New Submission Grinder Features: Piece Priority!

written by David Steffen

A couple of new features were released over the last week on the Submission Grinder.  For those who don’t know what the Submission Grinder is, it’s a donation-supported website that helps writers finds publishers for their work, as well as providing submission statistics from user data.

The Advanced Search Engine can do a lot of things already.  You can search by various parameters like length or pay rate.  You can ignore individual markets so they never show up in your search results, or exclude markets where a particular piece has been submitted.  But it can only work with the data it has available to it, and sometimes that’s not the sort of data that a program can make sense of.  For instance, Beneath Ceaseless Skies takes secondary world fantasy only.  The search engine can base its search on genre, so it’ll find BCS in a Fantasy search, so if you search for your contemporary American fantasy you’re going to keep seeing BCS in your search results and you’ll have to remember to ignore that result yourself.  Or if you have a piece that doesn’t technically fit the specifications of a market but you have special permission to submit or something, then there would be no way to mark that for yourself.

Now there are things you can do to customize your search results!  Now, you can define “piece priorities”, which tell the site special instructions for a combination of a particular piece and a particular market.  Besides the default “no priority” setting, there are two other values you can set:

  1.  UNSUITABLE
    This priority indicates that you just don’t think this piece is a good fit for this market, even if it fits the defined search parameters.  If you set a piece as unsuitable for a market, then that means that when you search for markets for that piece, that market will always be excluded from the results.  And if you search for markets for that piece, that market will always be excluded from the results.
  2. PREFERRED
    This priority indicates that you think this is a particularly good fit for this market, even if it doesn’t fit the defined search parameters.  If you set a piece as preferred for a market, then that means that when you search for markets for that piece, that market will always be shown at the top of the results clearly marked as Preferred, even if it doesn’t fit the search parameters otherwise and even if the market doesn’t qualify for a listing or you’ve marked it as Ignore (but it won’t show up if you’ve already submitted it there).  And if you search for pieces for that market, that piece will always be shown at the top of the results clearly marked as Preferred.

I am very excited about these additional features, I think they will be useful in those corner cases the search engine just doesn’t quite cover.  Thank you!

You can mark these priorities by clicking the “Piece Priorities” link on any market page while you’re logged in.

BOOK REVIEW: Six Wakes by Mur Lafferty

written by David Steffen

Six Wakes by Mur Lafferty is a science fiction mystery, one of the finalists for the Hugo Award for the Best Novel category of 2017.

In the future, cloning is commonplace, but its use is strictly limited by law to ensure that it’s only used for longevity of a person rather than multiplication.  Every clone makes regular mindmaps of their memories and after they die, a new youthful body is cloned from their DNA and the mindmap copied into it.  Many clones have hundreds of years worth of memories they carry with them as though they have lived a single long life.  The practice of cloning is not accepted by everyone, especially religious groups, many of which consider clones to be soulless abominations, and there have been violent conflicts about cloning practices.

And what better use for clones than to crew a starship?  Equip the ship with a cloning bay and mindmapper, and a crew of six can staff a starship that would require a generation ship with much heavier infrastructure with an uncloned human crew.  Not many clones would be interested in such a long dull trip, but criminal clones granted a pardon for their crimes as payment can be convinced, watched over by an AI to make sure things don’t get out of control, and a cargo of humans and clone mindmaps to colonize the planet at the end of the trip.

But, something has gone terribly wrong.  Maria Arena and the other six crew members wake up simultaneously in newly cloned bodies, to their own murder scene.  They have been in transit for twenty-five years but have lost all of the memories of their journey, the gravity is off, the food replicator is only manufacturing poison, the AI is offline, the cloning bay has been sabotaged, and presumably one or more of them was the murderer but even they don’t remember that they did it.  Their previous crimes are strictly off the record as part of the pardon deal, so no one knows if any of the others had a history of murder.

This was an enjoyable SF mystery, an amped-up locked room type of mystery, where this crew of six is set to investigate their own murders, and it could’ve been any of them since they lost the memories of the journey.  As they go they have numerous other obstacles they have to deal with just to keep going, as well as searching for clues to who committed the murders.  Scenes from the present are interspersed with scenes from each person’s pasts so the interplay between the characters makes more and more sense as we understand their histories.  I don’t read a lot in the mystery genre, but I liked how this novel took familiar tropes like the locked room mystery and by changing the setting and technology level gave them interesting new angles to explore.  The book flowed easily from beginning to end and I was satisfied with the resolution.  I don’t know how well it will stand up to avid mystery readers, but I enjoyed it and would recommend it.

Anime Review: Juni Taisen: Zodiac War

written by Laurie Tom

junitaisen

I didn’t expect to like Juni Taisen: Zodiac War as much as I did, but that said, it’s not going to be like that for everyone. The show is a throwback to the more violent anime of the 1990s in that there are lots of blood and guts, with possibly one of the most creative and disgusting ways I’ve ever seen to hide a corpse, but at the same time the series is very talky and ultimately depressing.

Juni Taisen is about a tournament fought every twelve years by twelve families. Each family sends a representative to participate in the gruesome death match, with the outcome deciding the fate of various nations between the power mongers of the world. As for the sole tournament survivor, they earn the fulfillment of one wish, no matter how outlandish.

Each combatant is themed to an animal of the Chinese zodiac and in several cases this also comes with a supernatural ability. During the tournament they don’t go by their proper names, but rather the name of their animal in Japanese followed by a description of their killing style. For instance: Eiji, the Ox, will introduce himself as “Ushi, Killing Systematically.” And make no mistake, there is a lot of killing.

At the start of the tournament, each combatant is instructed to swallow a gemlike object that turns out to be poisonous. The poison will dissolve into their bodies in twelve hours, setting a time limit for the battle. In order to win, the winner must have all twelve gems in their possession before time is up. Given these circumstances, true cooperation seems impossible, since winning involves removing an object from an opponent’s stomach, though at least one participant tries.

With a couple exceptions, each episode focuses on a particular combatant and we see parts of their personal backstory; who they are and why they entered the tournament in the first place. Unfortunately, after a few episodes the show is clearly following a pattern.

Viewers familiar with the Chinese zodiac, which will likely be the majority of the original Japanese audience, will be able to figure out who the winner is pretty quickly, so the show doesn’t particularly worry about revealing any secrets as the body count builds up. It might be possible for a western viewer to watch the show from an angle of suspense if they don’t know the zodiac and don’t watch the ending credits too closely, but the show was certainly not written with that possibility in mind.

How effective Juni Taisen is largely depends on the audience’s attachment for how these warriors came into their present circumstances, since (nearly) everyone dies and if a character’s one moment in the spotlight doesn’t catch the eye, then there’s not much point to anything else. Even the eventual winner’s story is not terribly climactic since their identity is not expected to be a surprise, which makes for an unusually tepid ending. I liked the winner, but because of the lack of surprise, their episode didn’t have a heavier punch than any other despite wrapping up the storyline.

While I enjoyed watching Juni Taisen as each new episode came out, it’s a series that’s more about watching a bunch of skilled strangers kill each other in various ways than anything deeper. We do get a feel for most of them as human beings, but the format prevents us from knowing them enough to miss them.

Number of Episodes: 12

Pluses: Interesting storytelling format, everyone more or less gets a chance to shine

Minuses: Doesn’t feel as deep as it was aiming for, winner is predictable if you know the Chinese zodiac

Juni Taisen is currently streaming at Crunchyroll (subtitled), Funimation (dubbed). Funimation has licensed this for eventual retail distribution in the US.

laurietom
Laurie Tom is a fantasy and science fiction writer based in southern California. Since she was a kid she has considered books, video games, and anime in roughly equal portions to be her primary source of entertainment. Laurie’s short fiction has been published in Galaxy’s Edge, Strange Horizons, and Intergalactic Medicine Show.

REVIEW: Hugo Novella Finalists

written by David Steffen

The Hugo Awards Best Novella category covers stories between 17,500 and 40,000 words.  See here for a full list of the nominees this year.  I enjoyed all of the novellas this year, I’m glad that the Hugos use instant-runoff voting so I can give some kind of vote for them all instead of just having to pick one!

1. “And Then There Were (N-One),” by Sarah Pinsker (Uncanny, March/April 2017)

A Sarah Pinsker from an alternate reality has discovered how to travel to alternate realities.  One of the first actions this alternate Sarah Pinsker performs is to organize the first SarahCon, attended entirely by Sarah Pinskers of various realities.  This Sarah (an insurance adjuster) grudgingly decides to attend, where she meets hundreds of herselves and is just starting to figure out how to navigate the odd social situation of talking to all these other Sarahs, when a dead body is discovered, apparently a murder, and this Sarah Pinsker is the closest Sarah available to one with detective experience while they wait for the authorities to arrive on the island of the convention.  The victim is Sarah Pinsker.  Pretty much all of the suspects and potential witnesses are Sarah Pinsker.  And Sarah Pinsker is on the case.

This story was wonderful and fun and delightful and hilarious.  There was plenty of humor inherent in the situation, but the murder mystery is played straight–it has all of the components you expect from a murder mystery, except that the scenario adds a bizarre twist to the situation that both complicates (because it’s hard to even tell the people apart) and simplifies (because Sarah has a better understanding of the suspects than she would if they were entirely separate people) the investigation.  This lends itself to the story taking some turns that would only make sense in this very specific situation.  Highly recommended, I have been recommending this to anyone who has asked me what I’m reading.

2. River of Teeth, by Sarah Gailey (Tor.com Publishing)

This was previously reviewed at greater length here last year.

Usually alternate history is used to explore the consequences of major political or military events turning out differently.  But sometimes, it can just be used as a reason to tell a Western story about hippo-riding cowboys in Louisiana (alt history because there was an early 20th century proposal to import hippos to raise them for meat).

Winslow Houndstooth had been happy as a hippo rancher until his ranch was burned to the ground.  Now Houndstooth is a hired hand, and he’s accepted a job from the government to clear all of the feral hippos out of the Mississippi, and he also has revenge on his mind to get back at the one who destroyed his ranch.

This is so much fun, very much a western style story but with the significant added wrinkle that their mounts/cattle can bite them in half.  The story is told straight, so the hippos aren’t used for comedy, but that just makes it all the more fun.  It has the feel of a heist sort of story, with Winslow as the leader gathering skilled specialists to perform the seemingly impossible mission.

3. Down Among the Sticks and Bones, by Seanan McGuire (Tor.com Publishing)

Jacqueline and Jillian are twin sisters, weighed under the heavy burden of parental expectations.  Every aspect of what they do and how they present to the world is defined by their parents who wanted the perfect boy and the perfect girl.  Jacqueline is the perfect princess of a girl, never dirty, never impolite, while Jillian is a tomboy who excels at athletics and never does things that might be considered girlish.  When they’re thirteen the girls discover a portal into another world in their house and they travel through it, to a land protected and contained by a vampire and a mad doctor who can raise corpses from the dead.  Portal visitors are a common occurrence here, and due to a prior arrangement, the girls each go into the custody of one of these powerful men and must make their way in this strange world until they can find a doorway home.

This ties into McGuire’s Wayward Children series, but you don’t need any familiarity with the series to read this–it works just fine as a standalone.  It is built largely on the audience expectations of portal stories, so if (like me) those are a particular favorite, you’ll be well-primed for this.  The characters are both well-portayed as real people as well as larger than life in some ways because they are constantly being pushed into boundaries that generally do not fit them.  It’s a story of what makes each of us different from the others, and how our environments and constraints on our behavior end up defining much of who we are.  It’s also a tale of sisterhood coming from a family that didn’t exactly nurture their relationship, thrown into adversity of a strange world.  Well worth the read.

4. All Systems Red, by Martha Wells (Tor.com Publishing)

The security android (SecBot for short) calls itself Murderbot, but only in the privacy of its own head.  It’s part robot part human, property of the Company, on security detail with a group of humans surveying a planet for resources.  Unbeknownst to its crew, it has successfully hacked its governor module that is supposed to keep it safe and limit its behavior to only those things necessary for its security duties.  But, really, it uses most of that freedom to download and watch entertainment vids in every moment of spare time.  Its current crew is disconcertingly friendly, which is bothersome when it really just wants to be left alone to watch its shows.  When a series of things go wrong with the surveying mission, it’s not clear if its due to the Company’s cut-rate equipment or if someone is sabotaging them.  But Murderbot’s vid-watching has (surprisingly) prepared it for unexpected situations more than its actual functional programming, and if it wants to survive it’s going to have to help its crew get out of this.

Murderbot is a fun and charming character in its own way.  While some parts of its personality are far from mine (a casual attitude toward violence, but that’s inherent in its programming) I think its character is particularly appealing for introverts who may find friendliness from others alarming at times.  Murderbot is a very competent character and it’s a solid action story, but the biggest charm of it for me was just enjoying the kind of odd personality traits, different from most human characters in stories but also different from most robot characters in stories.  Fun, and the first of a series.

5. Binti: Home, by Nnedi Okorafor (Tor.com Publishing)

The original Binti was reviewed here as part of the Hugo Novella Review in 2016.  Binti: Home is the second story in the series.

Binti is the first human from the Himba culture to travel to the stars where she is attending Oomza University, where she is learning to refine her skill for mentally manipulating magical formulas.  The first story told of the tragic happenings of her trip where she was the sole survivor of an attack by the jellyfish-like Meduse and went on to help forge a peace between humans and Meduse, and in the process was physically changed so that her braids became like a Meduse’s tentacles, able to move of their own volition.  Now she is returning home to Earth to her family to go on a pilgrimage during her break in her schooling, and she’s bringing her Meduse friend Okwu with her.  With the truce with the Meduse still fresh and tentative, and with Binti changed dramatically by her new experiences since leaving home, she doesn’t know how her family and culture will receive her.

Solid story, and I like following Binti as much as the first time.  The first book took place mostly off-Earth so you didn’t get to see much of Binti’s home or her culture directly.  This story takes place almost entirely here, we get to know her family and her background better.  This story is the second in what I think will be a trilogy and it does feel like that–it is clearly building FROM something, and clearly building TO something where it will go next, but as itself I wanted to get the rest of the story–I will be excited to read the third story.  I would recommend not starting the series with this book–I don’t think you’ll get everything out of it if you haven’t seen Binti’s path so far, and the previous conflict with the Meduse and the beginning of the truce.

6. The Black Tides of Heaven, by JY Yang (Tor.com Publishing)

Mokoya and Akeha are the twin children of the Protector, sold to the Monastery at birth.  Mokoya is plagued by visions of the future that can’t be changed, and Akeha is drawn to political revolution.  The Machinist rebellion is growing, the power of technology growing quickly and threatening the iron rule of the Protectorate and their soldiers, and both of the siblings see the terrible things their mother does to maintain her rule.  They must make decisions about where their loyalties lie and where their abilities are best used.

This story ties into the author’s Tensorate series, and was dual-released with another novella in the same universe The Red Threads of Fortune, but it works as a standalone–you don’t need any prior knowledge of the characters or universe to be able to follow the story.  I haven’t read the related novella or the other books in the series, but I enjoyed getting to know the twins and their relationship with each other.  What I found particularly interesting was some of the cultural details, especially how children are not considered a specific gender until they’re old enough to decide their gender for themselves, and how Tensorate magic is used to facilitate this process–although parts of living under Protectorate rule seem oppressive, this particular aspect was positive and interesting.

 

DP FICTION #39B: “Graduation in the Time of Yog-Sothoth” by James Van Pelt

Jackson clung grimly to his seat as the bus rattled over a corduroy stretch of road, tossing him against Gwynn. She held a flute case in her lap, while in the back of the bus, the rest of the flute section, seven girls and a boy—piped a discordant, screeching melody that wasn’t improved by bouncing around as the bus lurched down the rough track. Gwynn wore her hair short, seldom used makeup, and he’d often seen her sitting in between classes working on a sketch pad.

“Weren’t you supposed to play today?” said Jackson. The bus lurched left, pushing them the other way.

“Last week for seniors.” She looked out the window. The woods that lined the road when they took the bus in kindergarten were now blasted, shattered and burnt fragments that stuck up from the ground in painful angles. “The underclassmen have to learn how to play without us.”

Jackson nodded. Only five days until graduation. “Same with the newspaper. The senior editors handed their duties over to the juniors the first of the month,” which stung because Jackson had been the sports editor. He was sure Drew Whittier didn’t have the same drive to get to the heart of a news story that he had. How would the fall preview go without Jackson’s input? Did Drew have the same contacts on the football team? Did he know anything about cross-country? The section would be a mess.

It was hard to think, and even harder to be optimistic with the flutes shrieking behind him, but he wished they played louder, protecting them. Through the tinted windows, the low-hanging clouds swirled, glowing orange and red at their edges as if reflecting an unseen fire, a sure sign an Old One was about. Only flute music could placate them, although that was no guarantee. Three years earlier the forensic team didn’t escape, even though they traveled with that year’s state championship flute section. Some of those kids were still at the school, in a separate room, tended by aides who pushed their wheelchairs about and fed them.

Gwynn leaned into him, “Do you have your speech ready?”

Jackson grimaced. “Everything I write sounds stupid. What do I say about our future? We might not even have a future.” He’d been both proud and terrified when Principal Akeley named him valedictorian. At the beginning of the year, Howard Durst and Emma Chen had higher grade point averages, but they found Howard in the library on Halloween, slack jawed and drooling after reading from The Book of Azathoth (which was supposed to be locked up and unavailable to students) while Emma fell for a weirdly fishlike football player from cross-county rival, Dunwich High, and failed all her first semester classes except Mythology.

Gwynn said, “Write something hopeful.”

The road to the high school entered Trimount Canyon where low, limestone bluffs rose on either side. Jackson relaxed. He felt safer within the stone walls. They’d be harder to notice here, but they hadn’t gone a half mile before the bus slowed, then pulled onto the shoulder. Pale rock blocked the view out the windows across the aisle. Cloud-shrouded light illuminated the road through his window, though. The flute section redoubled their effort. A tremor shook the bus, then another. Dust drifted from the cliff walls as the sky darkened and grew more crimson.

“Put your heads down, kids,” shouted the bus driver. “Heads down and stay down until I tell you to sit up. Just like the drills.” She sounded calm, as if she did this every day. Even as Jackson pressed his chest into his knees, he marveled at how collected she was. Without the flutes, silence ruled.

The bus trembled again. Whatever Old One came their way was immensely huge and heavy. Would it step on them without even seeing them? Or would it pick them up, shake them about like pebbles in a box? Would it stare at them, sucking their minds into madness before it tossed them aside or dropped them down his terrible throat?

Gwynn grabbed his hand. They’d never held hands before. She was just a friend who’d been in his classes since preschool, like many of the seniors.

She whispered, “Will you open with a joke? Last year’s valedictorian told that great one about the three blind guys at a nudist colony.”

An Old One had never come this close to Jackson. They left omens in the sky: blood moons, tortured clouds and foul winds, signs in the sea: unnatural tides, fish kills, strange eruptions, but never a genuine appearance. Like tornados or tigers or tsunamis: they were much talked about, often part of nightmares, but not actually real.

He knew when it passed over. The hairs on the back of his neck stood, and then a pull from above from the Old One’s self-generated gravity. An icy, pure glacier abyss opened in the sky, as if the bus had turned upside down and longed to fall up. Jackson swallowed hard and clung to Gwynn’s hand. A thought looped, faster and faster: If I survive . . . If I survive . . . If I survive.

Then his organs shifted. The pull released, and darkness relented.

Jackson breathed deep. “I don’t know. A joke might be cheesy. I thought a shared memory like when Mrs. Peterson made hot fudge sundaes in kindergarten.”

They hadn’t sat up. Heads down, holding hands, Jackson felt as if they were alone somewhere, sharing a lifelong past. When the Old One eclipsed the sky, Jackson couldn’t tell if he was feeling Gwynn’s hand or if he was her feeling his hand. It seemed in that instant he saw the bus floor from his eyes and hers. For a blink, he sat in her mind, surrounded by her thoughts, being her, and he knew she’d become him. She hadn’t been as scared as he was; she’d thought about painting the clouds—blending the orange into the red and the red into gray. That close to pure, psychic alienness, they’d joined. The power to drive a human mind mad must have degrees. They hadn’t been taken over the edge, but they altered. Their skin melded; their nervous system became singular. The Old One, its mind more vast than human imagination, washed through them without bending from its alien mission and unknowable intents. Jackson had never been closer to anyone.

“Did you feel that?” Gwynn asked.

“Old One aura. Remember from the orientation?” He shivered. He couldn’t feel more exposed if they sat next to each other naked. How would they look each other in the face again?

Gwynn stayed down. The bus driver hadn’t cleared them to sit up yet. Jackson could tell Gwynn searched for words. How would she process what they’d gone through? Would she be able to talk to him?

Finally, she cleared her throat. “I forgot about those sundaes.” She squeezed his hand. “Every day was sunny then, even the rainy ones.”

*

In the hallway, Jackson pushed past the Acolyte Club who’d set up tables against the wall with promotional flyers and pamphlets. “We’re doing a chant around the flagpole after school to placate our benign overlords,” said a sophomore boy Jackson knew from the newspaper. The boy had blue lines on both sides of his neck in nesting curves, imitating gills. Jackson couldn’t tell if they were drawn or tattooed. Lots of kids had them, and many greased their hair and brushed it straight back from their foreheads, as if they’d risen from the ocean. Lately they sported large black buttons with yellow writing that read “Nothing Without Sacrifice”.

“DBD,” the kid said. “DBD, bro.”

Jackson shook his head, refusing the flyer. DBD: Dead but Dreaming. Jackson thought, aren’t we all.

Half the school belonged to the Acolyte Club. A group of teachers sponsored, slicking their hair back too. The rumor was that some of them encouraged the Acolyte Club to circulate the petition, asking the school board to change Kennedy High’s college-oriented, liberal arts curriculum into a religious one. They listed classes they wanted to add to graduation requirements, including “Important Figures, Relics and Places from Abdul Alhazred to Zon Mezzamalech,” “Sea Wisdom,” and “Intro to the Outer Mysteries.”

Gwynn sat behind him in British Lit. Jackson took out his notebook with quotes he’d been collecting that he might use in the speech. She looked over his shoulder. “Is that Othello?”

Jackson turned back the pages, one by one so she could see. “Yep. Othello, Macbeth, Gilgamesh, the romantic poets and the realists, stuff from American presidents, movie quotes, song lyrics, advertising slogans, and stuff my parents say. Nothing has struck a spark yet.”

He didn’t want to meet her eyes, but she wasn’t talking about the trip to school, which was good.

A couple girls a row over whispered to each other, looking Jackson and Gwynn’s way.

Gwynn said, “The word is out about our close encounter. Everyone on our bus will be famous by lunch. What are you going to say about what happened?”

“I’m not sure I know what happened.”

“Ask one of the acolytes. They’ll have an explanation.”

Jackson almost laughed despite himself. “Will it involve the transmutation of souls or surrendering ourselves to the vast indifference of the universe?”

“I almost wouldn’t mind the dissolution of self as long as they don’t ask me to wear my hair like that.”

Jackson said, “One of them told me that in madness lies sanity, and then asked if he could copy my Calculus.”

“Everyone wants to copy your Calculus.”

“You’re not helping me with the speech.”

“Do you want help?”

Jackson faced her. He hadn’t ever looked at her eyes before, not with this attention. They were dark brown on the edges, fading into gold near the pupils. She’s the girl with the treasure-well eyes.

*

During lunch, Principal Akeley looked up when Jackson entered her office. She often wore floral pantsuits. Today’s ensemble leaned toward pinks and purples, as if a giant orchid had thrown up on her, but she had an unforced smile and liked to joke. Normally Jackson didn’t mind talking to her, but not today. She’d want to know about the speech. Instead, she went a worse direction.

“Have you decided on a college, Jackson?” She put her hand on a short stack of brochures on the desk. “You missed the early application deadlines.”

“Umm, not completely. Maybe the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque.”

“Long way from home. Long way from the ocean.”

“That might be the point.”

“Why not Miskatonic?”

“M.I.T.?”

Akeley raised an eyebrow.

Jackson said, “Miskatonic in Town. Nobody wants to go to college that close to their parents.”

Principal Akeley shook her head. “It’s the same everywhere.”

“Then does it matter? I was going to apply to Stanford.” He regretted saying it. He didn’t want to sound bitter. Palo Alto didn’t exist anymore. In its place, a four-mile wide crater filled with the San Francisco Bay seethed and bubbled. Last summer, for weeks, news covered the disaster. They showed seabirds by the hundreds of thousands gathered on the shore, piping a terrible din, wheeling about in great clouds above the water, but never landing, and whatever stirred the unnatural bay didn’t surface.

She hunched forward on her desk, and grew intense. “They don’t care about us, Jackson. I don’t believe they know we exist.”

“Don’t say that to the acolytes.”

Akeley continued, “Today, on the bus, might never happen to you or anyone you know again. Stanford may never happen again. They could disappear as suddenly as they arrived. You can’t make your decisions based on the worst case scenario.”

“I know. I know. But it’s harder for us, for the seniors, I think. What did you worry about in high school?”

The principal straightened her folders, then glanced at her clock, looking infinitely tired. Jackson realized she had other appointments. “The world changes. Growing up is challenge enough. How’s your speech coming? You know I need to approve it first.”

“I’ll have something for you soon. Tomorrow after school?”

She squinted. “You haven’t started it yet.”

“Not the speech itself, but I’ve been thinking. I’ve gathered material.”

“A lot of people depend on you to make a good show of it. Parents, alumni, the school board and all your peers. Give them something to think about.”

They shook hands.

Outside her office, Jackson thought, way to take the pressure off, Akeley.

*

Jackson knew Gwynn was on her way before she appeared around a corner of the school a hundred yards away and walked toward the bleachers where he sat. All day he’d noticed ghost feelings: the weight of a pen in his hand when he wasn’t holding anything, a necklace he wasn’t wearing rubbing against his neck, an inhalation when he exhaled. They were Gwynn’s experiences. He wondered if their link would fade.

She set her art portfolio and book bag on the bleacher, then settled onto the bench next to him. “Weird day, huh?”

“Indeed.”

Something itched between Jackson’s shoulder blades. He thought about trying to get to it, but he knew he’d look stupid stretching about.

Gwynn put her hand behind him and scratched at exactly the right spot.

“Thanks,” Jackson said. They looked at the football field and clouds without speaking for a minute before he realized what she’d done. He glanced at her. She clasped her hands in her lap, sitting still. From the other side of the school, a dull, rhythmic mumble arose. He recognized the source: the chant at the flagpole. It would take a lot of acolytes to be that loud. The story of what happened with the bus had lit them up. Interruptions filled the afternoon as teachers reminded acolytes to stop whispering. Several times, Jackson caught an acolyte staring at him.

She said, “I got a C on my final art project.”

“No way!” The yearbook had named Gwynn “Most Artistic,” and the newspaper had written an article about her winning entry at the Massachusetts Art Institute High School Show in December. “How in the world did that happen?”

“Because of this.” She pulled a small canvas from the portfolio. On it she’d painted an orange resting on a worn wooden table. A single rose lay before it. Behind both, a crystal pitcher, half full of tea, glowed warmly in sunlight from a window not in the picture. Even with his limited understanding of art, Jackson gasped. Something in the way she’d painted it made the shadows utterly real, and the orange’s skin held and reflected the light.

“That’s beautiful. What didn’t she like about it?”

Gywnn laughed. “The assignment was a still-life, clearly, but she put on the table a dead rose, a broken pitcher, and a nasty, rotted orange. She said, ‘make your painting reflect a mood.’ Evidently she wasn’t going for what I saw. Last week we did multi-media with mutant ceramic tuna, rubber octopuses and seaweed. The art room looked like an insane asylum fish market. Gave me nightmares.”

“Does she wear her hair slicked back?”

“You know it.”

On the horizon, clouds swirled and pulsed with internal light. Jackson watched them warily.

Gwynn put the painting back in the portfolio, then produced a notebook and pen. “I have an idea for your speech, but you have to answer some questions first.”

“Shoot.”

She made a mark on her notebook. “Good. Do you want to be funny, serious, or both.”

“Both.”

“Check.”

“Are you giving the speech for your parents, your friends, the senior class or just yourself?”

Jackson wrinkled his brow. He hadn’t considered that, plus the chanting and roiling clouds distracted him. “I’m not sure.”

“You’ll have to decide.”

On the school’s other side, the murmur intensified. Jackson had heard the chants before, and seen bathroom graffiti featuring strange words, not in English, unpronounceable with too many consonants and lots of apostrophes. Jackson almost missed the casual racism and crude sex talk from elementary school. Yesterday, below a poorly rendered representation of what might have been a slaughtered sheep, or a dog drawn by Picasso, someone had written, “In his house at R’lyeh dead Cthulhu lies dreaming.” Underneath that, in a different hand, was a reply, “Wake him!”

“The acolytes are moving,” said Gwynn. A crowd flowed around the school, heading toward them, arms in the air, repeating, “Iä Hastur cf’ayak’vulgtmm, vugtlagln vulgtmm.”

More emerged, hundreds of them, walking slowly, waving hands in the air. Jackson recognized some. Bud and Terrance from newspaper. Chuck who had played third base in junior high. Junior class president Lisa Schmaltz, her face filled with zeal, the bizarre words tumbling from her lips. Many were seniors he’d march with into the gym for graduation in a week, friends he’d known for years.

Gwynn said, “That’s creepy.”

“Have you seen the buttons?”

Jackson joined her. She stood. “Do you think they’re literal, about sacrifice, I mean?”

Together, they started down the bleachers. Jackson said with a calm he didn’t feel,

“They’ve been eyeing me all day. I don’t want to find out.”

They broke into a run across the football field, away from the chanting students and didn’t stop until they reached a low hill overlooking the school. The crowd filled the football field, arms still in the air, weaving back and forth, words now indistinct, but “Cthulhu R’lyeh” seemed a key component.

Jackson shivered, then moved closer to Gwynn. He was afraid to hold her hand again. Memory of the morning was too intense, but he felt safer next to her. The clouds darkened. A cutting wind swept through the trees behind them. Jackson heard it rushing through the leaves before it pressed against his back, cold and smelling of the Atlantic. On the field, the chanting rose in volume. Arms swayed, hands dancing like demented starfish. The students undulated in obscene synchronization. For a second, he was convinced that whatever monstrosity that missed them this morning was returning to finish the job, that if he looked up, a huge object would descend, a tentacled, leprous, oozing mass, the base of a huge trunk that disappeared into the clouds, a single leg of the creature whose head must reach into the stratosphere.

The image trembled in his mind as vivid as a prophetic vision.

Principal Akeley appeared at the crowd’s edge carrying a megaphone, while the congregants looked to the clouds, ecstatically repeating whatever appeal they were making.

She brought the megaphone up, fumbled with it until it emitted a siren howl. The kids nearest to her looked her way.

“Students,” she said. “Buses will not wait. If you miss your ride, you will have to walk home or call your parents.”

Jackson imagined the acolytes falling upon her, their primitive lusts let loose and indulged, but the chant faltered. Arms fell to their sides, and they moved toward the school. A student tossed a Frisbee to another. Kids laughed. They hummed with lively chatter. Within a couple minutes, the field emptied.

“We survived,” said Gwynn.

“Indeed.”

Their hands moved toward each other, a mutual decision, and they touched. Nothing had changed from the morning. The connection remained. Jackson knew Gwynn and she knew him. No consummation could be more complete. They would be friends forever. More than friends.

And nothing in the future seemed bleak.

Jackson thought about the folder filled with quotes in his locker. For the first time, he imagined himself giving the speech, not what he would say, that was still a mystery, but he knew he wanted to speak of hope.

He said, “How does this sound: None of us knows our future, but we don’t need to when we have each other.”

Gwynn shivered. “Corny. Corny but true.”

The clouds above the school folded upon themselves then flashed from internal lightning. A few seconds later, the rumble washed across them. Something incomprehensible moved above, but Jackson realized it always had. For all of time the universe had been indifferent to humanity.

We are on our own.

Graduating from high school, really graduating, meant finally realizing that truth.

 

 

© 2018 by James Van Pelt

 

Author’s Note: I’ve been a high school teacher for a long time, and I remember being in high school myself vividly.  When I heard a suggestion to write a cthulhu mythos story set in a high school, I kicked myself for not thinking of it sooner.  Where else but in high school does the universe ever feel quite so huge and uncaring?

 

James Van Pelt is a part-time high school English teacher and full-time writer in western Colorado. He’s been a finalist for a Nebula Award and been reprinted in many year’s best collections.  His first Young Adult novel, Pandora’s Gun, was released from Fairwood Press in August of 2015.  His next collection, The Experience Arcade and Other Stories was released at the World Fantasy Convention in 2017.  James blogs at http://www.jamesvanpelt.com, and he can be found on Facebook.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Anime Review: Code:Realize ~Guardian of Rebirth~

coderealize

Code:Realize ~Guardian of Rebirth~ is the story of a young woman, Cardia Beckford, who is left alone in a mansion by her father. He tells her she cannot leave and that she must never know love because she is a monster. Her touch is a corrosive poison that melts anything she comes into contact with save the specially designed sheets and clothing her father crafted for her. One day, her father is supposed to come back for her, but before that happens, Queen Victoria’s soldiers arrive to take her away.

She’s stolen from them by none other than master thief Arsène Lupin, who brings her into his gang of friends who are hunting for Cardia’s father, legendary scientist Isaac Beckford. Cardia decides to join them rather than go back to the mansion, so she can learn more about herself, the strange gem embedded in her body in place of a heart, and to find her father.

Code:Realize is set in an alternate Victorian England, powered by steam-driven technology, and Lupin’s group is composed of literary figures who supposedly lived in that time period. So Cardia ends up rubbing shoulders with Victor Frankenstein, Count Saint-Germain, and Impey Barbicane. (I had to look up Impey, who apparently is from a Jules Verne novel From the Earth to the Moon.) Abraham van Helsing joins them shortly afterward.

The show also features other literary cameos such as Captain Nemo and Herlock Sholmes (the “getting around copyright” adversary of Arsene Lupin), making it fun to watch for period fans, as long as one doesn’t expect too much historical accuracy. Even Queen Victoria herself has a sizeable role.

Cardia’s father isn’t just the greatest inventor in the history of Britain, he’s also suspected of being behind a terrorist plot, and a mysterious organization known as Twilight is after Cardia, led by none other than a boy claiming to be her brother.

Though her companions get some time in the limelight, the anime keeps the story focused around Cardia, her discovery of Isaac’s true plans, her budding sense of self, and her growing trust and affection towards Lupin. All this happens in a steampunk world full of cars, trains, airship races, government conspiracies, and mad alchemy. But even though the story is imaginative, it doesn’t quite come to life, and I think it’s due to the series’ struggle with its roots.

Code:Realize is based on an otome visual novel, so in the source material the player is Cardia and she pursues a romance with one of the men, so all five are young, single, and good-looking irrespective of how old they should be at this point in history.

It’s a really good otome, where the rest of the story is just as engaging as the romance, making an anime adaptation an excellent chance to pull in a crossover audience. Unfortunately the anime doesn’t go for that and positions itself as a more traditional reverse harem show where one girl is surrounded by a group of guys who all like her, rather than a badass group of friends who are trying to help one of their own (which is closer how it feels in the game, ironically enough).

It might be due to the run time constraints, but a lot of the banter between the different men is missing in the anime, making them seem more like work partners rather than true companions. This flattens their characterization and makes their strongest bond through Cardia rather than each other, which doesn’t feel convincing when most of them don’t get enough time to fall in love with her either.

This weakens the run up to the finale, when Cardia and her five friends are supposed to be working as a cohesive unit. The series actually has a fairly action-oriented second half, with London under siege due to an insurrection. We know the six of them are supposed to be composed of battle-tested friends, because they’ve been together since the start of the show and they’ve done some jobs together, but we don’t feel it, which is too bad because the last two episodes are otherwise pretty good.

Both in the game and the anime, Cardia starts off the story as an emotionless doll due to her isolation, but as time goes on she starts to display more of a will of her own. She never gets as expressive as in the game, which will probably be the biggest disappointment for fans of the original, but even as muted as she is, she’s still better than the average otome heroine, and the animation staff lets Cardia fight for herself in combat so she avoids the standard heroine helplessness for the genre. Her battle choreography isn’t particularly great to look at, but it’s about par for the course for the rest of the cast.

Despite the loss of characterization, the anime otherwise does an extremely good job of adapting the game. This is no mean feat considering that a single playthrough is about 15 hours long and most of that time is spent reading. Though it was a given that the anime would follow Lupin’s storyline, since he’s the series’ poster boy, there are a lot of details from the other romance routes that are necessary to understand the story as a whole, and the show manages to weave them in. This allows things like Saint-Germain’s backstory to work when it wouldn’t have if the script had scrupulously stuck to Lupin’s in-game storyline.

The adapted script is also unafraid of moving plot moments to different places in chronology or different locations from the original. Frankenstein, who was originally not part of Lupin’s gang, is already with the group by the time Cardia meets him, speeding up what was originally a much slower start to the story. Some element of cutting and rearrangement was expected, but Code:Realize does it a lot and remarkably without losing a single plot thread. Events might not occur exactly as in the game, but the story remains intact.

In the end, Code:Realize is perfectly viewable version of the source material, even without being a prior fan, but as an adaptation it has a lot of flaws in what was otherwise a promising premise. My feeling is that the adaptation writer was trying so hard to make the plot fit in the time allowed that characterization fell to the wayside in favor of leaning on common otome anime tropes instead of what made Code:Realize unique among its peers.

Number of Episodes: 12

Pluses: Entertaining steampunk worldbuilding, smart adaptation to condense the source material into 12 episodes without losing much of the plot, Cardia is not as helpless as typical for otome protagonists

Minuses: Characters are fairly flat across the board, series wants to be a simple reverse harem romance but can’t get away from the source material’s action scenes, combat choreography is subpar

Code:Realize ~Guardian of Rebirth~ is currently streaming at Crunchyroll (subtitled), Funimation (dubbed). Funimation has licensed this for eventual retail distribution in the US.

laurietom
Laurie Tom is a fantasy and science fiction writer based in southern California. Since she was a kid she has considered books, video games, and anime in roughly equal portions to be her primary source of entertainment. Laurie’s short fiction has been published in Galaxy’s Edge, Strange Horizons, and Intergalactic Medicine Show.

In Loving Memory of Timmy Steffen

  • by David Steffen

  In Loving Memory of Timmy Steffen
Born April 1, 2002
Adopted August 22, 2009
Died January 17, 2018

This is the story of our oldest dog, our gentlest and quietest dog, who lived much longer than anyone expected.  This is the story of Timmy the apricot poodle.

Timmy’s Life

Bringing Him Home

Our city allows up to three dogs or cats, and we were interested in getting one more dog to go with the two we already had–Mikko the white poodle, and Aria the black-and-white papillon.  So, we took a trip to local poodle rescue Picket Fence Poodles, where we had adopted Mikko the year before.

There were several dogs available at the time that we did a meet and greet with.  Before we met any of them, I had Rosie the one-eyed Pekingese in mind, because I thought that a one-eyed dog might have a lot more trouble getting adopted than the other dogs in the group, but Heather had her eye on Timmy.  There was Jasmine, Timmy’s littermate, who was still so timid around people that we barely saw her.  And there was Timmy, bouncy little ball of energy, despite being seven-years-old and already with some health problems.  We took Mikko and Aria along for the visit to try to spot any social issues that might arise with different choices, and Aria and Rosie did not get along together, at least on that visit–they both tried to boss each other around, and so we thought that that might not be a good choice.

Timmy took to us, and Heather in particular, right away–enthusiastic, energetic, just like a puppy.  He cuddled right up with the other dogs on his first day.  His fur was red, almost an apricot color, with some lighter patches that turned almost white on his hair and chest when he got older (it never ceased to amuse me when he wore sweaters and his white chest hair stuck out of the neck).  He had lived his first seven years as a breeder at a puppy mill and even had a USDA numbered chain around his neck, and many of his teeth were already rotten from lack of care, but despite a rough and neglectful first seven years, he was never afraid of people, and had an infectious puppy-like energy.  We decided he would be a good match for our other two energetic dogs and we took him home with us.

Timmy immediately became Heather’s shadow.  He would follow her from room to room when she was doing laundry or whatever other things around the house.  If she left a room when he didn’t see, he would bound from room to room like a little deer until he found her again.  If we needed to find him, like if I needed to take him outside, then I would just need to yell “Tim-a-Tom-a-Tim-a-Tom!” and he would immediately bound toward the source of the cry, ready for whatever I needed him for.

His hair was course, almost wiry when we first got him, probably from the utilitarian diet of the puppy mill–his hair softened up before long.

Timmy fit in with the other dogs right away, loving to roughhouse and bask in the sun and go for walks.  Timmy loved to follow what the other dogs were doing, and they welcomed him into the pack immediately.  Timmy was never interested in being the alpha of the group, and he was content to follow the others, so there weren’t any hierarchy struggles like you sometimes get when you integrate a new dog.

Since Timmy didn’t fight for a higher place in the pack hierarchy, I was surprised that when he went on walks marking was always very important to him.  No matter how long you walked, he would always have a little pee left in the tank for more marking, even if he had marked two dozen spots already.  When we had Aria, Mikko, and Timmy, they would sometimes all pee on the same spot one after the other–Mikko first because he didn’t care, Aria because she wanted to cover up his spot, and Timmy because even though he didn’t care about the hierarchy in general, he wanted to have the last word.  We kept going, wanting him to empty his tank, and it would take quite a while, much longer than the other dogs who would always empty their bladders within a couple pees.  But he was never one to have accidents in the house (until he got older and was on diuretic medicines).

Shortly after we got him, we had to have quite a few of his teeth pulled, so that the rotten teeth wouldn’t spread infection and cause bigger problems elsewhere in his body.  We were worried about the surgery, but he was better than ever afterward, ready to chew on bones with whatever teeth he had left immediately afterward.

With the Other Animals

With Aria

The very playful Aria always wanted to play with him, and he loved to play when he was younger, but Aria was SO rambunctious she would scare him.  They would roughhouse a little, doing play-growls and circling each other, rearing up to grapple with each other, but then Aria would perform her favorite roughhousing move– flip over on her back and piston her legs up in the air and he would get scared and run away, leaving her wondering where her buddy went.

Aria was the pack leader when she was with us, and Timmy was content to let her have that role, though he would defend a bone that he’d claimed if necessary.

We never expected that Aria would pass away before he did, but she passed away unexpectedly when she was only five.  We noticed after she passed that he wouldn’t bark for food in the same way; he must’ve fed off of her excitement.

With Mikko

Mikko and Timmy took to each other immediately–always ready to roughhouse, they would play-growl and rear up on their hind legs and chase each other around and tip over.  Mikko always wanted to fight for a higher spot in the hierarchy, always ready to challenge, but it probably helped that Timmy didn’t really care about that.

With Violet

Violet and Timmy always got along pretty well.  Both dogs are mostly pretty mellow.  The only exception would be that, as Timmy got older, when he tended to wander aimlessly from room to room, he would sometimes stumble across wherever Violet was sleeping and she tended to get scared and defensive when she was suddenly woken up.  But apart from that they always got along.

With Cooper

Cooper dislikes all dogs, and wants nothing to do with them, and would rather all dogs stay away from him.  Except for Timmy.  Timmy he was absolutely enamored with, for some reason.  Probably because Timmy was indifferent toward him.  Timmy was happy to be around anyone, except Cooper.  Maybe it’s just because Cooper jammed his nose up Timmy’s butt one too many times, but Timmy just wanted Cooper to stop pestering him.

With the Cat-in-Laws

Timmy and the cat-in-laws generally did not interact much. I’m sure part of this was that the cat-in-laws weren’t adopted until Timmy was already 14 or 15 years old and so wasn’t interacting much with the dogs either. For the most part the biggest interaction was that Lucy would pick a spot to sit and if he wandered near her she might bat at him, but I really don’t think he knew she was there, and so it was pretty scary to suddenly get slapped around by someone he didn’t know was even there.

With the Kid

The kid was born when Timmy was about 11 years old, so he was still pretty spry and able to go for walks for the kid’s first few years.  Timmy was always the kid’s favorite because the other dogs learned to be scared in the rampaging toddler stage and so would try to be scary as a deterrent.  Timmy got used to the kid before the other dogs, partly because he was still Heather’s close shadow at that time, and for that maternity leave and the rest of the first year Heather sat in the kid’s room to pump breast milk.  Timmy always wanted to sit on the chair with her while she did that, and so he was around the baby a lot.  But Timmy never got mad at the kid, even though the kid would often accidentally kick Timmy for not watching for him.  The kid even walked Timmy sometimes, because Timmy was mellow enough that we weren’t afraid of the leash slipping away.  Timmy was the easiest one to practice gentle hands on, and the kid said he was sad when Timmy went to heaven, though he also said he was excited to get a new dog (but we told him we didn’t need to rush into it).

What Made Him Special

Gentle

I have rarely met a dog as gentle as Timmy. Except in very specific, unusual circumstances, he was always very slow to anger, and even slower to act aggressively even if frightened or intimidated. He was the one dog that we would leave out of his kennel when we let a contractor into the house because he never barked at people or showed any signs of aggression. He would just mosey around the house, eye the newcomer curiously, but otherwise leave them alone and just stay out of the way.

On Halloween, he was the only dog we left out, because the other dogs would bark when they saw people approaching the door and that would scare the kids. Timmy would just hang out in the room, not even fussing about his dragon costume, and kids would comment on how cute he was.

Whenever we had guests over to our house, our other dogs would always have an adjustment period to go from freaking out about these new people in the house to finally accepting their presence and calming down. This sometimes bothered guests, especially if they were only there for a short time or if they came in and out of the front door to get things from their car, because the adjustment period clock would restart all over each time. But Timmy just accepted whoever came in and however often, and so he would always make new friends whenever we had guests, who would often comment that they wanted to take Timmy home with them.

His fur was never very thick, and the winter cold would bother him.  But he also didn’t mind wearing sweaters.  The other dogs would be indignant and rebellious if you put a shirt on them, but Timmy didn’t mind, and he certainly liked to be warmer.

When Timmy farted, it would always be a dainty little squeak that was barely audible.

Loving

He was Heather’s shadow.  He loved to cuddle, except during the times when his coughs were bothering him.  In bed when he was younger he would cuddle up against Heather’s neck or in the small of her back, reassured by her touch.

He was so excited to get on the bed every time to sleep, he would stand on his hind legs by the edge of the bed and just hop-hop-hop to try to get up.  He never got his back legs more than, like, 4 inches off the ground, but that wouldn’t stop him from trying repeatedly every night: hop-hop-hop.  If he saw you reaching to pick him up he would hop right into your hands too (which you had to learn to be careful of, or he’d slip right out!).

When Heather took a bath at night, and he didn’t see where she went, he’d run into the bathroom and stand on his hind legs to peek into the tub to make sure he knew where she was, then he could settle down again.

He was always the best traveler of our dogs.  He would settle down and just cuddle up and sleep against Heather or another dog in the backseat.  He was never particular about where he sat, like Mikko, and he never got carsick like Violet.

Joyful

Timmy had a hard first half of his life, but he was such a joyful dog, finding pleasure in the small things.  An afternoon spent basking in the doorway in a beam of sunlight until he was panting from the heat of it.  His happy bounding when he ran from room to room was one of the most wonderful sights.  He loved to chew bones, even if sometimes he really preferred the secondhand bones that were already soft and gummy from dog spit, so while another dog was chewing he’d stand and stare at them until they lost interest, and then he would take his chance.

Timmy was never one for sweet treats, maybe because the sugar would bother his bad teeth.  But he was always the first in line if someone started slicing a cucumber, and crunchy cranberry liver treats were his favorite for a long time.

A walk, whether up the street or at the park, would always be a major source of excitement.  When he walked, he was always the one dog that would walk as straight as an arrow along the path you were going on, apart from brief marking detours.  Mikko always zigzags, Violet always wants to walk beside you, and Aria always strained against the leash, but Timmy would walk the same speed as you directly along the path with his little tail pointed straight up like a radio antenna.

While he was never a big barker at people as the other dogs always have been, Timmy did still love to bark.  He would bark for his meals (especially before Aria passed).  He even did this odd little move where he would prod your leg with his nose while he was waiting for a meal–it took us quite a while before we figured out what that poking sensation was, but it was Timmy’s nose every time.

If he saw Mikko and Aria barking he would always want to bark, too, but he wouldn’t pay a lot of attention to where they were barking.  It wasn’t unusual for all three dogs to be barking, but in all different directions: Aria on the couch looking into the back yard, Mikko at the front door barking at a passing car, while Timmy was pointed at the bedroom even though there’s never anything to bark at in that direction.  But he didn’t care, it was all part of the fun.

Timmy’s bark was a gruff little bark, much different than the shrill nail-in-the-ears bark of Mikko.  He could bark all day and it wouldn’t bother me.  He even barked occasionally when he was older, sometimes you’d hear his gruff little ruffs from the kennels when you got home.

His stiff little tail would wag as regularly as a metronome almost all the time, and certainly whenever there was any excitement.  If the excitement died down and his mind started to wander, you could almost see his attention shifting gears because the metronome would start to wind down, still moving but slower and slower as his eyes wandered to other things.  But then if you said his name again or one of the other dogs barked it would kick it at full rhythm again.

He did this weird little stretch with his back legs where he would extend one back leg straight backwards from his butt, then switch to the other leg, and repeat that 3 or 4 or 5 times.  The rate of the switching was a function of how excited he was, sometimes you could get him riled up with some vigorous petting and he’d do it really quick like an aerobics routine.

Tough

He was never interested in being the alpha, but when there was something that he felt was worth fighting for, he would.  Usually this was to keep hold of a bone.  Or trying to get Cooper’s nose out of his butt.

He had so many medical conditions all fighting for each other by the end, and until the very end he just kept on pushing through them, so much longer than anyone would’ve expected.  He was only about five pounds most of his life, but he could fight.

Stubborn

When one of our other dogs are worked up about something, we would usually be able to distract them.  By petting them, or giving them a treat, or in extreme cases bundling them up in a blanket.  Timmy, when he was worked up about something, seemed to turn into a ball of legs that could kick in every direction at once.  Never would this become more obvious than when his phobia of flashing lights kicked in.  We don’t know why he was scared of flashing lights, but our theory is that he might have been exposed to the weather during thunderstorms and always thought that flashing lights were lightning.

During thunderstorms, Mikko would always sleep through unfazed.  Aria or Violet would be nervous and would want to cuddle.  Timmy always wanted to run and hide (usually behind a toilet), and no amount of comforting would convince him otherwise.  After a lot of broken sleeps and frustration, we discovered that the only way to calm Timmy down was for me to take him to the basement and cuddle him up to my belly under a blanket on the couch.  It wouldn’t work if Heather tried it.  It wouldn’t work if I tried it on our bed or anywhere else.  It had to be that couch, and it had to be me.  I don’t know if he was just comforted by the routine action of it, or if he associated the smells of the couch and blanket with safety, but once I brought him down there he would almost always calm down and then we could all get some sleep.

In the winter, the strobe light on the snowplow would trigger the same phobia if Timmy happened to notice it.  So, if one of us woke up to the sound of the snowplow scraping, then it would save a lot of trouble if we would remember to put the blanket over Timmy’s head to block the light.  (This wasn’t entirely reliable, because the blanket on his head would sometimes wake him up and then he’d want to see what was happening)

This posed a real problem with trying to get a decent photograph of Timmy because a bright camera flash would also trigger his phobia.  The camera we had at the time we got him wasn’t a problem, but we got a bigger camera with a bigger flash a few years later and that one scared him.  This made it nearly impossible to get him to sit still for a photo, bribery with treats didn’t even make any difference.  We got portraits done with the dogs when the kid was an infant, and the photographer didn’t listen when we told him that we would like to take dog pictures first before Timmy realized what was happening.  The photographer claimed he was so good with dogs there would be no problem.  Predictably, the photographer was wrong, having never met that dog before that day and claiming that he knew how the dog would react, and so Timmy looks terrified.  We took portraits with the dogs again this last year before Christmas, and his vision had gone enough that the flashes didn’t bother him anymore.  We were very glad we got that portrait in.

Our tiny little dog was so stubborn that as he got older Heather would accompany him to the groomers for two-hour appointments so she could corral him while he was getting groomed, because he would otherwise have coughing fits that would magically clear up as soon as the thing he didn’t like stopped, or he would deploy his “ball of legs” move.

When driving on car trips, if we happened to get a whiff of skunk in the car, the other dogs never cared, but no matter how deep of a sleep Timmy was in, he would always perk up and sniff the air.  His sense of smell never faded.

While he was always a gentle dog, and almost always a sweet dog, he did have a spiteful streak that would come out occasionally when he was younger.  If you were making him do something he didn’t like, he would find something in the house to mark, and then he would stare you in the eye as he was doing it.  It would’ve been funny if he weren’t at the time saturating something with urine–he didn’t do this as he got old, probably just lacking the energy for such spite.

The Sad Part

We adopted Timmy knowing that his time with us might be brief, between his advanced age and neglected health.  We figured that if we got two or three years with him that we would be exceptionally fortunate.  We would never have guessed that Aria would pass away before he would or the he would last more than eight years, almost to the age of 16.

As he got older, he had issues with a variety of health conditions.  One condition that caused him problems for several years was a persistent cough.  Sometimes it was dry, but most often he would cough several times to work his way up to what almost sounded like vomit, but was really a wet throat clearing.  There was a stretch of time where it was hard to even pet him because it would tend to trigger coughing.  He stopped playing with Mikko because they would play for a few seconds and then Timmy would have to take a cough break.  It wouldn’t be unusual for him to wake up in the middle of the night and do it for a while and we found a few coping mechanisms to help him deal with it.  If you rubbed his shoulder blades in the same rhythm as his cough it would sometimes distract him enough to settle back down.  Sometimes if I took him to another room, to the couch downstairs or to the kid’s room, the change in scenery would be enough to distract, or if I took him outside.  After a while the vet discovered that he had an enlarged heart from congestive heart failure, and the fluid swelling in there was causing his heart to press against his trachea, which made it collapse sometimes.  Some heart medication helped this immensely, with diuretics to draw the fluid out.  This also made him have to pee constantly and so even though he’d gone so many years without having any accidents in the house, he just couldn’t hold it long enough to wait anymore, so we started putting diapers on him all the time while he was awake.  He was small enough that we could use size 1 baby diapers and wrap them around his midsection like a wrap–which was handy because they were much cheaper than dog diapers.  During the day we set up an exercise pen with piddle pads so he could pee whenever he wanted to without it being a big trouble.  He could sleep through the night fine without peeing, he was never incontinent, so we could let him air out a little bit then at least.

He never had very thick fur, and he was always pretty sensitive to the cold.  Wearing sweaters for most of the winter would help with this, and he never seemed to mind wearing them.  But he got more and more sensitive to the cold as he got older.  Until, the winter when he was 14, we decided we didn’t need to let him outside at all that winter.  Every time he went outside he would shiver for a long time afterward and it would take him a long time to recover.  He’d already been wearing the diapers for peeing for a while, and we just dealt with the poop when it happened, trying to get him to the hardwood when possible.

He lost his hearing completely.  It was a sad day when we realized that he couldn’t respond to the call of “Tim-a-Tom-a-Tim-a-Tom” anymore.

He also had more and more vision problems.  First he became super sensitive to bright lights so that he couldn’t even enjoy his beloved sun-basking anymore.  Bright lights would make him flinch in what looked like a very painful way, and if lights were too dim he wouldn’t be able to see at all and he would bump into things.  He still seemed to be able to see shapes in the right lighting, and he could walk from room to room without running into anything, and find his way to the water bowl.  In December 2016, after the Christmas tree was up, he wandered into a low-hanging branch and the tree needles poked his eye, and we had to deal with some ointment to make sure that healed up.  We learned to put low barricades of boxes around the tree to keep him away from it.

In his last year he was prone to wandering at night.  He would sleep for much of the day, but around 8 or 9 pm, he would want to start wandering.  He would usually do laps between the living room, kitchen, and dining room.  We’re still not sure what drove him to do this–if he thought he was lost or if he just wanted to walk and didn’t have anywhere in particular to go.  We would try to soothe him at first, let him know where we were so he didn’t feel alone (especially given how he was so much Heather’s shadow when he was younger), but he would always get up and start walking again.  So, we put him in front of the water to make sure he had something to drink, would maybe offer him some food, and we’d just let him wander.  Sometimes he would get stuck in corners, not sure how to get out, so we would help him find his way.  Generally he would settle down very well for bed, so I don’t know if that exercise helped him work out his restlessness.  I suspect that it helped him keep his muscle mass up at least because otherwise he slept so much of the day I think his muscles might’ve atrophied to the point where he couldn’t walk.

Although he never lost the ability to walk, his muscles did get weaker and weaker, probably partially from being inactive for much of the day, age, and trouble eating.  When he stopped having the endurance to walk at the park I would still take him a block up the street, until he started turning around at the mailbox and looking longingly back at the house–I didn’t make him keep going when he didn’t have the energy.  We bought a dog stroller we could put him in to take him to the park but his light sensitivity was so extreme by then that he still didn’t do very well at the park.  We started to have to carry him up and down stairs, and between that and his vision problems, him falling off of things and hurting himself was an ongoing danger. One day he fell off of a chair, just from the height of a normal chair, maybe two feet off the ground, and immediately after he tried to get up and walk but he dragged his back legs and we were afraid he had paralyzed himself.  We brought him to the vet, they found a hairline fracture, but not anything they could do anything about.  We couldn’t put him on furniture without someone holding him after that.  We had installed a baby gate when the kid was young, and we have left it up since then because it prevented Timmy from falling down the stairs. The hardwood floors became harder and harder for him to walk or even stand on, and even on carpet his gait took on a strange bouncing rhythm with his front legs walking normally and his back legs taking odd little hops.

He always like lying in dog beds, but as he got older, he was less and less particular about how much of him and which specific parts got in the bed, so he’d often only have his butt in the bed, or only his head, or just one elbow.

The dogs sleep in our bed, in a line between us, and Timmy slept up by our heads so that if he got up to wander in the night he would have to step on someone before he walked off the bed, so we would either feel it or Violet would growl when he bothered her, so we could get up and help him with whatever he needed.  We started putting him in a dog bed on the bed because that would help him sleep but it did make it more crowded in the bed. Especially in the last year, I would often take Timmy to the kid’s bedroom, where I would sleep on the floor with him in a dog bed next to me, because I wouldn’t need to worry about him falling in there, and he would often sleep better in there anyway, without us jostling him.

From the time we got him, his teeth were a problem.  We had to have several teeth pulled immediately, and we had to repeat the process several times, always afraid that he wouldn’t wake up from the general anesthesia when he woke.  It was important to pull them when they got too rotten because the infection could spread to other parts of his body, including his brain–sometimes we could tell it had gone a bit too far because he would discharge a milky fluid from his nose.  For the first five days of every month he was on an antibiotic course to try to limit infections, and even then sometimes we had to start it a bit early or go a bit longer to quell a rising infection.  His last tooth pulling was a few years before he passed–after that one he was down to just three teeth, including one gigantic lower canine tooth that was so big and so deeply rooted in his jaw that they were afraid that they would break his jaw trying to extract it.

A recurring problem partly caused by the teeth were that he became pickier and pickier about food.  Early on, he was happy to eat the same thing the other dogs were eating–some kibble with maybe some soft food.  But for Timmy we had to rotate foods periodically, or he would get bored and would stop wanting to eat it.  If he missed the occasional meal it wasn’t a big deal at the time, because he had a bit of extra weight on him.  But the missing teeth, rotten teeth, and picky appetite, this was a frequent battle we had to fight, and especially when we traveled we would have to make sure we had something he would eat.  If he missed a couple meals, then his belly would start growling and bothering him, but this made his appetite worse not better, so that was always a downward spiral we had to watch out for.  We would supplement with people food to get some food in him and then switch back to dog food again.  By the spring of 2017, he was pretty much done with dog food, we couldn’t get him to eat it anymore at all, and he had a bout of diarrhea that the vet thought might be a sign of end-of-life.  We braced for the end, trying to decide from day to day what we should do, how long we should let it go on before we made the hard decision.  We ended up putting him on people food for every meal, though we were advised against it by our vet because it doesn’t have the proper nutrition for a dog.  But at that point we had the choice between feeding him what he would eat or letting him starve to death.  His most reliable meal was a brand of honey-battered chicken nugget we could find at Target, so reliable that he rarely missed a meal for months, for most of the rest of 2017.

A few years ago, he was also diagnosed with kidney failure.  Among other things this meant we had to be careful how much other medications we gave him, so we tried to taper his dose down on the diuretic in particular.

Between the diuretic and the rotten teeth, Timmy would have trouble staying hydrated enough, and dehydration would make all of his other conditions worse.  We asked the vet for suggestions, and they said that subcutaneous fluid might help him stay hydrated.  They taught us how to inject saline under his skin, and we did that ourselves for a while, and Timmy took it pretty well for a while.  After a month or two, he started to get more squirrelly when we were doing it, and he would get afraid when we got the stuff out to do it, we eventually started taking him for a weekly vet visit to have the vet techs administer subcutaneous fluids.  This became a part of our weekly routine, and the vet techs were very close to him from their weekly visit from Timmy, where he would frequently become the stubborn ball of legs, but they were able to handle it, and every week he would perk way up from the fluids.

Around Christmas, we thought he might have poked his eye on something, so we took him in to treat him for that.  His appetite started getting a little shaky, and we weren’t sure why, maybe it was the cold weather that was having some days of negative highs.  After he’d been on some eyedrops for that for a while, Heather noticed that his breath smelled terrible, and so we got him on an antibiotic dose right away, his tooth had probably been bothering him.  Then the antibiotic probably was making him feel ill, and so the appetite problems continued.  He would no longer eat his beloved chicken nuggets, and he was even having trouble eating food on his own, so I would have to hand feed him to get him to eat anything.  This was difficult because, if the pieces of food were too big he didn’t have the teeth to chew them, but if they were too small he would have trouble gripping them enough to keep them in his mouth to eat them.  Arby’s roast beef was the sweet spot because he could still smell the warm meat, a wad of roast beef was easy to pick up, but the thin layers would tear apart as he chewed them so he wouldn’t choke.  Chicken McNuggets were another mainstay in those days.

But his digestion and appetite continued to get worse and worse, and he had more trouble eating and less interest in it.  Because he was eating so little his bowel movements became less and less frequent, until several days passed between.  The vet said that the best way to help him was just to keep him hydrated, so we kept taking him in for fluids, which helped a little bit, but not enough.  He took less and less even of his favorite people food, and slept more and more.  We decided that we wouldn’t try to force-feed him, that would only cause distress and discomfort, if he wasn’t going to eat he wasn’t going to eat.  We made it to the end of the antibiotic course, and we hoped that with it over his appetite would improve, but it didn’t and it soon became clear that we needed to schedule his last vet visit.

The day before the scheduled day, I was sick and I spent the day home with him cuddling for most of the day, making sure he was as comfortable as he could be.  If he passed we didn’t want him to pass in his kennel by himself while we were at work.  That night he perked up some, enough for some decent pictures with us, but still wasn’t eating.  The next day, the day of the appointment, he was very out of it, barely awake at all.  He didn’t seem to be in pain, but he was clearly very weak.  We took him to the vet, and they laid out a towel for us to wrap him in.  He was so out of it at that point that he wasn’t even worried about being at the vet.  He passed away peacefully with both us with him, touching him and comforting him to the end.

We are comforted to know that it was the right time.  Every time we were told this might be the end, we tried to give him a chance to recover, and so many times he did and then was able to be back to normal for a while.  This last time, waiting any longer wouldn’t have helped.  He was tired and uncomfortable, and he was ready to go.

A broken routine
even inconvenient
marks a lost loved one.

I had a lot of trouble sleeping that night.  His comfort had taken precedence for so long, with the bulky dog bed, and sleeping on the floor, and getting up with him so he wouldn’t wander in the dark and bump into walls looking for a spot to pee.  With the need for all of that gone, it felt wrong to be able to lie in bed so comfortably, without him interrupting my sleep.  Mealtime became much faster, without the need to watch his bowl so the other dogs wouldn’t eat his feed, and without the hand-feeding of the recent weeks. Even though all these things were inconvenient and time-consuming, they were expressions of love for Timmy, and every change in routine reminds of his absence.

But life goes on.  We have many other things to be thankful for, but we’ll never forget sweet, gentle Timmy.

 

Anime Review: Recovery of an MMO Junkie

recoveryofmmojunkie

Recovery of an MMO Junkie was my must watch show of the fall season. I wasn’t sure what to expect when I first heard about it, because there have been a lot of anime in recent years about people getting stuck in virtual RPG worlds, but this is different. There is no getting trapped. This is simply a romantic comedy featuring a delightful cast of adult gamer nerds, and we need more series like this.

Thirty-year-old Moriko Morioka has been worn down by the grind of her office job, which was incredibly hard on her since she is naturally a people pleaser with low self esteem. So she quits and decides to live off her savings while she gets back into gaming.

She finds a new MMORPG, since the old one she used to play has shut down, and makes a male avatar called Hayashi simply because she wants to play a cute guy. As someone who plays male characters just about as frequently as female ones, I love that MMO Junkie acknowledges that women will play male characters too. Before long, Moriko meets another player who plays a female support character called Lily.

Hayashi and Lily hit it off and rapidly become best buddies in game, all without knowing who the other person is in real life, which isn’t at all uncommon with online gaming and internet friendships. While Moriko suffers from crippling anxiety at meeting people in meatspace, she is open and enthusiastic when she has Hayashi to act as a barrier to other people.

And course, the romantic comedy twist is that the girlish Lily is actually played by a man, Yuta, who has his own hang-ups and insecurities (though he’s still much better put together than Moriko). Arguably the biggest joy of watching MMO Junkie is seeing these two introverted dorks finally come together.

Moriko is a wonderful protagonist. Aside from being in her thirties, she’s relatable in how she is not put together and suffers from a great deal of social anxiety. She doesn’t mind running to the store in sweats to pick up food and prepaid game cards, but if anyone should pay attention beyond ringing up her total at the cash register, it’s completely mortifying. Moriko doesn’t see herself as someone worthwhile, so she has trouble believing anyone else would either.

Though Moriko’s reactions are done for comedy, those who suffer from social anxiety will completely understand how this is how we feel, even while we laugh along. Even an innocuous bit of curiosity from a store clerk can be taken completely the wrong way by the socially anxious. But at the same time, every time she manages to overcome a social hurdle, no matter how small, she’s easy to cheer for, because we know how hard she’s worked to get that far.

Recovery of an MMO Junkie is clearly aware of how games work. Not so much in the mechanics department, but how the players in those games work. There are lots of touches that show the creative staff know games and the behavior of the people who play those games. For instance, in one scene a character spends the entire conversation idly crafting while in game. (Because what else are you going to do when your character is busy making fifty scrolls? You talk to people or go afk.) And there are similar small player to player interactions that will ring true to people who have played MMOs; the guildmaster being the repository of everybody’s secrets and personal hang-ups, players saying something confidently thing in game while uneasily hoping it sounded good in real life, spouses logging on each other’s characters, etc.

They are often small touches, to be seen once and then never repeated, but the fact the creative staff is aware of so many things without reducing them to repeated gags really makes the game world feel like there are real people behind the computer screen, even though we only see the faces of a few of them. There are conversations about work and university, characters aren’t always online at the same time, and it makes it feel like people have a life outside of the game.

Though every episode takes place at least partially in the game world, at least half is spent in the real one, since MMO Junkie is really about the people on the other side of the monitor rather than an epic adventure, especially since Moriko is trying very hard to avoid people discovering her true situation.

Quitting her job was probably the best thing for her mental health, but she’s well aware that it’s not socially acceptable to be an unemployed thirty-year-old woman who spends all day (and night) gaming, and her social situation is one of the biggest hurdles in getting her to acknowledge that Yuta could possibly be interested in her.

If there’s any flaw in the series, I’d say that it’s so short! Everything wraps up quite adorably, and there is a bonus 11th episode for viewers on Crunchyroll (it’s a home video exclusive in Japan!) as well as an animatic for Episode 1. The bonus episode is pretty forgettable fluff, but if you need a little more of Moriko and Yuta it satisfies well enough. The AR animatic is skippable though.

I highly recommend Recovery of an MMO Junkie. This is my light-hearted favorite of 2017.

Number of Episodes: 10 (plus 1 bonus episode)

Pluses: sweet romantic comedy, thirty-year-old female protagonist (!), accurately captures the nuances of being a MMORPG gamer

Minuses: supporting cast doesn’t get much development, coincidences are laid on a little thick

Recovery of an MMO Junkie is currently streaming at Crunchyroll (subtitled) and Funimation (dubbed). Funimation has licensed this for eventual retail distribution in the US.

laurietom
Laurie Tom is a fantasy and science fiction writer based in southern California. Since she was a kid she has considered books, video games, and anime in roughly equal portions to be her primary source of entertainment. Laurie’s short fiction has been published in Galaxy’s Edge, Strange Horizons, and Intergalactic Medicine Show.

DP FICTION #39A: “The Efficacy of Tyromancy Over Reflective Scrying Methods in Prediction of Upcoming Misfortunes of Divination Colleagues, A Study by Cresivar Ibraxson, Associate Magus, Wintervale University” by Amanda Helms

MAGUS’S NOTE

My colleagues will note that in writing this paper I have not attempted to divide the research from myself, as can be noted here with my use of “I” and “my.” Unlike some individuals whom I will not name, I have never attempted to pass blame; I take full responsibility whenever it is deserved. Therefore, and because the use of the third person and passive speech loses the vibrancy and verve the subject of tyromancy deserves, I have elected to forgo the more pedantic and tedious tone such works more frequently employ.

 

CONSPECTUS

This report discusses whether tyromancy, divination using cheese, might be more effective and accurate in its predictions than the more popular methods of scrying through reflective surfaces, such as mirrors or bodies of water. Specifically, the report considers whether tyromancy is more effective at divining colleagues’ misfortunes. While the literature on tyromancy must be greatly expanded, this study’s results indicate that indeed, cheese might tell us more than the average crystal ball, mirror, or pool of water.

 

PREAMBLE

Much has been written about cheese: how to make it, including the specifics necessary to produce particular varietals; its healthfulness (or lack thereof, depending upon whom one consults); with which drink or other foods it pairs best.

Much has also been written about divination: which method might provide the most accurate predictions; the meditative state in which one must be to “see the clearest skies”; and whether particular persons might be better suited toward one method than another.

This author feels that scrying though a reflective surface–the divination method favored particularly at Wintervale University–has been given excessive favor over the noble art of tyromancy, or divination through the study of cheese curds. This is exemplified by tyromancy’s sublimation into the Animalistic Magic Department at Wintervale, a structure re-ratified by certain personages whose names have no bearing on this study. Yes, cheese does come from milk, which comes from animals, but tyromancy is too easily lost among the reading of paw prints and entrails. The budget won’t keep us in milk and rennet, let alone replace the fifty-year-old churns!

This should not be. Not only is tyromancy more functional than reflective scrying–one can eat the cheese previously used to predict the future, but one may not do so with mirrors or crystal balls, unless one likes the idea of shards of glass cutting up one’s intestines–but this author believes it is more effective, with more consistent and more-often correct predictions. In this paper, I will elucidate the trials I undertook order to give tyromancy its just due, and report on my findings.

 

PRACTICE

Materials
• 3 lbs Roquefort cheese
• 3 listen-in bugs
• Magus Minerva Hiddleton’s heirloom mirror
• Magus Theodore Linwood’s crystal ball
• Wintervale University’s general-use scrying pool
• A small sample of Magus Septima Wolfe’s skin scrapings

Participants

I myself acted as the tyromancer.

Magi Minerva Hiddleton, Theodore Linwood, and Septima Wolfe of Wintervale University participated in my study, although due to the nature of my experiment, it was necessary to hide their participation from them.*

I also enlisted the help of two of my co-magi in the Animalistic Magic Department at Wintervale, Associate Magus Beatrice Myne and Undermagus Leopold Mixon.

*Some may think I selected Magi Hiddleton, Linwood, and Wolfe due to their loudly aired ill-opinions regarding tyromancy, or that I harbored an unscholarly personal vendetta against them. In fact, I selected them because they are exemplary practitioners of their chosen scrying methods. It would have been unfair to match my own immense tyromantic powers against lesser magi.

 

Conduct

One potential issue with attempting to prove the efficacy of any divination method is the potential timeline involved; I could not afford to wait years to discover if my tyromantic predictions were true. Therefore, I required relatively immediate results, and ones that I could not know myself, so as to avoid skewing the outcome. Thus I engaged the aid of my friends Beatrice and Leopold to prank Magi Hiddleton, Linwood, and Wolfe.* I emphasized strongly that since I, the practicing tyromancer, could not be biased into predicting the exact pranks, they were not even to hint what they might plan for Magi Hiddleton, Linwood, and Wolfe. Nor could they tell me exactly when they planned to enact their pranks, albeit–again due to the time constraints–I told them the pranks could not occur more than two months out.

However, since this paper is on the efficacy of tyromancy over reflective scrying, I needed a means of tracking the latter efforts. I am no great scryer; my strengths lie with coagulated milk. Plus, I could not risk an unconscious desire to “fail” at these other scrying methods and therefore invalidate the results. I could not act as a scryer, and nor would it have been proper for Beatrice or Leopold to do so.

Thus, I set about employing a means of monitoring the scrying methods employed by Magi Hiddleton, Linwood, and Wolfe, viewing respectively: a crystal ball, an heirloom mirror, and the general-use scrying pool on the grounds of Wintervale University. To maintain the blind nature of my study, Magi Hiddleton, Linwood, and Wolfe could not know of their participation. Naturally, I checked out three listen-in bugs from Wintervale’s Security Department, with the intent of placing one nearby each Magus’s chosen scrying surface.

Considering that Magi Hiddleton and Linwood keep their crystal ball and mirror in their respective rooms, this was initially somewhat challenging. However, I tracked the schedule of each and knew when he or she was to be out of his or her tower room for a suitable length of time. After feeding the two listen-in bugs a bit of my own choice Roquefort, I planted them where they’d be able to listen-in on the Magi’s scrying sessions.

The general-use scrying pool proved more difficult. I am sure that Magus Wolfe would prefer her own private pool, but that is a decision for administration. It has therefore become widely known that in addition to her regular teaching duties, she scries at the general-use pool for her own private matters, usually at odd hours when she can expect the students to be abed. I did not want the listen-in bug tracking all scrying sessions; that would have overwhelmed me with students’ amateur attempts. It became necessary to sneak into Magus Wolfe’s rooms, whereupon I was able to collect some skin scrapings off her pumice foot stone and feed them to the last listen-in bug, along with some Roquefort. This meant I still captured Magus Wolfe’s demonstration scrying, but at least weeded out the students’ feeble attempts.

I experienced momentary discomfort that my subterfuge would be discovered, ruining my experiment, but happily Magi Hiddleton, Linwood, and Wolfe are self-involved. That they never suspected what I had done came clear in the trial of The Province of Wintervale vs. Cresivar Ibaxson, in which I was legally bound to divulge my methods.

With all listen-in bugs in place, I set about my own plan: Each morning at dawn, I would take my morning Roquefort and engage in tyromancy, directing my attention toward Magi Hiddleton, Linwood, and Wolfe, and seek to determine what ill fates might befall them, and whether I could do so in a manner more expedient and accurate than their various methods of reflective divination.

* Accusers have made much of Beatrice’s and Leopold’s so-called “motivation” in helping me. Though it has no bearing on my paper, I understand that some readers may also consider this matter of some import. I therefore write now what I stated at trial: There is no greater motivation than that of human curiosity and inquiry.

 

OUTCOME

Over the course of the two-month period, I foresaw seven fates.

For Magus Hiddleton: a most ignoble defeat at Wintervale University’s annual mirror toss; a poisoning of her morning crumpet with a laxative in advance of her keynote speech on Weasels as Familiars at the annual Witches’ Compendium, resulting in a rather embarrassing moment on-stage;

For Magus Wolfe: falling through a rotted stair as she descended into the University’s dungeon; a case of head lice after her hair powder was infested with their eggs;

For Magus Linwood: plague rats in his chambers; flubbing his courtship of Magus Hiddleton when his rat poison nearly killed her weasel familiar*; and the extreme misfortune of contracting bubonic plague.

My review of the listen-in bugs showed that Magi Hiddleton, Linwood, and Wolfe foresaw three and one half of these fates.**

Magus Hiddleton foresaw the poisoning of her crumpet. She skipped eating her crumpet the morning of her keynote speech and thereby avoided that particular ill fate. She did not foresee her defeat at the mirror toss, but I learned later that she prefers her performance to be a surprise to herself. Henceforth, I hear, she will check for “tampered equipment,” but for the purposes of my study, I must consider this instance inconclusive.

Magus Wolfe foresaw the head lice. Feeling rather irked by the splint she was forced to wear following her accident with the rotted stair, she took the extreme precaution of throwing out her hair powder, along with that of all the other magi whose chambers share her floor.

Magus Linwood foresaw his misstep in his courtship of Magus Hiddleton and took adequate precautions to clear his chambers of rat poison. While he did foresee the rat infestation, it left him with too little time to enact preventative, vs. corrective, measures, and he missed the unfortunate detail that the rats were infected with plague.*** This meant he didn’t take adequate precautionary measures in handling the specimens. I must consider his foreseeing only partially effective.

I will allow that Linwood might have also foreseen his contracting the plague and his eventual demise; however, he located my listen-in bug while clearing his chambers of the rat poison, so results here are also inconclusive.

*I’ll note that I was unaware of Linwood’s courtship prior to my tyromancy. Though having no direct bearing on my planned research, this additional prediction further proves tyromancy’s efficacy.

**Among the three of them, Magi Hiddleton, Linwood, and Wolfe foresaw fourteen other fates besides, but as those had nothing to do with their misfortune, they are irrelevant here. Nonetheless, let it be known that I saw six additional irrelevant fates, which is higher than the average of the fourteen fates divided among Magi Hiddleton, Linwood, and Wolfe.

***Accusers have also questioned me as to whether Leopold, as Wintervale University’s rat expert, may have deliberately infected the rats with plague. While some people may find “contagion vectors” and “disease epidemics” interesting or even important, how the rats contracted plague has no bearing on my paper.

 

PREFACE TO THE PALAVER
To those critics who have stated in person to me and who might believe, after reading this paper, that I should have warned Linwood of the future I foresaw, and that I should have warned the University of imminent plague outbreak, I remind you of the importance of research. The pursuit of knowledge will at times have consequences. We must be willing to bear them if we are to progress in our understanding of tyromantic, and other, arts.

 

PALAVER

I hope my paper makes clear just how crucial it is to allocate increased funds toward the field of tyromancy in general and at Wintervale University in particular. Though I, Beatrice, and Leopold are now under investigation for willful misconduct leading to death*, I believe the importance of our research speaks for itself. The results clearly show that tyromancy is a viable option of divination, and may in fact be more reliable and accurate than scrying through a reflective surface. For the visually inclined, I have created a chart summarizing this point:

Note how the bars representing the use of tyromancy are higher than all the others.

Yet literature on the efficacy of tyromancy remains sparse, and my study cannot stand alone. Clearly, more research remains to be done on the efficacy of tyromancy over reflective scrying methods, and indeed, the field of study must be expanded past the imminent misfortunes of colleagues, and performed over longer periods of time. Tyromancy must be attempted with the variety of cheeses available to us. With suitable funding for cheese-making and subsequent trials, we might decipher which cheeses best lend themselves to tyromancy; what effect individual ingredients have upon the resultant visions; or if certain cheeses may make up for the deficits of tyromancers weaker than myself. Further, double-blind studies incorporating bean curd may also weed out charlatans and false tyromancers.

In addition, we, as magi and researchers, must turn our eyes toward the long-term: Might tyromancy be more effective than reflective scrying when searching for the latest Chosen One? Could it not reveal to us forthcoming war tyrants, enabling us to take action against them before they rise to power? And, since so many people keep harping on the matter, could it not be effective in warning us of widespread disease?**

I leave such discoveries to other discerning tyromancers.

*Posthumously, in the case of Leopold.

**Of course, my experiences have already proved tryomancy’s effectiveness in predicting disease outbreak, but reporting of such findings–whether at time of publication or as a kindly warning to the general populace–are more appropriate in a study devoted to that matter.

 

RECOGNITION

I thank my friends, Beatrice Myne and Leopold Mixon, for their willingness to help facilitate my study.

Beatrice, I plan to visit you soon. Indeed, the curds indicate I will have before this paper sees publication! Condolences again on your continued difficulty in procuring bail.

Leopold, you will not be forgotten. I promise to one day retrieve your bones from the mass pyre. They will have a proper burial, and I will honor your grave yearly with cheese platters. My fondest regards to the plague-free survivors of your family.

 

MAGUS’S FINAL NOTE

This paper in no way constitutes any admission of guilt on my part or on that of Associate Magus Beatrice Myne and Undermagus Leopold Mixon in the matter of Magus Theodore Linwood’s untimely demise. Nor does it constitute guilt in the resultant epidemic that took the lives of nearly one-tenth of Wintervale University’s student body and staff, or of their infected families. Pending the findings of The Province of Wintervale vs. Cresivar Ibaxson, I remain innocent within the eyes of the law, just as I remain confident that tyromancy is indeed the best whey to divine, understand, and prepare for the future–thanks to the power of those sweet, tangy curds.

 

© 2018 by Amanda Helms

 

Author’s Note: This story came out of a seed from the Codex Writer’s Group that read simply “tyromancy: divination via the coagulation of cheese.” I didn’t use it for the particular contest it was associated with, because I wanted to write Something Serious. The idea of tyromancy stuck with me, though, and I wondered about the type of person who would attempt to use it, and how they would feel if people constantly belittled their chosen profession. The bungled scientific paper and even worse approach to the scientific method developed as I considered how this person might struggle to make clear that their work is not pointless, dammit. And thus was Cresivar’s “scientific study” born unto the world.

 

Amanda Helms is a science fiction and fantasy writer whose fiction has appeared in Intergalactic Medicine Show, Daily Science Fiction, Cast of Wonders, and the Cackle of Cthulhu anthology. She tends to be funnier in her writing than in person, but don’t hold that against her. She lives in Colorado with her dog, and new husband. She blogs infrequently at amandahelms.com and tweets with a smidgen more frequency @amandaghelms.

 

 

 

 

 

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HUGO REVIEW: Novelette Finalists

written by David Steffen

Science fiction award season is here again, and the Hugo final ballot was announced for WorldCon 76 in San Jose.

On to the novelette category, my favorite category of all the Hugo categories, covering stories between 7500 and 17500 words.  This review covers all six finalists.

1. “Wind Will Rove,” by Sarah Pinsker (Asimov’s, September/October 2017)

This story is told by a musician several generations into a trip on a generation ship.  The pristinely preserved historic records of entertainment media have been erased by a hacker a long time ago, and people are divided about whether to try to reproduce exactly the art from memory or to try to make something wholly original.

This story took a little bit to really reel me in–I was interested, but not fully invested until I picked up what it was doing with the discussion of generations of adapted music.  The story shows how the new and the old are not necessarily as disparate ideas as they might seem in live music, where new trends are the gradual course of change from old trends as musicians put something new into the familiar.  Much like the setting with the futuristic setting and the instruments that haven’t changed in a long time.

2.  “A Series of Steaks,” by Vina Jie-Min Prasad (Clarkesworld, January 2017)

“All known forgeries are tales of failure”, the story begins.  Helena of Splendid Beef Enterprises is a forger, not of money, not of art, but of beef, writing patterns for 3-D printers to print beef from raw materials that can’t be told from the real thing–getting the marbling just right, the red of the meat, the white of the fat and bone.  If the government catches wind of what she’s doing, she’ll be in a lot of trouble, but she has a good business going with her established clients.  But when a new prospect calls to arrange her services on a much larger scale than usual with threats, she’s not sure she can afford to refuse.

Riveting story, between the part of the story about the forgery itself and the attempts to make it look real in all its detail, and the other part dealing with the conflict with the anonymous coercing client.  Great use of near-future SF ideas and extrapolating from current trends and technology.

3.  “The Secret Life of Bots,” by Suzanne Palmer (Clarkesworld, September 2017)

The bot is woken by the Ship and assigned maintenance task 944 in the queue, which is to deal with an “Incidental”, an unspecified biological pest that has gotten loose aboard the ship.  The task turns out to be a much bigger ordeal than it first sounds like; this isn’t just a rat or a cockroach, this one threatens the very integrity of the ship and if it’s going to have any chance at succeeding it has to use all of the resources at hand.

Action-packed fun story, not a dull moment as this bot that’s really not designed for the task at hand does its darnedest to do it anyway.  Interesting discussion on the strength of intuition vs logic.

4.  “Small Changes Over Long Periods of Time,” by K.M. Szpara (Uncanny, May/June 2017)

Finley, a trans man, is attacked by a vampire while taking a piss in an alley, even though vampires are supposed to go to blood banks instead of attacking people unless those people have applied to become vampires.  Finley couldn’t apply to become a vampire even if he wanted to, because one of the restrictions is that “people who have taken steps to medically transition” are not allowed.  He can’t register because of that, and unregistered vampires, if discovered, are hunted and killed.  So he is stuck with this situation and will be the first to enter the unknown territory of what happens to a trans body as it changes from human to vampire body.

Vampires can be a hard sell for me, but this one at least took a new angle in that I don’t think I’ve seen another story with a trans vampire.  The logical consequences of stereotypical vampire traits extended to Finley’s body made for some new revelations in this area.  I appreciated how the vampire that turned him, after the initial act, was actually generally supportive in helping Finley figure out how to cope and even thrive in this new and unprecedented life beginning for him.

5.  “Children of Thorns, Children of Water,” by Aliette de Bodard (Uncanny, July-August 2017)

Thuan and Kim Cuc are descendants of dragons who live beneath the Seine, whose mission is to infiltrate the house of a Fallen angel who claims to rule over much of Paris by applying for entrance into the house, posing as a poor unfortunate houseless.  Hawthorn house has shown an unusual interest in the Seine lately and the dragons want to know why, so they need eyes in the house.  They don’t know what the test is going to be, and they’ll need to avoid revealing their dragon magic in any way that might be noticed.  But something else is going on here besides just the test itself.

This was a very interesting setting, and the mission of infiltration set it up for a lot of tension, especially with the nature of the test unknown and new oddities appearing alongside the test.  This was my first exposure to de Bodard’s world here, and I felt like I was playing catch-up–a magical ability would be revealed at a crucial moment and I hadn’t known that was possible.  This isn’t necessarily bad, but I felt like I had to revise my understanding of the situation pretty often–this might be because de Bodard has released a couple novels in this world already and the story might be written with readers of the books in mind?

6.  “Extracurricular Activities,” by Yoon Ha Lee (Tor.com, February 15, 2017)

Shuos Jedao, a heptarchate commando, is sent on a secret mission to infiltrate Du Station in the Gwa Reality to find out what happened to their former classmate and captain of a warmoth whose last distress call came from there.  To enact this plan, Jedao is put in command of a merchant troop.

I’m not sure why, but I didn’t end up feeling particularly invested in the outcome of Jedao’s mission–I didn’t have anything against Jedao, but I didn’t feel the tension of the mission outcome–I’m not sure if these are characters from novels and so I might be missing background information?  It could also be that I never really felt like the outcome was in question–I felt like Jedao had everything under control from pretty much start to finish; I never felt like there was a point where the outcome hung in the balance.