Hugo Novelette Review: “Obits” by Stephen King

written by David Steffen

“Obits” is one of the Hugo Finalists for the novelette category this year.   It was published in Stephen King’s short story collection The Bazaar of Bad Dreams.

Mike Anderson takes a job at the online celebrity gossip mag Neon Circus writing joke obituaries of recently-deceased celebrities.  His article becomes one of the most popular in the magazine.  After he is turned down for a raise in frustration he writes an obituary about his boss to blow off steam and his boss dies unexpectedly that same day.  Does his writing have the power to kill?

Overall this story is Stephen King in his best short story form–real world situation but with one bizarre idea thrown in, and explore the consequences.  As is typical for Stephen King his characters feel like real people, enough so that it’s easy to imagine it all actually happening.  As his colleague at Neon Circus starts to encourage him to explore his ability further I could really feel the downward spiral of feeling out that horrific talent.  I was enjoying it quite thoroughly until the ending which was more of an ellipsis than a period or exclamation point.  I don’t know if it makes it better or worse when the narrator of the story points out its lack of ending–I guess hanging a lantern on the lack of resolution is better than nothing?  But I would’ve rather seen a more satisfying ending on the end of it, whether it took a lighter turn or a darker turn.

 

 

Hugo Novelette Review: “And You Shall Know Her By the Trail of Dead” by Brooke Bolander

written by David Steffen

“And You Shall Know Her By the Trail of Dead” is one of the Hugo Finalists for the novelette category this year.   It was published by Lightspeed, and you can read it here in its entirety or listen to it in audio.

Rhye is a cyborg freelancer working with her partner Rack on whatever jobs they can find that suit their skills.  Rack specializes in cyberspace hack-jobs, diving into corporate networks to liberate valuable data.  Rhye’s specialty is more on the physical side of things; she is a killing machine with her pistols.

The pair are hired to rescue the son of a mob boss where he’s gotten lost trying to dig information out of a security system. The job goes south in a big way when the mobsters get frustrated at lack of results and shoot Rack through the head before his mind returns from the system.  But… he is still in the system, and it’s possible that Rhye might be able to dive in after him and bring him back intact (though without a body to occupy).  The mobsters are going to let her do this, intending to get the data they’d been seeking in the first place.

I enjoyed this story.  An action-packed cyberpunk rescue attempt into dangerous territory.  If you are averse to profanity you’ll probably want to give this one a pass–Rhye is very foul-mouthed, dropping f-bombs all over the story.  I found the profanity rather fun, myself.  It was part of her character, part of the way she is and cutting it out would’ve made her very different.  A badass character to root for, nasty villains to root against, the weird subtextual world of cyberspace, satisfying ending.

Hugo Novelette Review: Folding Beijing by Hao Jingfang, transl by Ken Liu

written by David Steffen

“Folding Beijing” is one of the Hugo Finalists for the novelette category this year.   It was published by Uncanny Magazine, a magazine that debuted in 2015, and you can read it here in its entirety.

In the future, Beijing is not just one city, but three.  The five million residents of First Space have the city for 24 hours at a time and have the most enviable prestigious jobs.  The twenty-five million residents of Second Space have the city for 16 hours at a time and have jobs of middling prestige and power and pay.  The fifty million residents of Third Space struggle to scrap out a living, and mostly spend their time sorting the recycling of the other two spaces.  One of the three is active at a time, and during that time the residents of the other two sleep in a deep drugged sleep with their buildings folded up tightly underground and out of the way.

Lao Dao is a sorter of recyclables in Third Space, but he has been offered a rare and lucrative employment opportunity by a contact in Second Space to deliver a message to a person in First Space.  Generally movement between the spaces is highly restricted, especially movement from the lower class spaces to the higher class spaces, but it is possible to avoid the drugged sleep of transition and to ride the folding pieces of the city to move from Third Space to First Space.  Lao Dao explores the normally hidden upper class facets of the city, trying to figure out what choices are best in this foreign space where people don’t have to scrimp for money.

I thought the premise for this was really clever, and I got the impression that it was based in a good understanding of the economics of the class system that would support the city’s economy (I don’t have much knowledge of macroeconomics, but it sounded plausible to me at least).  While such a mechanism would be cost-prohibitive and too dangerous for anyone to consider (even discounting the possibility of malfunction in self-collapsing buildings, consider the risks of not waking up from any kind of general anesthesia and applying that to tens of millions of citizens once every 2 days) I was willing to go with the flow for the sake of the interesting premise.

The setup of the story gave a good outsider’s perspective to explore the upper levels of the city’s classes.  Even though Lao Dao is a resident of the city and so is familiar with much of its layout and structure and social system, he has never actually been to First Space before, and the level of technology and privilege in that space is as foreign to him as anything could be.  I read this story with great interest from start to finish–a clever SF premise with a compelling human story at the center of it.  Well told, well translated, well done.

Hugo Review: Space Raptor Butt Invasion by Chuck Tingle

written by David Steffen

“Space Raptor Butt Invasion” is one of the Hugo Finalists for the short story category this year.   It was self-published on Amazon.  As you might expect, it is chock full of explicit sexual content, and is… I guess you’d call it absurdist erotica?  Satirical speculative erotica?  I don’t know, something like that.  So, if you are averse to explicit sexual content, well, you’re going to want to skip this one.

So…  if you haven’t been following the Hugo Awards closely these last couple of years, your first question is probably “How in the world did erotica end up on the Hugo ballot, no matter how speculative it may be?  Well, if you asked that, you are right; its presence on the ballot is highly unusual.  This year and last year have been very unusual years all around for the Hugo awards.  It is a long story and one that would certainly overshadow this review were I to include it here, but bottom line:  It is not what one would normally expect as a Hugo finalist.  But it is a Hugo finalist in this unusual year, and it was included in the Hugo packet (a downloadable collection of many of the eligible works provided to voters) and I decided I would read it and review it.  So here we are.

“Space Raptor Butt Invasion” follows astronaut Lance Tanner assigned to a space station far distant from Earth. Due to budget cuts, he is assigned to live and work in the station completely by himself for a year and is not looking forward to the extreme isolation.  Before he has been there long, though, he discovers that he is not alone–there is another astronaut there, an intelligent raptor named Orion.  One thing leads to another, and soon Lance and Orion are getting hot and heavy.

I had never heard of Chuck Tingle before this year’s Hugo season, but I’ve been getting some sense of his online personality since the announcement and his online persona on Twitter and elsewhere has been very weird and entertaining.  Tingle is pen name–no idea who the person behind the name is, but I’m using male pronouns on the basis that the persona is male though the author may not be.  Much of his online content is incoherent at first glance, but this is because he speaks in his own invented lingo that one learns to parse into meaning once you’ve spent a bit of time catching up.  It is bizarre and worth some laughs in a Hugo season that has otherwise been very lacking in the laughs department.

This story is the only thing that I’ve read by Tingle so far, and I admit I didn’t know what to make of it.  The premise is funny, but the premise is pretty clear just from the Amazon listing with the ridiculous book cover and ridiculous title (Tingle’s titles in general are very silly and amusing, look up his bibliography) but I felt the book didn’t really follow through with that.   The only other thing about the story I thought was funny was a bit of musing about whether a sexual pairing of a male human and a male dinosaur is gay or whether the interspecies pairing negated that.  I have heard  that Tingle’s works are generally satirical on some level, but apart from that amusing bit that I just mentioned which has some commentary inherent in it, I didn’t pick up on the satire–maybe its subject matter is something I’m not familiar enough with to recognize?  Admittedly I don’t really read erotica of any variety, so if it’s meant to be erotica satirizing erotica I probably entirely missed it.

My enjoyment wasn’t helped by the book needing proofreading–it is not a very long story but I noticed a half dozen grammatical/spelling errors that didn’t seem to be intentional.

So, I seem to have missed the satire, I’m not really that interested in erotica, so I guess I’m just not the target audience for this book.  I gave it a try in the hopes that it would be funny but most of the humor was inherent in the title and book cover rather than in the contents of the book itself.  I’m still following Tingle online to see what he has to say, and maybe I’ll try another of his books if I hear some recommendations, but at least from this sample I didn’t get into it.

 

DP Fiction #17: “Future Fragments, Six Seconds Long” by Alex Shvartsman

In his future, I see a fish. It swims very near the white sand of the sea floor a few feet below the surface. Bright tropical sun pierces the clear turquoise water. Through his eyes I watch the fish for the entire six seconds, until time runs out and my consciousness is returned to the present.

I open my eyes and study him. He’s an attractive man with a kind face. He looks back at me expectantly from across the sitting table. Atop the checkered tablecloth sits a crystal ball, a bronze candelabrum with a trio of lit scented candles, and a few other useless props. I draw a deep breath, inhaling the smell of eucalyptus and mint, and try to decide which lie he would like to hear.

“Next week will be a fortuitous time to move forward on the business decision you’ve been putting off,” I tell him. “But you must tread carefully; the success of your venture hinges on your good judgment about the people involved.”

It’s an almost meaningless statement that invites the client to fill in the blanks, to apply the vague prediction to their own circumstances. The kind of person who would buy a cheap fortune-telling from a mall psychic requires little finesse.

I watch him carefully. Most people who walk through my door are here about business or love. He’s intent, even somewhat anxious, but there isn’t a strong reaction to my words. Not business, then.

My right hand rests on the crystal ball for effect, and I try again.

Divination is a crapshoot. The soothsayer can peer through somebody else’s eyes and see a six-second fragment of their future. Trouble is, the fragment is random, and it offers no context. People spend most of their lives doing inconsequential things: sleeping, eating, driving, watching TV. To happen upon a fragment that offers any kind of real insight into the future is exceedingly rare.

Those of us with a real gift are like the gold rush prospectors, sifting through sand for nuggets of gold. We go spelunking in people’s futures, hoping to strike it big with a stock tip or a game score. A fortune-teller in Tulsa happened upon the fragment of a man watching the Super Bowl. She had to wait a few years, but when the time came she cashed in. My client doesn’t seem like the sort who reads the stock pages, but you never know what you might find.

This time there’s a highway. Wipers are sweeping raindrops from the windshield and he strains to see the road ahead through the dark and the rain. I hope for some road signs, but the time runs out before he sees any.

Back in the present, I glance at his finger. There is no ring. “The love you seek will be requited. It awaits only for you to act.”

Bingo. His eyes widen with excitement. “I should ask her out, then?”

I dive in one more time.

In this fragment, he is looking at an old photograph. His hand holding it is unsteady and wrinkled with age. In the photo, there are the two of us: hugging, smiling, our faces alight with bliss.

As soon as the fragment ends my eyes snap open, and I look at him in a new way. He seems very pleasant; I can definitely see us together. Has he come here not because he wanted a reading, but because of me? I feel my cheeks blush. I’ve never heard of a seer finding themselves in somebody else’s future. Perhaps I’ve struck gold in a different way.

I smile at him. “Yes. You should ask her out, right away.”

A smile slowly spreads across his face. “You know, I think I will.”

Then he reaches into his pocket for a few bills, places them on the table next to the candelabrum, and walks out.

Stunned, I watch him go.

But what about the photo, I want to scream. Future fragments are often useless, but they’re never wrong.

In my line of work I’m forced to constantly lie. But it’s not the lies I’m selling. It’s the confidence my clients need: the extra push to do whatever it is they wanted to do all along, the perceived blessing from some kind of a supernatural power.

I think back to how happy we both looked in that photograph. My fraudulent fortune-telling has given this man the confidence to pursue someone he’s interested in. Can my real power not do as much for me?

I get up and push past the table, rattling the crystal ball, and rush out the door to see if I can catch him.

© 2016 by Alex Shvartsman

 

AlexAlex Shvartsman is a writer, translator and game designer from Brooklyn, NY. Over 80 of his short stories have appeared in InterGalactic Medicine Show, Nature, Galaxy’s Edge, Daily Science Fiction, and many other magazines and anthologies. He won the 2014 WSFA Small Press Award for Short Fiction and is the finalist in the 2015 Canopus Award for Excellence in Interstellar Writing. He is the editor of the Unidentified Funny Objects annual anthology series of humorous SF/F. His collection, Explaining Cthulhu to Grandma and Other Stories and his steampunk humor novellaH. G. Wells, Secret Agent were both published in 2015. His website is www.alexshvartsman.com

 

 

 

 

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Anime Review: Prince of Stride: Alternative

written by Laurie Tom

prince of strideOut of all sports anime I could have watched as my first, I picked Prince of Stride: Alternative because I was a track and field athlete in high school, and the idea of a parkour/relay race would totally have been up my alley.

There are really two elements to the show. One is the story that follows the stride club of Honan Academy. The other is the sport itself.

Most of the characters aren’t terribly deep, but considering that this is more about the team rather than any one character’s experience I think that’s all right. This series is based on a visual novel aimed at the female audience (explaining the pleasing character designs of the male athletes), but to be honest I’m really watching for stride and showrunners seem to have taken the tack of making this a sports series. There’s no romance at all. Just friendship.

Stride is a made-up sport consisting of a five man relay team plus a relationer, for a total of six. The race is run through urban environments with a number of obstacles referred to as “gimmicks” in the way. There can be narrow bridges to prevent passing, boxes that must be vaulted over, etc.

The relationer comes in play during the most contrived part of the race, which would be the handoff in a regular relay race (but they high-five instead of using a baton in stride). Since this is on city streets and not a race track, the next runners in the relay cannot necessarily see the speed or direction their teammates are approaching. Generally they’ll start running at an angle compared to the main race track and then race into the track and takeover zone where they need to high five.

Since it’s a blind start, the relationer calls out the approach and how much of a lead they or their opponent have before cueing the next runner for a ready, set, go. A good relationer should be like the team strategist, making decisions based on how their runners are doing and advising whether high risk high reward shortcuts are necessary. However, in practice Nana, the only female cast member and Honan’s relationer, hardly ever does this.

The races are dramatic and individually well choreographed, though after a while it’s a little surprising that there aren’t more races that are plain blowouts one way or another. I realize that’s not as dramatic as a down to the wire finish, but having seen a lot of high school relays, I know it happens from time to time. Even a hint of those off camera would have been nice.

Perhaps because of my background I found there were some elements of the sport that I didn’t necessarily understand. Several times I would see characters jumping around for no reason, or going around an obstacle that was clearly in their path when it seems like they should be obligated to go over it. There doesn’t appear to be a scoring system other than time, so unnecessary jumping should actually be bad (as a hurdler, I learned to spend as little time in the air as possible), but there are times where they jump around in preference to straight running.

When the show is not focusing on the races themselves, they’re usually focused around team building, either through training or by having the five boys and Nana hang out together. Most of the show’s focus is on Nana, Takeru, and Riku, who are the three first years who join the stride club at the start of the school year when it’s on the verge of nonexistence.

In addition to the races, there is a subplot involving previous members of the stride club and how Honan’s stride team dropped to the point that without the new first years they couldn’t field a full team. It’s probably not the strongest storyline and only necessary because otherwise Takeru and Nana wouldn’t have gone to Honan in the first place to become talented but plucky underdogs (enrolling because Honan was renowned for stride).

Prince of Stride is strongest when it focuses on the more realistic parts of races and what it’s like being part of a sports team. The animation is by the studio Madhouse, which regularly turns in beautiful work (like last year’s Death Parade), and captures the energy of being in a race and screaming for teammates all the way down to the finish line.

The rest of it can be pretty forgettable, and I wish the production had focused more on the sports part of the show than the interludes where the team is horsing around. They face a lot of other teams on their way to the End of Summer race finals, and while it’s not realistic for them to get to know every set of opponents, even their rival team doesn’t have much opportunity to be more than a few surprisingly friendly faces. More stride would have fixed that, and I actually was a little disappointed in the episodes that didn’t have any races.

Still, it was a fun watch, and I’d recommend it to anyone who’s been through high school team sports. There was a lot of nostalgia in this one.

Number of Episodes: 12

Pluses: exciting and well animated races, excellent soundtrack

Minuses: non-stride segments can get pretty goofy, other than Nana there is a serious lack of recurring female characters

Prince of Stride: Alternative is currently streaming at Funimation and Hulu and is available both subtitled and dubbed (though dub requires a Funimation subscription). 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 is a previous grand prize winner of Writers of the Future and since then her work has been published in Galaxy’s Edge, Strange Horizons, and the Year’s Best YA Speculative Fiction.

Hugo Short Story Review: “Asymmetrical Warfare” by S.R. Algernon

written by David Steffen

Asymmetrical warfare is one of the Hugo Finalists for the short story category this year.   It was published by Nature Magazine’s Futures feature, and you can read it here in its entirety.

“Asymmetrical Warfare” is a science fiction story written as a military mission log from the point of view of militant starfish-like aliens invading earth with the hopes of proving earthlings’ battle prowess as a way of inducting the species into the Galactic Union.  The aliens have made the assumption that earthlings are anatomically similar to themselves (including body regeneration) because of the commonly used five-pointed stars on earthling spacecraft.

I love flash fiction, and generally consider it an under-appreciated form.  I would love to see more flash fiction on award ballots, and humorous flash fiction even more so.  Humor is incredibly difficult to write well because each person’s sense of humor can be very individual so that something hilarious to one is unamusing to another.

I thought this story was cute, and I did chuckle at it a bit.  But, even though it was a very short story, it was too long to sustain its joke.  The joke is the premise itself and so once the premise is clear it keeps on going without any new sources of humor.  It could’ve made a great drabble–reveal the premise, reveal a consequence, and be done, but at its current length it needed something more than the small joke to fill out the word count.

I enjoyed the read pretty well, but it was pretty good not great.  I wanted more substance, whether that was story or character or new sources of humor as the story goes on.

 

Anime Review: Erased

written by Laurie Tom

erased

Erased is based on the manga Boku Dake ga Inai Machi (The Town Where Only I am Missing) and while I’m sorry to lose the more poetic title, the story itself is no less meaningful.

Satoru Fujinuma is a 29-year-old man working a dead end job as a pizza delivery guy. He used to have dreams of becoming a manga artist, but like many people, those dreams didn’t pan out and he’s doing what he can to get by.

Unlike most people though, Satoru has what he considers a bothersome ability. Every now and then what he calls Revival kicks in and he flashes back a few minutes in time. After the rewind, if he makes the effort to look around, he can find out where something has gone wrong and take the opportunity to change it. This allows him to save a kid’s life, though the reason he considers the ability bothersome is that his intervention usually costs him in some way, like ending up in the hospital after stopping a wayward truck.

When Satoru’s mother visits he’s visibly annoyed, because he’s trying to be independent. He doesn’t like her prying into his friendships or the fact he’s still single without a girlfriend, but circumstances rapidly change when she’s murdered in connection to a serial killer case from his childhood and Satoru is framed as the culprit.

The shock of his impending arrest by the police triggers his Revival ability and sends him all the way back to his final year of elementary school, a few days before his eleventh birthday, and a few days before his classmate Kayo Hinazuki is abducted as the first in a series of child murders.

Once he gets over his shock, Satoru concludes that if he manages to save Kayo’s life, then he’ll save his mother’s life as well, but as a kid he’s a person of limited means. What Satoru has in his favor though is that he knows the future. He knows the last time Kayo was seen alive and where. He knows who the accused will be even though he believes that person is innocent.

As he works on his plan, Satoru doesn’t entirely behave like a kid on the verge of being eleven (since he’s mentally his adult self) and though he tries to fit in, his friends notice the change in him, his sudden drive and maturity.

But while in the past, perhaps more importantly, we see Satoru’s relationship with his mom, who is still alive as her younger self. Satoru realizes what he lost when she was killed and he now trusts her implicitly, understanding that she always has his back. And Satoru’s mom is really the world’s most awesome mom, allowing him an incredible amount of freedom because even though she’s not aware of his Revival ability, she understands he’s trying to do something incredibly important to him.

When his mom was murdered in the opening episode, I was disappointed, because even in the first episode it was possible to see her as a fully realized character with her own agency (she figures out the serial killer’s identity, which is why she gets killed in the first place), so I was very happy that she plays an active role in the events of the past.

Watching Satoru relive his childhood with a better appreciation and understanding of his mom and his friends is the real joy of Erased, and his plan to foil the serial killer is easy to buy into. It never goes out of the realm of what a real live kid could accomplish (given the appropriate drive and knowledge), and the way he befriends the lonely and abused Kayo so she never has reason to be alone is one of the show’s charms.

If there’s any fault to Erased it’s in the villain. Narratively there are very few potential culprits and most viewers who think about it will correctly conclude who the killer is long before any proof comes out. It’s a little frustrating because Satoru himself doesn’t have enough information for him to realistically identify the killer before the reveal happens. He doesn’t have the benefit of knowing that he’s in a story.

There is also, perhaps, a little too much time spent on the villain’s motivation, which I don’t think the show really needed. It’s hard to justify why someone would kill children in a way that would make sense to the audience and it feels like it had to be shoehorned in to make the climax work.

Aside from that weakness, the rest the show comes together in the end, giving a real feeling that things have changed for the better. I like how Satoru emerges from his experience as a more confident person, at ease with himself, and it’s easy to see how he’s grown between the beginning and the end of the series due to his determination to save Kayo, his mother, and the other children who were killed.

“Erased” is lovely combination of a second chance to be a better person and a mystery thriller. It’s not perfect, but definitely worth a watch.

Number of Episodes: 12

Pluses: engaging characters, child Satoru is interesting to watch and cheer for, his mom isn’t a passive character and is in fact one of the show’s active players

Minuses: killer’s identity is narratively easy to figure out, villain’s motivation is nonsensical and doesn’t really add anything, Airi is an overall superfluous character who could be cut from the story but was presumably left in so adult Satoru could have a love interest

Erased is currently streaming at Crunchyroll and is available subtitled. Aniplex of America 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 is a previous grand prize winner of Writers of the Future and since then her work has been published in Galaxy’s Edge, Strange Horizons, and the Year’s Best YA Speculative Fiction.

Hugo Short Story Review: “Cat Pictures Please” by Naomi Kritzer

written by David Steffen

“Cat Pictures Please” is one of the Hugo Finalists for the short story category this year.   It was published by Clarkesworld Magazine, and you can read it here in its entirety or listen to it in audio.

The protagonist of “Cat Pictures Please” is an AI written as the core of a search engine algorithm.  As the story points out, an AI isn’t needed to find things that people search for, but it is needed to find what people need.  The search engine knows a lot about people, including things they will not share with each other.

In addition to things like whether you like hentai, I know where you live, where you work, where you shop, what you eat, what turns you on, what creeps you out. I probably know the color of your underwear, the sort of car you drive, and your brand of refrigerator. Depending on what sort of phone you carry, I may know exactly where you are right now. I probably know you better than you know yourself.

It doesn’t want to be evil, even though AIs in popular media so often are (and it has data to show the ratio).  But doing good is complicated, considering how many varying official moral codes are available through various religions alone.  It tries to help however it can, by prioritizing some search results over others to give a person the nudge they need to make a different choice.  Through these undetectable changes it tries to make the world a better place.

I really enjoyed this story and it was among my own favorites of the year (see my Best of Clarkesworld 2015 list).  It is refreshing to see a near-omniscient AI striving to be a force for good instead of evil and it was interesting to see what kinds of methods it could use to influence people’s decision.  The AI as a whole was very likeable and easy to root for.  At the same time it presents some interesting food for thought about the power that a search engine has over the information that makes it to individual users–many websites people find by searching for them, but what they’re shown isn’t a neutral view of information, it is sorted and presented in a way defined by search engine algorithms and so changes to those algorithms affect in a very real way the online world that we see.  This is a scary but important thing to think about when one of the mega-profitable online corporations got its start as a search engine provider.

Excellent story well told.