The first story I read this year made me cry. That is "Not Lost (Never Lost)" by Premee Mohamed. This is a beautiful story about Voyager, the probe launched from Earth nearly fifty years ago, and the various alien beings it has encountered along the way--including one that lifted it to sentience. But its nuclear power pack is finally running down, and it is facing its own death. Would that we mere human beings could come to terms with our end as nobly as this fictional artificial intelligence.
I picked up the anthology Alternative Liberties after reading about it on Facebook. The publisher, B Cubed Press, put out a few "alternative" anthologies (named after Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway's infamous crack about "alternative facts") during Trump's first term, and now they have started up again. This book was thrown together hastily following the election, and it shows: to be honest, most of the stories are just so-so, and one has a severe typo/formatting issue that resulted in not only misplaced words, but entire lines.
However, there is one shining diamond in this mediocre rough, and that is "Diminished Horizons," by Adam-Troy Castro. This story is a powerful exploration of fascism that takes two different paths. At the end, the story turns into outright eldritch Lovecraftian horror, as the protagonist emerges from his prolonged house arrest to find that his front yard, and seemingly the entire Earth, has disappeared into a "thick pea-soup fog." The narrator has no idea if there is anything left, but he has had his fill of "learned helplessness," and steps out his front door anyway. The story ends there with his final benediction: "Fuck them all, I thought, and stepped into the abyss."
But how he gets there is arguably the most horrifying thing of all, as this story lays out in precise terms how fascism operates, how people are oppressed, dehumanized and everything is stripped away from them, one step, one humiliation and one removal at a time. First it is his freedom, then his books and his movies; then his physical house starts narrowing, ending up as a first-floor hallway with a portrait of Dear Leader hanging at the end, replacing the picture of the protagonist's deceased wife. It's one of the most frightening things I've ever read, even without the fantastical aspects.
The January issue of Clarkesworld Magazine has two outstanding stories: "The Temporary Murder of Thomas Monroe," by Tia Tashiro (one of my favorite new authors) and "Autonomy," by Meg Elison.
The MacGuffin of Tia Tashiro's story is the "medtag," an implanted device that will resurrect someone from the dead by using nanobots to restore brain neurons. But what this story is really about is the relationship between parents and children, and the smothering and manipulation of the protagonist Thomas Monroe by his mother and father, who are trying to force him down a career track he is totally unsuited for. Finaly, he essentially takes out a mob hit on himself in his attempt to break free. Despite the burst of violence at the beginning, this is a gentle story that has a lot to say about the limits of love.
"Autonomy," on the other hand, is a short, sharp, bloody feminist howl of rage, against men who catcall, stalk and sexually assault women. It involves a code that can turn a self-driving car into a weapon, and it references, among other things, the trans woman Christine Jorgensen and an almost forgotten 80's horror movie, Christine, about a demon-possessed '55 Plymouth Fury (based on, what else, a Stephen King novel, and also one of the first times I ever heard George Thorogood's "Bad To the Bone"). This story is definitely in-your-face with its message, but hell, we need that sometimes.
These stories are all worth your time and consideration, and in Adam-Troy Castro's case, requesting your library order Alternative Liberties so you can read his story (if you don't want to pay for the entire anthology). Hopefully any subsequent printings will correct the errors.
