REVIEW: “Under the Satin Gunmetal Sky” by Shawn Goodman

Review of Shawn Goodman, “Under the Satin Gunmetal Sky,” Radon Journal 3 (January 2023): 40-45 — Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Schneider is a detective on the case of a double murder with a twist — two synths who’ve had their arms removed. (Another twist: he’s a synth himself.) Apparently, the best way to solve a complicated case, if you’re a synth detective, is to get high and fight it out at a fight club.

At least, that’s what I got out of Goodman’s story, and all I got. It was one of those weird stories where it feels like it all hangs together while you read it, but at the end you realise none of it made any sense.

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REVIEW: “The Flyswatter” by Nick Greenleaf

Review of Nick Greenleaf, “The Flyswatter,” Radon Journal 3 (January 2023): 34-39 — Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Tomo and Tommy fix electronics, but it’s not enough to make a living out of, so occasionally Tomo brings back other jobs for them. It’s a dangerous mission, involving Tomo hooking herself into a neural interface to try to hack her way in through a back door, but will bring in a lot of money.

There’s a fine line between explaining too much and explaining too little, but unfortunately this story fell on the latter side for me. I was never quite sure what Tomo was targetting — a person or a corporation? And the technicians who showed up at the end, their connection to the whole process also wasn’t clear to me. A lot of potential in this story, just not quite realised.

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REVIEW: “Superluminal” by Kevin Helock

Review of Kevin Helock, “Superluminal,” Radon Journal 3 (January 2023): 29-33 — Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

The best part about science fiction is that you can ignore science when needed in favor of fiction; on the other hand, if you want to write science fiction you can’t ignore too much science. With his story of faster-than-light travel and a 3000-strong colony on Mars, Helock has managed to hit a good balance between giving up science, without feeling any needed to explain how, and yet keeping the bones of the narrative credible.*

(*Other than the fact that anyone in so far distant a future would consider Elon Musk one of the “Great Men” of history. But Maxim seems the sort of person who would idolize Musk.)

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REVIEW: “The Blue Woman” by Leah Callender-Crowe

Review of Leah Callender-Crowe, “The Blue Woman,” Radon Journal 3 (January 2023): 14-19 — Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Between the rather prosaic info-dump intro and the present tense, which felt oddly unsuited to the story, I struggled a bit to get into this one. But the central message — that no matter how much we sacrifice ourselves to our employers, they will never reward that sacrifice — is an important one to read.

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REVIEW: “Rebirth” by Michelle Kaseler

Review of Michelle Kaseler, “Rebirth,” Radon Journal 3 (January 2023): 5-13 — Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Content note: References to suicide, murder, and sexual assault; forced labor and enslavement.

The process of rebirth takes criminals and turns them into mining drones, an endless supply of prisoner labor. Rebirth is supposed to erase all memory of previous life; people don’t even know that rebirth has happened to them.

Unsurprisingly, one person does find it, and infiltrates a work crew, and attempts to help people remember.

The detail that struck me the most in this story was how even though all the prisoners had been given labels (“A7”, “B9”, etc.), all these labels eventually gave way to nicknames that became names. You can try to erase the individuality out of a person — but it’s much harder than people think.

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REVIEW: “Eight Dwarfs on Planet X” by Avra Margariti

Review of Avra Margariti, “Eight Dwarfs on Planet X,” Radon Journal 3 (January 2023): 52-53 — Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

I’m never quite sure if I like SF poetry, but if all SF poetry were like this poem by Margariti, then I definitely would. It struck the perfect balance of poetry and story, and was very definitely SF without needing to rely on spaceships or stars. The fact that it’s a retelling of a classic fairy tale is just an added bonus.

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REVIEW: “If You Love Him, Hide the Grave” by Vera Brook

Review of Vera Brook, “If You Love Him, Hide the Grave,” Radon Journal 3 (January 2023): 1-4 — Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

This story has all the parts of a a classic SF story — consciousnesses uploaded to harddrives, prosthetic replacements of limbs and organs, military motivations lurking in the background — and combines them in a way that asks interesting questions. Short, but satisfying.

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REVIEW: “Ceres 7” by Lorraine Alden

Review of Lorraine Alden, “Ceres 7”, Analog Science Fiction and Fact January/February (2023): 118–123 (Kindle) – Purchase Here. Reviewed by John Atom.

This review may contain spoilers.

Ceres 7 is on its way to the planet Esperance with a mission to preserve the human race after Earth has presumably suffered nuclear Armageddon. Ruth and Jill, the youngest members of the all-female crew, are uncertain about their chances to survive the whole trip. With the cryogenic module half broken, only some of the members are destined to survive.

Alden’s story reminded me of Tom Godwin’s “The cold equation,” presenting yet another variation on the classic unwinnable scenario in science fiction (albeit far more plausible than Godwin’s version). I appreciated the tight economy of the prose, revealing just enough about the story’s background without drowning it in exposition. The final twist is genuinely surprising, but somewhat Deus-ex-machina for the protagonist. All in all, a great story.

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REVIEW: “Party On” by James Van Pelt

Review of James Van Pelt, “Party on”, Analog Science Fiction and Fact January/February (2023): 80–87 (Kindle) – Purchase Here. Reviewed by John Atom.

Tribley is jumping between dimensions searching for parties to take his mind off something. Someone is after him, trying to bring him back to reality.

The story does a fantastic job at bringing each location to life. Van Pelt has a gift for description that he puts to great use in this story. The ending is simply heart-breaking.

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REVIEW: “The Warrior Tree” by Chana Kohl

Review of Chana Kohl, “The Warrior Tree,” Luna Station Quarterly 52 (2022): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Born into a remote Amazigh village, Faiza is trapped by the circumstances of her life — born with no fingers, only thumbs; no money to afford an education beyond 8th grade; betrothed young to a much older man. But Faiza is lucky; her elder brother Adil is a carpet-trader in Marrakech, and he’s willing to help when she begs him for a way out.

This was quite an interesting story — really enjoyable in its own right, but given the context in which it was published, I kept reading it thinking “when will the speculative element come in?” The answer to that is: not until the very final few paragraphs. As a result, the ending felt a bit stitched on; nice, but not needed.

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