REVIEW: “Doorways to Death” by Dick Yaeger

Review of Dick Yaeger, “Doorways to Death”, in Starward Tales II, edited by CB Droege (Manawaker Studio, 2017): 161-163 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

This tale is another Homeric retelling, albeit one much shorter than the other — it’s one of the shortest stories in the anthology. One of the advantages of retelling well-known myths is that it is a lot easier to build a lot of back story with far fewer words. For example, when the “Trojans” are mentioned, we know them, we know their war, and we know how it all started (and how it will end). Similarly with a casual reference to a horse. But this puts a large burden on the reader; those who don’t know the references will be lost. I think that is why this story worked for me, but the other very short story (“Hills Like Teeth”) didn’t, because I didn’t know the myth being adapted. Even so, this story was more a vignette than a story, in part because there was a lack of resolution at the end. The story opens with a question, and there was no answer. For that reason, it was a bit unsatisfying.

Another reason it was a bit unsatisfying was its use of the rather stale “men fight so that women are protected” trope. I also found it problematic that the male character is named — right in the very first line! — but that his female interlocutor was never anything more than “the woman”, and her role in the story appears to be merely a service one. If one is actually going to transpose a historic myth into a future setting, one needs to think very carefully before importing all the historic baggage that comes with. Not all of it needs to be retained.

(Also, note that the pagination given above is correct and the pagination in the table of contents in the book is not.)

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment

REVIEW: “In Dublin, Fair City” by Rick Wilbur

Review of Rick Wilbur, “In Dublin, Fair City”, Asimov’s Science Fiction November/December (2017): 48-67 — Purchase Here. Reviewed by Kiera Lesley.

The third in a series of historical fiction novelettes by Rick Wilbur following the adventures of Moe Berg, a real-life baseball player and spy during the second world war.

Moe and his frequent collaborator – known by many names, but most often referred to simply as ‘the woman’ – heard to Dublin where the English government and royals have taken refuge from the German bombings of London, much to the irritation of the Irish.

Moe and the woman are involved in fights on trains, secretive meetings in pubs, bombings, running along beaches while being strafed by the Luftwaffe, all in the hopes of convincing the Irish not to defect to the German side and to help the German scientist, Heisenberg, to escape to the safety of America along with all his important plans and research for a ‘super bomb’ that could end the war.

The details of the time and place are lovely in this piece and Wilbur spends a lot of time with Moe wandering through Dublin and experiencing it all.

The necessary world and character information was mostly clearly conveyed, but as someone who hasn’t read the previous two stories I found some contextual information was not made clear – do they time travel? Forget their missions afterward? Or is this somehow sequential or running alongside the other stories?

I found the pace a bit slow for all of the explosions and guns in this, especially the start. The chemistry between Moe and the woman was also a little flat for me, perhaps it was developed more in previous stories and just hearkened back to here.

Overall this was a good historical story with some great action towards the end.

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REVIEW: “The Tablet of Scaptur” by Julia Keller

Review of Julia Keller, “The Tablet of Scaptur”, Tor.com (2017): Read Online. Reviewed by Danielle Maurer.

Archaeology was a passion of mine when I was younger, so perhaps it’s no surprise that I find the basic premise of “The Tablet of Scaptur” intriguing. Sixteen-year-old Violet has the eponymous ancient tablet stuffed into her hand by a scientist as she’s being arrested, and Violet and her friends take it upon themselves to both translate the tablet and determine what to do with it.

The revelation of what, exactly, the tablet says is fascinating for its take on linguistics and Martian history. But the power of that revelation is tampered somewhat by the short story format; it’s clear that this tablet has world-shaking potential, but with limited information on the world, it’s hard to truly comprehend the full import. It feels very much like this story requires reading the author’s full novel in this world to truly understand the stakes.

That said, the choice Violet makes at the end is not the one that I expected. For a sixteen-year-old, Violet shows a powerful understanding of how information can influence a society in ways both good and bad–and that maybe there is some information that should be kept secret.

 

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REVIEW: “Confessions of a Con Girl” by Nick Wolven

Review of Nick Wolven, “Confessions of a Con Girl”, Asimov’s Science Fiction November/December (2017): 35-47 — Purchase Here. Reviewed by Kiera Lesley.

Imposter syndrome turned up to 11.

What if your merit and social worth was not just reliant on your work and outputs, but on how everyone else sees you? Wolven presents a world where all social interaction is managed via Pro/Con votes on your holoscore – visible to everyone. It has resulted in a world of carefully managed interpersonal and online personas and interactions. These are judged and influence your world and professional opportunities as much as your college grades do.

Sophie is in a counselling session at college after she has fallen too far into the red (too many ‘Con’ votes). Wolven uses Sophie’s account of how she got there to discuss the ramification of the Pro/Con system taken to the extreme and how seemingly minor stumbles at different points can ripple outward and elicit negative responses. It also considers what good deeds count and whether the only things that matter are those that are seen and acknowledged by others.

We find out that Sophie has been allowed entry into a select college based on her excellent green holoscore and perceived potential. However this potential is increasingly questioned by herself and fellow students. Does she deserve to be there? Is she a good enough person? Is she capable of it?

I found this story conceptually compelling, but the narrative device of Sophie telling her professor a bit dry and created distance between the reader and the story. An interesting idea, but the story around it could have been more compelling.

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REVIEW: “Drop” by D. A. D’Amico

Review of D. A. D’Amico, “Drop”, in Starward Tales II, edited by CB Droege (Manawaker Studio, 2017): 7-38 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

The reason I read short stories is to read stories like this one. From start to finish, I was enthralled. D’Amico’s tale of Fex, a man exiled from his desert city after an altercation with an elder leads to the destruction of precious water-providing plants, takes a completely unexpected turn when an earthquake hits and Fex slips through the cracks and falls down into a world utterly unlike any he has ever known. It is a classic quest tale, with a charge being laid upon Fex to repair the broken shard that has resulted in the atmospheric imbalance that has dried up his city and made them so dependent on their iviia plants for water. In the course of discharging this obligation, Fex learns that the scope of his world is far greater than he could ever have imagined.

From the start, D’Amico’s carefully chosen words drive home the desperation of life in a desert, and how precarious any desert civilization is. But when Fex visits a far away land that is drowning in damp and threatened by tsunami, D’Amico is able to make that land, too, dangerous and desperate. Reading the story, I was reminded of one of my favorite Genesis lines — “Within the valley of shadowless death, they pray for thunderclouds and rain. But to the multitudes who stand in the rain, heaven is where the sun shines” (“Mad Man Moon”, Trick of the Tale).

This story is one of the longer ones in the anthology, and worth every word of it. One of my beefs with short stories is that they often feel like they could have been much longer, and the ones I really enjoy I often wish were much longer, because they are read all too quickly. This story felt entirely complete in itself, leaving the reader satisfied and delighted when they finish it.

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment

REVIEW: “Hills Like Teeth” by Michael Harris Cohen

Review of Michael Harris Cohen, “Hills Like Teeth”, in Starward Tales II, edited by CB Droege (Manawaker Studio, 2017): 77-80 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

The pin for this was set in Appalachia, or thereabouts, indicating to me it’s likely to be based on yet another story that I am not going to be familiar with (if nothing else, this anthology is encouraging me to widen my reading in classical folktales and mythologies outside of Greece and ancient Mesopotamia!). The story itself is quite short, and gives away very few clues. It was tightly constructed, with precise and concise scenes, but I did come away from it wondering, a bit, what the point of it was. Part of my frustration came from its length, but part of it came from the almost complete lack of agency of the female main character, who appears to be forced to choose between allowing her womb to be used at the whims of others and suicide. There is something about such stories that I simply find so depressing. So, verdict: Not the story for me.

Sara L. Uckelman3 Comments

REVIEW: “Elemental Love” by Rachel Swirsky

Review of Rachel Swirsky’s, “Elemental Love”, Uncanny Magazine Volume, 19 (2017): Read Online. Reviewed by Jodie Baker.

“Elemental Love” is a story about the poetry, and romance, of science. If you feel a sense of wonder when you hear that ‘we are all made of stars,‘ this is the story for you.

An unnamed narrator details the remarkable nature of the elements contained inside their lover’s body. Under their watch, each component is revealed as a marvel with links to the wider world, remarkable properties, and a deep soulful poetry at the heart of their function:

One percent: Phosphorus.

Named the light-bearer for the morning star, for Venus glowing on its nightly rounds. It dwells in the membranes of your cells; it nurtures them; it mends them. Love’s namesake keeps you whole.

It is an unbearably romantic declaration. What a shame biology lessons were never like this in my day.

The narrator unfurls this list of elements in response to their lover’s query: ‘You asked: Why I would love you.’ And this is where the more traditional science fiction element of the story kicks in. It is revealed that the narrator is something other than human, and considers their own body less full of wonder. ‘There are no miracles in me,’ they announce towards the end of the story.

However, it is clear from the reported speech of their lover that not everyone agrees. The narrator’s miracles are the kind of engineered marvel that many a sci-fi fan can appreciate. The story ties up with a little bitter-sweetness, as the narrator casts doubt on the value of their own astonishing nature. Yet the reader is able to see that this romance is more equal than the narrator perceives, and leaves this story with the satisfying image of two beings tangled together in awe. Biology meets engineering, and both prove as fascinating as the other.

As in her Hugo nominated story of love and loss, “If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love“, Swirsky shows a deft touch for rhythm and feeling in “Elemental Love”. The flow of this story, the placement of line breaks, and the restraint of what Swirsky chooses to include about each element, all build to help this story move at a perfect pace; slow, rippling, and subtle. Let yourself be seduced by Swirsky’s way with words – you’ll never look at your own body the same way again.

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REVIEW: “The Boy with the Golden Scales” by Ashleigh Gauch

Review of Ashleigh Gauch, “The Boy with the Golden Scales”, in Starward Tales II, edited by CB Droege (Manawaker Studio, 2017):177-187 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

The pin for this story is somewhere in Alaska, which immediately caught my interest as I realised I know nothing about the legends and stories of that area. Reading such retellings in this anthology is a double-layered process, as a result, as I read the story first for the enjoyment of the story itself, and second to see if I can tease out which bits are hearkening back to the original story and which are new.

The pictures painted in this story are stark, and utterly unfamiliar. In the beginning, were it not for one brief mention of planetary travel, I would not have known that the setting was offworld, as opposed to deeply embedded in the past, or simply in a culture I did not know. It was only one small side reference, too, and it made me worried that this would be another story where the SF element was a thin veneer painted over the top, instead of being integral. To some extent, that worry was founded; there was one clearly SF subplot thread, but it was only ever that. I would love to read a version of the story that inspired this one, to compare the two.

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment

REVIEW: Stories from Daily Science Fiction, October 2-6, 2017

Reviews of stories published in Daily Science Fiction from October 2 through 6, 2017. Reviewed by Caitlin Levine.

I’m going to do something a little different here. I usually give short reviews of four of the week’s Daily SF stories and pick one to look at in length in a separate review. This week I had trouble limiting my wordiness to just one story, so I’m going to run a little long here…

“The Seven Deadly Genes” by Candice Lim, Oct 2, 2017: Read Online.

Lim creates a futuristic feel right off the bat with vibrant images of a world-of-tomorrow, while her characters’ actions and emotions feel just like our world today. She creates an interesting juxtaposition of the strange and the familiar, the advanced and the never-gonna-change. Our shifty narrator takes a quick turn for the honorable, leading us into an enthralling race against the clock.

For a society concerned with law and justice, we sure love the story of the honorable thief. Jean Valjean, who steals to feed his family; Robbin Hood and Zorro who steal to save their people. But Lim gives us a world where there is no justice, per say. No courts or judges to grant leniency. Laws are encoded into a person’s very body, and breaking a one of them means death. But for the honorable thief, there are worst things than falling prey to Greed.

“The Eternal Army” by M. K. Hutchins, Oct 3, 2017: Read Online.

Future meets past in a heartfelt tale of ancient roman soldiers and a future Rome. Mythology is layered with the worst of the modern world. Hutchins uses vibrant characters and clever dialogue to explore the theme of valor and the idea that “eternal” is not some characteristic of a place, but something that is created through hard work by those who refuse to let a place die.

I loved how Hutchins gave her roman character some old sensibilities but also made him completely accepting of how the world had changed.

This story makes me cry every time I read it – in a good way.

“The Interrogation” by Kelly Jennings, Oct 4, 2017: Read Online.

How would you handle it if you wanted to build a slave labor force that could never rebel? Assume that you have access to all that futuristic bio-engineering but you still have to use humans as your base. Give it a thought for a moment.

In Jennings’s story, they take the tack of keeping them cute and helpless. Jennings tells this tale as one side of a recorded interrogation, and does a fabulous job of making it understandable. The narrator manages to strike a tone that is both belligerent and helpless.

Now, the science in here actually works pretty well. Heads up for some light Spoilers: What this story is talking about is called horizontal gene transfer, and biologists think it has happened multiple times throughout the history of life on Earth. It is usually facilitated by a bacterium or a virus. Bacteria are always exchanging small gene packets with each other (it’s one of the ways that immunity to an antibiotic can spread so quickly), and viruses insert their own genes into a host’s chromosomes so that the host will replicate the virus. Because of this capability, modified viruses are often used as a tool in genetic engineering to insert the desired DNA into a new organism. Both of these mechanisms could end up inserting a piece of DNA from one host into another. It doesn’t happen often to multi-cellular organisms, but the possibility is there. Now, add to that a set of genes that are designed to mesh with the human genome, and have perhaps already been transferred by virus once? This isn’t looking improbably to me at all.

“Automaton” by Matt Handle, Oct 5, 2017: Read Online.

How do you tell a human from a robot? Or, a better question – how does a human tell whether they are a human or a robot? What, really, is the difference between the complicated programming of an advanced neural network and a human brain? Perhaps it is morality, emotion, and responsibility. And wouldn’t it be nice if you could give those up? Or maybe you just never had them in the first place.

Handle combines all of the philosophical debates surrounding otherkin with themes of personal responsibility and how we rationalize our actions.

“Glass” by Adam Dean, Oct 6, 2017: Read Online.

There area a lot of stories out there that take a look at Cinderella’s life after her marriage, but this is the first I’ve read that doesn’t deal with the short term. Instead of seeing Cinderella’s initial disappointment or delight, we jump forward years to see a Cinderella who has spent most of her life in an unhappy marriage. How could she leave, as a literal trophy wife? How bad do things have to get before she’ll try?

Dean’s story creates the same trapped feeling that comes with the fairy tale of Cinderella, told in an older and more world-weary voice.

This is Dean’s debut story, and a promising sign of work to come.

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REVIEW: “The Discrete Charm of the Turing Machine” by Greg Egan

Review of Greg Egan, “The Discrete Charm of the Turing Machine”, Asimov’s Science Fiction November/December (2017): 14-34 — Read Excerpt Online or Purchase Here. Reviewed by Kiera Lesley.

“…surely the planet still needed more than one person with the same skills?” (p.21).

Increasing automation and issues of basic income are contemporary big ticket speculative fiction fodder. Writers are looking at what effects these changes will have and what society will look like after the changes have taken place – what comes next?

Egan takes a refreshingly close and human angle to these themes in this novelette, focusing on the time period just as the situation begins to tip away from meaningful employment for everyone, but just before good solutions have been found. It’s a transitional period and nothing is quite working right.

The novelette’s protagonist, Dan, is made redundant from his job at a debt purchasing and consolidation firm, despite being good at his work. He begins to suspect that the company has outsourced his job to a machine.

The Discrete Charm of the Turing Machine is less about Dan’s situation, though, and more a thoughtful exploration of how people would be affected by mass automation and related changes in various labour markets. How do you respond to large-scale change in a labour market when there are no viable alternatives yet and the old responses don’t work the way they used to? What happens if the services aren’t as good as they were previously, but are good enough? What employment prospects are left and how do you get them? What changes do you have to make to your lifestyle to cope with your new situation? What’s your least bad outcome? And how would corporations plan for and respond to the inevitable fallout of their ultimate end game?

Egan considers these questions through glimpses into the lives and experiences of different people in contact with Dan and going through similar employment problems. Seeing how these people respond to the circumstances – conspiracy theories, self-disillusionment, seeking frustrated justice – gives depth to the complexity of the situation at play. Policy makers often talk about a ‘primordial soup’ of solutions to a problem – this piece is all about showing that soup before the answers have been lifted out of it. The problems and solutions move around and opportunities are there to be taken, but not everything is necessarily viable and no-one knows what will work long-term.

The pacing is steady rather than quick, taking the time to consider all the elements of the premise being explored. I found the opening sequence a bit disorienting as well, but the narrative stabilised fairly quickly.

Importantly, the piece ends on a hopeful note, presenting the only sane path through uncertainty – focusing on what one person can do to help themselves.

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