REVIEW: “The End of Sleep” by Jamie M. Boyd

Review of Jamie M. Boyd, “The End of Sleep,” Luna Station Quarterly 50 (2022): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Content note: Infertility, IVF.

Dr. Ocan Kato deals with sleep issues in PTSD sufferers, which makes him exactly the person Major Claire Weissman wants to see, when experiments involving unilateral sleep in humans (sleeping with only one half of the brain) throw up some surprising results.

But while that’s the main thread of the story, it’s not the only one; it’s also the story of Ocan’s struggle to come to terms with his wife’s infertility. You don’t often get infertility/IVF stories from the point of view of the father, and Dr. Ocan Kato’s grief is raw, palpable, and real.

Overall, a complex and interesting story.

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REVIEW: “Love Unflinching, at Low- to Zero-G” by M. L. Clark

Review of M. L. Clark, “Love Unflinching, at Low- to Zero-G”, Clarkesworld Issue 181, October (2021): Read Online. Reviewed by Myra Naik.

A veterinarian in space wrangles with ethics, morality and duty, with inter-species collaborative space stations thrown in for good measure.

The Doc is getting on in years, but they are still very committed to ensuring a healthy, balanced existence on the station, amongst all species and their companions. But humans are only human, after all, and Doc takes it upon themselves to try and diffuse the situation before it becomes a potentially disastrous actual situation.

The descriptions were lovely, the characters were well-defined, and the ending was particularly poignant. Long yet engaging.

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REVIEW: “What Has Waited Between the Stars” by Daphne Fama

Review of Daphne Fama, “What Has Waited Between the Stars,” Luna Station Quarterly 50 (2022): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Woman breaks up with her girlfriend, takes to the stars, crashes on a lonely planet: A simple, and not especially original, premise. The only thing that kept me going through the opening paragraphs was the hint of the title, the promise that I might be dazzled with something unexpected.

The abrupt shift the story took about three quarters of the way through was certainly unexpected, but I think I ended up more perplexed than dazzled. And odd little SF tale!

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REVIEW: “One More Fairy Tale” by Carol Scheina

Review of Carol Scheina, “One More Fairy Tale” Cossmass Infinities 9 (2022): 20-24 — Read or purchase online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

This story is both one final fairy tale that a mother tells her child, of bargains made for wishes fulfilled, and a pretty classic SF story, of genetically engineered soldiers and trans-world travel. I like it when authors play with genres like this, and Scheina’s touching story does so successfully.

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REVIEW: “Love Letters” by Kit Harding

Review of Kit Harding, “Love Letters” Cossmass Infinities 9 (2022): 13-19 — Read or purchase online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Content note: Reference to suicide.

Harding’s funny, moving story takes on the question: How, exactly, do you navigate a long-distance relationship when the two parties live on different planets?

In the case of Sam and Amelia, the answer is: Not very well, as we get to see through a series of letters Amelia sends Sam, exploring the relationships between each other, and between each of them and their home. I am definitely on Amelia’s side, in this, and it’s not just because we only get to hear her side.

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REVIEW: “Maiasaura Deifaeria” by Jennifer Lee Rossman

Review of Jennifer Lee Rossman, “Maiasaura Deifaeria,” Luna Station Quarterly 50 (2022): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Even dinosaurs deserve to have a fairy godmother (or so Rossman easily makes the reader believe); but what happens to the fairy godmother when all her species go extinct? Well, after sixty-five million years of grieving, she finds someone else to godmother.

With a lot of extremely dubious and humorous fantasy and just enough real history throne in to make me jump over to wikipedia, this is a story that feels like it shouldn’t have worked; and yet I’m not convinced it didn’t.

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REVIEW: “Daybreak” by Margrét Helgadóttir

Review of Margrét Helgadóttir, “Daybreak,” Luna Station Quarterly 20 (2014): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Content note: Death by gunshot.

Gry is a healer and a descendent of healers, trained in performing the Operation that makes her patients become “Protected”, safe from the unstable emotions that are caused by the weakness and fragility of their bodies. She has never doubted the benefit or efficacy of her training, or the Protection, until she receives a call to Steinknausen, an isolated town in the north. There, she makes a terrible discovery, which threatens to destroy her entire understanding of who she is and what she does.

There is a lot of woo and homeopathy (and a lot of Capital Letters) in this story, and I wasn’t quite sure whether the author was taking these things seriously or trying to poke fun at them. It bothered me at first, but eventually I got swept up by the story.

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REVIEW: “The Girl Who Can’t Say No” by Stephanie A. Craig

Review of Stephanie A. Craig, “The Girl Who Can’t Say No,” Luna Station Quarterly 20 (2014): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

If you, like me, read the title and thought “horror story”, you would not be wrong. What you might not have counted on (as I did not) was that this story would be straight of genie-in-the-bottle fairy tale, except set in space. A fun clash of genres and tropes!

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