REVIEW: “You Can Adapt to Anything” by John Wiswell

Review of John Wiswell, “You Can Adapt to Anything”, Daily Science Fiction, Sept 15, 2017: Read Online. Reviewed by Caitlin Levine.

They say that people are endlessly adaptable. Sometimes that is a blessing; but, perhaps it is sometimes a curse. “You Can Adapt to Anything” follows two scientists, Miguel and Juniper, as they develop trans-dimensional travel. The two are the ultimate pair, united in love, purpose, and excitement. But after their portal breaks down, Juniper finds herself stuck in a different dimension – with a different Miguel.

Wiswell takes us on a technology-filled exploration of the nature of love. Alternately sweet, scientific, and sad, this story is an exquisite orchestration of emotions that never becomes sappy or trite. You’ll have to re-read this one to pick apart the layered questions of love and identity.

This is my favorite Daily Science Fiction story from this week because of the detailed relationship between Juniper and Miguel, paralleled by Juniper’s exploration of her own identity. The ending perfectly highlights the emotions of the piece and wraps up the story while opening the door for the characters to continue on.

caitlevineLeave a comment

REVIEW: “Ten Thousand Sleeping Beauties” by Jocelyn Koehler

Review of Jocelyn Koehler, “Ten Thousand Sleeping Beauties”, Luna Station Quarterly 30: Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

My first reaction was that I straight up love the title, with its evocation of both European fairy tales and 1001 nights. And while the story itself is not a fairy tale, it certainly involves one, albeit a darker, scarier one than we normally tell our children (even in Grimms’ grim tales, there is always a prince’s kiss to awaken the sleeper).

My second reaction was “how am I going to explain what is so poignant in this story without spoilers?” Let me try: Despite evidence to the contrary, despite the perennial moans throughout the ages that youth aren’t what they were like in our day, humanity as a whole is remarkably optimistic: We persist in thinking that, eventually, things will get better, they have to get better; or at least that they won’t get worse, not really. For example, the entire industry of cryogenics is based on the idea that the future will be better than the present.

But one day, the future will be the present. What then?

My third reaction was that the ending made me cry.

Sara L. Uckelman4 Comments

REVIEW: “The Man in the Crimson Coat” by Andrea Tang

Review of Andrea Tang, “The Man in the Crimson Coat”, Apex Magazine 100 (2017): Read Online. Reviewed by Joanna Z. Weston.

The story opens in a bar, where a woman named Jo watches a piano man with a shiny cybernetic hand, so we know right away that we’re reading some sci-fi noir. That could go in the direction of parody, but instead takes itself just seriously enough to tell a great story. The world is both futuristic and retro, but never campy. It suggests that even in a future with advanced technology, society will still need seedy bars and cheap motels. People will still be people. It’s an appropriate mood for a story about the importance of human connection.

The narrative interweaves a present-day adventure with back story that eventually makes a seamless whole. I found the flashbacks hard to get into at first, but they eventually yield some of the most touching material, particularly on a second reading. They’re not extra, but necessary to the plot, and I admire the way Tang structures them, concealing and revealing in just the right amounts.

The ending is perfect – both surprising and inevitable – and illuminated the whole story that preceded it.

J.Z. WestonLeave a comment

REVIEW: “Salamander Six-Guns” by Martin Cahill

Review of Martin Cahill, “Salamander Six-Guns”, Shimmer 38: Read online. Reviewed by Sarah Grace Liu.

What do you say when a story’s not really your jam, but it’s so well written? In “Salamander Six-Guns” Cahill presents a detailed world, where creatures of the marshes and swamps have received a sentient boost from Momma Scales, a lizard lord (at least, I think that’s how some of the biologics of this world work—humans can also be turned to scale-folk through a bite or an injury). The scale-folk comprise croc-folk, gator-kin, pyth-people, snake-touched, “iggies,” and more. As the Scaled Nation, they are slowly encroaching on the dry lands. The story opens in “Sunblooder’s Stand…the last living border town abutting the Scaled Nation.”

The greatest part of the story is some of the beauty of the lines. Cahill is clearly a writer who is as much in love with the sound of language as the story it tells.

For example:

How does a body run as slow as it can?

Or, the pop, pop, pop of the meter in this line:

We pulled out our pikes and our steel and our guns.

Or the beauty of the opening line:

He descended on the town like a saint sent from Dark Heaven.

What pulled me out of the story, however, was not the overall masterful construct or the lyrical narrative, but the lingo (dark heaven, bright hell, sunblooders, new dark) and the dialogue: “Even Momma didn’t have such a title and you all looked to her like she was Shadow Matron come High Dark to bless!” It felt…disingenuous, affected. It felt channeled, like some syntax and diction patched together from various colorful pockets of culture. It felt a little bit like appropriation. I find it hard to describe the fact that I felt a little wrong reading this.

Then again, it’s no small feat to create a completely new culture with their own slang and their own way of speaking, and yet give it a feel of familiarity, the feel of a shootout in the west. To that end, Cahill accomplished a lot. I’m just not the person for this story. I’m sure all of these atmospheric touches and details make the story great romping fun for the right reader. There are some GREAT lines in here, and despite myself, I did become thoroughly engrossed in the story.

pyramnesiac2 Comments

REVIEW: “Far, Far From Land” by Jude-Marie Green

Review of Jude-Marie Green, “Far, Far From Land”, Luna Station Quarterly 30: Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

One of the hardest parts about short SF stories is conveying everything that is distinctive about the fictional world in which the story takes places without spending all of the words doing so. It is hard to balance between explaining enough so that the reader gets a sense of what is science and what is fiction, but not so much that the reader gets no story, nor so little that the jargon seems mere window dressing and not deeply integrated.

Green’s story starts off too much on the “too little” side; a lot of technical terms and phrases are peppered throughout the opening paragraphs, but there is not enough context to know what an “xyz grid” is or how fractals can bounce, or be juicy.

That being said, I love the idea of big vessels trawling through space fishing for instantiations of mathematical concepts, and the casual ease the crewmates clearly display in their conversation with each other makes it easy to become invested in them, to hope for what they hope for and to mourn when they mourn as well.

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment

REVIEW: “Antarctic Birds” by A. Brym

Review of A. Brym, “Antarctic Birds”, Clarkesworld 132: Read online. Reviewed by Kerstin Hall.

Genetically modified lovers live within a compound in the Antarctic sunshine, teaching strange children about rainforests and cabbages. This story was a strange one, rooted in a very human relationship.

Nikau and Charlie aren’t at the best point in their romance; Nikau is preoccupied with his secrets and Charlie despairs of ever connecting with her students. The gradual regeneration of their relationship forms the emotional heart of the story, and it’s a sweet, delicate thread running through the narrative.

The worldbuilding in Antarctic Birds is of the work-it-out-yourself variety, which has both its uses and limitations. While the strong character focus allows readers to zone in on what is relevant –Nikau and Charlie’s feelings– I found that the lack of explanation grew distracting. Nikau can fly, Charlie can’t, and this appears to be related to their students’ burgeoning telepathic abilities. Two factions of an alien species compete for power, Masters and Makers. They have some kind of symbiotic relationship with humans and help our species to evolve, but this is perhaps against our will.

While a reader can discern something of the structure of the outside world from hints, I felt my grasp on the situation was too tenuous. As a result, Nikau’s choices in the conclusion lacked the significance they might have otherwise held.

Antarctic Birds reads like a snapshot into an intriguing narrative universe. It’s a brief glimpse of something larger, framed by the lives of two flawed but lovely characters.

 

 

Kerstin HallLeave a comment

REVIEW: “Zero for Conduct” by Greg Egan

Review of Greg Egan, “Zero for Conduct”, The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year series, Vol. 8. Reviewed by Drew Shiel.

“Zero for Conduct” is set in a near-future Iran. Indeed, there’s very little to stop it from being a contemporary Iran of 2017, except for a few details of technology – although they’re important to the story. And the story works around the development of a key new element of technology, invented by a schoolgirl with a brilliant understanding of molecular structure and chemistry. Greg Egan evokes Iran well, as far as I can make out, touching solidly on sectarian and gender issues as well as local flavour. The story resolves satisfyingly, and there’s none of the element of progress-hampered-by-idiocy which often plagues invention stories.

Recommended for fans of strong female protagonists, hard near-future SF, thoughtful examination of the Middle East, and/or ramifications and outcomes of relatively minor technical advances.

Drew ShielLeave a comment

REVIEW: “In Strange, Far Places” by Julia K. Patt

Review of Julia K. Patt, “In Strange, Far Places”, Luna Station Quarterly 30: Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

What happens when you fare forth into the stars, searching for a new home, but never find one? What happens when you no longer have the resources to go further — and you also no longer have the resources to get back to where you started? So much speculation about space travel seeks for the happy ending, that we will leave this planet and find a new one to make our home. But in truth, the endings of most space travellers will not be happy, they will be “left to live out their lives in the void until the synthetic atmos failed or the oxygenating phytos died or the food ran out.”

When your resources are used up, when you’re left to the mercies of the passing ships who might stop and pick you up and take you home, that is when this story starts. Em recounts her history and that of her comrades in simple, straightforward words; this is her life, and she knows that she is lucky. Not every story will have a happy ending, and yet this doesn’t mean that the story itself is not happy. But happy or sad, who knows what lurks behind the stars…

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment

REVIEW: Iraq+100, edited by Hassan Blasim

Review of Hassan Blasim, ed., Iraq+100: Stories from a Century After the Invasion, with support of Noor Hemani and Ra Page (Comma Press, 2016). Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

I discovered this book last year via a random tweet and was immediately intrigued by the premise. Editor Hassan Blasim asked ten Iraqi writers to consider the question “What might Iraq look like in 2103, a century after the British/American invasion?” The result is an eclectic collection of speculative stories, in the most literal sense of the term, which nevertheless are tied together by a very clear and distinctive thread, a thread that Blasim identifies as “the tragedy of modern Iraq—the tragedy of a people that is desperate for just a solitary draught of peace”. It is a sobering read, but it is also a delightful and entertaining read.

The book begins with an introduction by Blasim, describing how the collection came about, but also discussing the state of Iraqi science fiction:

Iraqi literature suffers from a dire shortage of science fiction writing and I am close to certain that this book of short stories is the first of its kind, in theme and in form, in the corpus of modern Iraqi literature (p. vi).

Blasim discusses why he hopes that this will change in the coming years, but also speaks to the question why there is such a dearth of science fiction in Arabic literature more generally. He notes that:

Perhaps the most obvious reason is that science fiction in the West was allowed to track the development of actual science from about the middle of the 19th century onwards (p. vi),

and that during this period, there was no similar corresponding technological growth in Iraq, so Iraqi science fiction is still in a sense playing catch-up.

I wonder, though, if one couldn’t dig a bit deeper. Just as the roots of contemporary western science fiction go back further than the 19th century (Margaret Cavendish’s Blazing World (1666) is often hailed as a forerunner of modern science fiction), speculative stories have a long and venerable history in an Arabic tradition—it’s just that these stories weren’t necessarily written or told as fiction! Instead, the very best of historical Arabic speculative story-telling can be found in the medieval Arabic philosophical tradition. To give just one example, in his Kitab Al-Shifa (On the Soul), ibn Sina (Avicenna) begins the following story:

One of us (i.e. a human being) should be imagined as having been created in a single stroke; created perfect and complete but with his vision obscured so that he cannot perceive external entities; created falling through air or a void, in such a manner that he is not struck by the firmness of the air in any way that compels him to feel it, and with his limbs separated so that they do not come in contact with or touch each other (Read the Arabic here).

This is the beginning of the so-called “Floating Man” or “Flying Man” thought experiment, but one philosopher’s “thought experiment” is another speculative author’s “science fiction”: For what is science fiction other than a great big “What if?” thought experiment by another name?

This is all to say that if one digs just a bit deeper, there is a wealth of speculative and science fiction material ripe for the delving in the Arabic tradition. Blasim’s collection may very well be unique in its kind right now, but I dearly hope it won’t be for long. I would love to read more stories like these, by more authors like these.

Some of the stories were written in English; some of them have been translated for this collection. Below is a list of the contents; I will review each story individually and when the reviews are published, link to them from this post.

Sara L. Uckelman13 Comments