REVIEW: “The Meadow” by Dina Lyuber

Review of Dina Lyuber, “The Meadow,” Luna Station Quarterly 22 (2015): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Jaydren lives in a world that feels very much like a version of what our own future could be like: Technology at every turn, that links us to our social media, our entertainment, or transportation. All of his actions are directed at or built around things these. Lyuber did a good job of taking our current technology the next few steps down the line; what was less successful was the way this was integrated into the story, as I often felt like the story was the vehicle for the cataloguing of the technology, rather than the other way around.

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REVIEW: “Planet, Paper, Space” by Melissa Embry

Review of Melissa Embry, “Planet, Paper, Space,” Luna Station Quarterly 22 (2015): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Max Villafranca is an origami artist who has paid for two weeks’ visit to the orbiting station Gaia, where he is very much the bumbling tourist that the long-suffering crew puts up with because it pays the bill. This was such an utterly charming mixture of the strange and unfamiliar and the ordinary, almost mundane. Max was an extremely disarming hero, and I felt great sympathy for Captain Nguyen having to put up with him. And I loved the way in which this story was slightly more than science fiction, it also had a fantastical element that segued always into horro that I was not expecting.

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REVIEW: “The Flower of Karabakh” by Anne Jennings

Review of Anne Jennings, “Empire of Dirt,” Luna Station Quarterly 22 (2015): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

I found this story confusing; it was arranged into short scenes, and by the time I was five scenes in, I had to keep pausing to go backwards and forwards to determine whether the narrative character had changed, or whether the temporal location had changed, and I could never quite tell. Taken at face value, this is the story of a imprisoned 90yo, the daughter of an Azerbaijani carpet maker, who reminisces in prison about how they “read a book in my twenties about a fantasy world magically hidden in the knots and patterns of an oriental rug”, which sparked their fascination with carpets — why then, when the narrator has grown up among carpets from her birth? Why also does the narrator speak of arriving in Baku as an adult as if Azerbaijan is a foreign, unfamiliar company? (And how does the child of an Azerbaijani carpetmaker meet and become friends with a woman from Singapore in the 1940s [I’m guessing, based on the fact the narrator is 90 and her father was alive in 1921]?). By this point, I’ve even forgotten to wonder why the narrator is in prison in the first place!

Some of these questions get sorted out, but not all, and not until much later on; unfortunately, I spent too much time being uncertain of what was going on to be able to enjoy this story as much as I would have liked.

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REVIEW: “Empire of Dirt” by K B Sluss

Review of K B Sluss, “Empire of Dirt,” Luna Station Quarterly 22 (2015): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Content note: Reference to self-harm.

In its simplest description, this is a story of unrequited love — ugly and chaotic. It was a tough read: Characters whom you wanted to sympathize with became increasingly unsympathetic, and the hurt and anger and betrayal that is woven through everyone’s story was hard to handle sometimes. Sluss shows real mastery in writing this piece.

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REVIEW: “A Spark in a Flask” by Emma Johanna Puranen and Patrick Barth

Review of Emma Johanna Puranen and Patrick Barth, “A Spark in a Flask”, in Around Distant Suns, ed. by Emma Johanna Puranen (Guardbridge Books, 2021): 73-84 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

It’s been ages since the last humans left this base on the moon, but SPARC, a Self-sufficient Primordial Atmosphere Robotic Caretaker, knows its duties: to keep the lab, and especially the Flasks, safe and clean and running — and to test the Flasks for signs of life. Computer knows how to adjust the contents of the Flasks as needed, but Computer can’t fix a physical problem if one occurs, only SPARC can. When Computer is no longer able to detect the contents of Flask H40, it’s SPARC’s job to go in and find out what’s wrong — or, in this case: What is wonderfully right.

I found myself responding to SPARC, left behind, sending messages back to an Earth that doesn’t respond, very much the way that people across the world have respond to the Mars rovers, to the satellites sent off to explore asteroids; it’s astonishing how easy it is to anthropomorphise the little machines we send into space. There were moments in this story when I was desperately afraid that SPARC wouldn’t get his happy ending. Because discovering life isn’t enough; one must sustain it too…

A very satisfying read!

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REVIEW: “After Colour” by Kiale Palpant and Oliver Herbort

Review of Kiale Palpant and Oliver Herbort, “After Colour”, in Around Distant Suns, ed. by Emma Johanna Puranen (Guardbridge Books, 2021): 63-72 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

This was such an unexpected story — unlike any of the other ones in the anthology. On the one hand, it’s probably as close to a horror story as this collection has; on the other hand, I want to describe it as “Exoplanets x ‘It’s a Beautiful Life'”. Even writing that feels like a contradiction! But it’s not, these competing descriptions really are the best way to explain this short, intriguing story.

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REVIEW: “A Momentary Brightening” by Laura Muetzelfeldt and Martin Dominik

Review of Laura Muetzelfeldt and Martin Dominik, “A Momentary Brightening”, in Around Distant Suns, ed. by Emma Johanna Puranen (Guardbridge Books, 2021): 49-61 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

Content note: Death of a parent.

This was an immensely human story, the story of Karl simultaneously mourning the death of his wife Sofie, navigating his role as now-sole parent of his young son Joshua, and also charting his path through the stars. The science took second billing to the emotion in this story, and yet this was done without sacrificing the science in any way: Though the reader is given little detail about how star lensing works or what it signifies, everything still feels viridical, as if there is far more beneath the surface, if only one wants to scratch. And that’s what I love in a sci-fi story: The sense that there is something real, that this is not just — or merely — a story.

I also particularly loved the writer/scientist reflections from this piece. Muetzelfeldt talks about the challenge that comes in shifting the solitary business of writing fiction into the more collaborative setting of science, while Dominik shares of taking his own aspirations and dreams and turning them into a story for Muetzelfeldt. Their collaborative energies shine through.

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REVIEW: “Rise in Perfect Light” by Maeghan Klinker and Aubrey Zerkle

Review of Maeghan Klinker and Aubrey Zerkle, “Rise in Perfect Light”, in Around Distant Suns, ed. by Emma Johanna Puranen (Guardbridge Books, 2021): 33-48 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

This story begins with an epigraph from Sarah Williams’s “The Old Astronomer to His Pupil”, which perfectly aligns with two reflections at the end of the piece, of which I’ll pick out one from each — Klinker speaks of “how science and art can build off one another” (p. 47) and Zerkle of the joy of seeing your dearest ideas “as seen through a[nother]’s eyes” (p. 48). These form a lovely bookend for what was a very satisfying “first contact” story, full of vivid characters and realistic science.

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