My life in books

“Articulated Restraint,” Mary Robinette Kowal. Tor.com, February 6, 2019.
https://www.tor.com/2019/02/06/articulated-restraint-mary-robinette-kowal/
Good. Set in Lady Astronaut universe. Short story.

“The Rule of Three,” Lawrence Shoen, Future Science Fiction Digest, December 18 2018
http://future-sf.com/fiction/the-rule-of-three/
Excellent. A very different first contact experience. Novelette.

“How to Swallow the Moon,” Isabel Yap; Uncanny, November-December 18 2018
https://uncannymagazine.com/article/how-to-swallow-the-moon/
Very good. Forbidden lovers overcome great obstacles. Novelette.

“The Secret Lives of the Nine Negro Teeth of George Washington,” Phenderson Djèlí Clark; Fireside Fiction, February, 2018
https://firesidefiction.com/the-secret-lives-of-the-nine-negro-teeth-of-george-washington
Excellent. Short story.

“Leviathan Sings to Me in the Deep,” Nibedita Sen; Nightmare Magazine, June 18 2018.
http://www.nightmare-magazine.com/fiction/leviathan-sings-to-me-in-the-deep/
Excellent. Short story. CN: whale hunting, explicit descriptions.

“Shod in Memories,” M. K. Hutchins; Daily Science Fiction, October 25 2018
https://dailysciencefiction.com/fantasy/fairy-tales/m-k-hutchins/shod-in-memories
Good but slight. Cinderella retold. Short story.

“One Day, My Dear, I’ll Shower You with Rubies,” Langley Hyde; Podcastle, May 1 2018.
http://podcastle.org/2018/05/01/podcastle-520-one-day-my-dear-ill-shower-you-with-rubies/
Very good. Consequences of growing up with a murderer fr a parent. Short story.

“Sidekicks Wanted,” Laura Johnson; Cast of Wonders June 15 2018, original publication in anthology Heroes, editor unknown, October 2015.
http://www.castofwonders.org/2018/06/cast-of-wonders-307-sidekicks-wanted/
Neutral. Predictable. Short story.

“Ana’s Asteroid,” M. K. Hutchins; Cast of Wonders, April 30 2018.
http://www.castofwonders.org/2018/04/cast-of-wonders-301-anas-asteroid/
Good. Heroic child saves the day. Short story.

“The Things That We Will Never Say,” Vanessa Fogg; Daily Science Fiction, May 25 2018
https://dailysciencefiction.com/science-fiction/science-fiction/vanessa-fogg/the-things-that-we-will-never-say
Very good. Uses sf tropes to talk about family dynamics. Short story.

“Strange Waters,” Samantha Mills; Strange Horizons, April 2 2018.
http://strangehorizons.com/fiction/strange-waters/
Excellent. A woman lost in time searches for a way home. Short story.

“The Paper Dragon,” Stephen S. Power; Daily Science Fiction, April 20 2018
https://dailysciencefiction.com/hither-and-yon/sf-fantasy/stephen-s-power/the-paper-dragon
Good. Examination of war and forgiveness. Short story.

Madeline Miler’s second novel, Circe, is the story of a legend, an iconic image of the eternal and dangerous woman, seductress, sorceress, as she might have been behind the stories men have told of her. This is Circe as she might have seen herself.

As in her first novel, The Song of Achilles, Miller takes the myths and legends of Greece as truth within the world she writes about. And so Circe introduces herself as the child of a naiad, Perse, and the Titan Helios - divine, one of a thousand lesser nature goddesses. Her childhood was not happy. She, like her siblings, and sometimes her mother, lived in the great underground palace of the sun god Helios, where he returns each night after riding across the sky. She was not, like her older full siblings, or her many half-siblings, other children of the sun, a bright and beautiful goddess, nor was she graceful and fluid like her many, many cousins, the daughters of other naiads. She was sharp faced, and asked strange questions, and was taunted by the others, despite the love her father showed her.

But as time after time wears on, Circe and her brothers and sister discover their true nature. They do not have the powers of the gods, but they are all pharmakia, witches - they have the ability to draw power from plants and use it, as the gods use the power that flows through their own bodies, to work miracles. The Olympians are concerned; they forbid Helios and Perse from having any more children.

The four witch children are contained. Pasiphaë is married off to one of Zeus’ demi-divine children, King Minos, and they torment each other bitterly, until eventually Pasiphaë gives birth to the Minotaur and the eventual fate of Minos and his kingdom at the hands of Theseus is sealed. Perses, the oldest brother, takes his exotic tastes and cruelties and settles in far-off Asia, far away from the area the Olympian gods frequent. The youngest, Aeëtes, has his own kingdom, which he rarely keaves - until his rebellious daughter Medea runs away with the hero Jason, her father’s golden fkeece, and the blood of her brother on her hands.

Because she is rebellious, and doesn’t play the game properly, because she has used her gifts, the strongest of which is transformation, to change the nymph Scylla into a monster, Circe is exiled, confined to the small island of Aiaia. Though she may not leave, except on rare occasions granted by Zeus, others may come to her. And here she slowly learns the principles of herbcraft, learning the extent of her magic.

At first the god Hermes visits, mostly from curiosity. He keeps her informed about the things that have happened in the world of gods and men, and he becomes her lover.

Later various demigods and minor immortals send their wayward daughters and other women to her island as a punishment, so that she is no longer alone, but surrounded by angry and frustrated young immortals. And sometimes, humans come to the island. The first, seeing in her only a woman among other women, alone without the protection of a man, rape her, as so many nymphs in Greek legend are raped by men and gods. But in her agony, she transforms them into swine, and thus begins the long train of sailors who cast up on her shores. Some are good men, lost on the sea - these leave unharmed, after comfort, food and rest. But most remain as the animals they are, living and dying on Circe’s island.

And then comes Odysseus, as foretold. His men transgress, but he himself, warned and protected by Hermes, avoids the traps, and wins both the freedom of his men, and the friendship of Circe. He stays for several years, becoming her lover - but he never forgets his wife and family, his beloved Penelope waiting for him.

The story of Circe as it unfolds here is woven together from many myths and sources, but it makes a satisfying whole, a take about the limitations of godhood and the triumphs of becoming human.

On February 8, 2017, SF author Mindy Klasky decided to edit an anthology. She was inspired to do so by the now infamous words used to silence American Senator Elizabeth Warren: “She was warned. She was given an explanation. Nevertheless, she persisted.”

The anthology that resulted from this decision, Nevertheless She Persisted, published by the Book View Cafe collective and featuring works by some of its members, is a collection of stories that aspired, as Klasky says, to show “...the power of women overcoming challenges, of women persisting against the threat of other people, of society, of their own fears.” It’s also generally enjoyable reading, with one glaring exception that I’ll get to later. I was disappointed that the contributors were, to the best of my knowledge, all white - there are many ways in which women of colour might have given us a broader picture of the persistence of women against the threats of society.

The stories are divided into four sections: the past, the present, the future, and other worlds.

I found all the stories set in the past to be interesting and engaging, from Marie Brennan’s revisiting of the story of Penelope in “Daughter of Necessity,” to Deborah Ross’s portrayal of the persistence of faith among the hidden Jews of Iberia forced to convert to Christianity in “Unmasking the Ancient Light.” “Sister,” Leah Cutter’s poignant story of a young Chinese woman’s desperate quest to find a spirit husband to care for her beloved, departed younger sister was deeply moving, as was an extract from P. G. Nagle’s novel about a passing woman during the American Civil War who decides to enlist. While “Alea Iacta Est” by Marissa Doyle was sheer fun - an Englishwoman in the early 19th century who decides to take part in a contest of table top war gaming at her brother’s club, whether it ruins her socially or not.

I was less engaged in many of the stories set in the present. Sara Stamey’s depiction of the generational harm done by male anger in the home in “Reset” is painfully real, and Brenda Clough’s “Making Love” is a charming tale about an older woman whose knitting seems to make things just a little better wherever it’s gifted. “Digger Lady” by Amy Sterling Casil is a bittersweet story of an old woman, an archeologist who has spent her life searching for evidence of a new hominid species. I rather enjoyed the themes of Irene Radford’s “Den of Iniquity” in which Lilith, the original rebellious woman, continues her ancient protest against the rigidity of the Father’s demands - though I must note some racist elements in the description and treatment of several characters named but not present.

Two of the four stories in the future section are frankly dystopian, and powerful. Mindy Klasky’s “Tumbling Blocks” tells a deeply moving story set in a world reminiscent of The Handmaid’s Tale in the way it treats women, a story about a young woman, pregnant by rape and shunned by her community, who finds an underground connection to women who are risking their lives to see that she and others still have access to reproductive choice. In “Chatauqua” Nancy Jane Moore envisions an America wracked by climate change and civil breakdown, where caravans of people with key skills travel the broken roads trying to save dying cultures, educate those who survive, and help however they can. Jennifer Stevenson’s “The Purge” focuses on a more personal trauma, an artist’s response to a visceral nightmare of war. The final story in the section, Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff’s “If It Ain’t Broke” is in a much lighter vein, telling of a serendipitous merging of artistic inspiration and technological innovation.

The final section, other worlds, contains three fantasy and one science fiction stories that mostly continue the theme, but is, I felt, the weakest of the four sections. Judith Tarr’s “Tax Season” was, In my opinion, the best story in this section, and one of the best in the anthology - a light, fantasy world look at traditions, taxes, and being a woman in some rather non-traditional, and not exactly legal, occupations. Vonda McIntyre’s “Little Faces” is a highly original look at trust, betrayal, and reproduction in a symbiotic, space-dwelling society - pushing boundaries on our notions of famiky, sex and society in some very interesting ways. Doranna Durgin’s “In Search of Laria” is a slighter piece, but also centres on a betrayal of trust, this time between a rider, seduced by power, and her horse.

And then there’s Dave Smeds’ “Bearing Shadows,” which simply did not belong in a volume of stories like this. I am, in fact, deeply saddened and angry that the editor decided this story belonged here, for reasons I will expand on at length, because I’m just that angry to have found such a story in this volume. I am going to include extensive spoilers, because if you’re going to read this story, I think you should know exactly what you are getting into.

“Bearing Shadows” is set in a standard medieval fantasy world. The protagonist, a young woman named Aerise, lives in a typical village in a fairly standard patriarchal and moralistic society. In this world, there are humans, and there are the Cursed, elf-like beings who nonetheless can pass for humans, who live for hundreds of years, use magic, and spend half their time in the physical world and the other half in the dreamworld - in fact, they become ill and eventually die if they do not move regularly between the worlds, which has an unfortunate consequence in that their women cannot sustain a pregnancy. Thus, all the Cursed are the offspring of Cursed men and human women. Because the Cursed are feared and ostracised, not many human women are interested in bearing children to Cursed men. But some do, for a fee. These are often women who cannot prosper in a patriarchal society because they are not pretty enough to get a husband, or are disabled in some way, or have run afoul of the social norms - in short, women who are considered damaged goods, not only by humans, but also by the Cursed who depend on them fir the survival of their race. In the story, the Cursed refer to these women as broodmares, speak of them with disgust, refuse to share living space with them because they are dirty. They are depicted in the story in multiple ways as inferior, undesirable, unintelligent, unwanted.

On to the story. Aerise is happily married, enjoys a reasonable social status in her community, has a good life for the most part. She’s lost two children, but she’s pregnant again, and excited about it. Then her belly starts glowing, a sign that she’s carrying a Cursed child. She’s been a faithful wife, but eventually figures out that she was raped and impregnated one night when her husband was supposed to out late, but, she thought, came home early, woke her in the dark and had sex with her. It doesn’t matter, however, to the village folk or her husband that she was raped. She’s bearing a Cursed child, so out into the cold in her shift she must go. Of course, her rapist has been waiting for this. He finds her, convinces her to come with him to a Cursed encampment, and gives her into the care of two Cursed women who will be her child’s mothers. She’s treated somewhat better than the other human women, pregnant and nursing -“broodmares” - also living in the encampment, but not much. Her rapist, Morel, explains that he wanted a child by a better class of woman than he could get by fair negotiation with a broodmare, so this somehow justifies his rape of her. She is not mollified. She gives birth to a daughter, stays with the Cursed long enough to wean her, and then demands her price - her life back. What Morel offers is that he place her in suspended animation for 60 years, and then, pretending to be her husband, take her back to the village she came from, where no one will likely be alive who remembers her, wait til she gets integrated into the community, and then fake his death so she can find a new human husband among the grown grandchildren of the people she grew up among. Pause for a moment. To get back, not her old life, the husband she loved, her friends and family, but a chance at starting over again with people she doesn’t know, she’s going to have to pretend to be the loving wife of her rapist. Think about that. Anyway, she agrees, and the story ends with her being accepted as a young widow, living in her old village, bring courted by some promising young men, with a new chance at life. And she gets to meet her now adolescent daughter by Morel, who is a charming young girl.

This steaming pile of shit purports to be about a woman who persists against rape, and the loss of everything she ever knew and loved, and is rewarded with a second chance at life. But underneath that veneer is a series of justifications for rape. It’s necessary to ensure the survival of the Cursed. It was necessary because Morel didn’t want one of those disgusting second-class broodmares as the mother of his child. It was ok in the end because the child was so lovely, and besides, she got to have another chance to get married and have a normal life. As I said, a steaming pile of crap. There is so much in this story that made me want to scream and break things. There are far too many male perspectives on rape out there, and most of them misogynist as hell. We did not need another one, especially one disguised as a celebration of the persistence of women.

I have a suggestion. I think it’s time that men stopped writing about rape of women and other femmes. The conversation on rape has been controlled by male voices for far too long. Sure, some sensitive and feminist men have gotten it right, but do we really need more men talking about the rape of women and femmes? Time’s up in more ways than one, and more male perspectives on this subject are not needed. Especially those that try to justify it, or come up with ideas of how to make it all right in the end. There’s only one way to do that - stop raping in the first place.

So.... I mostly enjoyed these stories, despite the spectre of white feminism lurking behind the editorial choices, but reading Smeds’ contribution left a distinctly bad taste in my mouth. I suggest that if you decide to read this, you just ignore that story. You’ll find much more to enjoy in some of the other selections.



*This anthology contains 19 short stories, 18 of which are written by women and one of which is written by a man.

Best of Everything is a self-published pdf-only anthology of short stories (some very short) by sff author Ahmed Khan (the collection is available from the author, who can be contacted via his Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/ahmedkhanwrites/ - at the time I acquired the pdf, the author was asking a donation of one dollar for the compilation)

Khan has a definite gift for writing stories that challenge expectations - you think they are going somewhere, but they end up someplace quite different. His stories are, generally speaking, fun to read, but his endings - now those can be quite thought-provoking indeed.

I often feel when reading one of his short stories that his style has been heavily influenced by oral story-telling traditions. He’s not one for lush description, or complicated proses. There is a deceptive simplicity to his style, something that often makes me think of his stories as parables, or fables - and yes, his work often carries with it a moral of one kind or another, as parables and fables are wont to do. Sometimes, however, I feel that this tendency to write in parables tends to sidestep the ethical complexities of real life, and present things which are multi-hued as though they must be black or white.

There’s often a touch of dry satirical observation in Khan’s writing, which I find quite delightful. An example:

“Earth people live like animals. Our conquest will be a blessing for them in disguise," said the Commander, as is typical of so many commanders all over the universe.
"How true!" murmured his men, as is typical of commanders' men all over the universe.

Bits of writing like this make me smile, and sometimes even giggle.

Among the stories in this collection that I particularly enjoyed were:

“Close Encounter of the Preposterous Kind,” in which an attack on Earth is foiled by a most unusual saviour. The story combines the tropes of two very different genres of speculative fiction to produce an unexpected ending in a way that strikes me as quintessential Khan.

“Face It” is a science fictional in-joke - but it’s also a comment on rushing into things you know little about. A plastic surgeon convinces a man disfigured in an accident to participate in an experiment to test the premise of physiognomy - with a result that will leave every long-term science fiction fan nodding in recognition.

“Knock, Knock” is perhaps my favourite of the stories collected here. Khan notes that the piece is inspired by the work of Urdu novellist Qurratulain Hyder - and after reading this piece, and reading about her on the Net, I’m going to have to see if I can locate any of her works in translation. It is, I think, a definitely non-western story in its approach. Deeply lyrical, it places importance on the journey rather than the goal, the state of mind more than the specific achievement. It spoke to me in profound ways about the standards we use to assess the value of a life.

“Mynah for the King” is a teaching parable of leadership and governance - but though it speaks about what kinds of things should inform the policies of a ruler, it is also applicable to the ways in which we make our own decisions, reminding us that wisdom and creativity can be better guides than pragmatism.

“Veils” is a story about a young woman who learns that judging the value of others by their outward appearance and sweet words leads to disappointment, while looking behind the surface to the real feelings and actions can be a much better way to discovering the real value of a person.

Several of the stories here are very short - a paragraph or two at the most, and it is in these that Khan’s playfulness shows most strongly - most notably in “Infringement.” But inherent in the word play are ideas worth thinking about seriously.

A few stories rather missed the mark for me, though. This feeling was strongest in the story, “How To Write a Fantasy,” an otherwise clever piece of metafiction, Khan describes the sole character in the story as “A man-hater of the variety who would like to decimate all the men from the face of the earth and spend the rest of her life making love to machines.” As a feminist who has ben described so many times as a man-hater, and seen so many other feminists described the same way, this shook me right out of the necessary receptive mood. I don’t know if Khan intended this to evoke the idea of a feminist, but it’s such a common insult, and one that many men as well as women would interpret as referring to feminists, that the impact was to turn what might have been an ironic twist into a something that felt like a nasty revenge fantasy.

Two of the stories in this collection would appear to rely rather heavily on the idea that consensual sexual activity outside of marriage is intrinsically wrong - a belief that I do not share, and that made my appreciation of these two stories, “Seventeen” and “The World, The Times, and The Unicorn,” less than complete. However, in both stories, it is possible to engage in a somewhat subtextual interpretation, in which the moral failure is not so much the physical fact of having sex, as it is the reasons and choices leading to it. Read this way, both stories are, in different ways, about choosing the spirit over the world.

In “Seventeen,” a young man meets a girl who seems to him to embody innocence and hope, but after he spends an evening in a casual sexual encounter, he feels unworthy of her affection. I’m not comfortable with the idea that sexual ‘purity’ equals innocence and sexual expression is a loss of innocence. But the choice he makes, can be seen as one of greed, of wanting everything without regard for the feelings of another. In “The World, The Times, and The Unicorn,” a man is offered a choice between great wealth, and a fantastic journey to an alien land. He chooses wealth, but is stymied when, in order to achieve that wealth, he must find a virgin within a specific period of time, and he fails. Here, I choose to read the fault as a choice of materialism over the chance fir new experiences and deeper understandings. When he chooses wealth, he dooms himself to an unfulfillable condition, not because the world has no virtuous women in it to give him what he wants, but because his own greed traps him. I’d like to think that the author would not object to these readings.

Taken all in all, there’s quite a lot to enjoy in this collection, and I’m glad that the author assembled these pieces and made them available.

“The Secret Life of Bots,” Suzanne Palmer; Clarkesworld, September 2017
http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/palmer_09_17/

Palmer’s suspenseful yet very funny novellette takes place on a nearly derelict space ship on a suicide mission to stop an enemy worldkiller from reaching Earth. So much of the ship is falling apart, all the available standard bots are working nonstop to keep the ship going just long enough to deliver its payload. When there are reports of an infestation, the Ship AI pulls an outdated bot with dangerous instabilities out of storage to deal with the problems. It turns out, the dangerous instability is creative thinking, and the ship needs some of that badly if it’s going to fulfil its mission.

“Cake Baby,” Charlie Jane Anders; Lightspeed Magazine, November 2017
http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/cake-baby-kango-sharon-adventure/

“Cake Baby” may not be the funniest science fiction romp I’ve ever read, but it comes awfully close. Sharon and Kango are two surreal characters with a real talent for fucking things up royally, which is why they may not be the best pair of interstellar adventurers to hire for your dirty work. But they manage to survive, thanks to their far more practical crewmate, ex-cultist stowaway Jara, and their ship’s computer Noreen. Very funny stuff. Really. Read it.


“The Dark Birds,” Ursula Vernon; Apex Magazine, January 9, 2017
https://www.apex-magazine.com/the-dark-birds/

Vernon often tells dark tales. This is one of them. In the forest lives a family. There’s a Father, of curse. And there is always a Mother, a Ruth , a Susan, and a Baby. When Mother has a new daughter, Ruth disappears, Susan becomes Ruth, Baby becomes Susan. That’s how it always is. Until it isn’t.


“The Fall of the Mundaneum,” Rebecca Campbell; Beneath Ceaseless Skies, September 28, 2017
http://www.beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/stories/the-fall-of-the-mundaneum/

In 1914, in a building in Belgium that houses a vast collection of books and artefacts, a man is waiting for the German army to arrive. He imagines that this great building, an establishment of knowledge and history, will be handed over honourably, to those who, while conquerors, will respect its importance. Right up to the end, he answers letters sent in by those seeking answers from the great collection, cataloguing the strange contents of a valise sent from his colleagues in Köhn, with a hasty message he understands only too late.


“Queen of Dirt,” Nisi Shawl; Apex Magazine, February 7, 2017
https://www.apex-magazine.com/queen-of-dirt/

A young martial arts instruction with the gift of seeing things most people don’t must find a way to save herself from a hive of otherworldly things seeking a new queen, and her students from the potentially dangerous consequences of contact.


“Remnant,” Jordan L. Hawk and K. J. Charles; Smashwords
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/404000

Historical m/m romance, of the explicit sort, about two pairs of occult detectives. Apparently each of the authors is known for writing a series based on one of the pairs in this story, which is well-written, and lots of fun, both in terms of adventure and eroticism. The setting is London. A long dead Egyptian spirit is killing people, and ghost hunter Simon Feximal, with his companion Robert Caldwell, is investigating. Arriving from America just in time to lend assistance is American philologist Percival Endicott Whyborne and his companion, Griffin Flaherty. A nice blend of mystery, adventure and erotica.


“These Deathless Bones,” Cassandra Khaw; Tor.com, July 26, 2017
https://www.tor.com/2017/07/26/these-deathless-bones/

Khaw has excellently inverted the trope of the evil stepmother here, with a story of a queen married to provide a new mother for a prince whose own mother has died. But in this dark fantasy, the queen is a just avenger, and the young prince a cruel budding psychopath whose years of torturing small animals and throwing tantrums to punish the servants have led step by step to the unforgivable.

The Hugo finalists are out, and while quite a few of the short fiction pieces were ones I’d nominated, there are a few I hadn’t read. So, I’ve gotten my hands on those (much thanks to Sarah Pinsker for making a pdf of her novelette available on her website) and corrected those gaps in my reading.

Short Story

“The Martian Obelisk,” Linda Nagata; tor.com, July 19, 2017.
https://www.tor.com/2017/07/19/the-martian-obelisk/

The Earth is dying. Slowly, from ecological breakdown and climate change and loss of infrastructure and antibiotic resistant diseases and natural disasters and sporadic violence and all the things we’ve been fearing in recent years. A series of slow apocalypses. Susannah is an architect, and with the backing of one of the world’s remaining millionaires, she has spent the last 17 years building a soaring monument to the memory of humanity - on Mars, remotely accessing the technology of a Mars colony that was prepped but never settled. And then the unthinkable happens. A message from a survivor of the last functioning Mars colony, previously thought lost, is received. A woman and her children, the only ones left alive on Mars, have battled halfway across Mars and are asking for the resources of the monument to build a place where they can survive just a little longer. Susannah must decide, what will be the final shape of the Martian monument - the obelisk she’s spent years building, or a few more years of life for a doomed family. Powerful story, both in its depiction of the end of the world - not with a bang, but a long slow series of whimpers - and in its examination of the irrational, irrepressible, persistence of hope.


Novelettes

“Wind Will Rove,” Sarah Pinsker
(Originally published in Asimov’s September/October 2017, available for download as pdf on Pinsker’s website: http://sarahpinsker.com/wind_will_rove)

In this novelette, Pinsker explores the tension between preservation of the past and creation of the future through the situation of a generation ship that, through an act of sabotage, has lost its cultural and historical databases. This results in a concerted decision by the passengers to restore and preserve as much of the lost material as possible, not just through the creation of new databases, but through continued repetition and accurate reproduction of the restored material - music, plays, art, and Earth’s history. The narrator, Rosie Clay, is a history teacher and traditional fiddle player, challenged by one of her students who rejects the emphasis on the history and creations of the past, of an Earth that means nothing to them. Forced to look beyond the truism that those who forget history are destined to repeat it - questionable in a world that is entirely different from the Earth where that history took place - Rosie finds herself examining her own assumptions. Quiet but very thought-provoking.


“Children of Thorns, Children of Water,” Aliette de Bodard; Uncanny Magazine, July/August 2017
https://uncannymagazine.com/article/children-thorns-children-water/

This novelette is set in the world of de Bodard’s Dominion of the Fallen series, and requires some familiarity with that world to be fully understood. It’s a world where Fallen angels wield magic and rule Houses, life for the houseless is bleak and often violent. The novels are set in an alternate late 19th century Paris and deal largely with relationships, politics and power - within houses, between houses, and in the larger postcolonial society. In this story, Thuan, a dragon in human form and member of the Dragon kingdom based in the waters of the Seine - the dragons, being drawn from Annamese (Vietnamese) tradition, are water beings) seeks to enter one of the Houses, House Hawthorn, as a spy, to gain information on what the tensions between houses might mean for the dragon kingdom. The day of testing, when new house dependents are chosen, is interrupted by a magical assault by creatures made of thorns, manifestations of House Hawthorne itself. Thuan proves useful to the Fallen in charge of the the tests in dealing with the crisis, and thus wins his place in the House. It’s a well-written piece, but I’m not all that fond of this secondary world. I read and enjoyed the first novel in the series and found it interesting - but not compelling enough to have pushed me to read the second volume. Good story, not quite my cup of tea.


Novellas

River of Teeth, Sarah Gailey

In her foreword, Gailey says: “In the early twentieth century, the Congress of our great nation debated a glorious plan to resolve a meat shortage in America. The idea was this: import hippos and raise them in Louisiana’s bayous. The hippos would eat the ruinously invasive water hyacinth; the American people would eat the hippos; everyone would go home happy. Well, except the hippos. They’d go home eaten.” It was this unfulfilled notion that spurred Gailey to imagine the alternate history of this novella, though she places the introduction of hippos into the American ecology and economy some decades earlier. In Gailey’s version of the American South, marshes have been encouraged to allow for the development of hippo farming. Hippos serve instead of horses for cartage and personal transport, and there are canals and pools for the animals to use as rest stops, and instead of stables. Part of the Mississippi has been dammed up, forming a marshy lake area called the Harriet where feral hippos range, interfering with water trade along the river. This lake region is controlled by a shady - and very wealthy - man named Travers, who operated gambling riverboats on the lake, and is known to feed people he dislikes to the feral hippos. The story begins when adventurer Winslow Remington Houndstooth is hired by a government agency to clean out the feral hippos. The general plan is to get them through the barrier at the downstream end of the Harriet by any means necessary, and encourage them to migrate south into the gulf, freeing the river for trade, and not quite incidentally interfering with Travers’ business. In addition to the large payment offered to him and any members if the tram he pits together, Houndstooth has a strong personal motivation for injuring Travers, who burned out his hippo farm sone years ago, leaving him penniless.

The first part of the novella is devoted to assembling the team, which could not be comprised of a more diverse group of characters: Regina “Archie” Archambault, a cross-dressing conwoman; Hero Shackleby, a nonbinary demolitions expert; Cal Hotchkiss, fast gun, card shark, and former employee if Houndstooth who may or may not have betrayed him to Travers; Adelia Reyes, a pregnant lesbian assassin; and Houndstooth himself, a mixed race Immigrant from England whose dream and passion is to rebuild his hippo farm. Gailey also spends time letting us get to know, not only the characters, but their hippos, their personalities and distinguishing traits. It’s clear in this society that people form bonds with their hippos not unlike those with other working or companion animals like dogs, cats or horses. As for the plot - everything goes wrong, of course, and there are double-crosses and hidden motivations and a tangle of cross purposes, and this is not a light-hearted caper, not everyone survives. But it is very entertaining, and I hear there’s a sequel.


Down Among the Sticks and Bones, Seanan McGuire

McGuire uses a delightfully arch and ironic tone in beginning this story - the backstory of Jaqueline and Jillian, Jack and Jill, two of the distinctly different children from the first of the Wayward Children series, Every Heart a Doorway - by introducing Chester and Serena Wolcott, two self-absorbed people who chose to have children to complete the image of their perfect nuclear family. Things go wrong, of course, from the beginning. As soon as they knew they were having twins, they assumed they would have a boy and a girl, thus efficiently creating the ideal family in one swoop. They never considered the possibility of two girls.

Parenthood does not suit the Wolcotts, being too disorderly and entirely too loud and messy. Chester’s mother is almost immediately recruited to actually raise the girls. At least until it becomes inconvenient to have her around, so at age five the twins lose the only person in their lives who saw them as people to be encouraged to grow, rather than accessories to be programmed for the benefit of their parents.

Those who have read Every Heart a Doorway already know a little of what happens to Jack and Jill. One day, they find a doorway where no doorway should have been and it takes them to a strange land where nightmares are real, but at least here they have some choice over which nightmare they will live in, where their parents gave them no choices at all. It is a strange place, a cruel place, and each child is changed in ways that do not bear much thinking about.

This is part of why, while I appreciate McGuire’s skill and invention in writing these stories, I don’t like them. I am not good with reading about abused children who don’t get to really escape their abuse - because we know that while Jack and Jill will someday find their way home, they will be damaged, perhaps permanently, perhaps beyond any hope of being ... normal, happy, able to function in a world of ordinary people. Of course, you can say that of many traumatised children, because the scars of some hurts never heal. So there is a fundamental truth underneath the fantasy here. As it happens, it’s a truth I live with, and reading about it requires accommodations that McGuire doesn’t offer, like the possibility of grace and hope.

Bogi Takács, “Some Remarks on the Reproductive Strategy of the Common Octopus”; Clarkesworld, April 2017
http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/takacs_04_17/

This is a story within a story, with one sentient being - a genetically enhanced octopus - telling another sentient being - a human - what is remembered in the group memory of the octopi about a great wrong committed by humans. The details unfold slowly, through filters of memory, time and difference, but the issues are familiar, the arrogance and assumption of human exceptionalism, the unthinking use of other living beings, the carelessness of the species. It’s not dramatic in its accusation, but it lingers nonetheless.


“Sun, Moon, Dust,” Ursula Vernon; Uncanny Magazine, May/June 2017
https://uncannymagazine.com/article/sun-moon-dust/

A sweet story of the “swords into ploughshares” variety; a farmer inherits a magical sword from his grandmother, a famous warrior in her day, but has no need or desire for war.


“Goddess, Worm,” by Cassandra Khaw; Uncanny Magazine, January/February 2017
https://uncannymagazine.com/article/goddess-worm/

Khaw deconstructs a Chinese legend about the discovery of silk weaving, revealing the acceptance of gendered violence that underlie it.


“Monster Girls Don’t Cry,” A. Merc Rustad; Uncanny Magazine, January/February 2017
https://uncannymagazine.com/article/monster-girls-dont-cry/

A powerful story about making room for difference. A young girl grows up hating and trying to erase the things that make her a monster in the eyes of the world finally learns to accept herself and demand acceptance from those around her.


“Carnival Nine,” Caroline Yoachim; Beneath Ceaseless Skies, May 11, 2017
http://www.beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/stories/carnival-nine/

Yoachim’s short story places us inside a world of conscious wind-up dolls, living in miniature cities around a model train layout. Each day the maker winds up the dolls, and they live their lives, ever watchful of the number of turns they have - a figure that varies with the conditions of their mainspring and possibly the whim, or degree of attention, of the maker. It’s an extended metaphor for human life, with not a great deal to add to the conversation about life, death, and fate, but does get points for including a situation that parallels the way family dynamics can change with the addition of a disabled child. A touching story.


“The Last Novelist (Or a Dead Lizard in the Yard),” Matthew Kressel; Tor.com, March 15, 2017
https://www.tor.com/2017/03/15/the-last-novelist-or-a-dead-lizard-in-the-yard/

Reuth Bryan Diaso is perhaps the last novelist in a galaxy in which no one reads books anymore. He has come to the planet Ardabaab to finish his last novel before he dies, but he has lost his inspiration. A chance encounter with a young girl whose enthusiasm for knowledge and raw artistic talent gives him the energy to renew his writing, and to share with her his love of books, of the physicality of reading, of the crafts of creating not just the sequence if words that make up a novel, but the actual process of printing a book. This is a story about loss and creation, endings and perhaps beginnings, death and renewal. I found it quite compelling.


“Utopia, LOL?,” Jamie Wahls; Strange Horizons, June 5, 2017
http://strangehorizons.com/fiction/utopia-lol/

It’s millions of years in the future, and human beings exist solely as uploaded intelligences in a vast artificial environment controlled by an AI known as Allocator. Almost all the usable mass of the solar system has been converted into the physical substrate that supports the set of virtual realities in which the human race spends its time, playing with simulations of millions of scenarios. But Allocator has limitations. It cannot interfere with human choices, which means that even as virtual beings, they continue to reproduce, requiring ever more substrate material. Allocator cannot extend its influence beyond the solar system - another programmed limitation - but humans can. Allocator’s dilemma - where can it find humans willing to inhabit space probes that will take them to other solar systems and find more space for the multitude of human minds? It’s a very well thought-out story, which touches on a number of issues related to artificial intelligence and informed consent.


“You Will Always Have Family: A Triptych,” Kathleen Kayembe; Nightmare Magazine, March, 2017
http://www.nightmare-magazine.com/fiction/will-always-family-triptych/

Kayembe’s novelette is powerful, terrifying, triumphant, laying bare the worst and best of the binds between family. In the midst of grief over the loss of his wife, a man does the unthinkable, destroys the son he believes caused her death, takes the other son away with him to America. Years later, he is truly haunted by his actions, and pays the price. Yet in the midst of a tale about supernatural revenge, there is also fierce love of brother for brother, mother for child and finally the discovery of self-love for the young woman who survives the toll exacted by the dead.


“Mother of Invention,” Nnedi Okorafor; Slate.com, February 21, 2018
https://slate.com/technology/2018/02/mother-of-invention-a-new-short-story-by-nnedi-okorafor.html

Anwuli is pregnant, almost ready to give birth. She is alone, deserted by her lover, a married man who deceived her about his status, then left her when she got pregnant. Shunned by her family and friends. All she has left is the smart house her lover built for her, an intelligent, self-repairing, self-improving home. But Anwuli has an even mire serious problem - she’s become severely allergic to the pollen of the genetically modified flowers that grow everywhere in New Delta City, and there’s a massive pollen storm brewing, one severe enough to put her into anaphylactic shock. When she goes into labour just as the pollen storm hits, help comes from a most unexpected source.

I have not been reading much short fiction this year; in fact, I've nit been doing as much reading as I normally do, because of health issues and depression and the effects of pain medication. But lately I seem to have regained my interest in reading despite the continued presence of these issues, and I'm taking advantage of this to do some concentrated reading of new short fiction. Among other sources, I'm using the Nebula Reading List (https://www.sfwa.org/forum/reading/4-shortstory/) as a general guide to finding stories of interest. So expect to see a fair number of posts about my short fiction reading in the next little while. Assuming that I don't fall into another of those rather scary not-reading phases.


Hiromi Goto, "Notes from Liminal Spaces"; Uncanny Magazine, May/June 2017
https://uncannymagazine.com/article/notes-liminal-spaces/

I don't actually have a simple word for categorising this piece of writing. It was published with a footnote which says "Originally delivered as a keynote speech at the 2015 Academic Conference of Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy." Certainly, it is not a traditional short story. Oh, there's a fictional narrative, and characters that are truly, strongly realised, and a climax that reminds me if nothing so much as Russ' story "The Women Men Don't See." And there is a speech about the meanings of story and the techniques if storytelling and the experiences of bring an 'other' - a queer Japanese-Canadian woman and mother living on unceded indigenous land - and how those experiences, those aggressions and insults and those things that shape her own perceptions of her identity go into her writing and her thinking about writing.

It's challenging and it's moving and it's thought-provoking in both its different parts and in the ways Goto has combined them.


JY Yang, "Auspicium Melioris Aevi"; Uncanny Magazine, March/April
https://uncannymagazine.com/article/auspicium-melioris-aevi/

In the future, clones of people who had special gifts and abilities, who had done significant things because of those gifts and abilities, are created, trained and tested to ensure that they are as perfect copies as they can be, then 'hired' out to clients who require someone with their original's ability and experience. A civil administrator, a statesman, even an assassin - all are imbued through training that simulates the conditions of their original's lives with the combination of experience and knowledge that, in combination with their genetic potentials, will result in predictable, bankable, behaviour. But sometimes, a clone breaks the mould and becomes, not a copy, but himself.


Naomi Kritzer, "Paradox"; Uncanny Magazine, May/June 2017
https://uncannymagazine.com/article/paradox/

In which a confused monologue by a time traveller becomes an argument for taking responsibility to act in one's own present. This well-crafted short story goes through all the established sff tropes about time travel, all the while building a subtle case against the all-too-human tendency to look for a saviour - for someone else, anyone else, who can solve the big problems and leave us alone to live our small and private lives. But as Kritzer's unknown protagonist says: "What exactly is it that you think time travelers should be doing? You’re here. Why aren’t you doing it?"


A. Merc Rustad, "Later, Let's Tear Up the Inner Sanctum"; Lightspeed Magazine, February 201y
http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/later-lets-tear-inner-sanctum/

A chilling deconstruction of the 'superhero' and 'supervillain' mythology that questions everything from the canonical disregard for damage and civilian casualties to the over-complicated villainous plots that always have one fatal flaw. What would happen if the whole thing were a vast morality play - one that measures its cost in human lives - and the real behaviours of heroes and villains were shades of grey carefully concealed by PR, not the black and white craved by their audiences? A very readable and enjoyable story.


S. B. Divya, "Mictobiota and the Masses: A Love Story"; Tor.com, January 11, 2017
https://www.tor.com/2017/01/11/microbiota-and-the-masses-a-love-story/

Ok, let's get the biases out of the way first. Like the protagonist in this story, Moena Sivaram, I suffer from extreme environmental illness. Allowing people into my living space can make me ill for days. It's been well over a decade since I was able to function in the outside world. My triggers are mostly industrial products rather than biological organisms - plastics, personal care and cleaning products, petroleum derivatives, all sorts of man-made compounds - but the situation Moena must live in to survive is so similar to my own, her general concerns so familiar to me, that this story drove right into my gut and wrenched it. I know this woman like I know myself.

So, yes, I found this deeply moving and sad and hopeful and I cried. I suspect that even without the impact of recognising one's life in a public text, I'd find this a powerful story. The things it has to say about our callous treatment of our environment, and about the power of love to transcend fear, are important messages in themselves. And it's a damn good story, with a happy ending, and heaven knows we need a few more of those.


Shweta Narayan, "World of the Three"; Lightspeed Magazine, June 2017
https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/world-of-the-three/

Narayan's delightful short story is based loosely on traditional Indian legends about Vikramaditya, who is usually cast as a model king. In Narayan's tale, the legendary ruler is no human, but a member if a race of mechanical beings - origin unknown, they simply are - who live mostly apart from humans but who trade with them and sometimes provide advisors to the courts of rulers. Vikramaditya is an exception, who lived among humans and sought to help them as their ruler. The story itself is told by Vikramaditya's parent to three more of their children, who are preparing to go to the court of a queen whose people have long had ties of trade and alliance with the mechanicals. It is a story of love, trust and betrayal, and tells some hard truths about human nature through the eyes of an outsider.

Reading Jack Williamson's Reign of Wizardry (it's one of the Retro Hugo finalists) is like stepping back into my childhood, the days when many science fiction and fantasy novels were brisk swashbuckling adventure stories based, sometimes quite openly, other times more subtly, on legends and folktales, and ancient history.

Reign of Wizardry is set in the time of the Minoan Empire, and calls on the myth of Theseus, the Athenian who killed the Minotaur and broke the hold of Minoan Crete over the Mediterranean world. In Williamson's fantasy, the power that sustains King Minos is wizardry, and Theseus must set human courage and ingenuity against supernatural forces - aided by the love of Ariadne, daughter of Minos and priestess of Cybele.

This is a very Golden Age fantasy, for all that it stays rather close to the bones of the Greek legend. The hero is from the same mould as Conan - bold, strong, smart, a warrior with a touch of barbarian nobility fighting against the decadent, cruel, and immeasurably wealthy forces of corrupt magic. The woman is a cypher who exists only to fall madly in love at the hero's passionate kiss and betray everyone she's ever known, everything she's ever believed in, to help him defeat the only world she knows. It's a fast, tightly plotted read that moves from set piece to set piece with efficiency and provides all the entertainment the reader expects.

At one point in Margaret Atwood's The Robber Bride, the twin daughters of one of the three main point-of-view characters insist that their bedtime story - The Robber Bridegroom - be changed because they want all the characters to be women. Not just the hero, but also the villain, and the villain's victims.

This of course is Atwood pointing out to her readers that the book they are reading is in fact such a role reversal. Oh, there are male characters, but they are all secondary, all adjuncts to the lives of the women who are the real story - Tony (Antoinette), Roz (Rosalind) and Charis (formerly Karen) and (though we never see anything from her viewpoint) Zenia. They are fathers, uncles, lovers, husbands, sons, employees - and all we see of them is the role they play in the lives of women. It's a longstanding pattern in fiction - one gender has all the agency, the full lives, the rounded characters, is the centre of the story, the other exists only through their relation to one of the important characters. Of course, we're used to seeing the stories be about men, while the women are only there to move the men's story along.

The novel itself is based on the folk tale of the robber bridegroom, a tale akin to the Bluebeard tale, of a man who proposes to young women and then kidnaps and kills them. In The Robber Bride, the eponymous villain is Zenia, a manipulative femme fatale who spins tales about herself and has a penchant for seducing men in relationships with other women, devouring their souls, then leaving or betraying them. Tony, Charis and Roz are three women, college acquaintances, who are drawn together by Zenia who, at different times, has seduced a man loved by each of them. One she either betrays or corrupts (depending on how much the reader chooses to believe of what she says), one commits suicide after she casts him aside and later fakes her own death, and one survives, wounded but perhaps wiser, to return to the woman who loves him.

At the core of the story is the friendship that grows between these women as, one after another, their lives are thrown into turmoil by Zenia's manipulations and they find the only people they can turn to are other women who have been victims. The novel fills in the life stories of these three women, each in her own way wounded by her childhood experiences, making them vulnerable as adults to Zenia's schemes and lies. Yet these women are also survivors, and it is their strengths that enable them to survive.

The theme of duplicity and duality runs through the novel in many ways, not all of them malignant. Just as Zenia constantly rewrites her life stories to take advantage of others' weaknesses, so do Tony, Karen and Roz rewrite themselves, to become more who they wish to be. In childhood, each deals with secrets and mysteries, stories and lies, in their own families. Tony, left handed mirror-writer, suspects she is the surviving half of a mirror twin pair; Charis has a repressed alternate personality created as a result of childhood abuse; Roz is the mother of twins. Each of them has kept secrets and told lies in and about their relationships with the men Zenia took from them. And in various ways, Zenia is a dark mirror to each of them.

At the end of the novel, Tony asks: "Was she in any way like us? thinks Tony. Or, to put it the other way around: Are we in any way like her?" The question may be one for all of us to consider.