REVIEW: "On the Causes and Consequences of Cat Ladies" by Richard A. Lovett

Review of Richard A. Lovett, “On the Causes and Consequences of Cat Ladies”, Analog Science Fiction and Fact March/April (2020): 143–149 (Kindle) – Purchase Here. Reviewed by John Atom.

Contains spoilers.

Growing weary of people’s interference in her life after her husband’s death, Barbara decides to move into an isolated farmhouse in the countryside. She did not only lose her husband, but also their joint research which was shown to increase intelligence in lab animals. Because of FDA interference, all that came of it was specialized cat food. Barbara hopes to leave all that behind and live the rest of her days quietly and alone. Not long after she moves, her presence in her new house attracts a myriad of stray cats demanding food. Barbara indulges, but she soon realizes there’s more to the cats than meets eye.

This was a great story with a great buildup towards a satisfying conclusion. Admittedly, my experience with Lovett’s writing has been mostly through lighthearted and satirical pieces that the author is well known for. This, however, was different. Despite the title suggesting a more humorous tone, this was a relatively serious tale with dark undertones, verging on outright horror towards the end. The beginning is a little exposition heavy, but all of it proves rewarding by the end.

While, of course, it’s unlikely that smarter cats would so easily turn diabolical, the story plays cleverly with the urban myth of their commonly perceived “indifferent” personalities. I do have one hang-up with the plot: it does not seem the smartest action on behalf of the cats to simply kill the person feeding them, and then starve for days till a new tenant moves in (if at all). Considering their heightened intelligence, it is more likely they’d try something else first.

Granted, this is a nitpick, but it nevertheless stands out in what is an otherwise excellent short story.

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REVIEW: "War Lily" by Beth Dawkins

Review of Beth Dawkins, “War Lily”, Analog Science Fiction and Fact March/April (2020): 140–142 (Kindle) – Purchase Here. Reviewed by John Atom.

Contains spoilers.

Before dying in combat, Shelby was able to record an imprint of her mind on a device called the “war lily.” The war lily can be used a total of 4 times by her friends and family for a final goodbye. The first three go to her wife, Rosa, their young son, Henry, and Shelby’s dying mother. Years later, a grown-up Henry summons his mother one last time, hoping to make her stay more permanent.

Though it features an abundantly common trope in science fiction, I enjoyed reading this story. One thing science fiction does well is to literalize abstract concepts, and “War Lily” is a perfect example of that, demonstrating a person’s inability to let go. It deals with universal theme that I never get tired of reading about, especially when done well. Here, the prose was evocative enough to bring out the emotion without sipping into melodrama. It’s a simple, yet effective.

Unfortunately, I did not quite buy the ending. We don’t get to know the main character well enough to find her final choice justifiable. Many questions are left unanswered. What was the nature of the war she died in? Why did she fight? I did not see a strong reason for her not to accept the body offered by her son. Perhaps in her quest for brevity, the author left some important exposition out of the story.

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REVIEW: “Star Bound” by Devon Widmer

Review of Devon Widmer, “Star Bound”, Luna Station Quarterly 41 (2020): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

This was a cozy little lesbian SF story, full of sweet romance. Terra may build and maintain spaceships, her wife Dr. Vivian Huang may be a leading expert in astroherpetology, but in this story, they are just two women living their lives, and looking forward to the birth of their daughter. So often I hear pleas for “more stories of people just living out their lives” — well, this one fills that niche exactly. In addition, I appreciated Terra’s ambivalence towards become a mom. Not every mom needs to be amazing. Sometimes being good enough is good enough.

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REVIEW: “Ganymede Days” by Victoria Feistner

Review of Victoria Feistner, “Ganymede Days”, Luna Station Quarterly 41 (2020): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

The settlements on Ganymede are home to a variety of different people — lifers, born there and ready to live out their lives there; hotsteppers, newly arrived, possibly not staying long; deckherders, (never quite got why they have that name…); motleys, examples “of how the robot-loving government doesn’t do enough to protect real people.” The narrator is one of the former and one of the latter, a motley descendant of immigrants. All she wants is to stand quietly in line and get her painkiller prescription filled. But tempers run high, and drama — and heroism — cannot be avoided.

I’m not sure what I make of this story. It was well-paced and put together, and the ending has some good pathos, but despite this, I’m not sure that it’ll be one that lingers in my memory.

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REVIEW: "A Stone's Throw From You" by Jenn Reese

Review of Jenn Reese, “A Stone’s Throw From You”, Analog Science Fiction and Fact March/April (2020): 111–112 (Kindle) – Purchase Here. Reviewed by John Atom.

Contains spoilers.

A young woman talks to the dead body her estranged sister. She is a scientist helping to save a world ravaged by pollution and climate change. However, she had to abandon her family in doing so. She hopes this final message to her sister will help her find some solace.

Unlike most stories of the kind, I felt the author made good use of the second person in this one. The whole thing is short enough to read like an extended monologue, almost in one breath. Overall, the story has a good sense of pacing. The author’s tendency to preach, which crept up almost every other paragraph, slightly diminishes the flow of the prose, though it is still an enjoyable, albeit too brief, read.

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REVIEW: "Midstrathe Exploding" by Andy Dudak

Review of Andy Dudak, “Midstrathe Exploding”, Analog Science Fiction and Fact March/April (2020): 101–105 (Kindle) – Purchase Here. Reviewed by John Atom. 

Contains spoilers. 

A bomb with unusual temporal effects has exploded in Midstrathe, and for the last 200 years, it has been slowly engulfing the city with its expanding wave-front. Everything caught within it slows down to an almost absolute stop. Ciaran, a 14 year-old orphan, works for a rogue organization that leads over-eager “tourists” near the wave-front. One day he has to escort one such tourist — an old woman — near the wave-front. When they arrive, the old woman surprises Ciaran by going past the safety line and entering the wave-front despite his warnings not to. This is against the rules, but Ciaran finds himself unable to stop her. She goes through the bubble, leaving Ciaran with no choice but to skip town.

“Midstrathe Exploding” has one of the most original science fiction premises that I’ve read in a while. Aside from the use of a “time-bomb” as an Armageddon device — a uniquely ingenious idea in itself — this story shows a fascinating view of how a society would adapt to such an unusual catastrophic event. Dudak’s evocative prose goes a long way into bringing the strange melancholy of his setting into life, even if his intentional vagueness makes the plot a bit hard to follow. There’s a lot to digest here, especially since the author uses a litany of new terms that can throw the reader off (click-chance, scrip, Dyads, temporal normalization, etc.). It is the kind of story that almost certainly requires a second reading, though not one that necessarily rewards it. While I thoroughly enjoyed the world that the author has created even upon multiple readings, I can easily see certain readers feeling disappointed at the rather lackluster plot. It would be interesting to see the author revisit the setting with a more expanded story.  

Overall, I recommend this story. Like much of science fiction, “Midstrathe Exploding” may not be for everyone, but it is worth a try, if only for its richly unique and inspired premise.

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REVIEW: “The Einsteiners” by J. Askew

Review of J. Askew, “The Einsteiners”, in David G. Clark, Callum Colback, Joe Butler, and Alex Hareland, eds., Beneath Strange Stars, (TL;DR Press, 2020): 237-247 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

I appreciate a novel take on time-travel, and that’s what Askew’s “skimming” is, liking skipping a stone across a flat pond, but instead of a rock and a flat space of water, it’s a person and a black hole.

Esther, the narrator, is one of the Einsteiners, one of the few people who has a legal license to skim. All she hopes is that she’ll get through to the other side of the black hole known as Lilith — a hundred years into the future — at the same time as her girlfriend, Andee, and before humanity makes first contact with an alien civilisation. Unfortunately, only one of those hopes will be realised…

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REVIEW: "Expecting to Fly" by Edd Vick and Manny Frishberg

Review of Edd Vick and Manny Frishberg, “Expecting to Fly”, Analog Science Fiction and Fact March/April (2020): 94–100 (Kindle) – Purchase Here. Reviewed by John Atom.

Contains spoilers.

Yetsade is the sole survivor of a spaceship that crashed on an alien planet where the predominant species is a group of bird-like creatures that roam the high skies. Yetsade grows up fully ingrained into the natives’ culture, even though she’s painfully aware that her anatomical differences — the lack of wings — will never allow her to fly. Eventually, another human spaceship arrives on the planet and takes Yetsade back to humanity. With the eager help of her teacher, Rhonda, Yetsade is able to adapt quickly to a human life, though she struggles to consider herself as part of the species. Her heart will always be with her former family.

From a science fictional perspective, “Expecting to Fly” has a rather implausible premise. It is essentially a “Mowgli in space” kind of a story, except that its futuristic trappings somehow make it less palatable than Kipling’s classic. It’s simply inconceivable that a child would survive in such an alien environment, or that it would be allowed to return after such a short acclimation period. This makes it especially disappointing since it is an otherwise fine story. Through the perspective of a well-realized protagonist, the authors give an exquisite description of the planets native life and their harsh customs. It was bold and original. Even Yetsade’s solution at the end was clever despite the overall implausibility of the situation.

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REVIEW: “Perennial” by Laura Duerr

Review of Laura Duerr, “Perennial”, in David G. Clark, Callum Colback, Joe Butler, and Alex Hareland, eds., Beneath Strange Stars, (TL;DR Press, 2020): 221-226 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

The best near-future/dystopia is the sort that seems so plausible, you half expect it to already be true. Even though we don’t currently have body mods like MalibuGlow or enlarged irises or GentleTone arms, they’re all plausible enough, and once you entertain the idea of cosmetic body mods then it’s an easy hop, skip, and a jump to government-required, industrial mods for manual labor, the sort you get when your “parents were either critically ill, dead, absent, or in so much debt that their only solution was to enroll their daughter in a government work program and have her transformed into a machine” (p. 223). A scarily realistic story, softened by some really likeable characters.

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REVIEW: "Camphor" by Mark W. Tiedemann

Review of Mark W. Tiedemann, “Camphor”, Analog Science Fiction and Fact March/April (2020): 84–93 (Kindle) – Purchase Here. Reviewed by John Atom.

Contains spoilers.

Remy serves as the representative of a large interstellar empire to a colony that’s been isolated from the rest of humanity for centuries. After three years on the post, Remy receives a visit from Havelock, another representative sent there to investigate — and if necessary, prevent — the potential spread of a deadly virus that originated from a non-native animal on the planet. Their investigation leads to a surprising revelation about the planet and its native population.

At a time when our own planet is on the verge of a viral epidemic, this story is bound to resonate quite strongly with anyone who’s been paying attention to the news. Even though the story’s conception is likely unrelated to COVID-19, it still manages to hit a nerve.

That said, this story is ultimately not about the epidemic. Rather, it is a slow-building mystery about the secret past of the planet and its inhabitants — and as far as the mystery is concerned, it is a rather weak one. There are several things that don’t quite add up and require a serious leap of faith on behalf of the reader. The explanation for the natives’ inoculation is hand-waved into the story, and so is the solution of the mystery. Moreover, I found the plot seriously lacking in any significant stakes or obstacles for the characters. Things more-or-less fall into place one after another, making for a less than compelling read.

There are things to appreciate in “Camphor,” but the overall plot makes for a weak mystery that does not hold up to its potential.

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