Sense of Wonder

by Gardner Dozois

  Much like the January Asimov’s, the February Asimov’s contains a lot of entertaining stories worth the reading, but nothing particularly outstanding. The best story here is probably Sean McMullen’s “Exceptional Forces,” a sly and clever story about a genius reasoning with a female assassin who’s come to his hotel room to kill him; this one goes off in unexpected directions, and is all the more satisfying as a result. Also good, although intensely sad, is Bruce McAllister’s “Bringing Them Back,” in which someone in a near future destroyed by climate change lists all the creatures that used to share the planet with us but which now are gone forever—a list on which he includes himself as one of the last representatives of homo sapiens. In “The Charge and the Storm,” An Owomoyela takes us to a world where human refugees from a crashed spaceship have been taken in to their enclosed cities by aliens (who themselves seem to be refugees from the surface of their own planet; victims of catastrophic climate change, perhaps? From a different planet altogether? It’s not entirely clear). The humans and aliens have reached a state of uneasy co-existence and equilibrium, although one that’s constantly threatened by human radicals who want to tip the balance toward human domination of the more technologically advance aliens, and who aren’t afraid to use terrorist attacks to fulfill that end—and this is the story of one woman who stands as both a bridge and a barrier between the two races. The protagonist is so insular, always preoccupied with chewing over problems and emotions that we might not understand at first, and the backstory complicated enough, that the story is a chewy read in places, particularly early on, but has become compelling by the end.

  Nick Wolven’s “Passion Summer” is an elegantly written story about a boy coming-of-age in a future where the artificial manipulation of emotions is possible, and who must decide on who or what to select for his first Passion, an artificially created obsession that may enthrall him for the rest of his life; turns out that there are unexpected drawbacks to this process, especially when you come from a dysfunctional family where your mother has become addicted to these kind of neurochemical alterations of mental states. “The Monster of 1928,” by Sandra McDonald, is a nicely done story, full of authentic-seeming historical detail, about a flood that devastated the Everglades in the late ‘20s; a not-terribly-formidable Cthulhu (one who’s capable of being challenged for dominance by an alligator) shows up later, but the story doesn’t really need him and could have been told as a straight historical period piece instead—except, of course, that then she probably wouldn’t have any place to sell the story in the first place. Similarly, “In Equity,” by Sarah Gallien is the story of an orphan anxiously awaiting placement in a new home, fearing that they won’t accept him, that, except for a few unessential science fictional details, could easily have been told as a straight mainstream story instead. Michael Libling’s “The Grocer’s Wife (Enhanced Transcription)” examines the rather unconvincing idea of artificially generated Alzheimer’s Disease.

  The January/February Interzone, Interzone 262, is a strong issue, with more science fiction than usual, and a number of interestingly varied locations, different from the near-future British dystopia that I’ve come to think of as the default Interzone story. The best story here is probably Mercurio D. Rivera’s “The Water Walls of Enceladus,” another story in his Wergen series, in which a race of technologically advance aliens are enthralled by the “beauty” of human beings, and will do anything to remain worshipfully in their presence. This one is set on Enceladus, where a woman considered by humans to be spectacularly disfigured has self-exiled herself to do essentially meaningless scientific busywork with a colony of appreciative Wergen who devotedly follow her every move, something that has begun to get on her nerves. She tries to escape, and what happens next shows just what lengths the Wergen will go to in order not to be separated from their beloved. “A Strange Loop,” by T.R. Napper, written in a loose, jazzy style that seems to be typical of Napper, if untypical of Interzone, is the story of a man who makes his living selling his memories but decides he wants some of them back, reminiscent in some ways of the film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind; an entertaining piece, although I did wonder why his memories would be worth so much money, since they seemed mostly to be of trauma and unhappiness. “Empty Planets,” by Rahul Kanakia, is a meandering tale of a kid growing up in a prosperous, multi-planetary society who spends most of his life feeling that he is on the verge of coming up with a marvelous philosophical idea or insight, and then never actually comes up with one—which might make the story seem kind of pointless, except that I suspect that that pointlessness is the point. “Geologic,” by Ian Sales, sets up an intriguing situation on an alien planet where an ancient artifact has been discovered, and then abruptly ends the story without resolving anything, as if he’d gotten tired of telling it. “Dependent Assemblies,” by Philip A. Suggars, is the issue’s only fantasy, dealing with the uses and problems of using a substance called “lux” that invests inanimate objects with life, rather like the Powder of Life in L. Frank Baum’s Oz books. Atmospherically written, but I always thought that fantasy stories seemed out-of-place somehow in Interzone, and this one seems especially incongruous surrounded by all the SF in the issue.

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  Asimov’s, March.

  Lightspeed, February.

  Lightspeed, March.

  Hwarhath Stories: Twelve Transgressive Tales by Aliens, by Eleanor Arnason. (Aqueduct Press, 291 pages)

  The March issue of Asimov’s has some entertaining stories in it, but nothing really outstanding. Much the same could be said about the January and February issues, which means that after ending 2015 with a couple of very strong issues, Asimov’s is off to a bit of a weak start this year. There’s still plenty of worthwhile reading provided here, though. The best story in March is probably Ted Kosmatka’s “The Bewilderness of Lions,” a subtle story about predicting (and, in fact, affecting) the future through complex data-mining and the extensive mapping of trends, and also about how it’s difficult to extort someone into doing something if they not only don’t care if your worst threats come true, but actually want them to happen. Also good here is Dale Bailey’s offbeat “I Married a Monster from Outer Space.” The satiric device used in the Bailey story is that nobody else except the wife and the husband notices the Monster from Outer Space they’ve sort-of unofficially adopted when its Flying Saucer crashes nearby, so that, for instance, the waitress at Hooter’s never reacts to the fact that they’re sharing their table with an alien that looks like a giant bug with an exposed brain (which could lead to a reading that the alien is just a fantasy the wife is having as part of a psychotic breakdown—but I don’t think that’s where Bailey is going); this enables the author to insert the alien to satirical effect into a lot of ordinary situations, at the movies, at the gas station, at the diner, sitting around in the trailer drinking cans of beer, without the story becoming about everybody else’s reaction to its being there. If the story was just meant to be funny, it would be too long, but Bailey manages to justify the extra length by generating a surprising amount of poignancy as well, mostly with his portrait of how soddenly bleak and hopeless the life of the working-class housewife is, something that may send a trickle of unease through many of those reading the issue, whose own lives might not be that far off.

  Ray Nayler’s “Do Not Forget Me” gives us an atmospheric exercise in nesting stories told by a succession of narrators, dealing with the arrival of the Great Poet in a little town in Central Asia long ago, and the tales of the uncertainty of life that are unfurled by his arrival. The eponymous “ship whisperer” in Julie Novakova’s “The Ship Whisperer” is someone whose job it is to interface with and interact with the sentient AI that controls a starship, and who runs afoul of a conspiracy involving an alien artifact of almost ultimate cosmic power that has been discovered on a alien planet; somewhat familiar stuff, although briskly and competently told (the obsessed Evil Colonel is a bit one-dimensional and cartoonish, though). R. N
eube adds another story to his long sequence of “Grainer” stories with “A Little Bigotry,” this one showing how a down-on-her-luck refugee, a veteran of the war against the aliens who now control the station she’s seeking refuge in, is used by one of the aliens to teach a lesson in tolerance to his offspring. James Gunn’s “New Earth” demonstrates that finding an Earth-like planet to colonize may be only the start of the problems the potential colonists will face.

  The February Lightspeed is rather weak—or at least, most of the stuff in it is not to my taste, not necessarily the same thing. The story I enjoyed most was probably Jeremiah Tolbert’s “Not by Wardrobe, Tornado, or Looking Glass,” a fantasy where “wormholes” have begun to open between various fantasy worlds and our own, allowing an exchange of population in both directions, with fantasy creatures taking up residence in our cities, and taking on human roles, as the original human inhabitants decamp to live in the fantasy world of their choice. The most elegantly written story here is Karin Tidbeck’s “Starfish,” a strange little story that exists somewhere on the borderland between reality and dreamlike fabulation, not quite a fantasy as we’re used to thinking of fantasy in the genre, closer to slipstream. “Sooner or Later Everything Falls into the Sea,” by Sarah Pinsker, is ostensibly a science fiction story, but there’s something dreamlike about it too, with the scenario that all the rich people have gone to live on luxury ships in the sea while everything else in the world has fallen apart and gone to Hell operating on a dream-logic level that wouldn’t quite make sense in the real world; many of the actions of the characters seem to be operating on a level of dream-logic as well, which gives the story a drifting feeling, as if it’s only partially engaging with reality. Rachel K. Jones’s “Charlotte Incorporated” follows a desperate social-climber in a faintly distasteful future where you have to save up enough money to buy a body, and until you do you’re a brain and a bundle of nerves stuffed inside a jar on a scooter.

  The March Lightspeed is considerably stronger. Best story here is probably “Redking,” by Craig Delancey, a fast-paced and involving postcyberpunk tale about a “code monkey” helping the police to track down the source of a virus that is infecting gamers and making them act erratically in unpredictable ways, sometimes killing themselves or others, and which threatens to spread until it becomes a virtual pandemic; there’s no ground here that hasn’t been covered by others before, but Delancey handles it all with a nicely-done professional competence that makes it a fun read. Also very good in March is Rich Larson’s “Sparks Fly,” the slyly amusing story of a “sparkhead”—someone who generates an electrical field that interferes with the operation of electronic equipment—trying to court a girl without either letting her find out about his socially disapproved-of affliction or setting off or frying her cellphone, computer, alarm clock, or TV set. There’s an unexpected twist at the end that enhanced my enjoyment of the story and made me smile. Lightspeed lists this as a fantasy, but it seems to me that it could just as well be considered to be an SF story of the “Wild Talents”/mutant variety—but then, I often have a problem with the way Lightspeed classifies their stories. The rest of the original stories in March are weaker. Caroline M. Yoachim’s “Welcome to the Medical Clinic at the Interplanetary Relay Station/Hours Since the Last Patient Death: 0,” in spite of the SFnal title, is actually a tongue-in-cheek satirical Choose-Your-Own-Adventure story rather than an serious SF story, amusing in places, but too long, as many comic pieces are. Marie Vibbert’s “Michael Doesn’t Hate His Mother” is a semi-surrealistic piece about a future where (for no reason ever explained) children are watched over by huge mechanical “mothers,” in spite of the fact that the mothers often act dangerously erratic and hurt their charges or even endanger their lives.

  One of the most criminally overlooked and neglected of living science fiction authors, Eleanor Arnason has been producing a wide variety of first-rate stuff for decades, from the Space Opera of her Lydia Duluth stories to the Space Age fabulism of her Big Mama stories to her quirky and eclectic fantasy stories set in Iceland (recently collected in Hidden Folk: Icelandic Fantasies). In SF, though, Arnason has done most of her best work in her long sequence of hwarhath stories, unusual in science fiction for being stories told by aliens (the humanoid, space-travelling hwarhath) about aliens, with human characters rarely appearing and humanity often not mentioned at all. The sequence started with the unjustly forgotten novel A Woman of the Iron People in 1991 (one of the best SF novels of the ‘90s, and winner of the first James Tiptree Memorial Award) and has continued since through to the present day in novellas, novelettes, and short stories that have at last been gathered together in a collection, Hwarhath Stories: Twelve Transgressive Tales by Aliens, by Eleanor Arnason. This is anthropological science fiction at its best, with only Ursula K. Le Guin rivaling Arnason in cultural insight and in the sophistication, complexity, and evocativeness of her worldbuilding. The hwarhath serve as a distorted mirror in which we can clearly see our own follies, foibles, and peculiarities, and the inequalities of our society; the hwarhath, meanwhile, see humans as a distorted mirror in which they can see the peculiarities and inequalities of their own society. Arnason does her best work here at novella length, and I consider “The Potter of Bones” and “Dapple” to be among the very best novellas of their respective years, and as having an honorable place amongst the list of the best SF novellas ever written. “The Hound of Merlin,” “The Actors,” “The Lovers,” “The Garden,” and “Holmes Sherlock” are also very strong; in fact, there’s really nothing here that isn’t worth reading. Coming as it does from a small press, you may not see Hwarhath Stories: Twelve Transgressive Tales by Aliens included on many lists of the best collections of 2016 as the year comes to an end, but believe me, it’s one of them. It may even turn out to be the best collection of the year.

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  Asimov’s, April/May.

  Tor.com, January 6-April 13.

  Lightspeed, April.

  Slate, April 26.

  The April/May Double Issue of Asimov’s is a substantial one, full of good stories, almost all of them core SF—probably few if any of them will make award ballots next year, but taken together they make the issue more than worth the money it takes to buy it in entertainment value. The best story here is probably also the most ambitious one: “Flight from the Ages,” by Derek Künsken, a story taking place over a timespan of billions of years, ultimately all the way back to the beginning of the universe, in which a banking IA operating a customs and tariff spaceship tries to deal with the inadvertent release of unimaginably powerful forces from a ancient alien weapon of war that threatens to destroy not only our galaxy but all of spacetime. There’s some great and very original conceptualization here, although as there are no human protagonists and a number of chewy scientific infodumps to get through, some readers may find it a bit abstract or austere, but stick with it and your persistence will be rewarded by a pure dose of that Sense of Wonder stuff that science fiction is supposed to deliver. Also good in April/May is Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s “Matilda,” which deals with the dysfunctional relationship between a human pilot and another AI-operated sentient spaceship, and how they have to learn to function with each other in order to survive a dangerous mission in enemy territory. Another spaceship pilot (although the ships here function more like tugboats than what we usually think of as spaceships) is at the heart of new writer Suzanne Palmer’s long novella “Lazy Dog Out,” as a tough, formerly homeless woman whose job it is to shepherd bigger spaceships in and out of a planet’s huge docking facility, a city in its own right, finds herself embroiled in a sinister conspiracy that threatens not only the station’s impoverished homeless population (with whom she’s maintained some contact) but her own life and the existence of everything she holds dear. This is a rare example in science fiction of a story that features someone in what is more-or-less a blue collar job (most SF centers around the upper classes, professional people, rich people, executives, scientists, ce
lebrities, politicians, if not the actual aristocracy themselves—not necessarily royals, but whoever the aristocracy of that society may be), and is well-told and suspenseful, although I did find it odd that the docking facility was planet-bound, where you have to push the big ships up out of a gravity well with your “tugboats,” rather than a station in space. Robert Reed’s “The Days of Hamelin” is the melancholy story of an unknown plague that starts killing children, and how the surviving children are affected emotionally and psychologically by having been passed over. T.R. Napper’s “Flame Trees” is an emotionally grueling story about an emotionally scarred veteran of a future war trying to hang on to the memories of the horrors he’s seen in the face of well-meaning government attempts to take them from him, in spite of the fact that the PTSD they generate make it impossible for him to truly function in society.

  Also in April/May, in “Of the Beast in the Belly,” C.W. Johnson rationalizes the old fantasy tale about a whale so big that it has the shipwrecked sailors it’s swallowed living in its belly (think Disney’s Pinocchio) as science fiction, with mixed results; I must admit that I was longing for the characters to get out of the alien “whale’s” belly long before they actually did, as those scenes dragged a bit for me. In “The Return of Black Murray,” Alexander Jablokov brings us along for the reunion in a now abandoned amusement park of old high-school friends whose lives were changed forever by one traumatic event that took place there one hot summer night many years before; this probably would have worked better as a mainstream story, with some more mundane reason for the tragic breakup of the classmates’s friendship, than it does with the rather trumped-up and unconvincing fantastic element that appears toward the end of the story. “Three Paintings,” by James Van Pelt deals with an artist coming to the slow realization that he’s unintentionally involved in a elaborate art scam, somewhat reduced in impact for me buy the fact that I find it hard to believe that he’d agree to put himself in the situation he’s in in the first place, where he kills himself for the sake of increased creativity. The issue’s only fantasy, Esther M. Friesner’s “Woman in the Reeds,” is not one of Friesner’s more familiar Comic Fantasy tales, but rather a rather grim tale about a mother struggling to save her baby from a malign supernatural Entity.