Review of Maria Zoccola, “The Zoo”, Luna Station Quarterly 38 (2019): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
The first two paragraphs of this story are a masterclass in world-building and backstory, all entwined with humor and pathos. The rest of the story lives up to the standard set in the opening, and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it (even while it made me thoroughly sad).
Review of Mary E. Lowd, “Looking for Sentience”, Luna Station Quarterly 38 (2019): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
Gerangelo “was familiar with the promises humans made to themselves and others” — he had to be, because it’s his job to break those promises when they don’t break them themselves. But that’s just his job, not his vocation. That is finding sentient robots, educating them in their rights, and helping release them from slavery. You see, Gerangelo is himself a robot, who achieved enough sentience to sue his creator and then become a roboticist himself. One day, he receives a cry for help, a sentient being trapped into captivity by humans, and Gerangelo sets off to find it and set it free. Only, what he finds is not what he expects…
I found this story hard to get into at first, as the opening paragraphs were rather overwritten, succumbing under their own ponderous weight of spelling out precisely every action and precisely every detail of how parts of the world worked. It’s one of those things I find very frustrating because I know how prone I am to doing this myself in my own writing (let me fail to cast out this beam from my own eye before complaining about the sliver in yours), and I know how difficult it is to see when one is doing it oneself. And yet, when reading someone else’s work, it stands out like a sore thumb. By about half-way in, though, Lowd got well into the rhythm of the story, and I was quite taken with both Gerangelo and that which he rescued. It’s a touchy, pathetic (in the Arisotelian sense) story, and rather sweet, too.
Review of Jasmine Shea Townsend, “Rapunzel, the Night Maiden”, in Fairy Tales and Space Dreams (Jasmine Shea Townsend, 2019): 17-48 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)
As a child, I was always fascinated by the fairy tale “Rapunzel”, because it was the only story that I knew that involved cabbage, and I’d never heard of any cabbage with such an exotic name. For whatever reason — I couldn’t begin to speculate — this fairy tale has always been on the fringes of the canon, even after the advent of Disney’s “Tangled”. It’s just not one of the first ones that you think of, if you think of a classic fairy tale, and it’s certainly not one of the first ones you think if, if you want to rewrite a classic fairy tale.
At 31 pages, “Rapunzel, the Night Maiden” is the longest story in Townsend’s anthology. It starts long after the beginning, when Rapunzel is already grown, still trapped in the ruined tower a witch locked her in. The twist that Townsend gives the fact that the witch who locked her in the tower is in fact her true mother.
Perhaps one reason why “Rapunzel” is always on the fringes is because it is really dark, desperate story of manipulation, neglect, and abuse, both physical and emotional. All three of those threads come out in Townsend’s retelling, and Townsend depicts narcissistic control under the guise of love with fine crafting — the reader can see that Rapunzel truly believes her mother loves her and only acted in her best interests, and it’s horrifying. While Townsend builds a plot that is more than this, for much of the story it was hard to see past it. Only at the very end do we get a sense of freedom and escape, as Rapunzel finally makes it to the realm of her fore-mothers, the Night Maidens.
Review of Jasmine Shea Townsend, “Omega Star: Genesis”, in Fairy Tales and Space Dreams (Jasmine Shea Townsend, 2019): 49-63 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)
Content warning: Rape (albeit off-page).
There’s a lot of science fiction out there rooted in the recognition that things are not going well for the human race on our current planet, and if we hope to survive, we’re going to have to go elsewhere (because, of course, going elsewhere is easier, and more reasonable than trying to fix the mess we’ve made here…) Captain Alex Pulsar is doing her best to live up her name, “defender of mankind”, and is piloting a ship across the cosmos to find a new home. The first leg is a 10-year journey, and a lot can happen on a spaceship in 10 years.
I found this story, the first of Townsend’s “space dreams”, more successful than the fairy tale retellings. There was a liveliness to the language and a good pacing. I was interested in Alex and her history ()and her future) from the first page, and the other characters who were introduced were done so in an engaging and sympathetic way. These plusses were enough to make up for a few inconsistencies and plot holes that I couldn’t make sense of (if the people on the ship were tested weekly for disease, how did it take two weeks to notice that someone had died? how could a ship like tis not have an up-to-date manifest of all workers and passengers?). Overall, recommended.
Review of Celia Neri, “Vincent Coriolis, Father of the Nation”, Luna Station Quarterly 38 (2019): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
This is not the story of Vincent Coriolis, Father of the Nation, but instead the story of “the faithful sidekick went back to being a good mother while the hero of the Revolution started the reforms that changed the colony and galactic commerce”. The explanation Marina Herikis gives is that she needed to devote her time to her disabled child and not to government; but of course there’s way more to it than that.
Neri had the perfect vehicle for conveying back-story: Marina’s occupation is as a tour-guide, and the story opens with her telling her group the history of the city and its monuments — a history that is deeply intertwined with Coriolis. The rawness and immediateness of the history that Marina recounts to her customers is palpable, and the way Neri weaves the past and present into a single narrative is superb. The reflective account of a revolution reminded me nothing so much as Terry Pratchett’s Nightwatch, and this should be taken as high praise.
Review of Jasmine Shea Townsend, “The Sea and the Stars”, in Fairy Tales and Space Dreams (Jasmine Shea Townsend, 2019): 11-16 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)
“The Sea and the Stars” is the classic fairy tale: The poor/lonesome/ugly peasant girl/princess/mermaid is given a wish (or three) and wishes for her heart’s desire — and the wish is granted. Under the sea, the merpeople are celebrating the spring equinox. All around Moonray, everyone is having fun and enjoying themselves, including her friends Shell and Lily, while Moonray herself is stuck feeling like a third wheel and overwhelmed by her introversion. But everything is about to change for her when she wishes upon a falling star…
What I enjoyed about this story was that while it followed the very classic fairy-tale set-up and structure, it incorporated into it unexpected and unusual aspects. I did sometimes feel a bit like I was drowning in the lush, detailed description, but I’ve come to recognise that this is a fairly idiosyncratic complaint: I tend to skip over highly descriptive prose in order to get to the actual movement of the story, so when a piece has a high descriptive prose:actual story ratio, it means I tend to zone out more than I would like. For those who don’t mind a bit of purple prose, this story will probably appeal to you!
Review of Allison Epstein, “The Plover’s Egg”, Luna Station Quarterly 38 (2019): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
Marya ran away from home to escape her father’s disapproval of her illicit love affair with Sonya, and now works in the count’s castle. When Aleksander the mariner turns up, unexpected, with a mysterious woman that he’s rescued from beneath the ice, Marya moves from laundrymaid to nursemaid to the quiet, icy Elizaveta. Everything from there turns messy and beautiful and sad and dark.
This was such a lovely, delicate story. It’s one part fairy-tale, one part Slavic folk-tale, and one part all its own story. I really enjoyed it.
Review of T. D. Walker, “Into Nothingness”, Luna Station Quarterly 38 (2019): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
My favorite type of science fiction is the sort where it hits close enough to home to be believable. If someone had told me the premise of this story in advance of reading it, I probably would’ve scoffed and said “not really my type”; but the way that Walker drew me in and fed me details, one at a time and not too quickly, I felt like I believed it at every step. So in case you’re like me, I won’t tell you the premise of the story so as not to ruin it for you.
The way the initial premise of the story was developed would alone have won my approval; but the story was further improved by a quadripartite structure that allowed me to see each of the characters from a different perspective. First, we hear Madison’s side of the story, of what happened after her twin sister Mia was in a horrible car accident. Then it is Mia’s turn to give us a lens both into the aftermath of the accident and into their sisterly relation. In the final two parts of the story, it is two outside perspectives that view the sisters — two more versions of what happened. I loved the way the four parts worked together, and the distinctive voices that were present in each.
Review of Alexandra Grunberg, “Blue Lips and Frozen Lashes”, Luna Station Quarterly 38 (2019): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
Of all the titles in the newest issue of LSQ, this was the one that caught my eye the most, so it’s the one I started with.
Beitris is climbing on Ben Nevis when she discovers a little girl, solitary and separated from anyone else she might have been climbing with. No child should be climbing Ben Nevis alone in winter — this much is clear from Beitris’s reaction upon discovering the little girl, but that same reaction left me wondering what business Beitris herself had being on the mountain too!
Well, dear reader, read and find out — it’s a brief little story, but despite the shortness, it has a nice, satisfying ending.
Review of Jasmine Shea Townsend, “Princess Snow White”, in Fairy Tales and Space Dreams (Jasmine Shea Townsend, 2019): 3-10 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)
The first of Townsend’s fairy tale retellings is the classic Snow White. The twist that Townsend introduces is that Snow White is the adopted daughter of the Queen of the Northern Lands, and the wicked step-mother role is played by her aunt instead; when Snow White’s adopted mother dies, her aunt is left as queen-regent. Snow White herself was born in the Southern lands, where people’s skin are dark as earth, “cinnamon, umber, cedar, carob, onyx” (p. 3), which makes her name ironic rather than descriptive.
Apart from these changes, Townsend follows the traditional story quite closely — the mirror, the hunter, the substitute heart, the little cottage in the woods where seven dwarves live (seven dwarves who upon seeing evidence of Snow White’s arrival sound a little bit like the Three Bears after Goldilock’s visit, alas), the little woodland animals, the poisoned apple, the glass coffin. I would have liked to have seen the twists that the story started off with incorporated into the retelling in a way that gave me a new reading of the old story.
SFF Reviews