REVIEW: “The Heaven-Moving Way” by Chi Hui

Review of Chi Hui, “The Heaven-Moving Way”, Apex Magazine 104: Read Online. Reviewed by Joanna Z. Weston.

This gem of a story starts with Zhang Xuan stealing a spaceship to track down her missing twin brother. Her quest to find him is interspersed with scenes from their childhood, adolescence, and adulthood – right up to the circumstances that led to his disappearance – and the sibling relationship is lovingly and realistically written, neither too perfect nor too fraught. If this had been a simple quest to find a missing loved one, it would have been a fine story. But Hui didn’t stop there; this is a story about the limits of human dreaming and exploration, one of my personal favorite modes of science fiction.

To me, this feels like a fresh take on that classic SF theme: humans exploring space and figuring out their place in the galaxy. It’s good to see characters of color, hailing from a non-Western culture, getting to star in that tale.

There are some stories that make me want to just pack up my word processor and give up, because I will surely never write something as exquisite, as original, as human, as the story I just read. This is one of those stories. The characters, the world, and the story that results from the combination of the two hit all the right notes for me.

If you like your science fiction with well-drawn characters and hope for an expansive future, then I highly recommend checking this out!

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REVIEW: “Katabasis” by Petter Skult

Review of Petter Skult, “Katabasis”, in Myths, Monsters, and Mutations, edited by Jessica Augustsson (JayHenge Publications, 2017): 120-121. — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

The story is a mishmash of elements from a variety of sources — Biblical references to Lazarus, contemporary SF in the form of integrated human-machines, a sprinkling of Greek gods — providing a sense of familiarity and also a sense of a much wider scope than can actually be given in a two page story. This is generally quite an effective technique to use in flash fic, in that one can omit many details knowing that the reader will be able to fill them in themselves from other stories they have read. (This is what the philosopher David Lewis calls `interfictional carryover’. Interfictional carry-over occurs when readers import knowledge of certain types of tropes into a story where those tropes are not explicitly mentioned. [1, p. 45]) But predicating a story on the assumption that readers can all fill in certain gaps is a dangerous gamble to take; for if you’ve got a reader who, like me, doesn’t know who Adrestia is, all the import of the ending is lost.

Note

[1] Lewis, David. 1978. “Truth in Fiction”, American Philosophical Quarterly 15, no. 1: 37–46.

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REVIEW: “The Rescue of the Renegat” by Kristine Katherine Rusch

Review of Kristine Katherine Rusch, “The Rescue of the Renegat”, Asimov’s Science Fiction January/February (2018): 154-192 — Read Excerpt Online or Purchase Here. Reviewed by Kiera Lesley.

This was a fun read and a highlight for me this issue. I read it in one sitting because I didn’t want to put it down. It’s like a solid episode of a sci-fi TV show you didn’t know you wanted to be watching.

The crew of the Aizsargs are in charge of closing off a Sector Base no longer in use by the Fleet – a giant flotilla of ships traversing space together (“always forward”). The Fleet takes 500 years to pass over any given point from start to finish, so they often occupy or associate with bases for a long time before shutting them down. Mid-closure, however, a strange ship – the Renegat – appears out of foldspace in distress. It looks to be over a hundred years old with questionable signs of life on board and the crew of the Aizsargs sets up a rescue mission, despite not knowing where or when the Renegat came from, who’s on board, or even how to conduct the rescue mission on a ship that old.

This novella is set in Rusch’s established Diving Universe, but even for someone not familiar with it Rusch sets up a world that feels full and established despite the short word length.

Despite the simple premise of the story, the pacing is fast and Rusch manages to give it a lot of character and emotional depth. There were multiple perspective characters throughout and each one, despite some of them only getting two or so scenes, had an arc and a place in the story. The cast felt full, with histories and futures that extended beyond the edges of the story told here. Fantastic stuff.

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REVIEW: “I Met a Traveller in an Antique Land” by Connie Willis

Review of Connie Willis, “I Met a Traveller in an Antique Land”, Asimov’s Science Fiction November/December (2017): 168-197 — Purchase Here. Reviewed by Kiera Lesley.

I have to find Ozymandias’s first. It’s here someplace, on one of these endless, look-alike streets. It has to be.
Because otherwise all those endless shelves of books – all those histories and plays and adventures and sentimental novels and textbooks and teen star biographies are gone. And whatever fascinating or affecting or profound things were in them are as lost to us as that vanished kingdom of Ozymandias’s. Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair indeed.

Jim is on a book publicity tour, based on his successful blog “Gone for Good” where he advocates for an end to nostalgia for things that no longer have a use disappearing: VHS tapes, payphones, telegrams. In Jim’s view, things being surpassed by better things and therefore being lost is part of the natural order of things. That is, until he stumbles into Ozymandius Books. Describing beyond this point would be giving away what makes this story special. This is a classic story of a protagonist falling into a strange world and then returning, not the same as they were when they started. Describing that world is the story and it’s done wonderfully here.

This novella was probably my favourite story this issue. It’s a lovely read for its own sake, but I enjoyed pausing while I read this to think about the questions it was raising: about the inherent value of books, whether updated knowledge invalidates the usefulness of the previous, and whether a book or a story loses its value when society moves away from it. At it’s core though, I Met a Traveller in an Antique Land asks two questions: Where does the last copy go? And does anyone care about it?

This story is necessarily a bit literary in tone and theme – being a meta-consideration of books and literature and their importance – but Willis’ narrative pacing and descriptions of Ozymandius were great and kept it from becoming too navel-gazey.

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REVIEW: “The Nanny Bubble” by Norman Spinrad

Review of Norman Spinrad, “The Nanny Bubble”, Asimov’s Science Fiction November/December (2017): 160-166 — Purchase Here. Reviewed by Kiera Lesley.

Aunty Nanny knows when you are creeping

She knows when you’re a snake

She’ll keep you in her Bubble

Never gonna let you escape

Ted – who does not like being called Teddy – loves playing baseball and he’s pretty good at it. Or so he thinks. See, he’s only ever played structured Little League games in real time – everything else is simulations. He lives in a Nanny Bubble – a complete smartphone, 3D audio and Heads-Up Glasses system that monitors where he is and keeps him confined to a four-block radius. This doesn’t seem like such a constraint to Ted – he can go wherever he wants in virtual reality, unlike the poor kids. Except one day, when he accidentally ends up on the wrong side of the park he sees the poor kids playing a type of baseball he’s never seen before, played in real time. Ted sees an opportunity to test out whether he’s really good at baseball, if he could ever really think about playing the Major Leagues, and hatches a plan to find out.

This is a pretty simple story speculating on one idea – what if kids were so monitored that they couldn’t wander off, meet other kids, stay out close to dusk and make their own fun? Does that experience still have value in a technology-driven world? And if we don’t watch our kids every second of the day, what’s the worst that could happen?

I enjoyed this one. It’s got a nice nostalgia to it, despite the 20 minutes into the future setting. Spinrad really manages to capture that ‘late-summer hanging out at the park with your friends’ atmosphere. There’s also some nice food for thought about independence and the importance of being given room to figure things out for yourself. The parental villains fell a bit flat for me, but that element didn’t overly get in the way of a light, fun read.

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REVIEW: “Flesh and Code” by Johanna Arbaiza

Review of Johanna Arbaiza, “Flesh and Code”, in Myths, Monsters, and Mutations, edited by Jessica Augustsson (JayHenge Publications, 2017): 276-305. — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

I’m always a bit worried when a story starts with a person standing alone, thinking to themselves, because most people tend to think pretty boring thoughts, and if that’s all that’s going to happen, I’m going to be bored — even if the person thinking these thoughts is the intriguely named Deathgleaner. In the end, I wasn’t bored, but I certainly was a bit confused.

It’s a slow building story. The initial world-building is done via a conversation that the Deathgleaner overhears, but there is little enough context to that conversation that the details that are provided are hard to make sense of; I felt as though I was being told quite a bit but that I had no way of understanding what any of it meant. There is (or was? or will be?) a war. There is (definitely is) a shortage of clean water. Probably these two things are connected.

Many of these questions are never answered, which I found frustrating — all the more frustrating because the characters are rich and complex, and excessively intriguing, and I wish that I could fully know and grasp their story.

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REVIEW: “Pipecleaner Sculptures and Other Necessary Work” by Tina Connolly

Review of Tina Connolly’s, “Pipecleaner Sculptures and Other Necessary Work”, Uncanny Magazine Volume, 19 (2017): Read Online. Reviewed by Jodie Baker.

“Pipecleaner Sculptures and Other Necessary Work” takes place aboard a generation ship where every resource must be carefully hoarded, and recycled, in order to ensure survival. In the midst of this scarcity, one robot caretaker has fought for the importance of art. Her name is Ninah, and you’re going to be heartbroken by the end of her simple, economically told story.

Ninah has gathered together pipecleaners, beads, and other scant resources so that the children she looks after can make sculptures and other artwork. While some on board the ship see these art projects as a trivial luxury she considers it a necessity: ‘Everyone needed work. Humans, children—androids.’ This line reflects the fact that ‘work’ can be defined as the need for a personal purpose as well as a type of production. Ninah has made sure that the children are stimulated and given the chance to be more than just a ship grown generation of colonists or soldiers. And in doing so, she has turned a mandatory care taking assignment into her own purpose.

Although the reader spends a very short time with Ninah, the story quickly builds a vivid sense of her history and her character. So, it is gutting to learn that when the ship lands in three months, Ninah, like the art projects the children make, will be re-purposed. It is even more heart-wrenching because caring, vibrant Ninah will become a military bot, and ‘she would not care. They would still call her Ninah, and she would still love her work.’ Ninah’s fate is an example of what happens when an identity is overridden by the practicalities of the state.

Tina Connolly’s story does soften this devastating blow slightly. In the end, a desire for a legacy, a sense of permanence, however small, wins out. And, while the ending is undeniably tragic, as there is no reprieve for Ninah, there is at least a bittersweet sense of triumph and defiance. Ninah will resonate with anyone caught in the grip of a society that values people for what, and how much, they produce rather than who they are. Or, y’know readers who just love crying about robots. They’ll like this story too. Definitely recommended to everyone who loved “Fandom for Robots“, for example.

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REVIEW: “Nine Lattices of Sargasso” by Jason Sanford

Review of Jason Sanford, “Nine Lattices of Sargasso”, Asimov’s Science Fiction November/December (2017): 126-149 — Purchase Here. Reviewed by Kiera Lesley.

I now know, my maybe on-day love, that memories aren’t reality. But I still hope the memories I’ve shared hold true. If only for a little while.

I really enjoyed this one. Told in a series of nine ‘Lattices’ – memory experiences that are able to be live-streamed or uploaded to the greater mind web – Sanford tells the story of Amali, her family, and Mareena a girl who washes up on their home Lifeboat Merkosa – a massive floating island for refugees of a technological crash caused by a rogue AI.

This has one tough opening sequence. I struggled with the first two ‘Lattices’ – the world-building, the technology, who my main character was and generally what was going on was all dense difficult to grasp. But Lattice 3 gives the world and characters context and it romps home from there. I went back and re-read the first two Lattices after finishing the piece and they made much more sense after the fact. Readers should stick with this one to at least Lattice 3 to give this novelette a proper chance.

Though it takes a while for all of it to become comprehensible, readers are rewarded with a story that includes issues of refugees and nationless-ness, piracy and exploitation of the vulnerable, and characters who are morally ambiguous at best all tied up into an action story set in a surreal post-apocalypse with smaller, human moments at its heart.

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REVIEW: “A Night Out at a Nice Place” by Nick Mamatas

Review of Nick Mamatas, “A Night Out at a Nice Place”, Apex Magazine 104: Read Online. Reviewed by Joanna Z. Weston.

An incorporeal intelligence embodies itself for fun (“downlowing into a limbsuit”), and then goes on a blind date with a human being. Fortunately, human beings are space faring at this point, so they do have something to talk about. Mostly, this is a far-future, philosophical dialogue about the nature of reality. It’s short, sharp, and surprisingly light, given the density of the subject matter.

I don’t think I was the ideal audience for this story. Either it was written for somebody much smarter than I am, and it went over my head, or else it was going for a sort of humor that just didn’t hit my personal funny bone. Maybe both. The futuristic slang and mathematical equations made it hard to understand at times and the narrator was a little too alien and superior for my taste (they joked about. destroying the star they were orbiting and wiping out the whole planet after their date made a tedious joke, and refrained because they liked her smile).

All that being said, the ending made me smirk, and I think that the narrator is supposed to be irritating – by the end, it’s clear that they are not as superior to humans as they think they are. The story is short enough that it’s definitely worth checking out, to see if it is to your liking.

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REVIEW: “Love and Dearth and the Star that Shall Not Be Named: Kom’s Story” by James Gunn

Review of James Gunn, “Love and Dearth and the Star that Shall Not Be Named: Kom’s Story”, Asimov’s Science Fiction November/December (2017): 118-125 — Purchase Here. Reviewed by Kiera Lesley.

This story is part of a series of tie-in pieces for James Gunn’s Transcendental trilogy of novels. Each tells the backstory of one character in the novels and how they came to seek the Transcendental Machine central to the novels.

A nice angle on a first contact story. Kom, a Sirian, encounters a human named Sam floating in an escape capsule near the star that his people hold to be the place where paradise for the dead is located. In learning to communicate with Sam, Kom describes the history, creation myths, culture and procreating practices of his planet and species. These conversations with Sam prompt Kom to think differently about these things and reconsider his life trajectory.

I really liked the mythology of this piece. Kom’s tales of the star that shall not be named and the beliefs attached to it by his people – the Ranians – are beautiful. I also enjoyed Kom and Sam’s conversations and the internal revelations this invoked in Kom. The shifts between recollections, current events, and creation myths are handled well, too.

However, as someone not familiar with the Transcendental novels I found the turn the story takes at the end to tie-in to the novel universe a bit abrupt. Where Kom was being sent to, why this was important, and Kom’s motivations for his quest for transcendence and the Transcendental Machine happened fast – within paragraphs – and weren’t clear to me. This left me unsatisfied with the ending. I suspect this is unlikely to be the case for a reader familiar with Gunn’s novels, but it did detract from this piece’s ability to stand on its own for me.

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