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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REVIEW: “Mourners” by Joe Baumann

Review of Joe Baumann, “Mourners”, Syntax and Salt 4, 2017: Read Online. Reviewed by Tiffany Crystal

I read a story once about a person who woke up and had completely forgotten how to read. He could write, but he was unable to read the words that he had wrote. He had to relearn the sounds each letter made, and how they went together to form words. The premise of “Mourners” is very similar to that idea, but instead of a mental ability, the people woke up missing body parts. One person woke up without feet, another without eyes. Someone else lost their nose, and a famous singer lost their vocal cords.

The author never goes into why it happened, a decision I’m not entirely sure I agree or disagree with, but he does a good job of painting a picture of how people might react to the sudden change. The “why” of it still bugs me though. Was it mother nature getting revenge? Was it aliens? Was it a shifting of realities?

The last one is the only one that makes sense, to me, considering that there was no blood or anything when the body parts went missing. They just disappeared as if they had never been there in the first place. I would love to hear other theories, so feel free to read and share your thoughts on the matter.

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REVIEW: “Singularity Alice” by Lorraine Schein

Review of Lorraine Schein, “Singularity Alice”, Syntax and Salt 4, 2017: Read Online. Reviewed by Tiffany Crystal

No sugar coating, no lying: I was bored. I was expecting so much more, especially when I saw that it was a human exploring a supermassive black hole. I have been fascinated by that very idea since I was eight, okay? So you can imagine my disappointment when I found myself skimming – skimming – through it, trying to see if it picked up along the way. It didn’t. I kept finding myself adding “with zombies” at the end of sentences, thinking maybe it was just too passive voiced. I finally just had to admit that I was bored because it was…well, boring.

I’m willing to cut it some slack though. I liked the “White Hole” ending, and it’s possible I was just too excited about the idea, and was unfairly biased. I suggest reading it for yourself, just to be on the safe side.

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REVIEW: “The Future of Hunger in the Age of Programmable Matter” by Sam J. Miller

Review of Sam J. Miller, “The Future of Hunger in the Age of Programmable Matter”, Tor.com (2017): Read Online. Reviewed by Danielle Maurer.

I’m not sure what I expected when I picked up this story to read, but it wasn’t a gay love story of sorts told during a post-polymer kaiju apocalypse. That said, I’m certainly here for it.

The story takes a science fiction framework and props it against a very human backdrop. The technobabble we expect is here, but it takes a back seat to a story about three core characters: Otto, our first-person narrator and former drug addict; Trevor, Otto’s controlling boyfriend with the too-perfect exterior; and Aarav, the visitor who comes between them. The story is split into two distinct halves: a key night before the kaiju made of programmable matter wreck New York City, and life in the refuge camps of upstate New York.

The prose has its moments of beauty, though in places it leans toward the overwrought. The frequent run-on sentences give it a breathy, babbling, almost nervous quality which can sometimes be grating.

But despite the mechanic flaws, the emotional core of the tale is powerfully depicted. Miller draws a realistic picture of Otto as a recovering addict, constantly worried that he’s not good enough, that he’ll fall back into his old destructive habits. And even though Otto thinks Trevor is perfect, Miller’s skillful depiction lets the reader know how much Trevor takes advantage of Otto’s mindset. It’s a heartbreaking tale, for much is lost on both macro and micro scales, but it’s also one of self-empowerment for Otto. Well worth a read.

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REVIEW: “The Fall of Tryos” by Eddie D. Moore

Review of Eddie D. Moore, “The Fall of Tryos”, in Starward Tales II, edited by CB Droege (Manawaker Studio, 2017): 85-95 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

This retelling of the siege of Troy is an eclectic mix of archaic and futuristic. The details of the story are little changed — Helen has been abducted from Menelaus; Menelaus’s friends are called to make good upon the Oath of Tyndareus; Ulysses (yes, he’s called that and not Odysseus) arrives belatedly to save the day — and many of the details are not made explicit, as Moore presupposes the reader’s familiarity with the original. For example, one must already know who Paris is to know who the character Pari or Peri (both names are used; I’m not sure if this is intentional or if one is a systemic typo) is.

It’s never entirely easy to simply transpose an ancient story into a futuristic setting. Many things — names, titles, ranks — can be kept the same, with other things — technology, for instance — simply being upgraded (the original Odysseus could only dream of space ships, laser swords, and Aspida fields). But there are certain aspects of the past that one can only hope will not be present in the future, and it is always a bit disappointing when one reads a futuristic story that still clings to the negative parts of the past. Sometimes it can be a very small thing, such as when Ulysses tells his Strategos that “our wives, children, and neighbors will feast our victory for weeks” (p. 85). Only their wives? Are none of them married to men? Are there no women in the fleet? One can only hope that in the future, it will be “our husbands, wives, and children”, or even better just “our family and friends” that celebrate our victories with us.

Like other stories in the anthology, this one is somewhat let down by the proofreading. In addition to the Pari/Peri fluctuation, there are again many missing commas, which detract (even if only minimally) from the pleasure that the story itself gives.

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REVIEW: “Poison_apple.exe” by Chanel Earl

Review of Chanel Earl, “Poison_apple.exe”, in Starward Tales II, edited by CB Droege (Manawaker Studio, 2017): 145-159 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

This is another story where the inspiring myth is clear from the title alone. The twist comes from the fact that the story is told from the POV of the “evil queen” (who is the grandmother, rather than the stepmother — a pleasant twist away from a standard trope). The setting of the story is maybe one or two generations from the present, and Earl works in the SF elements — which are perforce muted because of the timeline — in a very careful and precise way. The magic mirror is not magic, merely a robot. Instead of poisoned apples, Snow White must avoid a cleverly implanted computer virus.

Earl’s take on “Snow White” was a vivid and different retelling of the story. She evokes the reader’s sympathy in the main character while also perfectly capturing 7-year-old exuberance.

My enjoyment of the story was marred by the number of missing apposite commas, which jars me every time, as well as a few typos and errors in capitalization. It’s a shame that a good story was let down by the proofreading and editing.

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REVIEW: “Ashes” by Mike Lewis

Review of Mike Lewis, “Ashes”, in Starward Tales II, edited by CB Droege (Manawaker Studio, 2017): 63-80 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

I really do love retellings of known tales. You get all of the comfort of familiarity and all the joy of wondering what the twist(s) will be. This story is, of course, Cinderella — if the title wasn’t a big enough clue, then the main character’s name being Ella definitely should be.

One of the fascinating things about fairy tales is that the characters in them are more like caricatures; they are fitted into a story according to the roles that they play rather than according to characteristics of themselves. This works brilliantly for fairy tales told to small children, who can use the technique as a means of inserting themselves into the story. For a retelling of a fairy tale, however, the use of stock characters executing well-known tropes can sometimes feel a bit tiresome. I spent much of the story being bounced between irritation at the appearance of these tropes and then having that irritation assuaged by the way Lewis played on the tropes and twisted them. Why must Ella’s sisters be physically gorgeous while she is not? Why must Ella dream of a handsome captain to rescue her? The answers are not what you might think! Sometimes, the heroine gets something better than a prince…

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REVIEW: Poetry in Starward Tales II

Review of poetry in Starward Tales II, edited by CB Droege (Manawaker Studio, 2017). — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

I decided to tackle all the poetry in the anthology in one go because poetry can be wicked hard to review and it made sense, in the context of a themed anthology like this, to discuss all the poems together.

“Penelope Longing for Odysseus” by Vonnie Winslow Crist (p. 141)

One of the hallmarks of a classic story is that it transcends both time and genre. In this poem, Crist has transposed the story of Odysseus to far into the future, with Penelope waiting at home for her space-ship captain to return. Whether told in epic poetry and set in ancient Greece, or told in short blank verse form and set far in the future, the story of Penelope’s patience, love, and dissatisfaction with her wandering husband remains a powerful one. (The poem also reads aloud nicely, and rated an “It was good” from my 6 year old.)

“Chained” by Vonnie Winslow Crist (p. 39)

Like Crist’s other poem in the anthology, this one also draws upon a foundation of Greek myth, but it is not a straightforward retelling of a known tale. Instead, Crist uses the familiar elements of mythology to couch an unfamiliar future, when humanity has been awoken from cryo-state on a foreign planet. Will we find ourselves in the underworld, in purgatory, or in paradise?

“Girl in the Red Hood” by Richard King Perkins II (p. 97)

The inspiring story for this poem is obvious from the title. The first four stanzas follow the traditional story for the most part, with embellishments and details that make it a distinctive and not generic re-telling. The final stanza is where the dramatic climax is reached; unfortunately, there was not quite enough in it for me to understand the import of the ending. It wasn’t clear who the narrator of the poem was, nor what memories it was that the girl in the red hood forgot before the wolf devoured her.

“Icarus” by María Castro Domínguez (p. 117)

(Note that the table of contents puts this poem on p. 115).

The story of Icarus is one of my favorites, so I was immediately drawn to this poem from its title. The poem did not disappoint — Castro Domínguez paints some vivid pictures with her words — but I am not sure what connects the story of the poem to the story of Icarus.

“Beauty, Sleeping” by Marsheila Rockwell (p. 173)

This brief (10-line) poem takes the story of sleeping beauty and turns it upside down — what happens if when the prince comes to wake the princess instead of giving her his animative power, he takes hers instead?

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REVIEW: “At Cooney’s” by Delia Sherman

Review of Delia Sherman’s, “At Cooney’s”, Uncanny Magazine Volume, 18 (2017): Read Online. Reviewed by Jodie Baker.

Delia Sherman certainly has a way with sensory description. After a few lines of “At Conney’s” I felt like I had been whisked away to the dingy bar of her imagination:

Down on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, there’s a little bar called Cooney’s. It’s an old bar, with a tin ceiling and carved-up tables and a floor you don’t want to look at too hard and no air-conditioning to break up the historic atmosphere of stale beer and dusty upholstery and unwashed hair.

Enter Ali, the story’s narrator, who is sitting in Cooneys with her friends Grace and Michael. Grace & Ali argue with Michael about how ‘his man Dylan didn’t invent poetic protest songs.’ and discuss the history of black musical protest. It’s 1968, and Ali is in love with Grace. Grace is black, Ali we’re left to assume is white. Ali doesn’t know how Grace will react if a girl professes their love to her. So, from its opening moments, “At Cooney’s” is a smart, politically focused story.

During an emotional breakdown, Ali stumbles into the bathroom only to find herself transported back in time. Sherman creates real jeopardy with this device. The past is not a safe space for Ali. She arrives without money, or I.D. And her 60’s fashion choices get her branded as a girl dressing as a man.

Even returning to her present doesn’t guarantee Ali safety. It’s 1968, a time when Michael can ask, without much censure, whether the young girls on stage are ‘lezzies’. This choice to transport a narrator from the reader’s past into their own past, and then return them to a historical present, sets “At Cooney’s” apart. Sherman’s story challenges the idea that the present is always a safe space; a space where underrepresented characters are required to “be grateful”.   

In fact, despite the problems of the past, her trip provides Ali with many examples of strength. It turns out, Cooney’s used to be a club where the clientele dressed to express their true gender identities without fear of censure. When the club is raided, she sees people for who ‘being busted is a familiar pain, like a bad hangover, the price they pay for letting it all hang out, even in a speakeasy.’ And yet, these people continue to come to Cooney’s and dress the way that makes them feel their best. There she meets Ronnie, an incredibly seductive character. It’s worth reading “At Cooney’s” just to watch Ronnie’s moves:

Her breath is warm, her voice like damp velvet. I shiver, my eyes on the couples gliding past, bright-eyed and flushed, absorbed in the music and each other. Ronnie’s lips move to my mouth, and somehow we’re still dancing as we kiss, slow, slow, quick-quick.

Ali returns to 1968 with new drive to get over her fear, and to tell Grace she loves her. And while the reader never knows how Grace reacts we’re left with hope hanging in the air.

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REVIEW: “Möbius Continuum” by Gu Shi

Review of Gu Shi, “Möbius Continuum”, Clarkesworld 132: Read online. Reviewed by Kerstin Hall.

This one didn’t work for me, and it may be the case that I was simply the wrong audience. As it stands, I found “Möbius Continuum” to be amongst the weaker pieces published in this issue of Clarkesworld. I believe that readers with a taste for the philosophical may find more to admire – that’s not what floats my boat.

In part, the story functions as a thought experiment, a sort of mental repositioning. It is interesting, but there’s little more I can say without giving major spoilers. And even though I anticipated the ending, I still didn’t quite buy it. The conclusion necessitated a kind of tidiness which I experienced as anti-climactic.

Early in the narrative, the protagonist crashes his car over a cliff. Both he and his passenger survive, but the protagonist is left paralysed from the neck down. His enigmatic companion urges him not to despair, and to see his injuries as an opportunity.

I think my largest problem with “Möbius Continuum” is that I never received a strong enough impression of the protagonist’s character. I found it difficult to care about him, and thus the stakes of failures never raised my heart rate. I can see how this nebulousness served an ultimate thematic purpose, but I experienced it as a structural problem. Why should I be invested in this story, what is there to keep me reading? The answer is probably intellectual curiosity, but I wanted emotion on top of that.

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