Peters Canyon, No Glimpse of Mary

Yesterday a friend and I completed a loop around Peters Canyon, opting for the trails with the steepest inclines. It was a great workout, all in all close to 6 miles.

Today at the gym my body seemed to respond to yesterday's change in pace. I found running on the treadmill easier than other days, and completed 4.5 miles in 46 minutes.

Keeping busy working on the next set of story reviews (flash fiction this time), reading and working on my own fiction. Eleven more days to go as far as my physical challenge for April is concerned; I'm stoked to have gotten this far.

Amazingly, John Kessel's new short-story collection The Baum Plan for Financial Independence and Other Stories is available as a free Creative Commons dl at the above link, as well as through regular fossil channels. Haven't read it yet but I'm well ready to make an investment.

Though I haven't yet worked my way through the complete 07 LRSF (but I haven't forgotten about it, either!), another list has recently been posted which contains recommended 2007 short fiction. It is Dave Truesdale's 2007 SF & Fantasy Recommended Reading List, and well worth checking out.

LRSF #36, Sanjeev and Robotwallah, Ian McDonald

Opening: Every boy in the class ran at the cry. Robotwar robotwar! The teacher called after them, Come here, come here bad wicked things. But she was only a Business-English artificial intelligence and by the time old Mrs. Mawji hobbled in from the juniors only the girls remained, sitting primly on the floor, eyes wide in disdain and hands up to tell tales and name names.

Capsule: I have not yet read McDonald's River of Gods or "Little Goddess" but this story, in the same universe, was certainly captivating enough as a standalone work. The attention to cultural detail was astounding, and there is more action than I'd imagined, as well. What initially appeared to be a straightforward if adorned coming-of-age story situated in a near-future India, where boys remotely steer AI-enhanced mechas and bots of destruction in ongoing local skirmishes, became a much more intricate, absorbing, psychologically complex portrayal of cultural norms, social emulation, and self.

LRSF #35, Osama Phone Home, David Marusek

Opening: We arrived by rental car and parked next to a delivery van in the lot closest to the freeway on-ramp. The van hid us from the security cam atop a nearby light pole. We were early, traffic being lighter than expected. As we waited, we touched up our disguises. At 09:55, we left the car singly and proceeded to our target site by separate mall entrances. I rode the escalators to the food court on the third level, while G, C, and B quickly reconned the lower floors, where shops were just opening their grates. Read more.

Capsule: I've some read reviews that criticized this story for being heavy-handed, and others for lacking deftness in its handling of post-9-11 sensibilities. I don't either of those statements are fair. I think Marusek accomplishes a really challenging there; taking a specific, "contemporary" subject susceptible to dramatic pitfalls and crafting an entertaining, thought-provoking story around it. Osama attains symbolic meaning in this story, while paradoxically being nothing more than the man, Osama bin Laden.

This story is memorable in multiple ways, not least of all its psychologically insightful ending. Marusek is able to generate narrative suspense and interest in an unusual way; proclivity for reality-based (or at least real-sounding) specificity. Paragraphs abound in which we are treated to techno-speculative pizzazz, and the sheer impossible, inevitable reality of it all draws us in. This is not the techno-military ambiance of Clancy et al, though, let me be clear. The trappings may bear some resemblance, but the tonal modality is lighter, more subtle, just removed enough in gravitas to achieve emotional involvement. This is, whatever else its accomplishments, an exciting story. It's exciting to see it published as SF. So what if we enjoy it? We're just patriots, after all.

LRSF #34, Who's Afraid of Wolf 359?, Ken MacLeod

Opening: When you're as old as I am, you'll find your memory's not what it was. It's not that you lose memories. That hasn't happened to me or anyone else since the Paleocosmic Era, the Old Space Age, when people lived in caves on the Moon. My trouble is that I've gained memories, and I don't know which of them are real. I was very casual about memory storage back then, I seem to recall. This could happen to you too, if you're not careful. So be warned. Do as I say, not as I did.


Capsule: Neat story in which which the narrator agrees to work on the clean-up of a "civilizational implosion" on a remote colony as a means of payment for a crime of adultery he commits. The story twists into unexpected terrain, and leads to a memorable payoff. The tone and development of the ideas lend it an ironic, humorous quality that is never quite outright satirical, SF self-referential, or slapstick funny. I enjoyed this one thoroughly and may come back to it for a second read (there's a lot of clever detail), though overall it wasn't as impressive as "Jesus Christ, Reanimator."

LRSF #33, Jesus Christ, Reanimator, Ken MacLeod

Opening: The Second Coming was something of a washout, if you remember. It lit up early-warning radar like a Christmas tree, of course, and the Israeli Air Force gave the heavenly host a respectable F-16 fighter escort to the ground, but that was when they were still treating it as a UFO incident.

Capsule: This story is told from the perspective of a reporter who witnesses, firsthand, the arrival into the modern world of someone who claims they are Jesus Christ and interacts with him. I enjoyed the tone of this story, which was light enough for the seriousness of the implications to shine through without ever becoming preachy, and was also ironic without being self-important. If Arthur C. Clarke's Third Law states that "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic," then MacLeod's elegant story neatly incorporates one of the possible converse implications, namely that in an age when faith in science dominates, supernatural phenomena or magic may be mistakenly interpreted for advanced technology. There is clever dialogue that covers all the obvious and not-so-obvious possibilities, from a multiplicity of perspectives, as well as action. The ending is quite memorable and adds a layer of unexpected personal human depth to a story which deals vigorously with Very Big Ideas.

LRSF #38, The Lost Boy: A Reporter at Large, Maureen F. McHugh

Opening: One June 13, 2014, Simon Weiss came into the mechanic's shop where he worked in Brookneal, Virginia. He was a quiet kid in Carharts overalls. He had started working at Brookneal Goodyear two years before at 16. He was enrolled in the vocational school and living with a foster family.

Capsule: Extremely well-written story narratively framed as a non-fiction article (a kind of populist medical case history, or medically-themed human interest piece). This choice works beautifully to create poignancy in this exploration of a child who appears to suffer from "dissociative fugue." Focusing on the details of names, places, times grounds the story in reality and prevents the trappings of bathos. I found several passages stunning for the sense of heightened realism they achieved. Don't pass up on this beauty.

LRSF #32, C-Rock City, Jay Lake & Greg Van Eekhout

Opening: Whenever the UMS Katie O'Hara called at C-Rock City, I called on one Rocky Muldoon. Twisted with him in my hammock, his soft snores in my ear, I ran my palm gently over his stubbled scalp and marveled that such a weird-looking guy could be so cute.

Capsule: This is an entertaining tale about a spacer's search for his origins. He is the son of Violet4264, one of the slaves who helped carve C-Rock City, a unique construct made from a set of three Class C asteroids. There is a classic SF feel to this story of adventure and revelation, told in a sprightly first-voice narration, though spruced up with some ironic observations (and of course the relationship described in that opening paragraph). The short sections also build suspense, and it all leads to a satisfying climax. I enjoyed the background universe of C-Rock city and wouldn't mind more stories, maybe longer ones, set in the same venue. The ending certainly leaves that possibility open.

LRSF #31, By Fools Like Me, Nancy Kress

Opening: Hope creeps quietly into my bedroom without knocking, peering around the corner of the rough doorjamb. I'm awake; sleep eludes me so easily now. I know from the awful smell that she has been to the beach.

Capsule: Well-written post-apocalyptic story. The setting was nicely described and the characters, and their inter-relationships, fully fleshed out. Conceptually, however, I found this story a little lacking (considering we've already seen many of the elements on display here: the discovery of books, forbidden in this particular society, the religiosity in response to a technologically-enabled catastrophe/warfare, etc.). In conclusion, I don't think this represents Kress' best short-length work, falling a little short of remarkable, but it's worth reading for the skill of the telling and the atmosphere it evokes.

LRSF #30, Art of War, Nancy Kress

Opening: "Return fire!" the colonel ordered, bleeding on the deck of her ship, ferocity raging in her nonetheless controlled voice.

The young and untried officer of the deck cried, "It won't do any good, there's too many--"

"I said fire, goddammit!"

Capsule: In this cleverly-titled and clever story Nancy Kress offers some interesting speculations on the convergence of two lifelines: art and war. In the midst of the Human-Teli war, the protagonist, a military art historian, is sent to 149-Delta to explain why the Teli have been hoarding human art. Through the application of chaos-based mathematics, he is able to discover what drives the Teli's behavior, which leads to greater revelations about the entire war.

While the conceptual premise was intriguing and the resolution well-handled, it was really the intermeshing of that with the character development that made the story work for me. The protagonist and narrator struggles with unnamed seizures, and the General in charge of the mission happens to be his mother, with whom he has been in lifelong conflict. None of the elements in this diverting story feel very new or will cause you to think too hard, but their combination and measure into a suspenseful piece with equal measure idea and character is well-executed, in the best space operatic fashion.

LRSF #29, Mrs. Zeno's Paradox, Ellen Klages

Opening: Anabel meets Midge for a treat. She enters a small cafe in the Mission District in San Francisco, bold graffiti-covered walls and baristas with multiple piercings and attitude.

Capsule: Or, Ellen Klages meets the Reader for a treat. That's exactly what this story is--as delicious as the brownie that is subjected to repeated Zenoesque division by the two protagonists. This story is really short but packs a beautiful punch. Interested in the limits of divisibility of spacetime? Are there any? Fem-lit perspective? Did one of the world's most famous physicists have any children we don't know about? All this and more in a few pages! Really enjoyed this sly, tightly crafted, entertaining tale.

LRSF #26, The Tomb Wife, Gwyneth Jones

Opening: "In Lar'sz' traditional society," said the alien, "a lady would often be buried with her husband. A rather beautiful custom, don't you think?"

Capsule: Note: The comments on this story are best considered in conjunction with those regarding the previous one. The Diaspora pieces work better as a whole, in my opinion, than as stand-alones.

Interesting story exploring ideas on relativity, subjective (non-linear) time, and relationships (both between beings of different races, and between beings and time). The premise, the various interpretations of which the tale ably explores, is delivered in that first sentence captured above. The highpoints were the sheer number of ideas explored, the fascinating glimpses of alien culture and spacefaring civilization, and an ending which spoke both to character transformation and conceptual breakthrough. However, I didn't think this story was particularly even, on the whole. The cast of characters seemed large for the length of the story, and their psychological development therefore compressed. Elen came fully alive for me, but only in the second half of the story. I also found the style a little jarring at times (exposition abruptly interrupting description, for example, but not really driving the story forward). A novella set in this universe might have been more satisfying.

LRSF #25, Saving Tiamat, Gwyneth Jones

Opening: I had reached the station in the depth of Left Speranza's night; I had not slept. Fogged in the confabulation of the transit, I groped through crushing eons to my favorite breakfast kiosk: unsure if the soaring concourse outside Parliament was ceramic and carbon or a metaphor; a cloudy internal warning --

Capsule: I read this story and the next one in reverse order, and a curious thing happened. They both take place in what, for lack of a better term (is there an already established one?), I'm going to call Jones' Diaspora Universe. I thing I enjoyed this more for having red "The Tomb Wife" before it.

There is a lot of sense-of-wunda stuff packed into the Diaspora universe, and here there is enough narrative space for these elements to breathe, to become differentiated, to stick in the mind. At the same time, having a sense of how things work in the Diaspora universe meant that I was more acutely aware of character development. Instead of having to process the assimilation of the world and the "peoples" inhabiting it at the same time, I had a little more energy to invest in the "psychological topography" (a phrase that inhabits the text of "The Tomb Wife"). As it turns out, I think this works to the story's advantage, since lighter character touches become infused with greater depth by this shift in reading attention, and on the whole the characters, though interesting, sometimes have a tough time competing with the background inventions and meditations (which cover the philosophical, linguistic, scientific, historical, political and sexual with surprising agility).

The resolution to the main ethical/cultural dilemma is well-handled, and the intrigue throughout is suspenseful without feeling manipulative. There is almost a sense of science-fictional narrative bravura that emerges from Jones' writing, I think in part because of her multi-hued thematic palette and her muscular prose (grammatically separate clauses joined by commas, use of hyphens to end scenes with abruptness, etc.)

I have a feeling that I'll enjoy each new story set in the Diaspora universe more than the ones before, and that a future collection of these someday might be a treat. Any glimpses into the Aleutian culture (the race responsible for developing mind/matter travel, and only keepers of its secrets) would be fascinating.

A review of this story and other pieces found in the anthology The New Space Opera is
available at: http://www.bestsf.net/reviews/thenewspaceopera.html

Also, the long and insightful piece on The New Space Opera by Dave Truesdale, "Off On A Tangent: F&SF Style," offers a juicy paragraph on this story and is well worth the read: http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/2007/dt0710.htm

LRSF #23, Unpossible, Daryl Gregory

Opening: Two in the morning and he's stumbling around in the attic, lost in horizontal archaeology: the further he goes, the older the artifacts become. The stuttering flashlight guides him past boxes of Christmas decorations and half-dead appliances, past garbage bags of old blankets and outgrown clothing stacked and bulging like black snowmen, over and around the twenty-year-old rubble of his son's treasures: Tonka trucks and science fair projects, soccer trophies and summer camp pottery.

Capsule: Second entry by Daryl Gregory--and he's surpassed himself with this story! The writing made me catch my breath from the first sentence. It's not enough to state that Daryl Gregory has short fiction writing chops. We might get closer to the truth by suggesting that he is the original skeletal framework from whence the chops were removed and bequeathed unto Readers. Better yet, make those royal lamb shanks.

The story delivers its Matheson-esque revelations (there was a pervasive Twilight Zone-ambience, and searching for lost youth or a return to innocence is a subject tackled explicitly by that series in some of its most memorable episodes) with emotional umph. While the premise, therefore, offers nothing startlingly interesting, the character development, technique and poignancy buoy this directly past our suspension of disbelief and into the evocation of genuine emotion. The UnCompass needle points straight at UnBetterable on this one.

LRSF #22, Dead Horse Point, Daryl Gregory

Opening: Twenty-three years of silence and all it takes is one call. Not even a conversation, just a thirty-second message on her voicemail.

Capsule: Daryl Gregory's sharp technique and human insight enable him to construct a moving story that surprises and stays with the reader, but is fashioned out of mostly unsurprising elements. When the premise was established I became wary of Awakenings-redundant explorations of pathos, and I was thankful Daryl steered clear of them. The flavoring of physics (the physics, while not cutting edge, is thematically apposite and well-considered, since this story after all relates to a deeper search for meaning) combines and complements the psychological drama nicely.

The pacing is gentle, perhaps a little too gentle for some reader's tastes, but the accumulation of detail and building sense of end to the status quo serve only to heighten the story's elegant and accomplished finale. Excellent story, another top-notch choice within 2007 year's best picks.

Interesting comments available here.

LRSF #20, Catherine and the Satyr, Theodora Goss

Opening: "You've come back," said the satyr.
Where was he? Somewhere in the shadows. She could identify him only by the intolerable stench. Read more...

Capsule: The review over at The Fix gives this one a high recommendation and though I enjoyed it my recommendation is a little more reserved. Theodora Goss does accomplish quite a bit in the short space (speech patterns used to great effect in character development and setting, for example, and the alternating scenes of social milieu and satyr-intimacy create an interesting narrative dynamic) but overall the sense of being trapped didn't come across very compellingly for me. The light tone of the social scenes did make the darkness of what Catherine is experiencing darker--but I still found myself at a remove from her plight.

I enjoyed the historical setting but it seemed to me mostly a device subject to the speculative premise, and since I didn't find that particularly new or absorbing, the resulting proportionality in the narrative weight left me a little underwhelmed. Still, a strong entry.

LRSF #19, Electric Rains, Kathleen Ann Goonan

Opening: Ella sat by Nana's body two days before she pushed it out the window.

Capsule: I appreciated certain elements of this story but overall it didn't entertain or move me much. The concepts of electric rains, personality uploads, the Metro subculture etc. were all intriguing but I'm not sure how convincing I found their juxtaposition. They seemed to provide a noir, cyberpunkish patina, but not the substance of that type of experience.

The twelve-year old protagonist was well developed, but at times I felt her perusal of the archived newspapers was a little too explicitly the framework for infodump and wasn't perhaps as seamlessly integrated into the narrative as might have been possible. There just didn't seem to be enough happening in this story. What there was held my interest, but at a distance.

LRSF # 18, Always, Karen Joy Fowler

Opening:

How I Got Here:

I was seventeen years old when I heard the good news from Wilt Loomis who had it straight from Brother Porter himself. Wilt was so excited he was ready to drive to the city of Always that very night. Back then I just wanted to be anywhere Wilt was. So we packed up. Read more...

Capsule: Preliminary Nebula Award Nominee. Immortality in science-fiction is a theme as old as ... well. Karen Joy Fowler brings us here a quiet, heartfelt meditation on it that while not offering anything terribly true still reads very finely and plays against our expectations. I really enjoyed the moments of ambivalence, the tone of the first-person narration, and the sense of communal life described and how it dissolved. A tale about personal choice and belief to linger on in the mind.

LRSF # 15, The Drowned Life, Jeffrey Ford

Opening: It came trickling in over the transom at first, but Hatch's bailing technique had grown rusty. The skies were dark with daily news of a pointless war and genocide in Africa, poverty, AIDS, desperate millions in migration. The hot air of the commander in chief met the stone-cold bullshit of Congress and spawned water spouts, towering gyres of deadly ineptitude. A steady rain of increasing gas prices, grocery prices, medical costs, drove down hard like a fall of needles.

Capsule: Hatch's "bailing technique" has grown rusty and he goes under, sinking into the Drowned World. This is the first story of the LRSF list that truly knocked the air right out of my fucking reading lungs. It's an extraordinary invention. It contains more mind-expanding newness, paragraph by paragraph, than any of the stories I've read so far, and it was emotionally arresting, a steamroller that flattened and squished me and left me arranged in a new shape when I re-assembled myself into quotidian three-dimensionality. This story contains the Other. It was so good I stopped reading it for a few moments just before the end and paced myself: You Know What I'm Talking About. It's already received multiple readings. Seek it out.

LRSF # 13, Unique Chicken Goes in Reverse, Andy Duncan

Opening: Father Leggett stood on the sidewalk and looked up at the three narrow stories of gray brick that was 207 East Charlton Street. Compared to the other edifices on Lafayette Square--the Colonial Dames fountain, the Low house, the Turner mansion, the cathedral of course--this house was decidedly ordinary, a reminder that even Savannah had buildings that did only what they needed to do, and nothing more.

Capsule: Preliminary Nebula Award Nominee. The fascinating, delightful premise is well-developed and the story, overall a captivating read, is fun. It's been receiving quite a bit of attention and high praise. At the risk of casting myself out of whatever readership community I was attempting to belong, I have to confess that from a stylistic viewpoint, I didn't enjoy it much. Maybe I missed something?

LRSF # 12, Café Culture, Jack Dann

Opening: "From these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion." - Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg Address

After six Baptist suicide bombers met their god in the fiery nave, aisles, apse, towers and main altar of St. Patrick's Cathedral, the cafes that crowded Fiftieth and Fifty-First Streets become de rigueur for writers, artists, actors, news personalities, wealthy dilettantes, activists, dissidents, tourists, the Christian left, and wannabes.

Capsule: I have to say this is the first disappointing story I've read so far in the LRSF list. It's not a science-fiction story; and though this, in and of itself, does not comprise a critical attack, it is in part a justification for the irritation I felt upon having finished it. My expectations were confounded by the fact it was a LRSF pick and that it was published in no less than Asimov's. Now, expectations can be redefined, and thus a second reading might have delivered the goods. Not so here. This story didn't work for me because, regardless of genre or non-genre categorization, I didn't find enough to hold my interest. The extrapolation seemed intellectually non-rigorous (considering the magnitude of what is happening here, how would the rest of this proposed society really function?) and the ending seemed inconsistent with the protagonist's earlier psychological development (or, perhaps more accurately, motivational sketch). Even barring an interesting plot or compelling characters, the aesthetic experience might have been enough to provide reading sustenance. Alas, it wasn't. I found the writing of a high professional standard, to be sure, but lacking in the ultracrafty stylings of a Shepard, Bisson, Link or Ford, for instance, which is what would have been required. This story is preceded by Asimov's disclaimer about some scenes being potentially disturbing to readers. I didn't find them disturbing; I did find them disproportionately violent/harsh in relation to the net effect of the story.

For condensed, literary, groundbeaking stylized visions of a hellish future, there is a venerable tradition of great work readily available, in and out of the field. Consider, for example, some of Ballard's "condensed novels" (e.g. in The Atrocity Exhibition) or Spinrad's midperiod short work or almost all of Malzberg's short fiction. Stories like "Why I Want To Fuck Ronald Reagan" and "Love and Napalm: Export USA" do what "Cafe Culture" is attempting much better and in fewer words.

And of course there is Updike's novel Terrorist.