REVIEW: “The Use of Things” by Ramez Naam

Review of Ramez Naam, “The Use of Things”, in Visions, Ventures, Escape Velocities: A Collection of Space Futures, edited by Ed Finn and Joey Eschrich, (Center for Science and Imagination, Arizona State University, 2017): 151-163 — Download here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology).

[Ryan] was going to die in this ripped space suit, die thinking of Beth Wu, a hundred million miles away, and how right she’d been (p. 151).

I’ve never wanted to be an astronaut. The combination of a space suit and the expanse of space was both too claustrophobic and too agoraphobic for me to ever comfortably consider this as an option. Everything that I find scary about this is encapsulated in the opening scene of Naam’s story. Nevertheless, there is still a fascination about what would it be like, and Naam taps into that as well: The very different physical experience of being in space comes across clearly in this story, and even though I wouldn’t want to be in Ryan’s shoes myself, I really enjoyed reading about him being in them.

I also enjoyed the more theoretical thread of the story, which explores what use human beings are, or can be, in a future of increasing automation. We aim for the stars because it is human nature to explore — but increasingly our best means of exploration involve leaving ourselves behind on earth and sending automated explorers out instead. As Naam points out in the story, it’s just too expensive to send out the humans: “Humans have to go quickly, or not at all” (p. 159), and quickly means expensively. So where does that leave us? Building better and better means of exploration to satisfy a specifically human need and in doing so making it increasingly impossible that we will ever get to explore ourselves.

You might think, given all this, that this is a depressing story. It isn’t. It’s a hopeful, happy one.

Sara L. Uckelman4 Comments

REVIEW: “Kerouac’s Renascence” by Tal M. Klein

Review of Tal M. Klein, “Kerouac’s Renascence”, Apex Magazine 110 (2018): Read Online. Reviewed by Joanna Z. Weston.

Kerouac is living in Japan, so that his sister will not see his declining health. Now that his illness has reached its final stage, he plans to go to California to grant himself a dignified death, aka euthanasia. Selling all his possessions leaves him with more money than anticipated, so he chooses to travel there by way of a 22 day cruise, as a final treat. Against his better judgment, he makes friends and falls in love. Then things get weird, and we as readers remember that we are reading a piece of speculative fiction.

I did not find Kerouac to be the most likable narrator, but he is engaging and sympathetic. His choice to isolate himself from the people who care about him – a choice made repeatedly during this story – is frustrating to read simply because it is so realistic. It’s such a common (if hurtful) human coping mechanism that I would not be surprised to learn that psychologists have a special term for it. And that’s really where this story shines, in the ordinary. Most of the story takes place in the “real” world, with speculative elements appearing around three quarters of the way through, and Klein captured my attention and my interest without them.

This story is on the longer end of what Apex publishes, which means that it has plenty of time to delve into smaller moments and build itself, yet it never felt meandering. The story is tight.

This piece deals with some heavy topics – chronic illness, assisted suicide, fear of death and pain – without becoming maudlin. It’s not a light piece, but neither would I describe it as ponderous. For all that Kerouac’s life has been consumed by these topics, his conscious thoughts tend to push them aside, which lets the story breath without ever letting us get distracted from the stakes.

The ending surprised me, so I don’t want to spoil it for anyone else, but I will say that the title is a bit of a clue. This is a strong story on a dark topic, but there is hope.

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REVIEW: Darkest Hours by Mike Thorn

Review of Mike Thorn, Darkest Hours (Unnerving, 2017) — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

One of the perks of reviews is discovering new stories and new authers that one would not otherwise have ever come across — this goes both for reading reviews and writing them! Were it not for running this site, I doubt I would have come across this collection of short stories (mostly horror, but some have a stronger SFF element or slant). This is also the first time we’ve reviewed a collection of short stories all written by the same author, instead of an edited anthology, which is itself a treat: A single story never can display all facets of a single author.

The stories in this collection display many facets: Creepy, disturbing, but also skilled and precise. The overall tenor is a gory, sordid one — not really up my alley, unfortunately. In the end, I found I came away from too many of the stories feeling vaguely unclean from having read them, and I also found the glorification of male violence and the centering of the male characters rather depressing.

Nine of the stories in this collection have been previous published, but the remaining seven are new. As is usual on this site, we’ll review each of the stories in turn, and link the reviews to the list below:

If horror is your thing, you’ll probably find a story for you in this collection. If horror isn’t your thing, you may still yet find a story for you in this collection. Or you might be better off avoiding it.

Sara L. Uckelman16 Comments

REVIEW: “When You’re Ready” by M. Ian Bell

Review of M. Ian Bell, “When You’re Ready”, Apex Magazine 110 (2018): Read Online. Reviewed by Joanna Z. Weston.

A scientist is hard at work, modeling a human life from conception, tweaking variables of upbringing, trying to guide the simulant to a specific outcome. He’s done this many times before, but never gets the results he is looking for. The story follows his current attempt, with reflections on what has gone wrong before.

I enjoyed the way this story plays with memory and experience, and how people are hurt, supported, and otherwise influenced by the people around them and by their own choices. The way it engages with the nature versus nurture question is hardly unique – I think it’s pretty well accepted at this point that both factor into the people we become – but the depth of the reflection is rare, and I found it rewarding. I feel like this mirrors how many of us reflect on our lives, endlessly imagining how different circumstances might have brought us closer to the person we wish we were.

The story deals with so many interesting questions. How much can you change a person before they become unrecognizable to the people who know them? Can undesirable events lead to desirable results? What about an individual is inborn, and how much can be changed through experience? And most importantly, how much can a person will themselves to change, given a set past?

This doesn’t have what I would consider a twist ending, but the ending does color the story that came before, once you get to it. The pieces of the past slowly come together to create a satisfying conclusion. I highly recommend this for anyone who likes reflective, essentially psychological science fiction.

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REVIEW: “The Baker of Mars” by Karl Schroeder

Review of Karl Schroeder, “The Baker of Mars”, in Visions, Ventures, Escape Velocities: A Collection of Space Futures, edited by Ed Finn and Joey Eschrich, (Center for Science and Imagination, Arizona State University, 2017): 83-102 — Download here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology).

The story starts of juxtaposing the wild strangeness that must accompany colonising Mars with the quiet ordinariness of a Tampa diner. Myrna runs the diner as a sideline business, with most of her time taken up by catering to those who colonise Mars from afar — telecommuters who live on earth but function according to Martian days, Martian hours (forty minutes longer than our own), Martian timezones. It’s a trick balancing act, to live in one timeline but work in another, and Myrna’s catering service helps people live according to the timeline that they work in.

Schroeder’s story takes up the “public/private” matter that we’ve already seen in earlier stories in this anthology, because it is only through such ventures that such telecommuting colonisation can take place. The infrastructure is publicly supported, but much of what goes in to it is privately funded, by people like Wekesa Ballo, who had “sunk all his money into buying [a] bot and getting it transported to another planet, in the hope that what they build there will someday attract clients and customers beyond the launch companies and speculators” (p. 86).

It’s a story of many layers, though, not just this one, with ordinary humans living ordinary human lives while at the same time living lives upon Mars both virtual and real. The presence of these layers allows Schroeder to play with fact and fiction in a way that makes for a satisfying read.

Sara L. Uckelman3 Comments

REVIEW: “Grover: Case #C09 920, ‘The Most Dangerous Blend'” by Edward Edmonds

Review of Edward Edmonds, “Grover: Case #C09 920, ‘The Most Dangerous Blend'”, in Glass and Gardens: Solar Punk Summers, edited by Sarena Ulibarri, (World Weaver Press, 2018): 159-183 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology).

A gory opening scene (don’t read if you’re squeamish) segues into what would be a pretty typical detective/mystery story except that within a page we’ve got a suspect and a confession and the only uncertainty left is whether the suspect is telling the truth — and what reason would someone have to lie about negligence-leading-to-death? But Detective Ishani Grover isn’t one to assume the easy answer is the right one, and her investigations continue…until someone else dies.

Detective/mystery stories aren’t really my type, but this one was solid enough to keep me reading, with a plausible resolution and a few twists along the way to it.

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment

REVIEW: “The Heavenly Dreams of Mechanical Trees” by Wendy Nikel

Review of Wendy Nikel, “The Heavenly Dreams of Mechanical Trees”, in Glass and Gardens: Solar Punk Summers, edited by Sarena Ulibarri, (World Weaver Press, 2018): 141-148 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology).

What a positively delightful title, and what a perfectly wonderful little story to go with it! I was captivated from the opening line, when we are told:

Trees were never intended to be sentient beings, or God would have created them that way, back in the Garden.

But suppose that they were — how would the course of human history have changed? What would the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil have to say, if it could speak?

The trees in this story that think such thoughts and dream the titular dreams are not descendants of the trees created by God, though; they are mechanical trees, created by man. Machines cannot speak; machines cannot procreate; machines can only dream of these things, and pray to their human creator-gods that a miracle occurs.

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment

REVIEW: “Morph” by Sarah Pfleiderer

Review of Sarah Pfleiderer, “Morph”, Luna Station Quarterly 34 (2018): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

This is in essence a first-contact story; although contact with the Phytomorphs was actually made some 30 years prior to when this story starts, this is the first time that humans and Phytomorphs have attempted to live together. It is also, the further you read, increasingly a horror story.

There was a lot I liked about this story, particularly the clever, educated, older, female protagonist. When we are introduced to Dr. Audra Grissom in the opening paragraphs, I was quite pleased to see what I don’t often see in stories — someone like me!

But there were also a number of things which I didn’t like so much. The way Dr. Grissom was set up to us made me optimistic for both her and the society in which she operated, which is why I felt even more caught out than I might have been when I read this:

She had started graying in her 30s, but had given up trying to dye it back to its original brown once she hit her 40s. She had no husband or children to keep up appearances for anyway.

That second sentence — what a strange justification to add! It just goes to show that no matter how hard we try to write stories centering women and leaving behind the problematic social structures of reality, it’s hard to escape persistent and invasive ideas about how and why women should act the way they do. (Why should it make any difference to her hair color if Dr. Grissom is married or not? I’m married, with a kid, started greying in my 20s, and the only color I dye my hair is purple. I have no need to “keep up appearances” for anyone other than myself.) The upshot of this one single sentence is that I come away from the story pitying Dr. Grissom, knowing that the freedom and authority it seems that she has is only seeming, and not, yet, real.

I also felt vaguely uncomfortable about a lot of the colonial overtones that were present in this story. When Dr. Grissom meets the Phytomorph that she has corresponded with the most, we find out that she doesn’t know their name, but has given them a nickname of her choosing; the Phytomorph, on the other hand, addresses her by name. Why? Why did she give her name to them, at some point in their communication, but never ask theirs? Similarly, when she is confronted with the possibility that this co-habitation is harming the Phytomorphs, her first response is to protect the science, rather than put the objects of her study first.

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REVIEW: “Three Meetings of the Pregnant Man Support Group” by James Beamon

Review of James Beamon, “Three Meetings of the Pregnant Man Support Group”, Apex Magazine 109 (2018): Read Online. Reviewed by Joanna Z. Weston.

Imagine, if you will, aliens who come to earth after deciding that humans make excellent hosts to incubate their offspring. Imagine that this has become a known – if still controversial – aspect of every day life. What might that experience be like for the men so impregnated? The result might be this surprisingly thoughtful story.

I’m going to be honest with you – the premise of this story did not sit well with me. Growing alien fetuses in men’s appendixes seemed too weird, too gross. But the concept is grounded in strong writing, nuanced world-building, and a group of well-developed characters. This is a story that had to work to win me over, but it did a good job.

The world-building starts with the left-handed student desks that the men sit at in their support group, that identifies the group to anyone at a glance, even before the men walk in. See, the alien fetuses grow in their appendixes, so the pregnant men develop huge bulges on the right, rendering them off balance. The desks give them an opening for their side bellies, and something to lean against to counter the unbalanced weight. Every detail in the story is that well thought out.

This is a very human story. Yes, there are aliens, and we have to assume they have spaceships and a planet, but none of that matters here. This is about relationships – between the narrator and his sister, the support group, and his own body. It’s also about choice, as the men struggle to understand why they were picked for this role, what it means.

The problem in this story lies in the gender essentialism, which I did not pick up on the first time through, but which I saw discussed elsewhere and feel the need to address here. It presents the concept of pregnant men as a science fiction oddity, when there are real transmen who can, and sometimes do, carry children. This story does those men a disservice and could be hurtful to certain people, so be warned.

I still  believe this is a good story for people who like human-sized, thoughtful SF, but with some reservations.

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REVIEW: “Riot of the Wind and Sun” by Jennifer Lee Rossman

Review of Jennifer Lee Rossman, “Riot of the Wind and Sun”, in Glass and Gardens: Solar Punk Summers, edited by Sarena Ulibarri, (World Weaver Press, 2018): 29-37 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology).

The premise of this short — one of the shorter ones in the anthology — starts off quite pessimistic: We often look to the wind and sun to provide us alternative power supplies, providing us with basically endless energy. But there is only as much energy as there are turbines and solar panels and converters and storage for what has been converted, and in Rossman’s future Australia, that power is often hoarded by the major cities, sending the outback villages into blackout.

But the premise of this anthology is stories of a more hopeful future, and the story did not disappoint in its hopeful twist, becoming a story of a village working together to put themselves back on the map, quite literally, and which — and this is truly meant as a compliment — reminded me of nothing so much as Horton Hears a Who.

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment