then I want to read more of it.

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REVIEW: “Unit Two Does Her Makeup” by Laura Duerr

Review of Laura Duerr, “Unit Two Does Her Makeup”, Luna Station Quarterly 46 (2021): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

I didn’t expect a story of make-up, misogyny (okay, that isn’t fun, but the way it was casually ignored was), and a conscious navigation of the uncanny valley to end up being so empowering. It was an accomplished telling from the POV of an AI, who sometimes awkwardly, sometimes smoothly straddles the line between being herself and being more humanlike, and I’m considering reading it to my newly-discovered-make-up daughter. I think it’s got a message that she’d value hearing.

(Weirdly, though, this was the second story of this issue that had proofreading issues: Sometimes it’s Suzanne, sometimes Susana, and I think the one lone instance of “Maya” was meant to be Suzan(ne/a). Frustrating.)

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REVIEW: “Stones and Bones” by Devon Widmer

Review of Devon Widmer, “Stones and Bones”, Luna Station Quarterly 46 (2021): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

The other day I saw someone asking for recommendations for SFF with humor; if only I had read this story then, I could’ve recommended it, because it is laced with delightful comedy! And that’s in addition to the queer romance that blossoms into a ghost-exorcism business. All in all, this was a good fun read.

The only drawback — unusual for LSQ — was how the typesetting marred the story; about two-thirds of the way in, all of a sudden most of the capital letters were lost. No fault of the author, but it was still unfortunately distracting.

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REVIEW: “Lemon” by Mara Regan

Review of Mara Regan, “Lemon”, Luna Station Quarterly 46 (2021): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

“When someone is dying, the rest of us do weird things.”

This. This is why I read short SFF fiction. Because of lines like this, which hit you in the stomach and ring so full of truth.

It hardly matters what the rest of the story is, once you read a line like this, because the story has fulfilled its purpose. It was an added bonus that the rest of the story was so good — and so sad.

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