Review: Clarkesworld Magazine Issue 211

Clarkesworld Magazine Issue 211 by Neil Clarke
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is another good issue of Clarkesworld, with four outstanding stories and one story that I thought was....kinda weird, but still notable.

We start out with the longest story in the issue, Rich Larson's novella "The Indomitable Captain Holli." Now Rich Larson can be hit or miss with me; he tends towards the cyberpunk in his stories, and I can only tolerate so much of that. But while this story starts out with a cyberpunk narrative and setting, it gradually reveals what it really is: a post-apocalyptic story of survival, with what may be the last humans on earth living in two giant towers (think Burj Khalifa-size) in a ruined city, guarded--and preyed upon--by the AIs and robots in each opposing tower. The primary viewpoint character is six-year-old Holli, who takes turns being cute and being a little sociopath. It's a deft, risky characterization.

On the other end of the length spectrum, the delightful "Occurrence at 01339," by Kelly Jennings, comes in at only 1800 words but packs a helluva lot into a few pages. This little story explores the search for sentience and how it would be defined. Ruby the mining bot is trying to answer that very question, proposed by an alien probe under the threat of human destruction if she cannot satisfy it in 10 queries. There's a nice O. Henry style twist at the end.

"An Intergalactic Smuggler's Guide to Homecoming," by the fine new writer Tia Tashiro, is a crisis of conscience of sorts, as the titular Miko smuggles seven hundred intelligent thumbnail-size aliens out of their home system, where one bioluminescent faction of the Xellia are being targeted for extinction in their civil war. When she delivers her cargo and discovers why the client really wants them (for a "potent psychoactive" they naturally produce, the extraction of which will cause the death of all the aliens), she bolts with the Xellia. Her quest to save them dovetails with her reunion with her estranged twin sister Rina.

The novelette "The Arborist," by Derrick Boden, is a bit of a mythological horror story, set on an alien planet being terraformed by a "vast solitary organism," genetically modified, which will wipe out the nasty native life and prepare the planet for the arrival of humans from Earth. But some of the team members on the planet supervising the organism's progress begin to have second thoughts about their mission, naming the organism after the mythological "world tree" Yggdrasil, and calling it a "plague" that will eventually spread along with humans to other worlds and exterminate all life. This story has a bit of a philosophical divide and struggle, pitting human survival against the survival of other life, and whether humans have any right to wipe out other life, intelligent or not, to save themselves.

Finally, the aforementioned weird story, "The Rambler," by Shen Dacheng, translated by Cara Healey, is the fantastical tale of a pedestrian bridge that comes to life, pulls its four concrete supports, like legs, out of the ground, and walks off. We follow it as it learns to maneuver its "body" and flees into the wilderness. I guess this story could be called "magical realism," perhaps, as this one essential strangeness is just accepted by everyone in the story. While those following the bridge intend to disassemble it if they can make it stand still long enough, it eventually fords a river and escapes.

As always, if you like these stories, or this magazine, please subscribe. Amazon's Kindle fuckery, explained here, resulted in the magazine (and many others) taking what could be a crippling hit. I've subscribed to this magazine for years, and it is worth saving.

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Review: Ghost Station

Ghost Station by S.A. Barnes
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This author seems to be making a career out of sci-fi horror, and a successful one: this book, her second, is more assured than her first. The back cover blurbs also compare this book to the classic sf/horror movie Alien, although that's not entirely accurate--there are no Xenomorphs to be found here. But there is a mystery and the slow reveal of alien possession, and the dawning horror of being taken over by a mysterious outside entity.

As in the author's first book, the protagonist Ophelia Bray is a troubled woman with a traumatic past of her own. She is the daughter of one of the richest families on Earth, and she is also the daughter of Field "Bloody" Bledsoe, who succumbed to ERS--Eckhart-Reiser syndrome--and killed twenty-nine people about twenty years before. Ophelia, then known as Lark Bledsoe, was present during the massacre and needless to say has been haunted by it ever since. She is now a psychologist studying the syndrome and trying to come up with ways to cure it, and as the book opens she is preparing to go into cold sleep for a three-month interstellar journey to join the Reclamation and Exploration team of the ship Resilience. They are on their way to an abandoned planet where an ancient alien city has been discovered, and Ophelia is taking new equipment provided by her employer, the Montrose corporation, to see if ERS can be prevented.

But the R & E team don't want Ophelia there, and she has a difficult time settling in with them on the planet. Then comes the slow reveal of things starting to go wrong, and the rising horror of the ruins infecting all the team members and taking them over. One of the most effective things about this is that the cause of the possession is not defined--is it the two black alien towers on the planet, some sort of sentient nanotechnology that killed the original inhabitants thousands of years ago, an alien organism that manifests itself as black sludge oozing out of noses and ears, or something else altogether? It doesn't really matter, because after all the pieces are set in place this becomes a tightly written struggle for survival, as the surviving team members race to get off-planet before they are completely taken over and no longer in control of their own bodies.

Along the way Ophelia undergoes a nice character arc: she is riddled with survivors' guilt and self-hatred for being the daughter of "Bloody" Bledsoe, and she has to learn to let that go and recognize she is neither responsible for the past sins of her father or the current sins of her mother's family. There is a hint of romance between Ophelia and Ethan Severin, the commander of the expedition, but for the most part the focus is firmly on the horror of the situation and the fight to survive. After reading the author's first book, I can see how she has improved as a writer: this effort is more mature, with better pacing, worldbuilding and characterization, and simply a better story. This book is well worth your time.

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Review: The Saint of Bright Doors

 

When I read books, especially ones I know I'm going to write about later, I stick slips of paper in the pages to mark items that interest me and which I think will interest other readers: a particularly lovely prose passage, a paragraph of worldbuilding, a section explaining the book's theme. The more scraps of paper I have in the pages, the more complex and thought-provoking a book is, to me.

This book has more slips than I've used in a long time. 

I don't even know how you would classify this. It's science fiction in that it has hints of a multiverse and other worlds, but at the same time it's very much a fantasy with virtually immortal humans who gain godlike powers and the ghosts of people from those other worlds coming through the titular "bright doors." It's not our Earth--there are references to two "supercontinents"--but the characters also have automobiles, cell phones, television, crowdfunding, and the internet. Sometimes in reading the story you almost get a glimpse of the real-life cities, countries and history the story is based on (the writer hails from Sri Lanka) but then the story will take a wild turn and go off in its own fantastical direction (particularly when the protagonist, Fetter, is wandering through a "prison" that must encompass hundreds of square miles). It's a book where you gradually realize that Fetter and the character actually telling the story are not one and the same, and when it dawns on you just who--or rather, what--the narrator is, your entire perception of the story is thrown for a loop. 

It's a unique story unlike just about anything I've read before, bursting with inventiveness and ambition. Its scope is as large as making Fetter's father a 2500-year-old god-human who can twist the fabric of time and space, and as tightly focused as taking on a country's repeated occupations and the repression of undesirable castes and races. At the same time, it's the story of Fetter, a former child assassin who outgrew his god-mother's manipulation of his childhood, attempting to mold him into a weapon to kill his god-father, and how he learns to let go of his anger and become his own person. 

With all this density, needless to say, it's not a quick read. You have to take your time with this one. Let the characters and concepts slowly sink in, and contemplate what the author is trying to say. The book sometimes meanders in places (especially when Fetter is walking through that miles-long prison, with its hundreds of districts) and you might be wondering, what is the point of this? But every weird situation Fetter gets into, or strange character he encounters, does have a point, and eventually you will find out what it all means. 

I ended up liking it a lot more than I thought I would; usually a book like this is not my cup of tea at all. It's a helluva debut, and this writer is one to keep an eye on. 

Review: Shubeik Lubeik

Shubeik Lubeik by Deena Mohamed
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This graphic novel was originally published in Arabic, and the translation to English carries over the same format: reading from right to left instead of left to right. This left me a bit disoriented for a while--I felt like I was driving on the wrong side of the road. I did get used to it, however, and was eventually able to get into the story.

This story explores the effect of one change on the world: if wishes were a real thing that could be refined, bottled, and sold. The world as laid out here has an extensive alternate history weaving the industry of wishes into our world's politics. There are different grades of wishes, regulations around their production and use, and registration requirements. This is interwoven with three separate stories about the use of three "first-class" wishes, the kind that will change one's life. Aziza was thrown in prison because someone thought she wasn't supposed to have her wish and didn't deserve it; Noud, whose story is the longest, is grappling with severe depression and wrestles with whether or not to use the wish to cure himself. The panels in this story illustrating the contradictions and levels of depression are quite clever in portraying the disease. In the final story, Shokry, the shopkeeper who had all three first-class wishes to begin with, is trying to use the last wish to save someone's life. The woman he is attempting to save tells him a harrowing tale of revenge about her life with an abusive husband and how her children die. Decades later, she is dying of cancer herself and only wishes to join her children, and asks Shokry not to use his wish. All three tales explore the Egyptian culture and the culture of wishes in this alternate world.

This volume is quite thick and heavy and alternates color and black and white panels. There is also a liberal sprinkling of Arabic, even in the English translation (in particular, the djinn are depicted as whirling bursts of Arabic characters). It's not the best graphic novel I've read so far this year, but it's worth picking up.



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Review: Wonder Woman Historia: The Amazons

Wonder Woman Historia: The Amazons by Kelly Sue DeConnick
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Well, after reading this, I wish Kelly Sue DeConnick could write all the comics.

I realize there are many other talented comics writers, such as Tom King and G. Willow Wilson. But I've rarely seen a better fit between a writer and a world than DeConnick and this Amazon origin story.

This supersized volume tells the story of the six goddesses who went behind Zeus' back and created the Amazons; the human queen of the seventh Amazon tribe, Hippolyta; and the war between the Amazons and the gods that ended with their banishment to Themyscira. Wonder Woman appears at the very end of the story, as a baby freshly created by Hera; the focus is on Hippolyta and the losing war she fought with the gods, and the terrible decision she made so her sisters could live.

Hippolyta is a different, and interesting, lens to view the Amazons' origin story through. She is haunted by the choice she made at the beginning, as a working midwife, to take an unwanted newborn baby girl and expose her to the elements, setting her adrift on a basket in a stream to die. She changes her mind and goes back for the child, but cannot find her; and thereafter runs and runs until she is captured by some marauding men and freed by the Amazons. From there she follows the Amazons relentlessly, meeting up with the goddess Artemis along the way (Artemis is one of the best characters in the book, by the way--a prickly, stubborn goddess-child), repeatedly asking to join them, until she and a group of similarly rescued women are finally taken in to become the Amazons' seventh tribe, and Hippolyta is chosen to be its Queen.

This interweaving storyline of humans and gods is fascinating in and of itself, but it's the art that really elevates this book. It's an oversized book to begin with, coffee-table size, and it needs and uses every bit of the extra room for the glorious page spreads. There are three issues contained therein, with three separate artists, and as much as I gripe about comics artists changing as a series goes along, these three (Phil Jimenez, Gene Ha and Nicola Scott) mesh better than most. If I had to pick one, Phil Jimenez, who drew the first issue, has simply gorgeous art (if a bit busy--you really have to pause and look over his pages to pick out the many details he offers to expand the story, but the art and colors are so beautiful I didn't mind taking the extra time).

This is an excellent addition to the Wonder Woman world and myth, and is worth seeking out.

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Review: The Mimicking of Known Successes

The Mimicking of Known Successes by Malka Ann Older
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This novella successfully straddles several genres at once: hard science fiction (the setting is a human settlement of Jupiter, with floating platforms and rails that circumnavigate much of the planet), noir (the plot involves a murder mystery), lgbt (our protagonists are Mossa, the investigator probing the seeming disappearance of an academic with many secrets, and Pleiti, a scholar of pre-collapse Earth and its ecosystems; they were past lovers and find their way to each other again in a sweet, understated romance), and post-apocalyptic (in this timeline, Earth was drained dry of resources and rendered uninhabitable, and Pleiti's Preservation Society guards the remaining genetic material of animals and ecosystems). That is quite a lot to stuff into 166 pages, but the author manages it well.

Mossa and Pleiti also have elements of Holmes and Watson, needless to say, with Mossa's single-mindedness and deductive powers (it's never stated outright, but she seems to be on the autism spectrum to me). Pleiti broke off their relationship several years previously, when they were at university, but they get a second chance in this book. There's also a fascinating future history of humanity that could have taken up many more pages, but the author only reveals as much as she needs to.

The mystery is parceled out and dealt with fairly, but it's the worldbuilding and characters that shine here. The author could easily put a full length novel in this setting. Perhaps that will happen someday, but in the meantime do pick this up. It's a quick read, but it has nice depths.

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Review: Mammoths at the Gates

Mammoths at the Gates by Nghi Vo
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is a gentle, slice-of-life story that would almost qualify as a "cozy"--there are no terrible crises or world-threatening stakes, but rather an exploration of death, grief and the stories we tell each other about our world, to understand it and make sense of losing someone we love. This is the fourth in a series of novellas about the traveling cleric Chih, who collects stories and information and periodically returns to their abbey, Singing Hills, for that information to be processed. The abbey also houses a colony of intelligent birds, neixin, that have perfect memory and serve as a sort of living repository to record everything that happens.

Chih returns to the abbey after a four-year-absence to find something startling: the two titular "mammoths at the gates," war mammoths bearing two military officers that have taken up residence outside the abbey, demanding the return of their grandfather, Cleric Thien, who has recently died. This constitutes the entire conflict, but this story works because a) it's short, only novella length; and b) it concentrates on the characters, including the non-human ones.

At the end, one of the birds, Myriad Virtues, grieving the loss of her cleric, transforms into a doppleganger of Thien:

Chih could see the shape of it now, transformation fueled by grief. In the stories that Myriad Virtues had told Cleric Thien so long ago in Boddo, just a fraction of the explanations for the origin of the neixin, that was always the way of it. Great love or great passion or great vengeance had created the neixin, so perhaps it stood to reason that great sorrow could change them again.

The bird/human ends up leaving Singing Hills to tend the grave of Cleric Thien's deceased wife, and the mammoths and their handlers also depart, leaving Chih at the abbey for a brief stay before setting out again.

As you can see, this is pretty much a comfort read. You have to be in the mood for it, but it's a nice little break if you need it.

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Review: Sunbringer

Sunbringer by Hannah Kaner
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This second book in the Fallen Gods series expands on the worldbuilding and characters, raises the stakes, and in general gets our protagonists in a whole lot of trouble. It has a bit of an abrupt and depressing ending, setting up for a third-volume climax which will no doubt be a helluva (likely quite literal, since the antagonist is a fire goddess) big showdown.

This world is a quite interesting one, since the gods here are brought into existence by the prayers/offerings/shrines of their worshippers. There are thousands of them, from the aforementioned fire goddess Hseth to the sea god Osidisen to one of our protagonists, Skediceth, the god of white lies, and all sorts of large and small gods in between (including a "god of broken sandals"). Three years before the first book, King Arren of Middren and his loyal commander and strategist Elogast fought a cohort of so-called "wild gods" at the city of Blenraden. Arren nearly died, and was saved by one of the very gods he claimed to despise, the hearth god Hestra. He has continued his hypocritical persecution of gods ever since.

Another of our protagonists is the titular "godkiller" of the first book, Kissen, whose family was massacred by the fire goddess. In the first book, she became entangled with a young girl of noble birth, Inara Craier, who has somehow become bonded with Skediceth. All of these characters are now dealing with the fallout from the previous volume, along with the discovery that the fire goddess Hseth is not as dead as Kissen had thought. She is in fact gaining strength as the cult of her worshippers swells, and in this book she begins her fiery march across the land.

This book dwells more on the psychology of worship and faith, and draws some interesting conclusions, since this world runs on faith, both good and bad. The characters grapple with their faith, and what it does to themselves and the people around them. While the first book focused more on Kissen and Elogast, this one shines a greater light on Inara, who finds out who and what she really is, and explores her power. This is a good thing, since obviously that power will be sorely needed in the fight to come.

One other thing about this series is the outstanding covers, which are just gorgeous. Of course, the books have to live up to those covers, which they do quite well. I'm looking forward to the final book.

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Review: The Archive Undying

The Archive Undying by Emma Mieko Candon
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is the saga of an alternate world (not Earth as far as I can tell, or has been revealed yet), with giant robots and artificial intelligences sane and insane. It has some of the most complicated worldbuilding I have read in a long time, and is generally a pretty dense story all the way through.

Unfortunately, that sometimes comes at the expense of characterization. The primary protagonist (though not the narrator; it becomes clear as we move through the story that the person telling it is not human at all) is Sunai, the "relic" (read: human interface) of an AI named Iterate Fractal that "corrupted," or went insane and fragmented, seventeen years ago. During said corruption, Sunai had a copy of Iterate Fractal downloaded into his brain, a silent (and not-so-silent as the story progresses) "passenger" that increasingly becomes a key mover in the plot.

In this world, AI's rule the various cities and provinces, and for the most part, that rule is horrifying:

"Where do you think you are?" Sunai has to catch his breath. That heat flares ever brighter and more sickening. "What do you think happened here? This is where Iterate Fractal ate people, Adi. Every poor asshole who couldn't figure out where they fit in its master plan."

"Criminals."

"Oh, sure! Criminals, in a state where the patron AI had integrated us so completely into its network that it could compel us to do whatever it wanted. Criminals who happily got on the boat to this killing field." Sunai scoffs. "If people in Khuon Mo hurt each other, it was because Iterate Fractal let them. Because it was running an experiment, or because it was curious. But it always got tired in the end, and then it got upset. 'Why couldn't you be nicer? Why couldn't you behave? How could you want to leave?' "

Sunai hunts down corrupted "fragtech," the copies of fragmented AIs that constitute themselves into giant and misshapen mecha roaming the wildlands of this world, even though his great secret is that he is "corrupted" himself. He carries a great deal of guilt and PTSD over what happened with Iterate Fractal seventeen years ago, and the revealing of this secret is a major plot point. Along the way, he gets involved with another relic, Veyadi Lut. Veyadi builds a machine to take down the resurrected remnants of Iterate Fractal called the Maw, and Veyadi and Sunai are dragged into a giant fight involving humans, said remnants, and fragtech.

The plot is just as complicated as the worldbuilding, especially at the climax. This is definitely not a quick, breezy read: you really have to pay attention to even halfway follow what is going on. I enjoy worldbuilding as much as the next SFF fan, and probably more than most, but this book got to be a little too much for me in places (which is one reason it took so long to read it). The fact that the characters needed to be fleshed out more--sometimes I could hardly tell the secondary characters apart--didn't help. I appreciated this book for being hugely ambitious in its worldbuilding and scale, but I wish that density could have been pared back just a bit to make the story easier to follow.

Still, this is a debut novel, so I can forgive a lot in such a case. Certainly this author has imagination and ambition to burn, and if they can improve they will be a writer to watch.



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