My life in books

J. D. Popham, “Museum Piece”; Compelling Science Fiction, Winter 2017
http://compellingsciencefiction.com/stories/museum-piece.html

The creator of the robots is dead, and the only surviving humaniform robot is on the run, following his last instructions from his maker. Interesting but I found a serious disconnect between why the robot is being hunted, and what he is trying to do. It seemed there was some information left out along the way, and things like that bother me.


Ahmed Khan, “Crystals of the Ebony Tower”; Another Realm, January 2018
http://www.anotherealm.com/2018/ar010118.php

An interesting fable, marred in my opinion by too much specificity at the end. Without that, it would have been more widely applicable to the human quest for achieving one’s dreams, eschewing the easy way out. With it, it seems a touch too judgmental about which goals and dreams are worthy, and which are not.


Kai Ashante Wilson, “The Lamentations of Their Women”; tor.com, August 24, 2017
https://www.tor.com/2017/08/24/the-lamentation-of-their-women/

“How to be evil without doing bad? There’s a problem for you, huh?”

The title of Wilson’s novelette evokes the hero stories of Robert Howard, the creator of Conan the (white) barbarian, who rambles through a fantasy prehistoric world dealing rough justice with any number of enchanted weapons. In Wilson’s world, the world in our own, the world of Trump and the carceral state and extrajudicial murders of black men, and the heroes who find the enchanted weapons calling them to vengeance are two black New Yorkers, Tanisha and Anhel, who make a pact with darkness and set out on a murderous mission, to make those who oppress them pay. It’s violent, and angry, and it’s a warning.


Ellen Klages, “Caligo Lane”; originally published by Subterranean Press in 2014, reprinted by tor.com
https://www.tor.com/2017/05/12/reprints-caligo-lane-ellen-klages/

Franny Travers has a magical gift; she can make maps that turn into doorways, if she is careful and thorough and detailed enough. As long as she has two endpoints, she can make a bridge between them, a bridge big enough for a few people to pass from one point to another. One more important thing. Franny lives in San Francisco, but she is a Polish Jew, and this story is set during WWII.


Sunny Moraine, “eyes I dare not meet in dreams”; tor.com, June 14, 2017
https://www.tor.com/2017/06/14/eyes-i-dare-not-meet-in-dreams/

This is a story about the day when all the dead girls in refrigerators came back, still dead, but looking at the world with cold, clear eyes, and refused to go quietly back into the night. Chilling, and powerful, and somehow victorious.


Lucy Taylor, “Sweetlings”; tor.com, May 3, 2017
https://www.tor.com/2017/05/03/sweetlings/

In this post-ecopocalyptic world, the remnants of humanity struggle to survive, as evolution switches into high gear. Old species are reappearing, existing species modifying to take advantage of the inundated world. Taylor’s novelette hovers somewhere at the interface of science fiction and horror, telling a bleak take about the end of the world as we know it.


A. C. Wise, “Scenes from a Film (1942 - 1987); tor.com, March 31, 2017
https://www.tor.com/2017/03/21/excerpts-from-a-film-1942-1987/

Wise’s novelette is a disquieting examination of the media’s fetish for the deaths, preferably gruesome, of beautiful young women. Embedded in the standard Hollywood trope of the ingenue who comes to tinseltown to become a starlet, and that producer who discovers, creates and seduces her, is a litany of eroticisation of female fear, pain and death, using the death of Elizabeth Short, the Black Dahlia, as a touchstone of sorts linking all the murdered girls, all the serial killer narratives, all the films that make pain like theirs eternal.


Max Gladstone, “The Scholast in the Low Waters Kingdom”; tor.com, March 29, 2017
https://www.tor.com/2017/03/29/the-scholast-in-the-low-waters-kingdom/

Once there were doorways between the worlds and the knowledge and power to build planets, but the doorways failed and the knowledge lost. This is a story about a time when the doorways began to work again, and how some used them for conquest and plunder, and others used them to make peace where they found, and try to restore what was lost.

I was very much impressed by Ellen Klages' Green Glass Sea, and therefore had to immediately acquire and read the sequel, White Sands, Red Menace.

As the title suggests, the novel is set just after WWII, and places protagonists Dewey and Suze, now young teens, in the midst of the space race and the growth of the Communist scare in the US. Dewey, now part of the Gordon family, has moved with them to Alamagordo, where Suze's father is part of the rocket development program, working with American and German scientists who bring with them the tainted research gained from slave labour at facilities like Peenemunde.

There is no work at White Sands for Suze's mother, however, and she is devoting much of her time to the nascent anti-war, anti-bomb movement that arose following the horrors of the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The girls have embarked on a joint project in the attic that they call the Wall - a combination of engineering and art that brings them both together. At the same time, exploring their skills individually brings them both new friends and experiences.

The novel bristles with tensions - within the Gordon family, in their day to day relationships, and in the world at large - but at the same time, the narrative focuses on making bonds and working through difficulties.

Again, Klages places the personal stories of two teens in the process of self-discovery and identity formation in a complex web of social issues. The difference is that the girls are now older - no longer just observers, they must make their own decisions on how they will respond to perceived injustices.

The book captures the feel of the times - from the excitement of progress and the allure of the 'amazing atomic age' to craving for a kind of stability where 'everyone knows their place' in response to the turmoil of war, to the growth of the subtle paranoia that would characterise the Cold War era of the 50s.

A most enjoyable book, with two very engaging characters. I wish Klages had written more books showing Dewey and Suze growing into young women - I find myself wondering what they would have become.

The Space Between, Diana Gabaldon

Interesting novella, set in France and featuring Joan MacKimmie, Jamie Fraser's step-daughter (daughter of his second wife, Laoghaire MacKenzie), and Michael Murray, his nephew. Michael is taking Joan to join a French nunnery as a postulant, and in the process they encounter the Compte Saint Germain - who has his own plans for the young woman he believes to be the daughter of Claire Fraser. What intrigued me the most about the novella was its portrayal of Le Compte (a character whose historical and literary appearances I have some interest in) as not just a magician and alchemist (or a con man of some notoriety) but a time traveller much like Claire and the others so far encountered in the Outlander saga.'



After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall, by Nancy Kress

It's very easy to see why this won the Nebula for Best Novella. The story is intense and compelling, the prose lean and yet visceral, and the characters - after, before and during the fall - are so very human in their fears and choices.

The story unfolds in three time - 2035 (after the fall), 2013 (before the fall) and 2014 (during the fall), but characters from after and before connect in various ways, and all three merge at the climax of the fall - a convergence of natural disasters on a massive scale that sparks nuclear devastation and the end of almost all life on earth. But in that climax, the message that one woman from before the fall manages to pass on to the handful of humans surviving after the fall is one that may save the future.


In the House of the Seven Librarians, Ellen Klages

A simple fantasy about a closed and forgotten library, seven librarians who stay there after it closes, keeping order and eating tea and biscuits (the new library that has replaced their beloved home is too modern and soulless for these librarians) and the baby left in the book return chute. I suppose it's technically a children's book, but I loved it. Beautifully illustrated and published by Aqueduct Press.