Longer stuff for the weekend – here’s a novelette by a writer team!

A Militant Peace by David Klecha (an American man) and Tobias S. Buckell (a Grenadan-American man)

from the November 2011 issue of Clarkesworld

This is straight-up military SF and an interesting take on overwhelming force. Alas, my suspension of disbelief was really strained several times – not a good sign when it comes to supposedly realistic near-future SF!

First, I’ve found the general political scenario unbelievable (this is not really a spoiler, it’s how the story starts): Vietnamese UN troops invade North Korea “peacefully” by creating unassailable “alternative settlement zones” where civilians can flee.

Let’s say that again: the UN invades North Korea. Sure, and pigs fly. (If you kick them hard enough…) And this process is expected to last a decade? With no one else interfering?

Second, armies expecting to be literally invincible because of the huge technological disparity are sometimes in for a surprise. To offer an example that’s geographically close, the Serbians shot down an American F-117 stealth plane in the Kosovo war (1999) using Soviet technology from the 1960s. (The Serbian commander was an ethnic minority Hungarian; his Wikipedia page is quite detailed and describes the incident in detail.)

Also, the story seems to assume that North Korea stagnates; if other armies were to develop such amazing defenses, North Koreans might also be able to acquire them – espionage, proliferation, etc. the options are endless! After all, they apparently have nuclear weapons…

One of the story’s points is (spoiler!) that psychological vulnerability is also a form of vulnerability, so at least it’s not an “our army is perfect” tale, but it edges close – if the characters were American instead of Vietnamese, the novelette would read as straight-up propaganda for the American right wing. (And I like military SF, I’m not one of those people who are bothered by fictional depictions of armed conflict.) At least the story raises the very real issue of the UN troops not having a mandate strong enough to prevent atrocities.

Semi-related link I’ve been meaning to show you for a while now: Planeman’s Bluffer’s Guides. They include a detailed treatment of both Pyongyang’s and Hanoi’s anti-aircraft defenses based on Google Earth data. Unfortunately his blog seems to be down… (gee, I wonder why؟)

Today we have two stories about religion! Errrr… Scientology and the Flying Spaghetti Monster qualify, right?

The Hubbard Continuum by Lavie Tidhar (an Israeli Jewish man)

from Redstone Science Fiction, March 2011

L. Ron Hubbard was right and the future is a Scientologist nightmare with with Clears, Pre-Clears, implant stations and such. The plot is a short, fun romp with time travel and “psychic Thetan death-rays”; maybe a bit too self-referential for my tastes, though it’s by no means as bad as the usual ‘writing about writers who are writing’. I can’t help feeling Scientology ought to be more… paranoia-inducing.

I’m getting tired of repeating “this story was inspired by X, this story was inspired by Y”, but what can I do? Surely there is nothing new under the sun, but to see so many stories which are direct homages or rewrites is disappointing, even when they turn out to be decent work after all. I didn’t expect this! With that being said, this story was apparently inspired by William Gibson’s The Gernsback Continuum, except here the future is not Gernsbackian, but Hubbardian. Apparently, because the debt is not acknowledged by the author (compare Liu’s novella in my previous post), though the title makes it obvious. Still, I couldn’t find a single review online which noticed the link. This probably explains why the story is better-received than it ought to be: it seems more original than it actually is.

Grace Immaculate by Gregory Benford (an American man)

from Tor.com Originals, Oct 19 2011

A flash story about first contact with aliens and religion, with a twist. I’m bored with SF where the aliens learn something from the humans which Would Never Have Occurred To Them Otherwise – that’s so anthropocentric. But at least here (spoiler!) the aliens get the last laugh.

This one is mostly for completionists – while we’re at it: do send me links to religion-related SF, gotta catch ‘em all! – or those who really just want a mildly amusing story to go with their morning coffee.

Today we have two stories about human-alien interaction! To be honest I prefer the term “extraterrestrial”, it’s less value-laden… but that’s probably only me.

Join by Liz Coleman (an American woman) – I don’t have a link for her personal website

from the September 2011 issue of Lightspeed

A story about a human man who becomes a surrogate father to an alien joined to his body – for the time being, at least. A topic I personally find fascinating, and the characterization of the protagonist is decent.

I’m surprised SFnal body modification usually does not relate to the real-life body modification subculture in any shape or form, it’s like the authors do not even know (or have trouble contemplating?) that such a thing exists. This story is an exception! Unfortunately that alone does not really carry it through to the conclusion.

The protagonist visits his family on Earth and a strained coming-out scene ensues. It made me groan – the whole story looks like an extended metaphor for gay adoption even if that was not the author’s intent. It really comes across as  “look, I’m writing a story about a current issue, JUST IN SPAAACE“. Aliens are used as stand-ins for minority groups all too often and this is a trend I strongly dislike. If people want to write about minority groups, they should write about minority groups. If people want to write about aliens, they should write about aliens. Mixing the two has very unfortunate implications even if, I repeat, that was not the author’s original intent.

Also, I think the mother’s reaction was completely unrealistic (spoiler cut): the mother goes from “I’d never seen her like this. She looked like a wilted flower, her hand draped limply over her knee, her big onyx ring dangling from her grasp. She looked at me with empty eyes.” to “But she slowly smiled as she looked at the photo, and then at Ngoraich’s battered casing, and asked: “What’s her name?”” People don’t change that much in the course of a single conversation. I guess the author wanted a happy ending, but this is a huge oversimplification of coming out (related to any topic), and thus potentially harmful to people who’ve had to go through a coming-out talk themselves.

One more spoilery note: I’m not saying coming-out stories should always have bad endings, G-d forbid! But if the author wanted to end the story on a positive note, she shouldn’t have set up the story this way, with people starting off from an extremely negative position.

Making My Entrance Again with My Usual Flair by Ken Scholes (an American man)

from Tor.com Originals (Jan 12 2011)

This is a lighthearted story about a clown and a monkey… There are a few moments of brilliance here and there, but by and large the story is not very deep. Terry Bisson has proven that one can write humorous stories which are also very profound, and that really influences my expectations. If something is not very deep, it should at least be unique and memorable, and this story is neither.

It’s an okay read, but definitely not award-winning material. I find it hard enough to say much about it, but fortunately I ranted all too long about the first story, so there’s enough for you to read

All That Touches the Air by An Owomoyela (an American asexual neutrois person of color)

from the April 2011 issue of Lightspeed

A lengthy alien-contact story with great characterization. Very few stories try to tackle the fundamental claustrophobia inherent in living in an alien environment (Bios by Robert Charles Wilson comes to mind, and… not much else) and this one does a great job. It’s great to see that not everyone reacts the same way, and some people might take precautions a bit too far, just like in real life.

There is also an annoying little know-it-all in there, a character type seldom seen in SF probably because it uncomfortably reminds most authors of their childhood selves.

It’s hard to say whether this story is better than Frozen Voice, the author’s previous work I reviewed… I enjoyed this one more on an intellectual level, but Frozen Voice had more striking imagery that stayed with me over time. (I am a very visual sort of person, you can bribe me with spiffy pictures ) Anyway, both stories are well worth the read!

As before, read the author interview – it gives a really new perspective on the story. (And yes, there’s a bit about childhood selves in there…)

The Rotten Beast by Mary E. Pearson (an American woman)

from Tor.com Originals (Nov 30 2011)

What a simplistic tale. I kept on waiting for a faint glimmer of originality – or perhaps a masterful twist that will subvert all the bad tropes in the story at the same time – but no, nothing.

Of course maybe we’re all just dealing with an unreliable narrator – after all, she is an emotional teenager who comes across as the straw-man who people like to attack when talking about religious fundamentalists. (No, actual religious fundamentalists are not necessarily like that, but this is an unrelated tangent best saved for some other time.) There is no mention of religion in the story though, there are only lengthy anti-technology and anti-science rants that are about as profound as those conspiracy theories about Satan’s barcode printed on your forehead.

The technology is laughable: “I press my hand to my chest and try to feel the biochips clicking away inside”, “Being controlled by all the computer chips stuffed into his Biogel?”. I understand this is a YA story, but young adults are not stupid for the most part; they should not be treated as such.

Unfortunately there is not a shred of evidence in the story itself that the narrator is unreliable. Moreover, the story is a straight-up retelling of Eve and the apple, except… with a peach. I’m serious. A peach.

I’d say this one is a lemon.

(:O Couldn’t resist…)

I’m no longer doing these reviews magazine by magazine and in chronological order. I read a lot of stuff which I haven’t reviewed yet that I’ve found really meh, and I want to spice up the mehness a bit. Some magazines are quite consistently boring. (At least Clarkesworld tends to be interesting even when I dislike the stories in question.) Maybe I’ll post about that later on…

Spoiler cuts are the same as usual.

Postings from an Amorous Tomorrow by Corey Mariani (an American man)

from the Jan 2011 issue of Lightspeed

This is the author’s first publication (congrats!) and despite that he writes with a firm, self-assured voice. Alas, I’ve found the worldbuilding sorely lacking: if it is possible to change people’s sexual orientation in this hypothetical future, why is it not possible to change their social predilections? Why do the adults turn several children into killers instead of simply making the opposite change to their victim? Even the protagonist asks “It seems to me that they could have lit that house on fire just as easily as we did. They didn’t have to show us all of those awful things.” So why did they do that? Are the adults just evil for no particular reason, or am I missing something? I expected more after the fascinating start.

Transcript of Interaction Between Astronaut Mike Scudderman and the OnStar Hands-Free A.I. Crash Advisor by Grady Hendrix (an American man)

from the June 2011 issue of Lightspeed

A short, humorous story about a crash landing and… wait, there’s no sense in summarizing when all that is included in the story title anyway.

I suppose I would’ve found it funnier if I had hands-on experience with real-life OnStar systems; it’s not very amusing to read about an unfamiliar thing being parodied. Unfortunately this limits the story readership to regions where OnStar is available…

Further still, the story is eerily similar to Mars: A Traveler’s Guide by Ruth Nestvold (also available as an audiobook in podcast form). The Nestvold story has a different angle, though; much more melancholy. Also, AI chatlogs in general have been done to death in SF – I’ve even seen the topic on magazine “do not submit” lists.

The “sensual lovemaking” parts were amusing, but that’s about the only positive thing I can say about this story.

Endnote: Grady Hendrix often writes about Asian topics, but he is not actually Asian, hence this post is not tagged with Asian writers.

After a successful subscription drive, Clarkesworld is switching to three stories per month starting with this issue. So let’s see what we have…

I’m going to say right away that I’m not a fan of stories published in parts spaced out with a month between them. Sure, this way there is more material per issue, there is also more longer-form fiction available for free, but I strongly dislike having to wait for the next instalment – it makes me think I’m back in the days of old Galaktika issues printed on yellowing and brittle paper, as opposed to the bright and glamorous twenty-first century. Then again, I’m the sort of person who watches entire seasons of a TV series in a week, and then goes for months not watching any television at all. Coming to think of it, I should be doing that again, it’s been a while… anyway, let’s get back to the issue.

Clarkesworld, Issue 61 – October 2011

Staying Behind by Ken Liu (a Chinese-American man)

A post-Raptu– errr, I mean post-Singularity story, very realistic, very down-to-earth. I liked it, but I liked Ken Liu’s previous story in Clarkesworld this year much better. There’s not much to say about it, there are some fascinating ambiguities in there, but I’d rather not venture into spoiler territory, especially when the story itself is quite short (as in this case).

For Dash – there is a very minor mention of technological telepathy.

Pony by Erik Amundsen (an American man)

Ponies are back in fashion – I blame My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. This time we have gritty postcyberpunk space pony wranglers. Not bad, eh? The story is charming and aggressive at the same time. Well, maybe not exactly charming, but quite good nonetheless.

There is a strong narrative voice, the kind that would be annoying were the story much longer, but at this length it works quite well. I could almost hear the gruffy macho protagonist grumbling in my ears while reading.

Also, a highly quotable line: “in space, you can’t not telegraph the evil you’re about to commit.” There are other similar nuggets interspersed throughout the story, but you’ll have to read it to find them.

Silently and Very Fast (Part 1 of 3) by Catherynne M. Valente (an American woman)

Another mention of Sumerian mythology in Clarkesworld (see the previous one). I don’t want to go all prescriptivist, and there’s no One True Way of spelling Sumerian, but the spelling of Ereshkigal as Erishkegal really annoyed me – it’s one of those little persistent nags I can’t get rid of while reading. Fortunately, the story soon veered off and took a different path altogether.

I know Valente has a very vocal fanbase (which includes some of my friends), but her style never clicked with me. “She has chosen her body at age seven, all black eyes and sparrowy bones.” Is that supposed to be poetic, or is she literally covered in black eyes?

Still, here the purple has been dialed down a few notches and the story is actually readable, though not particularly engaging. I found myself growing sleepy and I was increasingly inclined to skim. Japan also makes an appearance as an Ooh So Exotic Backdrop (and Look, They Are Eating Exotic Food!). I’m thoroughly uninterested in the sequels, and if not for this series of reviews, I would probably skip them altogether.

On the upside, there is a good point made about the Turing test and privilege. It’s just lost in the flowery prose.

The reviews are back – sorry for the long delay!

In this issue, both stories were trying to say something new about time-worn SF tropes, but I think only one of them managed to pull it off. Let’s see…

Clarkesworld, Issue 58 – July 2011

Trois morceaux en forme de mechanika by Gord Sellar (a Canadian man who lives in South Korea)

The ultimate triumph of style over substance! This story depicts evil robots taking over the world – that’s the entire plot and I’m not kidding. It is told in a flourishing style. Example: Gorgeous steel, stainless save the spattered blood of this metropolis aflame, and the reflections of frail bodies strung all about the towers above, ornaments to celebrate the tidings of the new year, the new world, the ends and beginnings of various histories. If this is not your thing, you won’t like the story, if it is, you probably will – it’s that simple.

There is sheet music included… maybe this is not so surprising, since the story is titled after Erik Satie’s Trois morceaux en forme de poire. The score reminded me of Faerie’s Aire and Death Waltz, one of the classics of sheet music humor. In the audio version of the story there is actual music. It sounds better than it looks! It also sounds better than Faerie’s Aire (Youtube link!).

This is the second time this year that I’ve seen Clarkesworld run an “inspired by music” story. Trois morceaux en forme de mechanika really fell flat for me even though I’m a Satie fan… and I still prefer works of art that can stand on their own.

Here is a Satie mix by a friend of mine:

Frozen Voice by An Owomoyela (who is an American asexual neutrois person of color)

This one is about an alien invasion and book burnings. Fortunately, the aliens burn books for a rather unexpected reason – I won’t spoil it, read the story, it’s interesting.

I can see more potential here than a simple short story. I liked the way the aliens communicated with a “hum” in addition to spoken and signed (!) languages, even though this wasn’t really elaborated upon. Also, this is another story that will fit nicely into my “Languages in SF” series. Is the theme coming back in fashion?

There is a small typo in the text, the word for book in Arabic is kitab, not kitap. Just thought I’d mention it because in Arabic, only loanwords have p. But I readily admit this is not very relevant to the topic at hand…

Clarkesworld #57 – June 2011

I liked this issue overall. Again, spoilers are in white.

Semiramis by Genevieve Valentine (an American woman)

The first-person protagonist really comes across as female, which made me wonder if the story was centered around a lesbian relationship, but in one place the protagonist calls him(?)self a “gentleman”, so I guess not.

Otherwise, this is a calm and quiet story about huge and upsetting events… global warming, political turmoil, countries destroyed or occupied, while the protagonists are working in or around the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. I enjoyed it, but I kept feeling there could have been more. For instance, we never learn about the mysterious organization that employs the protagonist.

There is something I feel like mentioning, not directly relevant to Semiramis or my mini-review, but I can see some parallels… Another gene bank with a story behind it is the currently endangered Pavlovsk Experimental Station in Russia. During the siege of Leningrad, the botanists starved to death, but still would not eat from the collection. There is a moving song about the station by an American band, The Decemberists, which also starts with an allusion to Babylon, like Semiramis… so we’ve come full circle.

This is just someone else’s random Youtube upload of the song with no video, so I’m keeping the embed size small:

There is a (non-SF) novel on this topic, Hunger by Elise Blackwell, but unfortunately I haven’t read it yet.

Trickster by Mari Ness (an American woman)

Trickster looks like fantasy, but it has many science fiction elements – I think I can list it as both.

The protagonist is a physically disabled woman, which, combined with the presence of several deities in the story, made me really worried about the magical cure trope. Fortunately there is no magical cure in Trickster. Instead there is a very resilient protagonist, assumed to be weak by everyone around her – including her deities –, when she is anything but. Lots of destruction ensues. (You don’t need to be a buff superhero to cause lots of destruction. OH YES.)

It’s a quite lengthy story – I’m not even sure if it is, technically, a short story – but it’s well worth the read. This one will rate high on my scale, even though I don’t normally like fantasy stories with overly anthropomorphic deities.

*

While we’re at scales and such: I’m going to make a “Battle of the Stories” page to help people with Hugo nominations and voting. I’ve already assembled it and added the stories I’ve reviewed thus far, but before I make it public, I want to make a nice button to put on the front page… and I’ve hit a roadblock. What should I put on the button? The obvious answer is the Hugo logo, except…

The Hugo logo is really bland. When I looked at it, my first reactions were: 1. It’s really boring! 2. It looks like a penis! Now, I’m not a very sexual person, but I still think it’s a feat to design a logo that manages to be boring and penile at the same time. I read the comments on the logo announcement and people seemed to be having the same reactions, so it’s not just me.

I know the Hugo award itself looks like a rocket. That’s not an excuse!

They did not publish a list of runners-up, but I liked this logo set a contestant posted in the comments. Alas, it doesn’t lend itself to a horizontal button similar to the ones already in my sidebar.

The short story reviews are back after the interruption… Again, spoilers are marked with white.

Clarkesworld #56, May 2011

Whose Face This Is I Do Not Know by Cat Rambo (an American woman)

Last week, I had a strange idea. Sometime in the far future, I’d like to edit a thematic anthology which features body horror stories without the horror… or more accurately, without the revulsion. Body horror is usually presented in a bad way. The character changes into something in a quite graphic manner, and this is presented as horrifying and possibly evil. Stories which still have quite graphic elements, but where the reader is expected to feel the events are good and moral for some reason, or just neutral and normal, are few and far between… even though speculative fiction is supposed to be (at least in part) about just how far the human condition extends.

This story could possibly qualify, though it is not really graphic. The main character is a shapeshifter, but the usual tired tropes about shapeshifting do not apply. For example, when someone dies, everyone (including the reader) expects the shapeshifter killed them, but it turns out the shapeshifter was telling the truth that it was an accident. All throughout the reader is left rooting for the shapeshifter, and in my opinion that’s a Very Good Thing and something so often lacking in modern Western SF. (A Russian parallel I really liked was the Stars duology by Sergei Lukyanenko, unfortunately not available in English yet.) The fictional Other is usually evil, demonized, disgusting – the restraint writers try to exercise when writing about real Others is usually gone and their xenophobia shows through clearly. Not here, and thank Cat Rambo for that.

We still have the evil mad scientist trope – by now you probably know this is one of my pet peeves -, but in this story the scientist is more of a greedy jerk than the classic mad scientist.

The Architect of Heaven by Jason K. Chapman (an American man)

I simply could not get into this story. It starts off very slowly and does not really pick up steam until the second half. A friend of mine showed me The Universal Mary Sue Litmus Test the other day and I couldn’t get it out of my head while reading The Architect of Heaven. Trent is extremely rich, extremely popular, and people readily sacrifice their lives for him. This would not be necessarily bad in itself, but I saw nothing in the story that would’ve made me feel that yes, Trent really was that kind of guy. The characterization just wasn’t strong enough for the rest to be believable.

I wasn’t sure if there was a gay subplot, because it is never discussed explicitly, but if there is, then that’s probably worse, because of course the gay man ends up sacrificing himself for the straight guy. LJ user prusik posted a lengthy analysis, so I’m not going to go into more detail; this is definitely not one of the cases where I notice something about a story that no one else has pointed out yet.

I’m writing an article on the characterization of Eastern Europeans, so I’m not going to comment on the stereotyped Russian… and the stereotyped Chinese, either. But I think this story is going to make an apparance in the article…

Clarkesworld #55 – April 2011

As I’ve said in the previous entry, I’m trying to add every author’s ethnicity and gender, for later statistical purposes… but I’ve had difficulties with this issue. I think E. Lily Yu is Chinese-American and Erin Hartshorn is Jewish-American (or American Jewish? that always confuses me), but I’m not sure, so I’ll probably just have to ask the authors directly.

The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees by E. Lily Yu (a Chinese?-American woman)

I’m not particularly fond of parables, but this fantasy story is neatly told – I think this is the type of content that’s best-suited to podcasts, flowing along smoothly. (I read the text myself, but you might want to try the audio version.) Maybe it was a bit too didactic at times, but the political content did not ruin the story outright.

I’m not really sure about the take-home message, though – you can try to be different, but you will probably fail and die a miserable death? Well, life is like that sometimes, true enough…

Matchmaker by Erin M. Hartshorn (a Jewish?-American woman)

Yay, a Jewish story! The family of the protagonist really reminded me of the stories I hear from American secular Jewish friends – I think the American Jewish “guilt trip” experience is expressed quite eloquently, or maybe it is an American secular Jewish experience? Many of the American Jews I know are religious, and their families are nothing like that. Anyway, the author is clearly on to something here! There is also the interesting intersectionality of culture and class – one seldom sees really rich characters in SF, and even then they do not tend to belong to minorities. The author avoids the traditional ‘Jewish millionaires own the world’ trope, but the family comes across as slightly obnoxious… just as it probably would in real life! So far, so good.

I’ve never heard of a shidduch this fast, though – even the most fervently Chareidi people I know had at least 3-4 dates before marriage. (And most shidduchim end up going nowhere. Just ask me!) I understand that things need to come to a satisfying close in the span of a short story, but to me this part came across as more stereotype than reality… and not a stereotype I’d personally like to reinforce.