Today we have two stories by women authors. I’m trying to come up with a schedule… I’ve just read something I loved, recommended by a reader (review coming soon IY”H), so keep those recommendations coming! Also, feel free to recommend bad stories, especially if they have to do with underrepresented groups. I’ll review them and hopefully that’ll help others avoid Teh Suffarz

Nebula nominations are closing in two weeks! There’s still time for the Hugos though… and I also need to decide what to nominate for the Carl Brandon awards. I have a metric TON of short stories I’d love to nominate, but seeing as these awards usually go to longer-form works, that might be a waste of time. Still, I’ve read several good novelettes and novellas that would be a good fit; I just need to make up my mind. Carl Brandon nominations are open to everyone, so head over:

The Carl Brandon Parallax Award is for an outstanding speculative fiction work by a self-identified writer of color. The Carl Brandon Kindred Award is for an oustanding speculative fiction work dealing with race and ethnicity. You may nominate the same work for both awards.

After the short intermission, back to today’s stories:

This Strange Way of Dying by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (a Mexican-Canadian woman)

from GigaNotoSaurus – audio version available on Podcastle

This story was published in GigaNotoSaurus, a magazine specializing in novelettes, but it’s not actually a novelette (the word count is around 5400) – just mentioning this in case you want to nominate it for awards. Despite the length, it is a quick read, as Moreno-Garcia’s other stories: she writes lean prose that simply flies by. Let’s see what this one offers!

A girl makes a pact with Death, over the backdrop of the Mexican Revolution. The fascinating setting saves the story from being a boring rehash of the old theme.

Silvia Moreno-Garcia also writes straight-up fantasy, but to be honest I appreciate it more when she sets her stories a bit closer to home – especially since she does not tend to overexoticize anything. I’ve wondered if some magazines pressured “ethnic” writers in that direction, or maybe that’s just the kind of style that tends to resonate with the (white, American) editors. Anyway, Silvia Moreno-Garcia is a good counterexample: her stories are not loaded down with extraneous detail, but they are still pronouncedly local. More please!

The Sighted Watchmaker by Vylar Kaftan (an American woman)

from Lightspeed (Dec 2011)

An “alien observer” story, with a twist. I think I dislike this “with a twist” template more and more with each passing day: in a story building on ages-old tropes, where said tropes are changed in one specific way, the reader (ME!) still has to wade through too much of the same old same old in order to get to the heart of the matter.

Still, the change was interesting (it made me feel the author would see some opposition from both sides of the creationism debate) and the writing was touching. I also liked the sweeping perspective. I wouldn’t choose this story as one of the year’s best – like Rich Horton did -, but it was decent enough.

Today’s stories are both about… apples! In a roundabout way, at least… You know you are tempted to read on!

Black Fire by Tanith Lee (a British woman)

from the January 2011 issue of Lightspeed

This has to be the first British work I’m reviewing unless I’ve managed to miss something. It is a retelling of the Adam and Eve story – I do love me some Bible fanfic, but Black Fire just isn’t strong enough.

The narrative is composed of police interviews with ordinary citizens. With this type of structure, a lot hinges on the voices being convincing. Here, the citizens sound realistic, but also slightly boring.

Special groanworthy quote: “My last thought is, I confess, is this really then what is meant by Science Fiction?“

iTime by Ferrett Steinmetz (an American man)

from the September 2011 issue of Redstone Science Fiction

A highly readable time travel story with two shortcomings. First, one of the characters is such a stereotyped vacuous bimbo that I found the first half of the story hard to read, I kept on cringing. Sure, the protagonist is a hacker girl, but as the story is based around their interactions,  the difference between these two women only emphasizes that the author tried to build on lazy stereotypes. The complete opposite of a caricature is also a caricature.

The second shortcoming is worldbuilding-related: there is zero social context. Minor characters are completely oblivious to the time-travel technology, even though a resale market has sprung up already: “Daddy paid four hundred thousand on eBay for an unbonded four-hour model,” she said, puffing out her chest. Still, no one understands that Miss Vacuous Bimbo is using a time-travel gizmo!

Also, the device must have a really horrendous user interface if  (spoiler!) Bimbo manages to use it without ever being exposed to any warnings. Even my Nintendo Wii keeps on telling me to please wear the controller strap, and that’s really minor in comparison. As the name strongly hints at the fictional gizmo being produced by Apple, a company whose strong suit is providing a smooth user experience, this is even more puzzling.

It’s a shame – the temptation aspect is very well-executed, and I liked  that different characters experienced similar temptation for different reasons. There is also a “learning social interactions” theme to the story that will probably resonate with many readers.

Mama, we are Zhenya, Your Son by Tom Crosshill (a Latvian-American man who is also an immigrant)

from the April 2011 issue of Lightspeed

Definitely one of the more memorable stories from this year’s Lightspeed. I’m also very happy to see fellow Eastern Europeans gain more exposure

At first I thought this would be a story set inside a computer running Linux: “The gnomes live in the cellar. They’re short and green and wear big fluffy hats with their names on them, like GUI 1, GUI 2, GUI 3″. Which isn’t really a novel idea, save for maybe the Linux part. But the story is about something completely different and ends up being much more ingenuous than just another virtual-reality tale, so keep on reading! Without giving away much, neuroplasticity is a keyword.

Be sure to read the author interview as well once you’re finished. All magazines should have similar extra features!

To be honest I disagree with him (spoiler cut):

“What if you took a very young human brain and placed it in a complex simulated quantum-like environment? Might it learn to adapt to this environment and predict its behavior in real time as accurately as we predict the behavior of the real world (for a quantum-mechanical, probabilistic meaning of “predict”)? If it did, that would be a very strong indication that the human brain does indeed rely on quantum phenomena to make sense of the world”

I think the human mind can model environments whose behavior has no real-world analog; there are some really far-out ideas in experimental gameplay etc. that IMO seem to show this… but I don’t know if this issue has ever been rigorously investigated. Anyway, the story is great

The Paper Menagerie by Ken Liu (a Chinese-American man)

from the Mar/Apr 2011 issue of Fantasy & Science Fiction (available as a free story from Del Rey’s website and as an audiobook from Podcastle)

This is a realy, really sad and beautiful story. Definitely one of the best in 2011 – if this keeps up, the hard problem will be deciding which Ken Liu story to nominate for the Hugos!

Also, finally a story that deals with immigration. Even people who belong to a non-WASP ethnic group tend to write about “the sourceland” as Deepa D put it, and not the immigrant or the ethnic-minority experience… at least in spec fic. (The trend is probably reversed when it comes to contemporary non-genre literature!)

Some of it reminded me of the scene in Michael Ende’s Momo where the kids play with the new toys. Also very melancholy.

You can say The Paper Menagerie is fantasy, or you can say it’s magical realism, it’s going to find its home anywhere. Go read it now.

_________

Note: a big thank you to España Sheriff who linked the audiobook version on hugo_recommend – I would’ve missed the podcast release altogether if not for this notice.

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.