REVIEW: “Nanoscopic Nemesis” by P. K. Torrens

Review of P. K. Torrens, “Nanoscopic Nemesis”, Analog Science Fiction and Fact July/August (2020): 106–107 (Kindle) – Purchase Here. Reviewed by John Atom.

Contains spoilers.

The story is told from the perspective of a medical nanobot performing a tumor excision surgery on a patient. Realizing that the tumor has metastasized, the nanobot proceeds to find its source and eradicate it.

Generally speaking, I’m not a fan of the “AI with a personality” – or “AI with attitude” – types of stories, especially when the AIs in question are depicted in a fairly realistic manner (as they are here). Certain lines like “I want to crack a beer open because that’s what my programmer does” or “My processor purrs” or “The liquid nitrogen washes over my RAM like a cool wave over a scorching beach” feel out of place in a story like this. Such a style is superfluous to the narrative.

That aside, I really appreciated the detail with which the author treated the hypothetical subject of nanobot surgery in the story. The author clearly knows his stuff and does a great job at delineating (in just enough detail) the innards of a technology that will quite possibly exist in the future. Medical nanobots are perhaps the first truly tangible “miracle drug” that science fiction has conceived, and well-crafted stories about them are always welcome.

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REVIEW: “Lowlife Orbit” by Rich Larson

Review of Rich Larson, “Lowlife Orbit”, Analog Science Fiction and Fact July/August (2020): 94–95 (Kindle) – Purchase Here. Reviewed by John Atom.

Contains spoilers.

Earth is slowly dying, and in an effort to provide a new home for humanity, the governments of Earth have started terraforming Mars. Unbeknownst to many, however, this process will take a long time: up to 1000 years. That is why a team of smugglers – uncle and nephew – have decided that it is OK to steal some of the terraforming materials in low-Earth orbit and sell them in the black market for profit. The uncle has no moral qualms about the operations since he believes the Mars terraforming project is nothing but a pipe dream. On the other hand, the nephew is more apprehensive about the future. However long it takes, he argues, one day Mars might be the new home of Humanity.

A thousand years means nothing to the human brain […] We evolved to deal in seconds. Minutes. Days. Years. A millennium, we’re not equipped to imagine that.

Despite its brevity (~1000 words), “Lowlife Orbit” is a story with a lot to unpack. It simultaneously deals with human shortsightedness, as well as the human tendency to ignore the problem at hand. In Larson’s version of the (near) future, Earth is presumably ravaged by climate change and humanity has given up trying to fix it. Instead, they’ve piled all their hopes on the possibility of a habitable Mars. At the same time, the protagonist of the story can’t help but point out the futility of that hope.  Whether it is because of indifference, pessimism, or simply pragmatism for the present, he resigns into a sort of unhealthy apathy that satisfies neither side of the argument. As usual, Larson is able to imbue a lot of personality into his characters in a brief and concise manner. The story ends with a glimmer of optimism, before circling back to the same status quo.

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REVIEW: “Aboard the Mithridates” by Sean Vivier

Review of Sean Vivier, “Aboard the Mithridates”, Analog Science Fiction and Fact July/August (2020): 86–89 (Kindle) – Purchase Here. Reviewed by John Atom.

Contains spoilers.

Aboard the generation ship Mithridates, the passengers are slowly adapting their bodies – through training and gene therapy – to survive on the planet Hephaestus, the atmosphere of which contains large amounts of sulfur. Zarah Ngata is coping well with these changes, but not all kids at school are handling it as easy. One young man, Gavin, is having a hard time as his lungs seem unable to process the increased concentration of sulfur in the air. Zarah speculates that he won’t survive the next stage of the adaptation process. She’s determined to do whatever she can to help save the life of her less capable schoolmate.

In “Aboard the Mithridates,” Vivier presents an interesting take on the popular science fiction trope of the generation ship. Many stories such stories are often focused on the breakdown of the generation ship’s society, whereas here, the ship’s inhabitants remain focused on their goal. Vivier also comments on the unpredictability of the offspring and the real possibility that they’re not fit for the harsh environment of a generation ship. I was happy the story addressed these issues. Running at approximately 2400 words, the story does not have the chance to dive very deep into its themes, but it does, nevertheless, raise some interesting questions regarding the communal lifestyle that would be required in a generation ship. Is individual sacrifice acceptable if it benefits the rest of the community?

There are some plausibility issues, however. For example, I find it unlikely that Gavin’s health issues would be totally ignored by everyone except another child. It’s also unlikely that a society capable of building generation ships would not have some way of easing his pain. A respiratory aid, perhaps.

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REVIEW: “Rite of Passage” by Jerry Oltion

Review of Jerry Oltion, “Rite of Passage”, Analog Science Fiction and Fact July/August (2020): 99 (Kindle) – Purchase Here. Reviewed by John Atom.

After graduation, Roshi prepares for his first solo moonwalk in his new 5-piece space suit.

There’s not much happening in this story other than the titular “rite of passage”, which presumably is the act of putting on the new suit. There’s a brief moment of tension (if one can call it that) when the character almost forgets to put on a helmet, but otherwise there’s not much plot to speak of. The story is simply a 460-word description of someone putting their space-suit on.

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REVIEW: “Ganymede’s Lamps” by Michèle Laframboise

Review of Michèle Laframboise, “Ganymede’s Lamps”, Luna Station Quarterly 42 (2020): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Many stories have been written about what life would be like living on another planet (or moon) in our solar system — the lack of air, the difficulty in growing food, the distance between you and your family and friends left at home — but Laframboise eschews all those grand issues for a much simpler one: What about pets?

More specifically, this is the story of Bethesda’s journey towards getting a cat — and not just any cat, a real cat, not a mech one. On Ganymede, cats are hard to come by and hard to justify. But her birthday is coming up, and maybe this is the year she can convince her mom to get her one.

This is a story any cat lover will appreciate!

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REVIEW: “TheraBot” by Hannah Frankel

Review of Hannah Frankel, “TheraBot”, Luna Station Quarterly 42 (2020): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Velma’s got a new task at work — to program her replacement, a TheraBot called JoyCE. Why have people administer therapy when a robot can be trained to do the same? Angie works in customer support at the same company, and she’s one of the first to receive therapy from JoyCE.

The story alternates between the two women, and collects together all sorts of present-day anxieties about the future of employment — how AIs will integrate into the job market, the damage caused by anti-absenteeism culture, the rise of workplace-caused depression and anxiety, the panacea of “wellness” — there’s something in it for everyone to identify with! Sometimes it hits a bit too close to home for comfort. 🙂 But rather than accept these things as merely inevitable, Velma and her partner Todd make a decision to pro-actively embrace the future, turning JoyCE to their own purposes, and affecting the course of Angie’s life. I really enjoyed the optimistic turn the story took at the end.

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REVIEW: “And Never Mind the Watching Ones” by Keffy Kehrli

Review of Keffy Kehrli, “And Never Mind the Watching Ones “, Escape Pod Ep. 725– Listen online. Reviewed by Kat Samp.

This two-part story portrays a cast of teenagers dealing with bizarre alien frogs, on top of all the drama of their daily lives. Each character faces relatable problems with fitting in and forming relationships, and layered onto their stories are their encounters with the glitter frogs, colorful frogs that appeared out of nowhere one day and cover the world. It is one of those wonderful stories where the SFF elements illuminate and strengthen a powerful message about what it means to be human.

The stylistic quirks accompanying some of the perspectives made me prefer reading this story, rather than listening to the podcast. But both were excellent, and I highly recommend reading “And Never Mind the Watching Ones” for a lot of feels, as the teens might say.

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REVIEW: “State of Trance” by Chen Qiufan

Review of Chen Qiufan, Josh Stenberg (trans.), “State of Trance”, in Jin Li and Dai Congrong, ed., The Book of Shanghai, (Comma Press, 2020): 147-160 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology).

The anthology closed with a bang, with this creepy futuristic science fiction story. Told in second-person (not normally my favorite), it quickly drew me in and forced me to wander through Shanghai “on the last day of the Anthropocene” (p. 151), to partake in a “world on the cups of disintegration” (p. 157). What I really enjoyed about this story was that not only was it science fiction in content, it was also science fiction in construction: Parts of the story were automatically generated by AI programmes “trained on deep learning of the author’s style, and […] not thereafter been subject to human editing” (p. 160). Wonderfully bizarre, and an excellent concluding piece.

(Originally published in Fiction World, 2018.)

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REVIEW: “Calm Face of the Storm” by Ramona Louise Wheeler

Review of Ramona Louise Wheeler, “Calm Face of the Storm”, Analog Science Fiction and Fact May/June (2020): 119–131 (Kindle) – Purchase Here. Reviewed by John Atom.

Contains spoilers.

In a planet orbiting twin suns, Bret is a flying man that has strayed away from his home while chasing a strange looking lizard. On the way, a violent storm almost kills him, knocking him unconscious. Bret wakes up in one of the lighthouses that populate the edge of his people’s territory. There he finds out that the lighthouses are maintained by a set of “transparent” flying people, not as technologically advanced as his own culture, living a more natural way of life. Bret falls in love with Mornell, the daughter of the lighthouse keeper, and with her help, adopts their way of life. However, he soon realizes that he can’t stay with them forever and must return home.

I always try to not be a stickler about “genre purity,” but I was nevertheless surprised this story was included in Analog. While it has some elements of science fiction (twin suns, spaceports, possibly aliens, etc.) it reads a lot more like a fantasy story — or at the very least, a convoluted hybrid of the two (I could not stop thinking of Avatar). It doesn’t matter so much, since most of the story takes place inside the main character’s head, but it is nevertheless something that stood out to me.

Genre nitpicking aside, I was rather disappointed with the story. The world that the author creates, while rich in detail, is nothing new or original, drawing on many preexisting tropes. At times I was impressed with the author’s prose, but much of it felt padded with one unnecessary description after another, making the story rather painful to read. Similarly, the plot offers little more than a standard coming of age story with the addition of some serious holes in its logic. For example, Bret comes from a somewhat technologically advanced society, yet nobody knows what lies just a few miles outside their city. This sounds highly implausible to say the least.

Overall, I found very little to enjoy in “Calm Face of the Storm.”

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REVIEW: “Reincarnation” by Suzanne Reynolds-Alpert

Review of Suzanne Reynolds-Alpert, “Reincarnation”, in David G. Clark, Callum Colback, Joe Butler, and Alex Hareland, eds., Beneath Strange Stars, (TL;DR Press, 2020): 377 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

This spare, evocative poem makes for a wonderful closing piece to the volume, playing on the idea that we are all stardust, and stardust we will all become.

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