Review: A Memory of Light

written by David Steffen

(I’ve done my best to keep this spoiler-free as long as you’ve read the previous 13 books)

It’s the end of a saga twenty-three years in the making, the conclusion to the Wheel of Time series. I picked up book one of the series when I was in eighth grade. I was at a Barnes & Noble with no money and time to kill, so I picked the book on the SF/fantasy endcap with the coolest looking cover. The one on the endcap was book 8 in the Wheel of Time series, so I found book one, “The Eye of the World” and sat down in one of their cushy chairs to read for a half hour until my ride showed up.

By the time I’d finished the prologue and first chapter, I knew I had to read the series. I stuck with the series as I went, getting each book as it came out. And now, a decade and a half later in January 2013, the final book has been published.

Robert Jordan is the creator of the series, and he wrote the first eleven books of the series. In 2007 he came down with a blood disorder and passed away. He left copious notes behind, and eventually Brandon Sanderson to finish the series. Brandon has done an extraordinary job with his work on the series. I can’t tell what parts he wrote and what parts Jordan wrote, and I didn’t notice any shift in the tone, the style, or the characters.

This final book is all about the leadup to the Last Battle, and the Last Battle itself, which everything in the previous thirteen books has led up to. All of the nations have been gathered by Rand with the intent to unite them. It is finally revealed what identity Demandred has taken since escaping the Bore. The armies of Light face off against the forces of the Dark One. Slayer, the creature that had once been Padan Fain, the six remaining Forsaken, hordes of Trollocs, all against Rand, Mat, Perrin, Egwene and the White Tower, Fortuona and the Seanchan.

The book was solid throughout. The prologue started out with a huge reveal that ties into details revealed ten books ago. There’s plenty of variation in action, and the stakes have never been higher. In the previous thirteen books, Robert Jordan had shown that he was very reluctant to kill off any major characters who fight for the Light–that is one of the major criticisms that could be leveled against the series since it does lower the tension quite a bit. But this is the last book, and it is the Last Battle, and all bets are off. Any character can die, and some of them do.

Rand’s fight against the Dark One is a very interesting one which goes to places I wouldn’t have expected. The Dark One gets some unexpected character here that I wouldn’t have seen coming, some glimpse of his motives in the grand scheme of things. In some ways he’s not entirely evil though his acts generally are. That was a pleasant surprise since, for the most part, the Dark One has been a stereotypical Satan kind of character.

The battle scenes of the last battle are epic and tense. The most badass characters in the series are there facing off against one another and you never know who’s going to die or when. Every day when I had to set the book down I was eager to pick it back up again to find out what happens next. The best part of the book, though, is watching how Perrin has developed. From the beginning of the series he has been my favorite character, especially his abilities that come from being a wolfbrother. In this book he finally reaches his full potential and he needs every ounce of that to fight against Slayer. His battles against Slayer in Tel’a’ran’rhiod are some of the most exciting reading I ever remember reading. It’s a great setting for a battle between two experienced fighters who have cultivated the flexibility of mind to be truly dangerous there.

Another one of my favorite characters plays a big role in this book, this one who had only been introduced in The Towers of Midnight (Book 13), Androl Genhald, an Asha’man Dedicated who is among the group loyal to Logain (rather than Mazrim Taim). Through his eyes we get to see some of the inside stories at the Black Tower, which has been closed to most other characters for half the series. Androl is, strictly speaking, one of the weakest of the Asha’man in raw strength, but he has a Talent that allows him to create gateways despite his weakness and in greater quantity and size than any other. You get to see Androl unleash this Talent, and he can be quite badass.

The one thing that I was disappointed with was the resolution of the plot thread with the creature that had once been Padan Fain. That is one of the longest plot threads in the series, starting in the first few chapters of the first book when the Darkfriend Padan Fain arrives in the Two Rivers and later in that book is distilled by the Dark One to hunt Rand like a hound, only to be corrupted by Mashadar, the mindless entity that haunts Shadar Logoth. His abilities have grown and grown throughout the series so that no one, not even the Dark One can match him. The books have talked up his abilities so much, I was wondering how they were going to resolve it at all. So I watched for him with great anticipation, at which point that thread was resolved a little too neatly, a little too easily.

So, well done Brandon Sanderson for finishing the series with high quality. I truly believe that Robert Jordan would have been proud of you, and quite happy with how it turned out.

 

Interview: Karl Bunker

interview by Carl Slaughter

Karl Bunker sold “Gray Wings” to Asimov’s a few months ago and followed it almost immediately with “The Women From the Ocean.” One the heels of his first two stories to Asimov’s, he sold “This Quiet Dust” to Analog. Three stories to the two leading science fiction magazines in rapid succession. Has he arrived? Diabolical Plots inquires about this and more.

 

YOU’VE JUST SOLD 2 STORIES ALMOST BACK TO BACK TO ASIMOV’S, FOLLOWED BY YOUR FIRST SALE TO ANALOG. DO YOU FEEL YOU’VE ARRIVED?

Well, the amount of success I’ve had so far certainly seemed like a fantasy back when I started writing. But I haven’t received any awards yet — no Hugo, no Nebula, no Pulitzer, no Nobel — so I feel like I’ve still got a lot of “arriving” to strive toward and fantasize about.

 

YOUR TWO ASIMOV’S STORIES ARE CHARACTER ORIENTED. YOUR ANALOG STORY IS SCIENCE PREMISE ORIENTED. YOUR INTERZONE STORY IS HALF ALIEN AND HALF FABLE. YOUR FAVORITE OF YOUR STORIES IS THEME ORIENTED. WHICH SUBGENRE IS YOUR BEST? WHICH DO YOU PREFER? WHICH DO YOU PLAN TO EMPHASIZE?

I guess most writers would say this, but I like stories about people — about human feelings (though it may not be “humans” who are doing the feeling). But I’m also drawn to old-fashioned gosh-wow, sense-of-wonder science-fictional ideas. SF lets us writers come up with strange and wonderful situations, and then look at how people (human or otherwise) might react to those situations. It’s that latter part that makes a story worthwhile, in my opinion. My upcoming Analog story is unusually idea-oriented for me, but even with that one I see the core of the story as being about feelings — about hope and curiosity and love overcoming fear. In terms of sub-genre, I’m drawn to post-singularity as a theme, but of course post-singularity stories are hard to write, since (by definition) they’re about a future that can’t be straightforwardly extrapolated.

 

WAS IT EASIER FOR YOU TO GET OUT OF THE SLUSHPILE AFTER WINNING WRITERS OF THE FUTURE? WAS IT EASIER FOR YOU TO GET ON THE RADAR AT ASIMOV’S AFTER SELLING TO INTERZONE, EASIER TO GET ON THE RADAR AT ANALOG AFTER SELLING TO ASIMOV’S, ETC?

The answer to both questions is “I don’t know.” Ideally of course, I’d like to think that I made more sales as I went along because I was learning to write better, and that’s the end of it. I know that when I’m looking for a story to critique on Critters, I try to find something that looks like it’s going to be interesting and well-written, and as I scan through the first few paragraphs of a batch of stories it’s easy for me to make that judgement without being distracted by whether or not I recognize the author’s name. So I assume professional editors can do the same. But there’s no way to know what goes on in the minds — and perhaps the subconscious minds at that — of editors, so my opinion is that it’s best not to worry about that.

 

HAS IT BEEN EASIER FOR YOU TO GET A COMPLETE READ WITH FUTURE STORIES AFTER SELLING TO AN EDITOR? HAS IT BEEN EASIER TO SELL TO THE SAME EDITOR ONCE THEY’VE PUBLISHED YOU? HOW MUCH FEEBACK DO THEY GIVE YOU FOR REJECTED STORIES?

After selling a couple of stories to F&SF, it appears that I can count on a personal reply from Gordon Van Gelder. With Sheila Williams at Asimov’s, I got a lot of wonderfully encouraging personal responses from her before she ever bought anything from me. Now that I’ve sold them a couple of stories, she doesn’t have as much praise and encouragement for me, either in acceptance or rejection notices. So that’s kind of funny; I guess she figures that I’ve “arrived,” as you put it, and so she doesn’t have to coddle me any more. With Analog, I never got anything other than form rejections up until I sold a story to them. I haven’t had anything to submit to them since that first sale, but I’ll be curious to see if I still get that (rather insulting, IMO) “how to write SF for dummies” form rejection of theirs.

 

SO FAR, YOUR CAREER HAS EMPHASIZED QUALITY BUT NOT QUANTITY. DO YOU GET WRITER’S BLOCK, DOES IT TAKE LONGER TO FINISH A STORY, DO YOU REVISE MORE, OR DO YOU JUST HAVE LESS TIME TO DEVOTE TO WRITING THAN YOU’D LIKE?

I do suffer from a sort of low-grade chronic writer’s block. In all of 2012 I think I finished only two stories and sold one. I’ve been a lot more productive so far this year, but I don’t think I’m “cured” of writer’s block yet. It may be that writing will always be slow and painful for me. At a rough estimate, I’ve probably finished fewer than 30 short stories in my life.

 

ALL YOUR STORIES ARE SHORT FICTION. ANY NOVELS IN THE WORKS?

I don’t have any novels in the works, and i’m not sure I ever will. It’s perhaps a misfortune of mine that I have a tremendous love and respect for the short story as an art form — more so than the novel. I much prefer reading short stories to novels, and the prospect of writing a novel feels to me like a horrible grind of a chore that stretches off to infinity. And that’s too bad, because it’s awfully rare for an author to make a name for him/herself solely from short stories.

 

RELATIVE NEWCOMERS LIKE KEN LIU AND LEAH CYPESS, AS WELL AS VETERANS LIKE IAN CREASEY AND CARL FREDERICK, RUN ALL THEIR STORIES THROUGH THE CRITTERS WORKSHOP, EVEN AFTER WINNING A HUGO/NEBULA. SOME OF THEM MAKE MAJOR REVISIONS BASED ON THE FEEDBACK THEY GET FROM CRITIQUERS. WHAT HAS BEEN YOUR EXPERIENCE WITH WORKSHOPPING?

I sometimes wonder if I’ll ever reach a point where I feel that critique groups are superfluous for me. I know I still learn a lot every time I put a story out for critique, and critiques have often saved me from embarrassing blunders. They’ve also sometimes convinced me to completely rework a story, or to give up on one, and even on one occasion to believe in a story that I was ready to call a failure and give up on. And I still feel that I have a lot to learn from writing critiques, and a lot to learn _about_ writing critiques. All parts of the process — reading something with writing a critique in mind, writing a critique, reading and making good use of critiques about one’s own work — all of these things are complex and difficult skills in themselves, and there’s a lot to learn and know about all of them. Of course I often get “bad” critiques, where I feel that the critiquer is just totally clueless about how to read, or how to read for a critique, or how to think about writing, or how to write a critique, or all of the above. But for the time being anyway, it’s hard for me to imagine giving up on critique groups.

 

IF YOU COULD TRAVEL BACK IN TIME AND TALK TO YOUR YOUNGER SELF, WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU GIVE YOURSELF ABOUT WRITING?

I can’t really think of any advice to give my younger self. Writing was something I had to learn — and still am learning — and I think I’m doing okay with that learning process. On the other hand, I’m quite shockingly old to be a “new” writer, so perhaps it would have been good for me to start working seriously at writing several decades earlier in my life. At least then my fans (if I ever have any) will have a longer body of work to look forward to. But on the other other hand, it’s good to be working on something new in one’s life, regardless of one’s age.

 

IF YOU DON’T HAVE ANY ADVICE FOR YOUR YOUNGER SELF, WHAT ABOUT OTHER BEGINNING SF WRITERS? ANY THOUGHTS FOR THEM?

Perhaps one thing: For god’s sake, don’t just read within your preferred genre. For SF writers in particular, I would wish that they would read literary fiction, and learn to appreciate and love it. It’s my feeling that that’s how real quality and richness will be brought into the genre, and into each writer’s writing

 

Carl_eagleCarl Slaughter is a man of the world. For the last decade, he has traveled the globe as an ESL teacher in 17 countries on 3 continents, collecting souvenir paintings from China, Korea, Thailand, Vietnam, and Egypt, as well as dresses from Egypt, and masks from Kenya, along the way. He spends a ridiculous amount of time and an alarming amount of money in bookstores. He has a large ESL book review website, an exhaustive FAQ about teaching English in China, and a collection of 75 English language newspapers from 15 countries.

His training is in journalism, and he has an essay on culture printed in the Korea Times and Beijing Review. He has two science fiction novels in the works and is deep into research for an environmental short story project.

Carl currently teaches in China where electricity is an inconsistent commodity.

 

Daily Science Fiction: May 2013 Review

written by Frank Dutkiewicz

Hey there fans of Daily Science Fiction. Have you’ve been enjoying all the free works of speculative fiction all these years? If you have, maybe you can show the editors some love. First, here are this month’s stories†¦

 

Stories about or containing affairs as plot are fairly common, yet “Persephone at Arm’s Length” by Bridget A. Natale (debut 5/1 and reviewed by Dustin Adams) stands out because of how polar opposite the two characters are.

The protagonist puts up with more than any man rightly should (which is deftly “shown” not “told” by the author). And she is solely in need of companionship while her husband is away(Where he is gives this tale quite a boost).

There’s a distinctly lopsided relationship here, even for two people married to others, and I gather that it’s not likely to change.

 

“Lyam” by Jez Patterson (debut 5/2 and reviewed by Dustin Adams) is a fun, flash piece about human parents struggling to come to grips with their adopted baby. Their alien baby.

The father is on board, ready to go, and soothes his wife with humor and love, but she — she’s not so sure. Decent story. Simple, and enjoyable.

 

“Things We Leave Behind” by Alex Shvartsman (debut 5/ 3 and reviewed by Dustin Adams) is a story about a Russian couple and their son leaving their country, town, and legacy, not so much to find a better life but to escape a not-so-great one. Fueled by the matriarch and with the young son eager to explore, the father eventually acquiesces and parcels their belongings, including his vast collection of books. The books that have kept their town safe for generations.

Personally, I enjoyed this story very much. There’s subtle hints of magic here and the timing of world events leads the reader to believe they are absolutely true.

 

“The Taking Tree” by Emily C. Skaftun (debut 5/6 and reviewed by Dustin Adams) according to the author’s notes was inversely inspired by The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein. While I can certainly see the author’s motivation I admit I was disappointed to discover this fact because I quite enjoyed the story as-is.

A tree, having been cut down by a life-long friend, grows anew around the stump with rings of saplings that together become the mightiest tree in the forest. Sadly, however, the tree’s thoughts are bitter and when other children come to play she doesn’t trust them; she hurts them.

 

“Smaug, MD” by Andrew Kaye (debut 5/7 and reviewed by Dustin Adams) is a brilliant story in which dragons have returned to the Earth but are small enough to become our physicians. They’re better at doctoring than their human counterparts, and have set up complex insurance programs which culminate in the consumption of the patient at the time of death.

However, the narrator’s father is let in on a secret mere moments before he is to be eaten that shakes his foundation, and that of his daughter. What did the dragon tell him?

Unfortunately, I found myself so interested in what the revelation was, that the story itself, the journey, lost some of its luster. Good stories start with a question that’s answered at the end, and this one was great. Possibly too great.

 

“Puss” by Melissa Mead (debut 5/8 and reviewed by Frank D). The famous fairy tale cat readies himself for the next chapter in his life, and takes a previous rival as a convenient companion.

In this alternate fairy tale, Puss has had enough , electing to strike out on his own. It isn’t clear to me if this is an unwritten epilogue of the old classic, or a divergence in the original story.

 

Peter Whitt stands accused of the most heinous of crimes, the attempted assassination of the angel. In “Ichor” by Jess Hyslop (debut 5/9 and reviewed by Jim Hanzelka) he shows no emotion as the charges and sentence of death is read. He stares straight ahead not looking at the priest as he rolls up the scroll. He doesn’t react as the executioner strides to the handle, doesn’t acknowledge the jeers and thrown dirt clods from the crowd. Only when he falls through the trap door does he react. He smiles. It is as if he knows something no one else does.

This is an interesting story. I can’t say I really cared for the layered flashback structure the author uses to tell the tale, but still the sense of the story comes through. The author does a pretty good job of setting and character development for a short work and the ending works well. Overall an interesting read, if not one of my favorites.

 

The princess withers under the overbearing hand of her father in “The Princess and Her Tale” by Mari Ness (debut 5/9 and reviewed by Jim Hanzelka). She is aware of her value only as a princess, but her father sees her as the reincarnation of her mother and seeks to hold her unmarried at his side. The minister concocts a plan to free the princess. She adopts a disguise and with her maid leaves the city. Along the road they meet three women who give them gifts to aid in their goal to have the princess meet and marry a princess from another land.

The author has crafted a well written tale that flows well for the most part. The problem is it seemed a little too familiar and in the end just wasn’t interesting enough to hold my attention. The story also seemed cramped in this format with not enough space to allow the spectacle to flourish or the tale to unfold gently. Overall not a story I would recommend, unless you are a devotee of fairy tales, then it may be worth a read.

 

A medium has a special bond with her dead in “Forgiving Dead” by Jeff Stehman (debut 5/13 and reviewed by Frank D). The protagonist is visited by a pair of customers. Like many, they wish to contact a lost relative , a victim of a tragic accident.

“Forgiving Dead” is a story of condolence. The protagonist’s gift is her own penance, a reminder of her role in the spirits of this tale’s fate. A nice, but not jarring, twist at the end. I rather liked it.

 

The yearly family get together would not be complete without the telling of the traditional tale in “The Troll (A Tale Told Collectively)” by Marissa Lingen (debut 5/14 and reviewed by Frank D). Telling the tale , much like the outcome of the tale , always ends in disaster.

This light-hearted look at family reunions centers around the conflicting story of a troll that had a habit of disrupting past reunions , until the day long-gone grandpa rudely put the trolls intrusion to an end. The telling of the tale is never completed but the story within the story wasn’t really the story anyway. “The Troll” is a tale of dysfunctional family dynamic and is an excellent analogy on why so many of us don’t look forward to holiday gatherings every year.

 

Faith powers the “Airship Hope” by Laurel Amberdine (debut 5/15 and reviewed by Frank D). The lighter-than-air ship is a vessel prophets deemed necessary. A labor of a thousand years, monks ride in search of a new land, steering through the skies on the power of prayer. Only doubt can doom the vessel. Those who lose faith, are cast aside , no matter how important they are.

“Airship Hope” is a tale of commitment. The captain of the craft is the bishop of the order. A test craft proved doubt will spread and spell the end of the vessel. Blind faith is a must. The tale has a slight twist but it isn’t the climax of this short tale. The bishop’s own faith is tested, and you can see the seeds of his own doubt sewn in the fabric of the finale.

 

A hard woman makes her man hard in “Puppet Man” by Cate Gardner (debut 5/16 and reviewed by Frank D). Walter is a mealy married to an overbearing woman. Maeve is a bully who is never satisfied with her husband. To combat her boredom (and to get away from Walter) she acquires a hobby , taking up woodworking at the local college. Her instructor also teaches sorcery, and Mauve is eager to combine the two talents, and experiment on Walter.

“Puppet Man” is a tragedy. Walter is a spineless man who can’t please , but never stops trying , his wife. Maeve is the worse type of spouse; judgmental, unsympathetic, rude, selfish, bossy – and with all the tenderness of a cactus. She doesn’t like her husband one bit. Walter is very unhappy with his marriage but lacks the courage to put his foot down. Maeve is out to change him once and for all.

The story is told from Walter’s perspective. The reader ends up hating Maeve and her lack of any redeeming quality whatsoever. Weak, indecisive, complicit; Walter doesn’t come off well either in the sympathy department. He internally contemplates leaving Maeve but outwardly endures her masochistic actions. “Puppet Man” attempts a twist but twist fails to turn the story. The changes Maeve imposes on Walter does nothing to change him or his mind. Instead, it only serves as another pin for Maeve to poke her man with.

 

An extrinsic cybernetic man buys “The Last Tiger” by Joanne Anderton (debut 5/17 and reviewed by Frank D). Edward is a wealthy man. He fills his home with replicas of extinct animals. The Last Tiger is his most unique possession , a creature that is mostly alive. Its brain and heart are cybernetic units – such are the limitations of biological components – but the creature smells, defecates, and acts like the predator it once was. The living creature requires a lot of care but there is something alluring to it. Edward is drawn to its primeval need to hunt, as if its desire to kill is what makes it seem so alive.

“The Last Tiger” is a tale of decay. Earth has become a sterilized world where the electronic has merged with the biological. Society, the landscape, and personalities mimic what once was. The tiger in this tale acts like an overgrown house cat for Edward, seeking his owner’s affections and bringing his fresh kills for Edward as ‘gifts’. The large creature drives a wedge between Edward and his wife, and between Edward and his reality. So fascinated he is with his pet that he forgoes the basics of substance for himself. The story at this point changes. What was set up as a metaphor on our decaying society becomes a diverting Trojan Horse finale.

I found this story to be well-conceived. The people of this future are barely people anymore and I got the impression that civilization was operating on an auto-pilot. Biomechanical humanity has become a sterilized society; a mimic of what we once were. This portion of the premise attracted me. However, the payoff I was expecting never came when a twist took the story in a direction I wasn’t expecting and into a conclusion I didn’t fully understand. Let me just say the disguised antagonist’s motives I don’t get. It left me scratching my head and wondering ‘why?’

 

“Private Memories” by Michael Haynes (debut 5/20 and reviewed by Jim Hanzelka).

The main character can control time and is using this ability to prevent Sara from killing herself. Over and over again he tries to change the events, failing each time. Five, six, seven tries are not enough. Finally he succeeds, finds the right words to pull her back. But someday the time will come when even this ability isn’t enough, and the fates will have their due.

This story has an interesting premise. If you had the ability to go back in time and correct some mistake, should you; or are you doomed to eventually pay the price. While I like the concept, I can’t really say I care for the execution in this case. The author has chosen to put this in a first person format that felt a little distant to me. I never really felt for his characters, therefore I found the piece a little flat.

 

The narrator is in the basement with her friend’s lover in “The Left Side of Your Lover’s Broken Face” by Brynn MacNab (debut 5/20 and reviewed by Jim Hanzelka), but they are only playing ping pong. She’s comfortable with him as a friend, maybe more so than her female friend. Their discussion ranges from politics to cows to shoes. The lover is distracted by the conversation, which leads to an unfortunate accident with a ping pong ball. This event cascades into a darker event, one that reveals a secret that changes the narrator’s perspective on life. Eventually.

This is another oddly constructed story, but with a less interesting premise. I found the characters oddly flat and distant. Even the narrator seemed to display a lack of passion, even when fleeing for a weekend. Even odder, the author tries to portray her as terrified, but the next week she’s back acting as if the traumatic event is merely bad socialization. I found the whole story a little disjointed.

 

A princess seeks an escape in “A Little Sleep” by Melissa Mead (debut 5/22 and reviewed by Frank D). The protagonist is a bright daughter of a widowed king. His only surviving child, she will make an excellent bargaining chip for an endowment. She does have a choice but it is a radical one.

“A Little Sleep” is a darker side to the ‘Sleeping Beauty’ fairy tale. The princess is well aware of the curse on her head, but has managed to steer clear of spindles thus far. Her predicament, as a married off princess, is not to her liking, which makes the allure of the spindle actually enticing.

I liked Ms Mead’s addition to this tale. Logical and gives the story more meaning. The ending had an amped up dark mystery to it as well. Well done.

 

Family togetherness involves a “Nitpick” by K. S. O’Neill (debut 5/23 and reviewed by Frank D). The characters of this story live in a future where parasites are accepted companions.

This story’s point was lost on me. There were a lot of subplots that had no obvious connections to me. The central theme to this story is the tolerated lice that live on their human hosts. The humans have come to frown upon the serious arts , like science and math , while pushing their children to take up frivolous activities.

I hate to nitpick at “Nitpick” but I found this tale not that all fulfilling and a little bit gross.

 

Pest, pet, or partner? “An Exodus of Wings” by Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam (debut 5/24 and reviewed by Frank D) is the story of three people whose lives intersect from a fairy infestation in Michael’s apartment. He had always taken steps to keep them at bay but when he fell for Heidi, his attention to detail waned and the fairies soon appeared. He doesn’t dare harm them when she is around. It becomes clear that it is the fairies that draw her to his apartment and he realizes that there will be no future between the two. Time to call an exterminator.

“An Exodus” is a tale of three perspectives. The writer chose to tell each person’s tale in a different point of view (distant 3rd person, 1st person, and 2nd person), unique and accomplished well. It takes talent to pull that challenge off well , kudos to Ms. Stufflebeam. Although her story telling skills are impressive, the story itself was thin. The tale was just about a boy who was willing to live with an inconvenience to impress a girl. The fact that the inconvenience was a magical pest made the premise only slightly different. The ending left me unfulfilled.

 

A man strikes a deal to achieve everything in “The Bargain” by Henry Szabranski (debut 5/27 and reviewed by Frank D). The protagonist is in the midst of the final scene in a final act of a tragedy of his own creation. He had made a deal with the devil without weighing the costs.

“The Bargain” is a very short tale on greed. It is written as if it were the final page of a much longer story. What happens before is not known to the reader but it doesn’t matter with the conclusion that is left for us anyway.

A great work of flash. I can imagine plenty of readers unsatisfied with its brief telling and sharp conclusion but I liked this commentary on overpaying for your deepest desire.

Recommended.

 

“The Wheel of Fortune” by Alexander Lumans (debut 5/28 and reviewed by Frank D). Aliens have invaded Earth and are tearing up the ground to extract its minerals. The protagonist is a young soldier whose dreams are big and plans bigger.

This story is told with headers pertaining to cards in a Tarot deck. I don’t know of the orders of the cards or their meanings, so part of the point of this tale may have been lost on me. That aside, I could only follow about half of what the story was about. The conclusion felt as if a large section of the tale was missing. I got the nature of the interstellar conflict, but the protagonist’s inner turmoil fell out of my grasp.

 

Four witches are out to concoct a special thing from the “Jumbo Gumdrop Serenade” by E. Catherine Tobler (debut 5/29 and reviewed by Frank D). The thing they have been waiting for has arrived on their porch. The four brew their potion, speak their spell, dance their dance, in hopes of creating something greater than themselves. What they get is a something so different from what they are.

“Jumbo Gumdrop” is a tale I had to read twice, and read slowly to grasp what it was about. A big mystery is kept from the reader as the author dangles encrypted hints. The effort of deciphering it was laborious. The ending did have an appropriate twist that made reading the story worth it.

 

A ghost baby cries relentlessly in “Ghosts in the Walls” by Shannon Peavey (debut 5/30 and reviewed by Frank D). The spirit of a baby in Laura’s apartment wall is a wailer. It cries until an earthquake comes then is silent as if it is rocked asleep. Its screams are wearing on Laura nerves but she is compelled to endure them.

The protagonist in “Ghosts” is a woman racked with guilt. She is in the midst of a divorce. Her child was lost in a crib death months ago. Earthquakes plague the city but leave her building unharmed. Any or all of these occurrences may be the reason why the baby in her wall screams but the reader and protagonist are clueless why. The story does have a straightforward conclusion, which likely was the reason why I never saw it coming. It was hidden in plain sight along.

“Ghosts in the Walls” is a very good ghost story. Short, sweet, and little sad. Everything a ghost story should be.

Recommended.

 

A political pundit lives on with the help from “The Suit” by Robert Reed (debut 5/31 and reviewed by Frank D). Garrett is a writer on matters of public policy. His articles are popular and his Sunday appearances on news programs are influential. His conservative principles hold much influence but his mental faculties take a hit after a small stroke. Ill-conceived words threaten his credibility, but a wealthy fan offers him a solution so he won’t fade from the public eye; an artificial intelligence assistant hidden in a suit.

“The Suit” is a long tale in a small package. The protagonist is a crafty man who has done well masking an average intelligence with timing and keen insight on outward appearance. His conservative opinions strike a fascist tone one day, nearly derailing him for good. A benefactor salvages his credibility and enhances his intelligence with the help of his suit. Soon, his radical notions become policy. He is a star once again, but age has its effects, ending his life. However, the suit remains, and the people closest to Garrett would love to wear it.

You cannot ignore the veiled distaste the author has for his protagonist. Although Garrett could represent one of many real life pundits, the fictional character’s beliefs really didn’t matter. The story could have been told if his views were a mirror opposite on the left. The tale was a commentary of the effects of artificial intelligence and how its benefits for a few could have disastrous effects for those who have not the means to acquire such assistance for themselves. Although the story made its ‘point’, it lacked a discernible moral I would have expected for a politically motivated piece. It was very much like the political debates on TV; thoughtful words from (a) smart sounding pundit(s) to make you believe you are learning something, but in reality resolve nothing when it ends.

 

A Chance to Settle a Paying Forward Debt†¦

As I have stated before, a leading editor and reviewer once told me that he doubted Daily Science Fiction would have a long lifespan because of a non-existent (at least one he couldn’t see) business model. Jon Laden and Michele-Lee Barasso proved him , and many other , doubters wrong. They have managed to maintain DSF as a free distributor of speculative fiction for three years strong , and counting. At eight cents a word and publishing hundreds of thousands of words a year you don’t have to be a mathematician to know that can’t be cheap. Paying authors aside, there is the expense of maintaining and sending a story to 7000+ subscribers every work day. A friend of mine once calculated what the cost of just running the web page must be for the editors. I was floored.

So, our two founding heroes have done it without asking for a dime, but the pot they found at the end of the rainbow just might becoming a little bit light. They now could use some help.

Through Kickstarter, – an online project funder , DSF is asking its long standing members for a small donation. The amount they are asking for I don’t think will fund a month’s worth of stories, but it is all they are requesting. If every subscriber donated $1, they would meet their goals with enough left over for them to each grab a coffee or two at Starbucks. Of course, you know that guy next to you won’t give a cent (freeloader), so it’s up to you to throw in an extra buck for him.

Note: At the time of this writing, the campaign still needs over 2 grand more to meet its goals , and has two weeks left to do it. I confess, I am bit surprised they didn’t reach the very modest target in the first few days. So be a champ, and give.

Editor’s note: at the time of scheduling this post, the campaign needs about $700 in 7 days. Deadline is August 16–4 days from when this post becomes public.

 

Dustin AdamsThe Lord of the Underworld and all the damned souls in his realm would like to thank Diabolical Plots contributor Dustin Adams for achieving another sale , thus saving them a costly air conditioning bill for this month. His latest work will soon be appearing in an upcoming issue of Plasma Frequency. Congrats Dustin. And here I was worried it would take another million words for you to get published again.

Songs in the Key of Rejectomancy

introduced by David Steffen
songs written by Amadeus X. Machina

I had never heard of the musician who calls himself Amadeus X. Machina until I went to WorldCon in Chicago last year and stumbled across one of his performances. He is a musician of the most eccentric variety, eschewing the commonplace for his own forms of expression. He laughs at the traditional definitions of “audience” or “distribution”. If you so much as mention iTunes, he will slap you so hard your teeth will rattle (I learned this the hard way). He has an avid fanbase of people who devote large portions of their lives to figuring out where he will play next, and failing to do so. I have yet to speak to anyone who has seen him play twice, and the first time always seems to be a random coincidence, though he seems to appear at times of need.

I happened to come across one of his private performances in a ground floor men’s room bathroom at 5:30 in the morning on Saturday morning in the Chicago Hyatt. I was suffering a bout of insomnia, and found myself wandering the hotel to avoid waking my roommates. Somehow, from inside his bathroom stall, he was managing to sing, and to play an accordion an autoharp and a guitar simultaneously, and all in perfect pitch. The song was one about an epileptic monkey pirate who wished upon the morning star to be turned into a whale so he could forever cavort with his beloved Baluga mistress, Frita. It was a beautiful song that you should listen to if you ever have the opportunity. I could not do that beautiful song justice so I will not even try.

Mr. Machina and I got to talking at length about music, and art, and writing. Mr. Machina is a writer himself (under a pen name which he refused to divulge), and he sang me a few of his songs that he had composed while waiting for editors to respond to him. He was gracious enough to grant me permission to post these here on Diabolical Plots for all the writers out there to enjoy.

I asked Mr. Machina if I could give his email address for his fans to reach him. He said that he prefers to conduct all of his personal correspondence by Post-It notes left in hotel bathrooms (both men’s and women’s) where science fiction conventions are being held.

 

Twisting in the Wind
by Amadeus X. Machina (to the tune of Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind”)

How many reads must the slush reader do
Before my submission is read?
Yes, and how many times must I check my email
When I should be writing instead?
Yes, and how many sleepless nights have passed by
Since my Grinder has turned bloody red?
The author, my friend, is twisting in the wind
The author is twisting in the wind.

 

Dashing Through the Slush
by Amadeus X. Machina (to the tune of James Lord Pierpont’s “One Horse Open Sleigh”)

Dashing through the slush
In a one-horse open sleigh
Writer’s hopes I crush
Laughing all the way

Best of luck to you
Placing this one elsewhere
For Lightspeed it won’t do
And certainly not Nightmare

Chorus:
Jay Jay Ay, Jay Jay Ay,
Jay Jay all the way!
Oh what fun it is to read
And respond in just one day!
(repeat*)

* only after 7 days have elapsed

 

The Ballad of Shane
by Amadeus X. Machina (to the tune of Paul Henning’s “The Ballad of Jed Clampett”)

Come and listen to my story ’bout a man named Shane
Software engineer but he lived his life in pain
He wrote a little story just to buy his family food
But seventeen weeks later he got totally queued
(Slow queued, that is. Limbo. Cooling his heels.)

Well the next thing you know old Shane tried agin
“Write another story” said his pals and all his kin
He knew that selling fiction is a long hard slog
But he never reckoned on being bludgeoned by a log.
(Analog, that is. Trevor’s tar pit. The black hole of Quachri).

Well now it’s time to say goodbye to Shane and all his kin
They would like to thank you folks for kindly dropping in
You’re all invited back again if you’ve written a story
And join us in this lovely place that we call purgatory
(Y’all come back now, ya hear?)

 

Slush Little Story
by Amadeus X. Machina (to the tune of traditional song “Hush Little Baby”)

Slush little story, don’t say a word
Papa’s gonna send you to Clarkesworld
And if Neil gives you the brush off
Papa’s gonna send you to Asimov
And if Sheila won’t buy you
Papa’s gonna send you to Trevor Q
If you don’t meet his current need
Papa’s gonna send you to Lightspeed
If Jay Jay Ay says that you’re junk
There’s room for one more in my trunk

 

Check, Check, Check Your Mail
by Amadeus X. Machina (to the tune of traditional song “Row, Row, Row Your Boat”)

Check, check, check your mail
As often as you can.
Primarily, primarily, primarily, primarily,
Your inbox just has spam.

Wolfgang-amadeus-mozart_2When not checking his email, Mr. Machina enjoys spelunking and recreational trepanation. His autobiography, Wake Me If There’s Sex, is eagerly anticipated by his many fans.

My Hugo Ballot 2013

written by David Steffen

I’ve spent the last several months reviewing award nominees. I decided to take it one step further and post the final decisions that I plan to post to my Hugo ballot with explanations (where I deem them necessary) about why I voted the way I did. I encourage anyone reading this to post discussion in the comments about how they voted, why I am wrong in my choices, etc.

What makes this more interesting is that the Hugo Awards use an instant runoff voting system. You rank your changes from 1-x, and can also set a number to the “No Award” category. You can find all the nitty gritty details at the Hugo Page explaining votes. I like the system a lot, much more than just a simple single-cast vote, because if your primary vote is for the least popular story, your other preferences still count for something.

If you are a nominee, keep in mind that I am just judging these based on my own preferences and, though I aim to not make my reviews mean, if you don’t want to hear my honest opinion of your work than you might want to skip this article.

For a full list of the nominees, see the original announcement on the Hugo site.

 

Best Novel

1. Redshirts, John Scalzi (Tor; Gollancz)
2. Throne of the Crescent Moon, Saladin Ahmed (DAW; Gollancz ’13)

Reasoning: I’ve only had time to read one book and a partial so far. I finished Redshirts and reviewed it here–I enjoyed it quite well, though there were some parts I didn’t like it was huge amounts of fun. I’ve started Throne of the Crescent Moon but haven’t finished it yet. Throne of the Crescent Moon is a solid book so far, but even though it has the strength of being set in a non-European based fantasy world, it still lacks the novelty that Redshirts has for me.

 

Best Novella

1. The Emperor’s Soul by Brandon Sanderson (Tachyon Publications)
2. After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall by Nancy Kress (Tachyon Publications)
3. San Diego 2014: The Last Stand of the California Browncoats by Mira Grant (Orbit)
4. The Stars Do Not Lie by Jay Lake (Asimov’s, Oct-Nov 2012)
5. No Award

Reasoning: The only story that I disliked enough to prefer no award was “On a Red Station, Drifting” by Aliette de Bodard. See my Novella Hugo 2013 Review for more detail.

 

Best Novelette

1. In Sea-Salt Tears by Seanan McGuire (Self-published)
2. The Boy Who Cast No Shadow by Thomas Olde Heuvelt (Postscripts: Unfit For Eden, PS Publications)
3. Rat-Catcher by Seanan McGuire (A Fantasy Medley 2, Subterranean)
4. The Girl-Thing Who Went Out for Sushi by Pat Cadigan (Edge of Infinity, Solaris)
5. No Award

Reasoning: The only story that I disliked enough to prefer no award was “Fade to White” by Catherynne M. Valente. See my Novelette Hugo 2013 Review for more detail.

 

Best Short Story

1. Immersion by Aliette de Bodard (Clarkesworld, June 2012)

2. Mono No Aware by Ken Liu (The Future is Japanese, VIZ Media LLC)

3. No Award

Reasoning: The only story that I disliked enough to prefer no award was “Mantis Wives” by Kij Johnson. See my Short Story Hugo 2013 Review for more detail.

 

Best Graphic Story

1. Locke & Key, Vol. 5: Clockworks, Joe Hill, art by Gabriel Rodriguez (IDW)

2. Schlock Mercenary: Random Access Memorabilia Howard Tayler, colors by Travis Walton (Hypernode Media)

3. Saga, Volume One, Brian K. Vaughn, art by Fiona Staples (Image)

4. No Award

Reasoning: See my Graphic Story Hugo 2013 Review for more detail.

 

Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form

1. The Cabin in the Woods
2. The Avengers
3. The Hunger Games
4. Looper
5. The Hobbit

Reasoning: See my Dramatic Presentation, Long Form Hugo 2013 Review for more detail. I didn’t regret the time spent on any of the movies, so I gave them all a rank.

 

Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form

1. Game of Thrones, “Blackwater”, Written by George R.R. Martin, Directed by Neil Marshall. Created by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss (HBO)

Reasoning: I’ve never seen an episode of Dr. Who (gasp!), so I can’t comment on the show in any way. I’ve only ever seen the pilot episode of Fringe, which did not inspire me to watch further even though I was excited about the show from the trailers. But my wife and I are avid watchers of the Game of Thrones series. The show is really solid throughout, great writing, casting, special effects, set design, costume design, everything is really stellar. And this episode was an especially awesome episode of a major battle, with great tension and great action all around. Even if I had been familiar with any of the other nominees, it likely would’ve come on top.

I don’t have anything against any of the other four winning the award, so I’m not casting a “No Award” vote for this category. I’m sure that one of the Dr. Who episodes will win anyway.

 

Best Editor, Short Form

1. Neil Clarke
Neil does great work at Clarkesworld, and I look forward to every episode of Clarkesworld. I tend to have a bit of a polar reaction to Clarkesworld stories. I either love them or don’t get them at all. But when I love them, the stories are well worth listening to the others to get to. Also, as a writer, I appreciate Clarkesworld’s lightning-fast response times.

2. John Joseph Adams
I enjoy listening to the Lightspeed podcast as well. I tend to have a polar reaction to Lightspeed stories as well, and a similar appreciation for lightning-fast response times, and it was hard to decide which to rank higher. He and Neil are ranked close enough in my mind that it’s almost a toss-up between the two and I just gave Neil the edge because he’s been a head editor longer. It’s for cases like this that I really appreciate the instant runoff voting.

3. Stanley Schmidt
I am often not a huge fan of Analog stories, often too nuts-and-bolts for me. But they’ve published some really great ones. I will immediately buy any issue with Juliette Wade in the pages, because her linguistics-based SF stories that have run there are among my favorites. There was a Wade story last year, too, a definite bonus. This was Stanley’s last year as editor so it would be neat to see him win, but I’d rather vote based on who I thought was the best rather than nominating for warm fuzzies about the guy who retired.

4. Sheila Williams
I don’t read Asimov’s very regularly, simply because they don’t have a podcast. I have read good stories in the issues that I’ve bought, so I’d have no complaints about her winning.

Reasoning: I’m not familiar with Jonathan Strahan one way or the other. I’m not going to cast a vote for him, but I’m also not casting a “No Award” either.

 

Best Professional Artist

1. Dan Dos Santos
Dan Dos Santos is awesome. I have a print of his depiction of Moiraine Damodred on my office wall. I love his other art as well, such as his Warbreaker cover. He just has a very skilled hand and great eye. I rarely enjoy others’ cover art as much as his. His character art in particular is really great–the examples in the Hugo packet are good ones, especially the baby-toting warrior woman, and the punk woman in the bathroom.

2. John Picacio
I picked for a large part because of the Hyperion cover with the elaborate mechanical monstrosity holding a human infant. His other covers are really good too.

3. Julie Dillon
 I LOVE the “Afternoon Walk” image, with all the monsters being walked like dogs in the park.

4. Chris McGrath
I like the gritty style of these, almost like found photos of fantastical places.

5. Vincent Chong

Reasoning: They always say not to judge a book by its cover, but in this case I had to judge the artist by his cover. The only one I’m very familiar with is Dos Santos, so I had to judge based only on the samples. This was a hard category to pick favorites. I would not be disappointed for any of these five who won the award. But, I’ve gotta pick someone.

 

 

Best Semiprozine

1. Beneath Ceaseless Skies
2. Clarkesworld
3. Lightspeed
4. Apex
5. Strange Horizons

Reasoning: See my Semiprozine Hugo 2013 Review for more detail.

 

Best Fanzine

1. SF Signal

Reasoning: I’ve enjoyed going to SF Signal for various content for years, so I’ll happily give them my vote. The other four I am aware of, but have never read. I’m not using the “No Award” vote, because I don’t have anything against the other four.

 

Best Fancast

1. No Award
2. SF Squeecast
3. SF Signal Podcast
4. Galactic Suburbia Podcast
5. The Coode Street Podcast

Reasoning: This is the second year that the Best Fancast category has been running, and all five of last years nominees are nominated again. This makes me think that no one is actually listening to them and is just nominating past nominees as a habit. I think this may also have to do with confusion over the classification of podcasts who pay their authors, like Escape Pod, Pseudopod, Escape Pod, Drabblecast, and so on. By the word of the rules, these would all be considered Fancasts but many people might guess that they would be classified as Semiprozines. I asked the question of the Hugo committee long before the nomination period ended to clarify publicly the classification of these, but they never responded to me. This is hurting my favorite magazine’s chances of getting award nominations because anyone who wants to nominate them may be splitting across categories. I was very disappointed that the Hugo Committee didn’t respond to my question.

In large part to raise my small voice of protest about the Hugo Committee’s lack of clarification, I am choosing No Award as my primary vote. I would love to see a quality fiction podcast get award nominations, and maybe even win. No offense to the nonfiction podcasters who do good work, but if I wanted to listen to a conversation about SF I would just talk to someone about SF. It’s the stories that I’m here for. And if my favorite fiction podcasts aren’t allowed into the category, then I’m not interested in the category.

It also bothers me that StarShipSofa is the lone fiction podcast representative, because their constant over-self-promotion, Hugo vote begging, unfiltered content , lack of payment is just too many factors that bother me about them. And that’s even not including the aborted nonfiction project they had planned some years ago to supporting a plagiaristic audio adaptation–it was aborted when the moral problems were pointed out to Tony, but I felt that an editor shouldn’t need to have this pointed out to him. It may seem wrong to criticize a “fancast” nominee for unprofessional policies, but venues like Escape Pod and Toasted Cake have shown me that just because a podcast is staffed by volunteers in their spare time doesn’t mean that there have to be no standards.

So I’ve ranked the four nonfiction podcasts about StarShipSofa so that even if “No Award” gets eliminated as a possibility, I’ll be encouraging one of the others to get the award rather than StarShipSofa.

 

Best Fan Artist

1. Spring Schoenhuth
I love the jewelry designs of Schoenhuth, particularly the Robot Transformation, and the Four Electron Atoms designs. I don’t generally wear jewelry other than my wedding ring but those make me want to start.

2. Galen Dara
a really neat dreamlike style. I particularly like the Ghost River Red image. It feels like a story, and the vivid reds of the hero and the shadowy adversary are very eye catching and intriguing.

3. Brad W. Foster

4. Maurine Starkey

5. Steve Stiles

Reasoning: As with the Professional Artist category, I had to judge these by their samples and would not be disappointed if any particular one of these won, but again i have to choose.

 

The John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer (Not a Hugo)

1. Mur Lafferty

Reasoning: I confess that Mur is the only one whose stories I am familiar with, and I ran out of time to read the contributed works of the other authors. So, certainly no reason to use the No Award, but my lone vote is cast for Mur.

 

Conclusion

And that’s my take and my voting strategy on all of the categories where I picked up enough of the material to be able to cast votes. There are three categories that I didn’t touch at all: Best Fan Writer, Best Editor Long Form, and Best Related Work. In the In the Related Work category, I did not have time to read any of the nominees. In the Fan Writer and Editor Long Form, I am unfamiliar with these people’s work.

How did you vote? Care to share, drop a comment. I’ve enjoyed putting this together, and I think I’ll try to do the same series of articles again next year. Let me know if you enjoyed it, folks! Do you find it appealing to see how someone else spent his votes?

Daily Science Fiction: April 2013 Review

written by Frank Dutkiewicz

It has been a while since I posted a review , I’ve been a very busy writer. The editors of Daily SF have been busy as well. They have proudly announced that Year 2 of Not Just Rockets and Robots is about to go into print. If you haven’t had a chance to read Volume 1, by all means, order a copy. You won’t regret the purchase. Now onto this month’s stories†¦

 

On first read, I enjoyed reading “Past Tense” by James Beamon (debut 4/1 and reviewed by Dustin Adams) very much. I let it happen and followed the time line to a catchy conclusion. There’s a kind of all-life-in-an-instant vibe that I particularly enjoy.

However, in trying to frame my review, thus reading the story over, I became confused and started asking questions. I also noticed the distinct lack of space the character(s) inhabit.

My advice: Read this one once. You’ll like it more if you don’t look too deep.

 

“Parallel Lines” by Russell James (debut 4/2 and reviewed by Dustin Adams).

At first I thought I’d comment on the characters being simply “he” and “she” which, in my opinion, leaves them without much personality. (There’s something about a name, even for fictional characters.) However, as the story progressed, more and more details were revealed, and eventually, I discovered there was a good reason for the vagueness upfront. Next, I was going to comment on the lack of a speculative element early on, but here too the story catches up and then soars with its idea.

“Parallel Lines” refers to parallel Universes, and about the more healthy of the two aged protagonists has found a way to tap into and record the lives of those more happy other he’s and she’s.

Russell James scores a heartwarming story with Parallel Lines. It may start slow, but keep reading, you’ll be glad you did.

 

I fear that if I provide a review about “Rocket Dragons” by Larry Kincheloe (debut 4/3 and reviewed by Dustin Adams), a story that is about stories, I may create a circular paradox and the entire universe will be destroyed. So I will sum up.

A girl from a dystopian post-dystopan future, living in a time where today’s conveniences and technology have been forgotten by all but the eldest, finds a copy of a DSF book. She enjoys the stories, but can’t resolve what it means to rate a story by Rocket Dragons.

The tongue-in-cheek, inside-joke, breaking the fourth wall combination makes for a sure-fire smile-on-face read.

 

The Sandman brings dreams to boys and girls using dust in a sack he wears around his waist in “The Sandman’s Dream” by Jess Hyslop (debut 4/4 and reviewed by Dustin Adams). He’s followed one girl, Susan, into adulthood. At some point, she needs to put an end to his visits. Dreams are for the young.

Unfortunately, this story didn’t have the effect on me I believe was intended. I found the Sandman eerie and stalker-like. He’s a child, who wants to play and give dreams, and does to children, such as Susan’s son, but also to her well into her adulthood. She tells him, “I have a husband now, a son.” Which he already knows. So her dreams must end, but he asks if he can still visit the son, to which Susan replies yes. Not exactly solving the problem created in the opening, which is that it’s time for the Sandman to go.

 

“When The Trumpet Sounds” by Sean Melican (debut 4/5 and reviewed by Dustin Adams)

I’m torn on this one. First, it starts out with a boy having his blood drawn. He’s got a cold, and this is significant. He’s thrown out and won’t be going. If that sounds difficult to follow because of a lack of world info, then you’ll understand why I’m torn. Because once I figured out what’s going on, and saw the details and images of the world, the story started to rock. In time, I learned that we’ (humans) are getting off planet. The giant ship in the sky (ark) is recruiting based on what the main characters can only speculate is logic. An untold number of humanity is standing on the line, some several days away from being examined, and the narrator “works the line” for his livelihood.

This story is more about the journey than the destination. Let it unfold, and trust everything will make sense.

 

Duty outweighs our most cherish possession in “Leaving Home” by Kurt Pankau (debut 4/8 and reviewed by Frank D). The protagonist is visited by an Eraser-man. This is the second time she has met one but the details of the previous visit are unclear. He has come for her son, Chris, but not to arrest him. He has decided to join the force.

“Leaving Home” is a tale about loss. The mysterious agency the Eraser-man represents enforces disturbances to the timeline. Chris will lose his existence to be a member. His mother will to remember him, a reality she senses as he walks out the door. A good work of flash, heart-wrenching with a sad ending.

Recommended.

 

An enterprising young woman offers a nostalgic service in “Cleaning Lady” by J. Kyle Turner (debut 4/9 and reviewed by Frank D). The protagonist in this tale is an out of work college graduate who creates a niche in the market , cleaning done by human hands. Her clients prefer the human touch of a cleaner, so she puts on a show while they are watching. Once satisfied, the clients leave her to her work, which is when she brings out the robot.

“Cleaning Lady” is the tale of a clever girl. The cleaning robots are flawless , and that apparently bothers some. The protagonist lets the robot do its work while she flows behind it to give the job the flaws that make a human touch. The story follows a woman who employs the old bait-and-switch tactic and puts it to good use. I give her crooked but brilliant business practice a high five. Nice idea and an original premise. I liked it.

 

“Snake Sister” by Melissa Mead (debut 4/10 and reviewed by Frank D). The protagonist is the sibling of a cursed girl. The jewels she vomits when she speaks have attracted a prince, but the jewels are not long for this Earth. The protagonist is determined to fix the problem and force the witch to remove the curse. Instead, the witch rewards the protagonist for her sharp tongue.

“Snake Sister” is based on a fairy tale that I am unaware of. The story is told with a vengeful voice. The open ended finale has a dark promise. I found the tale delightfully sinister.

 

“Daughter of Mettle” by Aaron DaMommio (debut 4/11 and reviewed by Frank D).

The protagonist of this tale is the child of a superhero, angry atthe lack of time he has for her. But she has a plan to force him to make time for her and keep his promises.

This tragic tale is written from the perspective of regret. The story could have been told from an attention neglected child of a celebrated fireman, police officer, or soldier , as a little girl would be envious that others receive her hero’s heroics rather than her.

 

“Heart of Joy” by Kate O’Connor (debut 4/12 and reviewed by James Hanzelka)

Luscinda, the dancer from Ymir, has stolen the heart of the most powerful man in the galaxy. Feon, the Senior High Chancellor, delights in her public performances and her private attentions. When he is given an automaton that can dance perfectly, however, the relationship cools. Luscinda eventually leaves to go home, but can she leave the emotional attachment behind?

This is a love story. Like so many it deals with the loss of love through indifference or misperception. The author handles the subject well and it gives us a new take on the subject. The metaphor of dance for love is clear. I found the story entertaining, not really something I would seek out, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. Give it a try, particularly if tale of love and loss are your cup of tea.

 

“Never Leave Me” by Michelle Ann King (debut 4/15 and reviewed by James Hanzelka)

Katrine loves Aron, but hears the stories about him when he delivers his wares to the village. She has visions of him in others’ arms. When she visits the old woman in the forest to put a spell on him to remain true, the old witch refuses. In desperation Katrine kills the old woman and takes her power. Now she can hold on to Aron, but at what cost?

This is a poignant story about love and fear of loss. It was well written and engaging, and there is a strong cautionary ending. The story does tread a well-worn path, so there’s a bit of predictability to the ending. It is still worth the time spent in reading it.

 

A magician uses the art of misdirection on a very direct man in “Legerdemain” by Gabriel Murray (debut 4/16 and reviewed by Frank D). The protagonist tempts a lustful man. Geoffrey Spencer is a man of free love, and is used to getting what he desires. Geoffrey’s wife introduces him to Claude, a talented illusionist. Geoffrey is interested in Claude’s vanishing trick and in Claude. A good magician will never reveal his trick, but may allow you to experience it.

“Legerdemain” is a tale of deception. The author of it preforms a deception on the reader while his protagonist preforms it on a disloyal misogynist. Not fair, Mr. Murray. At least Geoffrey had a chance to see the illusion coming.

 

The Chosen One has a destiny to fulfill in “The Chosen One Can’t Lose” by Sean Vivier (debut 4/17 and reviewed by Frank D), and it will be fulfilled, no matter which path is taken.

“The Chosen One” is a parody of the ‘chose your path’ adventure books, where the reader decides the direction the protagonist travels in the tale. In this particular tale, more than one path is offered but all roads lead to the destination. Loved the ending of this funny tale.

 

“What Merfolk Must Know” by Kat Otis (debut 4/18 and reviewed by James Hanzelka).

She first saw the Deathships when she was ten migrations old; from then on she was filled with curiosity about the humans they carried. But the humans were dangerous. Counseled by her Mamma to avoid the ships and the dangerous humans they carried, she avoided the ships. Until she was twenty migrations old, then she went out to find answers to her questions, but with the help of the Sea Witch finds more.

This is a nice little fable that fits in with any number of other stories. The writer does a pretty good job of blending the old with her own vision. I found myself drawn into the main character’s struggle to follow her own curiosity in spite of the warnings of her mother. This is a good read and worth investing the time in it.

 

“Paradise Left” by Evan Dicken (debut 4/19 and reviewed by James Hanzelka).

Rob was feeding Whistler when Ashley stormed in from the Rebellion. Five and a half feet of ash covered Rebellion. “How did the war go?” Rob asked. “Great,” Ashley replied. But it wasn’t great, though they’d beaten the machines and been granted the right to govern themselves, it was all a charade. The machines were humoring them, allowing them to live in a faà §ade of the world. Rob had left the rebellion because he saw no reason to fight anymore; Ashley could never give it up. The rift was growing, but would it drive Ashley to another world? And if it did, would Rob follow?

This is classic science fiction. The author deftly explores subjects like the relationship between man and machine and that between man and woman. He also pictures a future where the machine’s loving care for humans provides an Idyllic world that smothers individuality. Some can live in it, succumb to the lotus blossoms, others rebel against it. A well crafted story and one I would recommend, particularly those that love old school SF.

 

A codebreaker turns to an old Cold War veteran for help deciphering small snippets of signals from the stars in “Snippets” by k. b. dalai (debut 4/22 and reviewed by Frank D). A National Security data analyzer is given the task of determining if years of random SETI signals have meaning. The snippets of data are random and few, buried in the back ground noise of the galaxy. He turns to his father-in-law, an old communications expert. The old vet points out what everyone has missed, and leaves the protagonist with disturbing questions that need to be answered.

“Snippets” is a collaboration effort from a married couple. This is a rare work of flash that touches on a present day scientific dilemma and sets it in an outstanding science fiction premise. The story is set up as a mystery , mysterious signals without a meaningful pattern , that leaves small clues for the reader to piece together; very difficult to do but is outstanding when done well. This compelling tale has a finale I found chilling, and left me questioning our place in the universe.

Good flash fiction is rare. Outstanding flash fiction should be celebrated. I can’t remember a work this brief that had me this hooked and left me this satisfied when I read it. Rarely do I feel compelled to reread any work immediately, this one I did twice.

Recommended.

 

A son’s error in time cannot be undone in “Grief In The Strange Loop” by Rhonda Eikamp (debut 4/23 and reviewed by Frank D). A ten year-old boy is left to watch over his father’s time machine while Pop makes a jump, and makes a mistake that strands his dad centuries in the past. His mother has never forgiven him. Racked with guilt, he spends decades trying to correct his mistake. The entire family discovers time changes people, and that time can produce wounds that weren’t there before.

“Grief” is a story of guilt. The protagonist sandwiched between opposite ends of blame spanning centuries, and an even wider gap of a few decades. The parents of this tale act like spoiled children in this tale. Resentful, bitter, and shallow , the mother and father seem like two people that do not deserve children who moved the very heavens to make them happy.

 

An envious sister wants to fly in “Swan Song” by Melissa Mead (debut 4/24 and reviewed by Frank D). The protagonist in this dark tale is the sibling of a boy born with wings instead of arms. Her parents and friends mistake her bitter demeanor as concern for her deformed brother, but her brother understands that what she feels is envy.

“Swan Song” is based on a tale I am unfamiliar with. The girl wants to experience flight and forms a plan that will be doomed to failure. It has a very ominous exclamation point for a conclusion.

 

A man has fallen for the light of his life in “The Lady Electric” by Gary B. Phillips (debut 4/25 and reviewed by Frank D) but society needs that light. A brilliant inventor named Edison can put the energy she secretes to good use. “Lady Electric” is a tale of man who will do anything for the woman he loves. His love has become a prisoner to Edison, but our hero has a plan to rescue her.

“Lady Electric” takes a couple of dark turns. The protagonist’s plan relies on Edison’s vanity. I found the tale murky; details of the woman’s condition, origins, and how she became to be a source of electricity were never explained. The story hints that she is a mystery. I would have preferred a solved mystery or two to go with its conclusion.

 

A dying and honorable breed is sacrificed for its healing power in “Chasing Unicorns” by Terra LeMay (debut 4/26 and reviewed by Frank D). The protagonist is a desperate man in league with desperate people. They hunt unicorns, using their virginity as bait for the magical beasts. Although they cannot resist the allure of a virgin, the unicorns are not defenseless.

“Chasing Unicorns” is written from the perspective of an addict. The horn of the magical beast can heal anything , even the poison men put in their own bodies. The protagonist is eager to cure his brother, an addict in bad shape. Anticipation for the hunt begins to haunt him in his dreams. Unicorns are becoming rare, and may soon be gone. A conflict of helping blood against destroying a natural treasure wracks the potential killer.

“Chasing Unicorns” is a tale a modern day poacher could tell. Guilt competes with greed. Knowledge that he may be ending a great species tears at the protagonist. Compounding his dilemma is the unicorn’s psychic link with its virgin.

The disclaimer before the tale warns the reader of a dark tale, and dark it is indeed. There are no sympathetic characters to root for , even the unicorn proves to be deceptive. Guilt fills the protagonist from the start and he becomes so saturated with it that the reader absorbs his overflow by the end. If you don’t wish to feel dirty after reading, you may want to steer clear of this tale. If you’re the type that would want to see a poacher feel awful by his deeds, by all means, dive right in.

 

“Shades Of The Father” by M. Adrian Sellers (debut 4/29 and reviewed by James Hanzelka)

Aubrey is amused by the graffiti scrawled across the Marty-Mart wall as he pulled in front of the building. Inside he can’t help but laugh while paying for the pack of smokes. Martin Paxton notes he is wearing his old man’s sunglasses, the only possession his late father left him. The sadness and confusion about the gift brings Aubrey back down from his temporary high. As he drives back home each building has graffiti on it, almost as if someone had tagged the whole neighborhood overnight. The witty words of wisdom pull him back from his funk and he starts to appreciate his father more than he did in life.

This is a good tale for the month of Father’s Day. It deals with fathers and sons. The story lets us understand how sometimes we don’t appreciate the relationship until it’s too late. I loved the premise and how well the writer let us in on the inside joke, as well as how he made us feel about the relationship of Aubrey and his father. It also reminds us that often the best gifts are the ones we least expect. Take the time to read this story; you won’t be disappointed you did.

 

“It’s Good to See You” by Douglas Rudoff (debut 4/30 and reviewed by James Hanzelka)

Most on the ship don’t like the Necropolis, but one has to pass through it to get to the viewing port. Brad doesn’t mind because it gives him time to reflect on what he left behind on Earth. Anyway he will be joining the dead soon, taking his eight year shift in darkness. As he stands at the nose of the ship, he thinks ahead to the end of the forty year journey. A message from his ex-wife pulls him back to the past. It’s been fifteen years since they parted and somehow they had ended up on the same ship. Was he strong enough to go back emotionally? It was a question that would also answer his strength to go on.

Set in the future, where mankind is leaving Earth, searching for new worlds to explore, the piece does a good job of showing the burdens we will carry along with us. The author lets us see Brad’s pain, but helps us to understand that in order to move ahead we sometimes have to deal with the past. This one is well worth the read.

 

To Be Heard, Or Not To Be Heard†¦

†¦that is my question. Daily Science Fiction is a publication that has earned its stripes. It is a top market, in readers and in pay rate. It is receiving more accolades for its efforts every year (not as many as I believe it should but that is another topic for another time). It is still the only publication that uses the Internet’s email delivery system to distribute its product. I applaud it’s originality for tapping into this outlet, but think it is time that it expands into a new and growing market.

My profession as a traveler has granted me an outsider’s view in the rise in the audio book market. The racks for the CD imprinted publications in traveler stops has become larger than the video (movies and TV serials) DVD/DVR shelves, at many places, and dwarfs the printed paperback carousels and music CDs. Audio books are becoming a hit, yet few authors have cracked into it.

A few wise bestselling names (Stephen Coonts, Danielle Steele, Clive Cussler, Tom Clancy) have gone all in and dominate the shelves. Others , like Stephen King , are testing the waters and are displaying old classics in this market. There are a couple of publishers (Angry Robot) who have elected to showcase new works and authors. The shelves have a mixture of fiction and non-fiction. Most are old bestsellers but a few are new. You’ll find a science fiction tale or two, but there is one type of book I have yet to see; the short story collection.

As someone who drives for hours at a time, I have wondered why no one has tried to market the short story (i.e. anthology or collection format) in an audio market. Quick, a tight frame, and complete , they’re perfect for a person who needs a distraction to help pass the miles but doesn’t require an audience’s complete attention that would divert their mind from the road. Listening to a short story would be also like listening to a single cut on an album. It is a niche that needs filling.

I recommend the editors of DSF consider looking into this market, but if they do, to dip their toes warily into this water. Not Just Rockets and Robots would be a great collection to listen to, but at 425,000 words, would be a logistic nightmare to record , and likely be too expensive to market. Dividing it up into smaller bites would be the ticket. The first three to four months of Daily Science Fiction would be a great place to start. With the right readers, the collection would be affordable and short enough to encourage potential customers to give it a chance. Reliving previous DSF tales would be a whole new experience when it is read by another, hopefully with all the minor inflections that come with storytelling.

So what do you say, Jon and Michele? Care to take a shot at another innovative leap?

Me and my Bob_EnhancedFrank Dutkiewicz writes. Frank Dutkiewicz eats. Frank Dutkiewicz probably excretes, but for some reason Frank Dutkiewicz is reluctant to talk about it. Frank Dutkiewicz puts his pants on one leg at a time, except when he doesn’t. Frank Dutkiewicz flies a spaceship. Unlike Han Solo, Frank Dutkiewicz can make the Kessel Run in only nine parsecs. Frank Dutkiewicz has a cybernetic badger/weasel hybrid as a friend. When Frank Dutkiewicz says “Jump,” frogs say “How high?” If Frank Dutkiewicz jumped as hard as he could one night, the Earth would fall into the sun. Frank Duktiewicz’s last name is hard to spell. Frank Dutkiewicz’s last name is also hard to pronounce. Frank Dutkiewicz says that anyone who says these things about his last name is just jealous. Frank Dutkiewicz did not write his own bio this month.

 

Review: Redshirts by John Scalzi

written by David Steffen

Most people who spend a lot of time around geeks like myself are familiar with the term “redshirt”. It is relevant here, so for the benefit of anyone who isn’t aware, I’ll briefly explain. The term “redshirt” refers to a “cannon fodder” character in a piece of fiction who exists strictly for the purpose of killing in order to raise the stakes. In the original Star Trek TV series the main recurring characters of the show were often accompanied by acting extras who frequently died in some way that illustrated the dangers of the particular planet they were visiting that week. According to Wikipedia, 73% of crew deaths in the original series wore red shirts.

Looking back on the series, the redshirt cannon fodder members of the crew are kind of funny, particularly to an SF geek who likes to obsess about things and look for patterns. But it wouldn’t be so funny if you were one of those crew members, having gone through Academy training and getting stationed on an exploratory vessel just to get eaten by random planetary fauna.

The prologue is a scene that feels like a straight up parody of Star Trek, with a redshirt POV character meeting a quick and gruesome fate. This is what Scalzi read at MiniCon that had the audience on a constant roll of laughter. The excerpt ends with one of the officers saying “…this and other recent missions have seen a sad and remarkable loss of life. Whether they are up to our standards or not, the fact remains: We need more crew.”

The main characters of the main story of this book are the redshirt type of expendable crew members on an Enterprise-like exploratory vessel, part of a branch new batch of hires that are a result of the aforementioned recent rush of crew deaths. Our main character is Ensign Andrew Dahl who has just recently signed on to the starship Intrepid as a member of the xenobiology department. Early on he meets other new crew members who were hired on as part of the hiring run.

As they start getting acquainted with their positions on the ship, they start noticing bizarre patterns to crew behavior. The subject of away teams carries an ominous weight, which likely has something to do with the fact that all of these new hires were taken on to replace crew members who have met sudden and gruesome deaths on such missions. The longer-standing crew members have a knack for mysteriously disappearing whenever the senior officers pass by, and for some reason neither the Universal Union or even the press show much interest in the ridiculously high mortality rate among crew members. Something screwy is going on here, and they need to find out what before they all become victims.

From the prologue and the first chapters, I had thought this was simply a parody of Star Trek for strictly comic effect. As the book went on, I’m not sure that’s how I would describe. It certainly has elements of parody, and mentions Star Trek specifically by name, but the story takes the redshirt characters’ plight seriously even though the situations and circumstances around them are ludicrous so that I would describe it as an action-adventure SF drama in a setting with parody elements. Which is cool, there’s a nice mix of flavors here of comedy but of real human stakes and tragedy. The ludicrousness of the situation is recognized by the characters themselves, and makes their potential deaths all the more tragic, because no matter if you are afraid of death or not no one wants to die a pointless ludicrous death.

It’s quite a difficult bog of a situation these characters are mired in, kind of science fictional, very meta as it the characters realize early on that their situation is not normal. I liked this main plot and I liked the resolution of it, which it turned out ended about 2/3 of the way through the pages of the book. After that are three codas, which I haven’t quite settled on a firm like or firm dislike for. Coda I is in first person, Coda 2 is in second person, Coda 3 is in third person. The first coda was written about a writer writing about writing–a trope which has been way too well worn by many authors that it has to be something really special. Which it wasn’t. Not surprisingly, I hate the style of the second person story as I always find that method of telling to be gimmicky and distracting. This is no exception. That section alone made me feel like John Scalzi was filling the rest of his pages were more than a bit self-indulgent, more of a writer’s exercise than a book. The actual story told in the Coda 2 was good, but the style was bad. The third coda was good all around and ended on a particularly well done tone.

So, generally I’d recommend Redshirts on the merits of the main plot of the story. Particularly for any Star Trek fans or people who like some weird twisty plot situations. The codas after the main story were a bit hit and miss, and could’ve used a little less self-indulgent writer style and a little more straightforward storytelling, but their content is still worth reading them for.

Review: Hugo Graphic Story Nominees 2012

written by David Steffen

Since the vast majority of my fiction intake is through audio, while I’m driving or doing dishes or picking up sticks or what-have-you, I have made little effort to keep up with graphic stories, even though I am a fan of the medium . Other than some classic X-Men and Spider-Man comics anyway.

So, here’s my chance to read some of the most popular of the year. Some of these are part of series, in which case I can only judge them based on themselves, not on any knowledge of the rest of the series, so keep that in mind.

 

Hugo Award for Best Graphic Story

1. Locke & Key, Vol. 5: Clockworks, Joe Hill, art by Gabriel Rodriguez (IDW)
The main characters of this story live in the present, the children of the Locke family who live in a very strange home in Lovecraft, Massachusetts. They have a strange family history dating back to 1775 (portrayed in the opening chapter of this issue) in which rebels hiding from British soldiers in the Revolutionary War come across a transdimensional door that opens into a world of demons. One look through the doorway, and they snare your mind and twist your intentions. When demons try to cross through they are reduced to hunks of “whispering iron”, a metal which is not obtained through any other way. To save the rebels, the young locksmith and heir of the Locke family forges some of the whispering iron into a lock to hold the transdimensional door shut. Over the years he forges other keys with the whispering iron, each with its own specific magical purpose, and these keys are passed down from generation to generation.

As you might expect, it’s a bit of a learning curve to pick up book 5 in a series of 6. The initial scenes of this one take place in 1775 before anything supernatural is known, but then suddenly in Chapter Two you’re thrown back into the present where there are a bunch of keys which are already taken for granted and used nonchalantly while I tried to figure out what the heck was happening. A couple of strange little nonhuman characters were especially confusing until the main characters see them and explain them in some brief dialog. Obviously this is no fault of the book itself, but at my own reading them out of order. I did eventually figure out everything I needed to understand, and by the climax of the story I understood the rules of the world well enough that I could understand the stakes.

This story was awesome. Very well inked, colored, very well written, scary as hell in parts, and funny in others. This story does a good job explaining who appears to be the main villain, a plotline which will presumably be solved in the next book. I now want to go find the previous four stories in the series, and then read the conclusion in book six.

 

2. Schlock Mercenary: Random Access Memorabilia Howard Tayler, colors by Travis Walton (Hypernode Media)
The titular character Schlock is an amorphous alien blob who is a member of Tagon’s Toughs interstellar mercenary troop. They have hired on to run security for a colony of Gavs, a race of people who are all copies of the same person (presumably the reason for this was covered in a previous issue, I don’t really know). Things are quiet. Too quiet. Something is bound to go horribly wrong.

I found the main plot of this pretty entertaining, action packed and fun.

Unfortunately, as far as I’m concerned, that main plot didn’t actually get going in any interesting fashion until page 140 of 294 when things start really going wrong. From then on it was well-paced and interesting. The first 50 pages or so appeared to be slow-paced mop-up of the previous issue, which was hard to follow, all the more so because apparently the previous issue involved many of the main characters’ memories being wiped and rewritten, and now memory restoration is happening. A large portion of the story space was taken up with character development of characters I don’t know or care anything about.

This perceived pacing problem is no big surprise for a series that I started on issue # 13, and really it’s probably no flaw in the comic itself for someone who has followed the series. But since I am judging it by this issue alone, the pacing issues are a major flaw.

 

3. Saga, Volume One, Brian K. Vaughn, art by Fiona Staples (Image)

Baby Hazel is born into a war-torn region of space where fights constantly rage between the planet Landfall and its moon Wreath. She is the child of a man and a woman who are fugitives from opposite sides of the conflict. Meanwhile, bounty hunters hired close in on them.

This story was okay. It seemed to depend primarily on empathizing with Marko and Alana, the fugitive parents, but they never felt like real people to me. Something about their dialogue just made them seem too artificial to care about. Hazel might be a person to empathize with, but in the story she’s only hours and days old, and so is largely unaware of her surroundings. And the story is narrated by her as a retrospective, so obviously she’s survived and done okay for herself. I didn’t really feel connected to other characters in the story either.

It didn’t help that there were some elements of the story that made if very hard to take seriously, such as the character named Prince Robot IV, who is a part of subset of the population that has CRT monitors for heads for no reason that I was able to discern.

The one thing that had me perked up and paying attention was the character The Stalk. She is badass and it would be fun to see a CG version of her.

That said, the drawings were of good quality, the plot was coherent, and I was interested in The Stalk character. But that’s not nearly enough to carry this story.

 

 

4. Grandville BÃ ªte Noire, Bryan Talbot (Dark Horse Comics; Jonathan Cape)
“Two hundred years ago Britain lost the Napoleonic War. As with the rest of Europe, it was invaded by France and the members of its royal family were guillotined. It had been part of the French Empire until 23 years ago, when it was begrudgingly given independence after a prolonged campaign of civil disobedience and anarchist bombings. Ten weeks ago, France experienced a revolution following the death of Emperor Napoleon XII and is now ruled by the Revolutionary Council.” This is the introduction to the story, giving you a good taste of its alt-history origins. So far so good, we know the branching point of history, and we have an idea where that’s taken us. The story follows Detective-inspective LeBrock of Scotland Yard and his Watson-esque sidekick Roderick as they investigate the murder of a prominent artist. And he’s just the badger for the job–oh, right, instead of people this world is populated by anthropomorphic animals.

LeBrock seems to be kind of a mix of a Sherlock Holmes kind of detective (complete with his Watson-esque Roderick, a mouse with an over-the-top dialect) and a James Bond kind of government agent. The alt-hist aspect of it is interesting, to see what kind of world the creator imagined from that branching point. Personally, though, I found the choice to mix anthroporphic animals with alt-hist to be distracting and detrimental to my immersion in the story. The two genres just clash with each other, and badly. Alt-hist is generally grounded in plausibility, finding a reasonable branching point and showing us how different things could be. But at no point is there any reason why the animals are there instead of humans. If we were literally replaced by a variety of animals, I can’t believe that human history wouldn’t be MUCH MORE different, certainly not with the same occupations, same cities, etc, that we have today. With the combination of the two I just found it hard to consider the story anything but a big absurd joke. It’s not that humans have just been swapped out for the sake of drawing differently shaped faces either–humans are present in this world as an oppressed minority that the other species call “doughfaces”, who are picketing for rights–this half-inclusion of them just makes things all the more confusing and annoying to me.

Also, I’ve never been a huge fan of mystery stories anyway, I just don’t get that wrapped up in trying to figure it out, and so with the combination of that and the constant distraction of the weird population, I just really didn’t get into this.

The art of this graphic story was well drawn, though I found some of the anthropomorphic animals to be pretty creepy, especially when they’re naked.

 

5. Saucer Country, Volume 1: Run, Paul Cornell, art by Ryan Kelly, Jimmy Broxton & Goran SudÃ… ¾uka (Vertigo)

Presidential candidate Governor Arcadia Alvarado wakes up in her car with her ex-husband, having lost some time. Her recent memories are consistent with alien abduction cases. She must decide what to do in response to this, and how it affects her Presidential campaigning.

I don’t get what this story is supposed to be about. I mean, obviously, about alien abductions on the surface. Alvarado and her staff work toward finding the truth of her experience and the experiences of others, but by the end of the story you just end up with some random images for clues, a handful of competing and conflicting interpretations of what “alien abduction” actually means, and the last chapter is just a rambling treatise detailing one person’s opinion about alien abductions.

To me this reads like an essay written by a UFO enthusiast, shoehorned awkwardly into a story structure with illustrations. It’s not really a story. I guess if you want to hear a person’s opinions on UFO abductions you might enjoy it. But if you’re looking for a story, it’s a disappointment.

This is just volume 1 of the story, but I’d say that any volume of any story needs to have some story arc of its own that is satisfying in its own, just as any book in a series of books. This volume fails at that and I wouldn’t buy a second volume based on this.

 

 

Review: Hugo Novella Nominees 2013

written by David Steffen

And here’s the last of the short (ish) prose fiction categories, the almost-a-novel aka Novella, which covers fiction from 17,500-40,000 words. This was a tough category to pick my favorite in, so for this one I’m glad that the Hugo awards use an instant runoff voting system so that if your favorite doesn’t win your lower votes can count towards the result.

Hugo Award for Best Novella

1. The Emperor’s Soul by Brandon Sanderson (Tachyon Publications)
The Emperor’s wife has been killed and the Emperor has been injured in an attack by assassins, via a crossbow bolt to the head. The best magic of the legal variety can heal his flesh, but cannot heal his mind, leaving him catatonic. The Emperor’s highest ranking officials are the only ones who know of the outcome of the attack. The official mourning period for the Emperor’s wife is one hundred days, at which the Emperor will be expected to speak in public. If he cannot, the Empire will be thrown into chaos. They have but one chance to salvage the situation with the recent capture of the criminal Forger Wan ShaiLu. Various legal branches of the art of Forgery, which can rewrite the history of an object, can be practiced in the Empire. Shai, however, practices the forbidden branch of art which allows even a person’s soul to be Forged into something else. This criminal, this blasphemer, is their only hope, if she can reforge the Emperor’s soul using only journal entries and interviews with his counsel.

Brandon Sanderson is great at inventing new magic systems. I enjoyed Warbreaker, and I enjoyed this. The details are intricate, but logical, so that the magic is more of an alternate-world-science, something which appeals to my engineer mind. Shai is an expert in certain areas of her craft, and she goes at the work with the zeal and skill of an expert craftsman, all while contemplating how to escape before she is inevitably killed to silence her. The situation maintains constant tension while maintaining intellectual curiosity and emotional depth. The art of Forging depends upon understanding the history of a person or thing completely and then creating a manmade branching point to change that history, so to pull of this most difficult of all Forgeries she has to exercise her powers of empathy like she never has before.

Great story, well written. One of my new favorites. Well done!

 

2. After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall by Nancy Kress (Tachyon Publications)
An apocalypse hits the Earth in 2014, killing most people and rendering most of the planet unliveable. Very few people survived, and those were saved from certain death by boxlike tentacled figures (nicknamed Tesslies) that would appear in a shower of golden sparks, grab the person, and take them somewhere else. These survivors wake up in a building with no doors to the outside, with machinery meant to serve their basic food and sanitation needs. The Tesslies never told them what was happening, but their best interpretation is that aliens have attacked earth and kept some humans as specimens. Many years later a new piece of machinery they call the Grab machine appears in the Shell which periodically makes a window through time to the years before the apocalypse. Whoever goes through, the Grab machine yanks them back to the future with whatever they’re touching, so they use it to grab supplies and to grab children to help repopulate the future (adults die when they pass through). This part of the story follows Pete, a fifteen year old boy who is a child of some of the original survivors.

Meanwhile, back in 2013, mathematician Julie Kahn is working with a police task force trying to determine a pattern to the robberies and kidnappings.

I related completely to both Pete and Julie, even when they did things I didn’t agree with or when their actions were in direct opposition to each other. This story had me interested from beginning to end and it felt neither too long nor too short. Well done, Ms Kress, well done. Unfortunately, I hadn’t finished reading this before the Nebula voting period ended, and Sanderson’s story squeaked past this one for my top vote, but with the instant-runoff system I can still show my love.

 

3. San Diego 2014: The Last Stand of the California Browncoats by Mira Grant (Orbit)
The first outbreak of the zombie epidemic happens during the overcrowded opening night of San Diego Comic-Con 2014. This story is the chronicle of that chilling event, told as a 30-year retrospective.

This story is well-written with believable characters and a strong emotional core. The main reason why this didn’t rank higher on my list is that I didn’t feel that it trod any new ground. Zompocalypse stories have been too common in recent years, probably only second to sexy vampires as overused tropes. I’d rather see an original speculative element, an original setting, or both. This story didn’t vary from the familiar zompocalypse rules, at least not in any significant way, so it’s not an original speculative element. I don’t recall seeing a zombie story set at a convention before, and I suspect that’s why it’s been popular enough to get nominated. But, personally, it just strikes me as lazy, trying to keep the writing in a comfort zone rather than trying something different. Kind of like a Stephen King story about a writer that takes place in a sleepy town in Maine.

Also, the story is formatted as though it’s a documentary, but the story itself admits that much of it is conjecture based on known facts. This in itself wouldn’t be problematic, except that by my reckoning, probably 80% or more of the events have to be either pure speculation on the part of the media because the deathtoll was high enough to make after-the-fact compilation of stories problematic. The story would’ve been better if it had just discarded the idea of using a framing story and just told it as a standard narrative.

 

4. The Stars Do Not Lie by Jay Lake (Asimov’s, Oct-Nov 2012)
Morgan Abutti, 4th degree Thalassocrete, member of the Planetary Society, has discovered something new in the stars that violates the truths taught by both the Lateran and the Thalassojustity belief systems that rule the world. He has arranged for a public discussion of his findings, which could shake the world. Bilious Quinx, master of the Consistatory Office (aka Inquisition) must find Abutti before he makes his heresy public. Eraster Goins, head Thalossocrete, has very different motives for finding Abutti.

As you might be able to tell from this brief explanation, there are several religious factions which at least to my mind were never clearly differentiated. Maybe that’s an intentional statement about religious schisms, maybe it could’ve been made clearer, or maybe I just don’t get it. I generally liked the Morgan Abutti character who did not consider his findings a heresy but only wanted to share his findings of the universe to expand their understanding of it, a scientist trying to work within a religious government system. But I just didn’t find the stakes all that riveting. Whether or not Abutti’s announcement becomes public, some other scientist will discover the truth anyway (as the story itself points out), so the events of the story feel pretty moot to me. It doesn’t help that the grand discovery has implications for major future changes, which don’t make it into the space of this story. Those major future changes are what I’m really interested in. If Jay writes a story about the events after this story I will read it eagerly.

 

5. On a Red Station, Drifting by Aliette de Bodard (Immersion Press)
Cousin Linh has arrived on Prosper Station, seeking refuge from the Emperor, whom she has rebelled against in a token fashion. Quyen, magistrate of the station, allows her refuge grudgingly. Linh’s visit causes no end of trouble.

The world of the story takes traditional beliefs and uses futuristic technology to reinforce them. In particular, people in this society are not only expected to honor their ancestors, they also have memchips implanted in their brains that allow their ancestors to give them advice on everything that is happening around them. Very cool idea. The station’s systems are run by the Honoured Ancestress, a being that is sort of a metahuman, with an altered version of a human mind that allows it to run all of the day-to-day affairs of Prosper, and allowing residents of the station to interact with this mind by entering the trance. There’s something wrong with the Honoured Ancestress of Prosper.

I loved the worldbuilding in the story, but I just wasn’t that interested in the main events that took up the bulk of the story. Linh and Quyen’s conflicts didn’t really interest me. I didn’t particularly relate to either one, and it didn’t matter to me which one succeeded or failed in their goals. The state of the Honoured Ancestress was, to me, my biggest interest in terms of plot, but it did not have as much text devoted to it as I would’ve liked, and the solution to the problem was presented without a lot of interesting development to get there.

So this story just wasn’t for me. It was just too long to justify the parts of it I was actually interested in. It didn’t help that the length was such, and my free time segmented enough, that it took a dozen sittings to get through it.

 

Review: Hugo Novelette Nominees 2013

written by David Steffen

And on to the Novelette, the awkward older sibling of the Short Story category. Stories from 7,500-17,500 and voted by fans. A decent batch of stories here! And unlike the Short Story category this year, we got a nice round 5 of them (which means it might’ve been less contested than that category, no doubt in part due to the difficulty of getting longer short stories published).

 

Hugo Award for Best Novelette

1. In Sea-Salt Tears by Seanan McGuire (Self-published)
Selkies live a life that is both blessed and cursed. They love the ocean, but each Selkie is born without the Selkie skin that allows them to turn to seals. This is their blessing, for with a skin they can swim in the ocean as naturally as if they were born there, and be one with the tide and the current. This is their curse, because there are a limited number of Selkie-skins, much more than there are Selkies. You can only have a skin if you are given one by someone else who wishes to give it up. So Selkies are doomed to live a life of longing, wishing for something which they can’t have unless they are given it. This is the story of a Selkie named Liz who has been passed over for Skin inheritance time and time again, and who falls in love with the sea witch.

As the writers of 500 Days of Summer so aptly put it “This is not a love story. This is a story about love.” Which is to say, this is no rom-com where happiness is inevitable after some madcap hijinx involving a last-minute reunion at an airport. This feels like the real thing, because it is not idealized or idolized, it is what it is.

Well done, Seanan McGuire.

 

2. The Boy Who Cast No Shadow by Thomas Olde Heuvelt (Postscripts: Unfit For Eden, PS Publications)
“Look” is the titular boy who casts no shadow. He does not even cast shadows upon himself, so he lacks the shading that gives our face their visual depth. He also does not appear in reflections or video recordings, and he’s become a celebrity due to unphotogenic nature. But overall he’s still just a normal teenager. He makes friends with Splinter, a boy who’s made of glass who is nothing but reflection where Look has no reflection. Splinter’s parents, understandably, are very protective of their boy, because he is so fragile.

It took me a little while to get into the story, while Look monologues about the nature of his condition. But it hooked me a little while later when the focus becomes his bond with Splinter. Really, I thought Splinter the much more interesting character and I thought he should’ve been the one the story was named after. Splinter wants so badly to experience life fully but his parents don’t allow it. Together with Look, he tries to expand his horizons. In a way this reminded me of the type of movie/book (and I’ve seen a few) where a person discovers they have terminal cancer and try to live their life to fullest because they know they don’t have long. This was a little different in that Splinter could live a long life if he’s careful, but he wants to really experience things. This story is about him making that choice for himself.

 

3. Rat-Catcher by Seanan McGuire (A Fantasy Medley 2, Subterranean)
The year is 1666 and Rand is a prince of the Cait Sidhe (a type of Fae who can shift into cats) who does his best to avoid confrontation with his father and others. But when he hears a prophecy of the simultaneous destruction of London and Londinium (the Fae counterpart to the English city), he must leave his comfort zone and do everything he can to save his family and his people.

This story was entertaining enough, with plot and character and stakes that I could root for. The details of the Fae in this particular universe were interesting and made me want to know more. It seemed like this story was barely get started when everything resolved very quickly in the end. I would like to read a longer story about this character and this place. It’s a good sign when a story leaves me wanting more, but I would’ve like if this story had been a little meaty as well.

 

4. The Girl-Thing Who Went Out for Sushi by Pat Cadigan (Edge of Infinity, Solaris)
Humankind is spread across the solar system, but it doesn’t all look like it used to. The natural human form is not well-suited to long occupancy in space or other planets, so we have developed the technology to make drastic and irreversible body modifications to bodies better suited to the environment. The story takes place around Jupiter. The “Girl-Thing” of the title is an old-fashioned human working among the “sushi” that are body-modded people. She has made the decision to “go out for sushi” meaning that she has decided that she will go through the body mods.

This one definitely kept me paying attention from the beginning because it dives right into future lingo head first. It doesn’t ease you into it, but neither does it go at a pace so fast that it’s incomprehensible. As a linguistic puzzle, it’s very entertaining. By the end I could understand the lingo for the most part.

But, perhaps due to the careful pacing chosen to allow the lingo to be understood, when I think back on the story the events themselves aren’t all that compelling to me. Things happened, for sure, but those things seemed to happen in a rush at the end as if Cadigan were running out of space and just tried to cram them in. I think this one could’ve used a little more room to expand so that there would still be space for the lingo to be explored, but then could go through the events themselves at a pace that let them have more impact. So, while it wasn’t a bad story, it wasn’t spectacular either. Fair-to-middlin’, I’d say.

 

5. Fade to White by Catherynne M. Valente (Clarkesworld, August 2012)
Joseph McCarthy has become President of the United States and life is good for everyone. Yes it is good, as defined by the goodness measures laid down by President McCarthy, everything from the war effort to the structure of the family unit. Never mind the radiation and the widespread impotence or the government choosing your occupation. The story is told as alternating propoganda videos by the McCarthy administration and two children who are trying to find their place in this world.

I felt like I should like this story. For those who may not know, Joseph McCarthy was the US Senator who singlehandedly started the Red Scare, lying his ass off to convince people that Communists were infiltrating us, thousands of spies acting as normal American families. Anyone could be a Communist spy, and you had to keep vigilant and report the slightest odd behavior. But McCarthy never showed any evidence of this in our world, and eventually was disgraced because everyone came to the conclusion he was lying.

McCarthy as President is a great premise for a dystopian future. Even I (who generally doesn’t have interest in politics) can’t help but extrapolate from that basic premise to something really terrible.

I generally liked the sections of this story that were told as editing notes on propoganda tapes. I’ve always liked stories that felt like “found” documents, and this had that feel. The propoganda feel gives an uneasy overpatriotic ring to this part of the story, very creepy.

But the “honestly” told parts of the story bothered me. I mean, bothered me in a way that meant I didn’t like it rather than the seat-squirming involvement in the propoganda sections. I’m having trouble putting my finger on exactly why, but it meant that I didn’t like the story in the end. The closest I’m able to put it to words at this moment is that the “honestly” told parts of the story felt somehow even less genuine than the things that were clearly meant as propoganda. The over-the-top propoganda videos seemed to have been meant as a cautionary tale, and these other sections were meant to show the real life behind the propoganda, a life that isn’t so great. But to me these other sections didn’t ring true, to the point that they feel like propoganda directed at me and authored by Valente, using the obvious propoganda to try to drive me toward believing the other part is authentic when it really just felt like a more subtle propoganda to me. And, I mean, the main message I can detect there isn’t a bad one, that McCarthyism is a scary thing and that it’s a good thing that it didn’t sweep the American mindset and stay there. But the way that it’s told makes me want to distrust every part of the story as more propoganda, and that means that everything is so disingenuous to my gut feelings that there’s nothing of meaning here to me. In the end, this story just ended up just leaving me irritated.