Birthday Review: Stories of James Patrick Kelly

Today is Jim Kelly's birthday. He's been writing exceptional SF for over four decades, I am shocked to realize. I remember encountering him with his first novel, Planet of Whispers, and the next year with a collaboration with John Kessel, Freedom Beach. Both were intriguing, but it was "Rat", from 1986, that blew me out of the water. One of the best "cyberpunk"-style stories, from a writer who had made his bones on the so-called "Humanist" side of that now all but forgotten quasi-rivalry. Here's a selection of my reviews of his stories for Locus, which represents less than half his career -- but a career still clicking along with exceptional work.

Locus, June 2002

June brings another first-rate issue of Asimov's. As with every June for the past nineteen years, James Patrick Kelly is aboard, this time with "Luck", something of a departure for him. It's the story of Thumb, a man of a prehistoric tribe (Cro-Magnon, I assume), and of his encounter with the last mammoth.

Locus, December 2002

Gardner Dozois generally looks for seasonal-themed stories for the December and/or January issues of Asimov's. This December there are two, and both are quite good. James Patrick Kelly's "Candy Art" is about a woman whose parents come to visit for Christmas – by downloading themselves into a puppet and sharing the time half and half. Meanwhile her commitment-phobic never seems to be home. On the surface this seems a typically sweet piece, reminiscent, say, of Connie Willis in her Christmas mode. But look much deeper and the story is a bit odder – what are we to make of the example of the woman's parents' marriage, in which they occupy the same body such that they literally cannot meet? And what of the somewhat drab relationship of the leads? The story urges us to be happy and hope, yet asks us: why?

Locus, June 2003

James Patrick Kelly's "Bernardo's House" (Asimov's, June) is a fine story as well, about an intelligent "house" (complete with an android "housekeeper"/sex toy) who has been abandoned by her owner. The story echoes a theme of Tom Purdom's story in the same issue ("The Path of the Transgressor"), in considering the house's conditioning to love its owner. This conditioning is tested by the abandonment, and by a homeless young woman who turns up on the house's doorstep.

Locus, May 2004

The novella from the June Asimov's is "Men Are Trouble", by James Patrick Kelly. This is set a few decades in the future, after aliens called "devils" have "disappeared" all the men in the world. The surviving women are trying to build a society, ambiguously helped by the aliens and their robots, who maintain most of the economy, and who enforce childbearing on the women via a "seeding" program. Fay Hardaway is a Private Investigator. Her latest missing person case ended successfully in one sense – she found the missing young woman – but unsuccessfully in that the woman was dead. Now she is hired by the aliens to track down another person, linked to the dead woman. All this ends up touching on the "Christer" faith and on a conspiracy to "seed" women by human means: even perhaps on a plan to bring back men. Kelly portrays a world without men believably and without grinding any axes, and the story works simply because the characters and their concerns are involving.

Locus, June 2004

The May lineup at Sci Fiction is strong. James Patrick Kelly's "The Best Christmas Ever" is an affecting story of the last two people in the world, being maintained by "biops" – androids of some sort. The narrator is a biop, "Aunty Em", trying to keep the last man's spirits up by staging yet another Christmas. But what if the present the man wants most is to die? Can the biops give him something better? Better still is a scary little domestic piece from Kit Reed, who does domestic scariness better than anybody.

Locus, November 2004

James Patrick Kelly's "The Wreck of the Godspeed" is Between Worlds' prize. The artificially intelligent starship Godspeed is one of the oldest of a group of ships taking matter transmitters to new worlds, and it seems to have gone mad. But slowly the secret of why the Godspeed is acting erratically is revealed. The conclusion, which plays a bit with some extrapolations of the matter transmitter tech of Kelly's Hugo-winner "Think Like a Dinosaur", is surprising and moving.

Locus, June 2005

James Patrick Kelly's traditional June appearance in Asimov's is one of his finer stories. "The Edge of Nowhere" is set in an isolated town. Apparently the residents have all been reincarnated by shadowy intelligences from something called the "cognisphere". Rain is the town librarian, and her young friend Will is trying to write a novel. Representatives of the "cognisphere" often ask her for books recreated from the residents' memories. But now they want an unfamiliar novel – and Rain is spooked when that novel seems to be Will's unfinished effort. Kelly takes the story in a slightly unexpected direction – he seems interested, perhaps, in the problem of creating something new in a simulation – and the ending is very nice indeed.

Locus, March 2006

James Patrick Kelly’s Burn is one of the very best novellas of 2005 – almost a novel, at over 39,000 words. There is a conflict on the planet Walden between the original settlers, who pretty much ruined the place, and a later wave who enforce rules of technological simplicity, and who are trying to alter this particular world to a sort of simulacrum of the wooded American Northeast of Henry Thoreau’s time. The original settlers’ tactic of choice is forest fires, in an attempt to halt or reverse the spread of newly engineered trees. This story’s hero is Spur, a volunteer firefighter who as the book opens is recovering not only from terrible injuries suffered in a fire but from the collapse of his marriage. But as he recovers, on a space station, he is perforce confronted with the wonders of the greater human Galaxy – and to make things more interesting, he accidentally engages the interest of a precocious child of a rather strange human culture. This child insists on visiting Walden, against all the rules, and of course in so doing he forces Spur (and Spur’s friends) to learn a great deal about their way of life, and its compromises – not to mention some wrenching personal secrets. I was struck in particular by Kelly’s presentation of the central conflict as one in which both sides are partly right and partly wrong – the reader veers from anger at the evil forest burners to anger at the repressive Waldenites to an understanding that both have at least some good reasons for their stances, if not really for their actions.

Locus, June 2009

June at Asimov’s means a James Patrick Kelly story – this makes 26 Junes in a row, as celebrated by a tribute this issue. Kelly represents himself very well with “Going Deep”, about Mariska, whose mother is genetically fitted to be starship crew – which means so is Mariska. This fact conditions her whole life – her friends, her intended, her contracted father, the AI who helps raise her – and of course Mariska has a rebellious streak. This strikes me as very satisfying pure SF, turning on a plausible and original SF idea, furnished with a variety of believable background details – it’s not a story that could have been told in any other mode.

Locus, December 2010

At the December Asimov’s, James Patrick Kelly’s “Plus or Minus” is a sequel to last year’s “Going Deep”, about Mariska Volochkova, daughter of a famous starship crewmember, indeed her mother’s clone, and as such sharing her capability for deep hibernation. But Mariska wants to be her own person, and so she has run from her mother’s influence – now to the Shining Legend, a ship in the asteroid belt. She’s the lowest person on the crew’s totem pole, and she’s fairly miserable, partly because she doesn’t get along with any of the rest of the crew, for a variety of reasons. Kelly nicely portrays a rather grimy space environment, populated by rather ordinary people. And then disaster strikes, as it will do, it seems. There aren’t any easy solutions, but there is believable, and moving, heroism – ordinary people heroism, perhaps. Pretty fine work.

Locus, March 2011

In print I saw the March/April F&SF. There is also a fine time travel story from James Patrick Kelly, “Happy Ending 2.0”, in which an old married couple, marriage gone rather sour, visit the mountain cabin where they first fell in love, in an attempt to revitalize their relationship. And perhaps they do – or not! – in an unexpected and a bit creepy resolution.

Locus, May 2011

Two strong stories in Eclipse 4 are set on Mars. ... James Patrick Kelly’s “Tourists” is the latest of his pieces about Mariska Volochkova, the cloned daughter of a starship pilot who keeps trying to escape her mother’s legacy. Now she comes to Mars, and ends up involved with a rebellious Martian boy, whose only wish is to escape his culture and go to the stars – the same fate Mariska has been avoiding. The story, with its Martian setting and adolescent characters, could have fit just as well in Strahan’s new YA anthology, Life on Mars. It nicely depicts yet another Martian culture – and seems to close, perhaps, the first set of Mariska stories (the others appeared in Asimov’s) – pointing, though, to further stories, or perhaps a novel.

Locus, July 2013

A shortish set of stories in May at Clarkesworld. My favorite is James Patrick Kelly's “Soulcatcher, a revenge tale about a woman trying to save her clone-sister from the fatal attraction of an alien ambassador. Her means a rather ghoulish rug … things, of course, never go quite as planned in such stories. This one is fine, striking, work.

Locus, December 2013

At the September Clarkesworld James Patrick Kelly's “The Promise of Space” is a subtle and moving variation – or so it struck me – on the space booster sort of story. Stories in the mold, in a way, of Sturgeon's still astonishing “The Man Who Lost the Sea”. This piece is told as a sequence of exchanges between a science fiction writer and her husband, an astronaut. Some terrible happened to the astronaut on a trip to Mars, and what's left of him seems to be mostly an AI-assisted reconstruction, which might remember the writer's famous heroine better than she herself. An interesting and somewhat off-center look at “the promise of space” – and the costs.

Locus, May 2014

Finally, James Patrick Kelly's “Someday” (Asimov's, April-May) is a well-done look at gender roles and relationships on an off-Earth colony. Daya is a brilliant young woman in a small village – surely she will head to the “big city”, as it were, on her perhaps backwater planet. But there is the matter of bearing a child … a responsibility, it seems – and choosing the multiple fathers for the child … and what of the visitors from the stars? Kelly unpacks multiple surprises here … cool stuff in the purest of Sfnal modes.

Locus, December 2016

James Patrick Kelly, in “One Sister, Two Sisters, Three” (Clarkesworld, October) tells of a planet colonized by a religious group and two sisters growing up there, resistant to the wider galactic technology (including “replication” of peoples’ minds as they grow old or sick, and uploading to new bodies). The narrator, Jix, is somewhat jealous of her beautiful sister, Zana; and both miss their mother, who chose replication when she got very sick, to their father’s disgust. When an Upsider tourist seems interested in Zana, the jealousy increases, and result is a tangle of not quite tragedy.

Locus, July 2018

Tor.com’s May offerings are exceptional. James Patrick Kelly’s “Grace’s Family” is set on Grace, a spaceship. As the story opens, Jojin, a young man, is living with his story Qory and their Mom and Dad on Grace. But their Dad is getting old, and his mental functions seem to be degrading. They have entered a new star system, one of many they are surveying – that is their purpose. But instead of continuing their survey, they meet up with another ship – Grace’s sister Mercy – and Mom and Dad leave, in trade for another woman, Orisa. They are to be a new family – but, we begin to ask, what is family here? And what of the mention that Qory, and their Mom, are bots? And what is the purpose of the virtual story environments they all repeatedly enter? This is fascinating original SF, deeply concerned with the purpose of intelligence in the universe.

Locus, December 2019

James Patrick Kelly, in “Selfless” (Asimov's, 11-12), portrays the boss of a pulp museum, who is also the son of an imperious but dying woman, and husband to a fine man, father to a great kid. And none of these are his Selves, really: he seems to have been forced into a scary sort of dissociation as a bullied child, and takes on different personae. One of them is called Hunter, which points to a potential horror story, but then a “hunt” ends unexpectedly, and points to a couple of possibilities – a larger community of people like him, or – something like redemption, maybe.

Birthday Review: Some Novels of Barrington J. Bayley

Barrington J. Bayley was born April 9, 1937, and he died in 2008. He was one of the weirdest of SF writers. In his memory, here's a set of capsule reviews of some of his novels. Unfortunately, I'm not covering his best novels -- as noted below, these are probably Collision Course, The Fall of Chronopolis, The Garments of Caean, and The Soul of the Robot. But these are still a pretty interesting set of books.

Let's begin with two Ace Double reviews already posted here:
Annihilation Factor
The Star Virus

Capsule review of The Great Hydration

Barrington J. Bayley is a British writer best known for a series of unusual novels in the 70s and 80s, mainly for DAW and Doubleday. His novels often featured unusual cosmological notions, and a dour and cynical viewpoint, often reflected in somewhat offbeat humour. Among the best, by most accounts, are Collision Course, The Fall of Chronopolis, The Garments of Caean and The Soul of the Robot. After the mid-80s he found it hard to sell further novels, and nothing has appeared since then but a media tie-in and a number of short stories, some quite good. But last year Cosmos Books (an imprint of Wildside Press) published two new Bayley novels, apparently written in the late 90s. These are The Sinners of Erspia and the novel to hand, The Great Hydration, a very short novel at just over 40,000 words.

The Great Hydration is set on a nearly completely dry planet. A number of humanoid species, adapted to require no water (indeed, water is a poison to them) live under the loose rule of the lobster-like Tlixix. Apparently the Tlixix were masters of the world when it was full of water, and they genetically engineered these new species to work for them in the dry world produced when a fault slipped allowing the oceans to drain into the spongy interior.

A couple of shady businessmen from human space show up and offer to release the trapped water with a series of nuclear explosions, which will restore the planet to a pleasant environment for the Tlixix, but will result in the death of the other species. A disaffected employee, one of their top nuclear engineers, somewhat accidentally becomes involved with a sort of resistance movement among the dry-adapted species. Disaster, pretty much, ensues, for everyone, magnified when the galactic police force shows up.

It's kind of weird, and casually worked out, and not very plausible. At the same time, it's pretty fun, if horribly cynical. The various aliens are interesting enough, and the basic concept, if unlikely, is brash enough to impress. Not bad, if not great.

Capsule review of Star Winds

Star Winds, by Barrington J. Bayley (DAW, 1978), is a rather delightfully goofy novel set in the very
far future.  The story opens on Earth, as a sailing ship lands in the local port. You see, ship travel uses special sails which interact with the "ether" to allow them to fly. It turns out that at one time ships could even go between planets.  But that trade has died out, and with it the hope of replacing the ether sails, which cannot be made on Earth.  Rachad Curban, a dilettantish young man,wishes desperately to be a sky sailor, but there are no openings, and the whole business is decaying.  At the same time, he is rather vaguely studying with an old alchemist. When the old man tells him that the only hope of making the Philosopher's Stone is to find a book somewhere on Mars, an idea is born.  Rachad convinces a down-and-out sky captain to refit his ship to make a desperate attempt to fly through space to Mars.  Once on Mars, the sky captain will be able to obtain new ether sails, and revitalize the whole sailing business.  From here the story begins to open out, as it were, section by section.  Bayley keeps changing the stakes.  The flight to Mars is a rather exciting adventure which ends in disaster: capture by a nobleman from another star system, who by coincidence was looking for the same book Rachad's alchemist was seeking.  It turns out that the nobleman needed the book to find a way into the keep of another corrupt nobleman, whose lands the King has promised him if he can root him out.  The corrupt nobleman is host to ... another alchemist.  And so the story goes, changing direction again and again.  It's dotty, and oddly lighthearted despite a series of failures by our heroes, and despite a rather sad view of the future fate of the galaxy.  It's also based on a nonsensical but fun premise: that the atomic theory of matter is wholly wrong, and that the alchemists were right: the Philosopher's Stone is a real possibility, all matter is made of Earth, Air, Fire, Water, and Ether, etc. etc.  This is quite a fun book.

Capsule Review of The Grand Wheel

I hadn't read a Barrington Bayley book for a while, and I saw The Grand Wheel (1977), one of his least-known books, used and picked it up.  It's typically weird, about a far future where the Earth's portion of Galactic space is ruled by a strictish government called the Legitimacy, and opposed by an organization called The Grand Wheel, which runs gambling houses and pushes the idea that all life is contingent, random, based on luck.  Human space is under siege from inimical aliens.  The Legitimacy wants to find the rumoured "Luck Equations" of the Grand Wheel, to use against the aliens, and they blackmail a gambler named Cheyne Scarne to infiltrate the Grand Wheel.  But he finds that the megalomaniac head of the Wheel has something else in mind: a gambling game with another group of aliens: the prize, perhaps the entire human race.  But wait, there's more ... This isn't really Bayley at his best -- he doesn't quite convince the reader of the significance of all his blather about randomness and chaos and so on, and the story is a bit slack and slow.  It's an OK read, though.

Capsule Review of The Pillars of Eternity

Barrington J. Bayley is one of SF's true wild men.  His novels are fascinating, just stuffed with serious philosophical and scientific speculation, but with that speculation stretched to and beyond its limits.  One of his obsessions seems to be the nature of Time.  He's played with different concepts of Time and Time Travel in novels like The Fall of Chronopolis and Collision Course.  He plays with it again in The Pillars of Eternity.  This features Joachim Boaz, a shipkeeper (that is, shipowner/captain) who is kept alive by his intelligent bones, and who cannot forget the terrible accident that occurred after his bones were first installed, when his bone-enhanced senses exaggerated his pain after an alchemical experiment gone awry, while his bone-enhanced preservation function wouldn't let him die, prolonging the pain.  Boaz' real fear is rooted in his philosophical belief in "eternal recurrence": thus, he is sure that when the Universe collapses and reforms, he will again have to undergo the pain.  Unless he can change the past.  Hence, he joins the treasure hunt to the wandering world Meirjain, where the mysterious "time gems" might be found.  But that's not all ...

It's wild, wild, stuff.  Very entertaining, and but honestly thoughtful beneath it all.  The writer he reminds me most directly of is Charles Harness.  Some might think of van Vogt, but I will confess to being allergic to van Vogt, so I can't really comment.  In a quite different way, R. A. Lafferty has some of the same wildness.

Birthday Review: Stories of Sarah Pinsker

Today is the birthday of the exceptional writer Sarah Pinsker, who has just had her debut collection, Sooner or Later Everything Falls Into the Sea published by Small Beer Press, and who is also on the Hugo and Nebula ballots for her very good story "The Court Magician". Here's a selection of my reviews of her short fiction:

Locus, May 2016

I also liked Sarah Pinsker’s “The Mountains His Crown” (Beneath Ceaseless Skies, 3/17) for its central idea: an Emperor becomes obsessed with his daughters’ notion that his land looks a bit like him, and decides to force the farmers to plant crops to reinforce that resemblance. The plot – about a farmer woman who tries to find a way to change his mind – perhaps doesn’t quite live up to the main idea, though it’s OK, and the characters are strong.

Locus, July 2016

In the June Asimov's I also liked I also liked Sarah Pinsker’s “Clearance”, which uses the device of a woman leafing through the Clearance items at a tourist shop to reveal that there are alternate worlds that sometimes intersect. There is also a teenaged daughter that the protagonist is trying to please. This is clever, low key, funny without being silly, with a nice underplayed SFnal notion driving a believable human story.

Locus, April 2017

The March-April Asimov’s has an effective story in response to (or in dialogue with) Ursula Le Guin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas”. This is Sarah Pinsker’s “The Ones Who Know Where They Are Going”, and it is told from the point of view of the abused child … who gets a chance to escape. The moral logic is powerfully resolved – a more wrenching choice than those who walk away make is presented.

Locus, May 2017

Another mystery story, this one Science Fiction, is the best piece in Uncanny’s latest issue (and also the longest story they have yet published). This is Sarah Pinsker’s “And Then There Were (N – One)”. This is set at a convention of Sarah Pinskers from alternate worlds, held on an isolated island (natch – see title!) off the Canadian coast in one particular alternate world. The narrator is a Sarah who ended up an insurance investigator – others are musicians, scientists (one of the Sarahs invented the process of traveling to alternate worlds), dog trainers, hotel managers, etc. (Even, yes, a Nebula winning SF writer.) Our Sarah (that is, the narrator, not the author!) is roped into investigating the death of one of the Sarahs, due to her insurance investigation chops. The criminal herself can be deduced from first principles (as with many mystery stories), but that’s not the key here. The story is well and warmly told, with dollops of real humor (the convention, and its panels, is certainly familiar in style to any SF con-goer), and the central issues, concerning identity, identity’s ties to circumstance, and choices, are absorbing and effectively examined.

Locus, December 2017

Those are good, but even better at the September-October Asimov's are two stories with some similar themes that open and close the issue. Sarah Pinsker’s “Wind Will Rove” is a story about the folk process, and memory, and the occasional importance of forgetting, set on a generation ship. Rosie is a middle-aged teacher on the ship, and a pretty good fiddle player. A malicious virus wiped most of the ship’s memory not too long into the journey, and Rosie and her fellows work on restoring what’s been lost by remembering everything they can, including folk tunes. But some of her students resent being taught history – another form of remembering – why should they re-create Earth on the ship, or even the new planet (that they will never see)? Even Rosie’s daughter has doubts. But purposeful forgetting – or malicious erasing – hardly seems right either. These questions are considered in the light of Rosie thinking about a particular folk tune, “Windy Grove”, a favorite of her grandmother’s, and how it changed over time – and might still change. Thoughtful and quite moving.

Locus, February 2018

The January Lightspeed is full of fable-like pieces ... The piece I really liked was Sarah Pinsker’s “The Court Magician”. This tells of the career of a young boy selected to learn magic. So he does, over time, mastering sleight-of-hand, always wanting more, until he is finally offered real magic. Which must be in service of the Regent of his land, and which comes at a cost – a terrible cost to himself, and, he eventually realizes, possibly to other as well. It is in a way another variant on “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” (a story Pinsker riffed on even more explicitly last year with “The Ones Who Know Where They Are Going”).

Locus, April 2018

And from March 1 at Beneath Ceaseless Skies Sarah Pinsker’s “Do As I Do, Sing As I Sing” is pretty solid work as well, set on a world where “cropsingers” are required to sing to the crops, to encourage them to grow properly. The narrator is to become the newest cropsinger for her community – a difficult and lonely job. Her brother rebels, and leaves, only to return with what he hopes are mechanical approaches to the problem. The story is at once a fine look at its main characters, and a worthwhile and not insistent meditation on both the difficulty of crude efforts to replace traditionally effective methods (such as this story’s cropsinging), and on the somewhat paradoxical resistance to changes that really might improve peoples’ lives, if disruptively.

Locus, March 2019

Sooner or Later Everything Falls Into the Sea is Sarah Pinsker’s first collection, which surprised me – she has done so much outstanding work in the seven years since her first appearance. The original story here is a curious one – “The Narwhal”, set in a world pretty much like ours, except for the apparent presence of superheroes. Lynette is a young woman trying to make her way in the gig economy, and she’s hired to help a woman drive a whale-shaped car across the country. The trip is frustrating, and strange, and eventually they land at a Midwestern town at which some disaster apparently occurred some time in the past – which of course turns out to involve the woman who has hired Lynette, and her strange car. This is solid and interesting work, though not quite Pinsker at her very best. The book, to be sure, includes some of Pinsker’s very best work, and even the only good stories are good enough to place this as a must-have first collection.

Birthday Review: Ilium, by Dan Simmons

Today is Dan Simmons' birthday. In his honor, then, I'm reposting this review that I had posted at SFF Net and on my now defunct website back in 2004.

Date: 01 May 2004

Review: Ilium, by Dan Simmons (2003)
Eos, New York, ISBN: 0380978938

a review by Rich Horton

Dan Simmons' Ilium is, as of this writing, a nominee for the 2004 Hugo for Best Novel. It's a long novel at some 240,000 words. It comes well-recommended, with mostly quite good reviews in addition to the award nomination. I had hesitated to read it, partly because of the length and partly because the most common capsule description -- "the Iliad reenacted on Mars in the far future" -- just didn't seem all that appealing. It turns out, as I might have expected, that that description is not really very good applied to the entire book. And as for the length, it's notable that it is very similar in size to the combined books of Scott Westerfeld's diptych Succession, but it was published as one book for $27.95, while Westerfeld's books were published as two books for $23.95 per. (To be sure, Ilium is itself only the first book of a diptych!)

Having finally read Ilium, I was pretty pleased. It's full of SFnal imaginative brio (if not always very plausible), and it's also full of pretty absorbing action. My main complaints are a) that it's only the first half of its story (though it does come to at least a somewhat satisfying stopping point -- similar in a way to that of Westerfeld's The Risen Empire but I think more successful as a book conclusion); and b) that so far it doesn't seem to be about much -- it's fun and has lots of interesting ideas but it seems somewhat slight.

The story is told on three main threads. The most prominent centers on Thomas Hockenberry, a 20th century college professor who specialized in Homer. He has been mysteriously resurrected in this far future, and he is one of a number of "scholics" employed by the gods (yes, Zeus, Aphrodite, etc.) to observe the progress of the Trojan War, which is being fought (reenacted? refought for real? fought for the first time somehow? who knows?) on what seems to be Mars. (The gods, of course, live on Mt. Olympos -- that is to say, the great volcano Olympus Mons.) The scholics keep track of how closely the war tracks Homer's poem, which turns out to be pretty closely. But the gods' arbitrary violence, and a general despair at the bloody-mindedness of everyone, drive Hockenberry to rebellion -- at first just a night with Helen (!), but soon a plot against the gods themselves.

Meanwhile, the AIs called moravecs who live in the Jupiter system have detected unsettling activity on Mars, and they send an expedition. One member of this expedition is Mahnmut, who lives on Europa and drives a submersible exploring the Europan seas. He is also an expert on Shakespeare's sonnets. His best friend is Orphu of Io, a Proust enthusiast. The two are marooned on Mars when the expedition comes to disaster, and they head for Olympus Mons on their own to try to complete the mission.

And finally, in Earth, Daeman is a foolish young man living in the rather stale society of the few remaining humans on the planet after the long past exodus of the "posthumans" to Earth orbit. The Earth humans live lives of idle eroticism and sloth, unable to read, unaware of geography as they "fax" (i.e. teleport) everywhere, served by robotic "servitors" and the alien Voynix. Every 20 years they are "faxed" to orbit and repaired, but they live only five "Twenties". Daeman visits a beautiful young woman named Ada in hopes of seducing her, and finds himself all unwilling drawn into the schemes of Ada, her friend Hannah, an ancient Jewish woman named Savi, and a 99 year old man named Harman who wants to avoid extinction when he reaches his fifth "twenty". This group ends up wandering the Earth: Antarctica, Israel, the dry Mediterranean Basin, in hopes of finding a way to the home of the posthumans in orbit.

Which is pretty much it for this book. Which isn't to say that nothing is resolved -- lots happens, and there is a lot of change. There are bloody battles, rampaging Allosauruses, some weird technology, aliens, gods of various sorts, heroism, sex, disasters. It's lots of fun, and the scene is well set for what could be a pretty exciting concluding volume. [But perhaps it says something -- though more about me maybe than the book, to be fair -- that I never got around to reading the sequel, Olympos.]

Birthday Ace Double Review: Captives of the Flame, by Samuel R. Delany/The Psionic Menace, by Keith Woodcott

Ace Double Reviews, 85: Captives of the Flame, by Samuel R. Delany/The Psionic Menace, by Keith Woodcott (#F-199, 1963, 40 cents)

A review by Rich Horton

(Covers by Jack Gaughan and Ed Emshwiller)

This Ace Double includes novels by two of the great writers in the field. "Wait!", you might say, "Samuel Delany I understand. But Keith Woodcott! I never even heard of him." Ahh ... but Keith Woodcott was a pseudonym for John Brunner. At any rate, neither of these novels is among their author's best, though Delany's is the promising work of a young writer who would get better, and who even here shows much promise, while the "Woodcott" is terribly disappointing work by a writer who had already done first rate work, and who could usually be trusted to be quite entertaining, even in his hackwork. He'd get better too -- but you can't say that The Psionic Menace provides any evidence of that. Captives of the Flame is the longer book, about 52,000 words. The Psionic Menace is about 38,000 words.

Captives of the Flame is Delany's second novel. It appeared when he was just 21 years old. It is the first of a trilogy, collectively known as The Fall of the Towers. It opens enigmatically, with Jon Koshar confused and lost ... we soon learn that he has been imprisoned for the past 5 years, despite his prominent position as the son of a leading merchant in the city of Toron. Toron is the island capitol of Toromon, a small "empire" on a future Earth, an Earth on which the inhabited parts (which seem to include Aptor, setting of Delany's first novel, The Jewels of Aptor) are isolated by belts of radiation, the result of the "Great Fire". As the novel begins, Toron is lurching towards war with the mysterious people beyond the nearby radiation belt. The young King Uske, mostly a puppet, wonders what he is doing, declaring war. Jon Koshar's sister Clea, a brilliant mathematician, looks forward to her graduation party, and worries about her military boyfriend. The mysterious Duchess of Petra plots to kidnap the King's younger brother Let. A boy named Tel has landed on the island, and is immediately swept up in the Duchess's plot, along with the acrobat Alter, her aunt Rana, and Jon Koshar. Also involved is a giant from the slightly mutated forest people, who live near the radiation barrier.

If all this seems a bit busy, well, it is. And it stays that way, though it's mostly easy to follow and fun to read. The war starts on schedule. Economic chaos, partly driven by artificial fish production, and exacerbated by a poisoning of the fish supply, accompanies the war. (Delany includes some rather incoherent and unconvincing economic rants.) The kidnap plot comes off, and Prince Let is taken to the forest people, to learn how to be a better King than his ineffectual brother. Clea's mathematical abilities identify a way to end the war. Jon Koshar, with Alter and Petra, battles the alien Lord of the Flames, who seems to be behind the provocations that led Toromon to war. This battle takes them to numerous different planets, to inhabit different life forms, in a colorful sequence that reminded me of Harlan Ellison's very minor early novel The Man With Nine Lives. And ... well, the book pretty much stops. Good thing this is just part one of a trilogy!

In many ways this book is kind of a mess. But some of that might be resolved in the concluding novels of the trilogy, to be fair. (I've read the whole thing, but 40 years ago, and I don't remember it at all.) And as I said it's readable and fun throughout, with prosodic flashes that, while not wholly successful, point the way to the kind of writer Delany would become.

It should be noted that both Captives of the Flame and the second novel in The Fall of the Towers trilogy, The Towers of Toron, were significantly revised prior to publication of the omnibus edition of all three books. That's omnibus edition is what I read, back in 1975 or so, and maybe that's why I don't remember Captives of the Flame! (Or maybe not.) For one thing, it was retitled Out of the Dead City (a much better title) for the later editions. It is possible that some of the revision was restoration of cuts demanded by Donald Wollheim -- I have read that Delany's first novel, The Jewels of Aptor, had to be cut significantly to fit in an Ace Double, and that in the end, frustrated, he was just tossing out paragraphs more or less at random. I would say there is definite evidence in Captives of the Flame that scenes are missing.

The Psionic Menace, by contrast, is a bad book unrelieved by any indication of the possibility of better work to come. I wonder if Brunner purposely used the Woodcott name because he knew how bad the novel was. ("Keith Woodcott" wrote some 5 books for Ace, 4 of them Doubles -- the name also appeared on a couple of short stories. I haven't read any other "Woodcott" novels so I can't say if their quality was generally lower than the novels under the Brunner name. But certainly the other Brunner Ace Doubles I've read (under his name) were much better than The Psionic Menace.)

The book is set in a future in which a mostly peaceful and well-controlled Earth has isolated "psions". Conditions are worse for Psions in the interstellar confederation controlled by the "Starfolk", who live on starships (like Anderson's Kith or Heinlein's Free Traders). The main character, a "cosmoarchaeologist" named Gascon, is a psinul -- his thoughts cannot be sensed by psions. One night he encounters a runaway psion boy who is panicked by a broadcast psionic message warning of the "end of everything".

Meanwhile, on the Starfolk-dominated planet Regnier, a young girl, Errida, is chosen to be a Starfolk concubine. (It appears they need to refresh their genetic pool on occasion, and they do so by force.) But her brother is a psion and it becomes necessary for them to escape to an isolated alien city -- once home to a colony of the "Old Race"... alas, the rest of her family is swept up in a fomented anti-psion riot.

Gascon's academic field, cosmoarchaeology (study of the relics aliens have left on various planets), combined with his being a psinul, makes him ideal to send to Regnier in an Earth plot to solve the mystery of the psion panic about the "end of everything", and also to put pressure on the Starfolk. So he goes to Regnier, and meets Errida. The Starfolk, who have come to Regnier because a Starfolk ship has been lost and psions are suspected, get involved as well, and in a typically too rapid Brunner ending Gascon steals a Starfolk ship and follows clues to the location of the "Old Race" and to the, in the end very disappointing, solution to the mystery of the "end of everything".

It's just a book that didn't work for me at all. I wasn't engaged by any of the characters. I was thoroughly unimpressed by the SFnal aspects, particularly the lamish resolution to the central mystery. Brunner wrote a lot of his early stuff pretty fast, for the money, but he usually gave decent value. Not this time, though.

Birthday review: Stories of Ian McDonald

Ian McDonald turns as old as I am today (as he does every year). He's another of my favorite contemporary writers. My favorite of his novels is not as well known as most of his other novels, this is Ares Express. I've reviewed that here already: Ares Express review. Anyway, here's a selection of my reviews of his short fiction from Locus, but beginning with a post I made of a story that is sort of a precursor to Ares Express.

Blog post about "The Catharine Wheel"

I noticed that Ian McDonald's first published story, "The Catharine Wheel", seemed to be related to Ares Express (probably my favorite McDonald novel).  It was published in the January 1984 issue of Asimov's, which I have, so I fished out my copy. And then of course I read the rest of the issue.  "The Catharine Wheel" is the story of the last run of the Catharine of Tharsis, the big train that also features in Ares Express, and also the story of the decision of Kathy Haan, the tortured girl from Earth who operates Martian "manforming" equipment remotely, to kill herself on Earth while her mind is uploaded into the Martian equipment, so that she will never have to return.  Thus she becomes St. Catharine of Tharsis. It's a good story, but I think Ares Express is better.  In the book the trains are well established -- I don't think there will be a "last run", and Catharine becomes Catherine, and details of Kathy Haan's life are changed.

Locus, November 2002

"The Hidden Place", by Ian McDonald (Asimov's, October-November) is an impressive novelette. Fodhaman is a sort of nanny to Prebendary Shodmer, the envoy of the Clade, a starfaring civilization which has contacted the world Fanadd. Shodmer is at the same time a six-year old girl (in a cloned body), and an adult, programmed with the mind of Clade member. Fanadd us unusual in that people are almost always born in twin pairs, and the twins grow up with a telepathic link, and generally live together their whole life, marrying another twin pair, etc. The setup recalls Ursula Le Guin both by its exploration of an interesting and different human society based on a biological change, and by the back story: many worlds have been seeded by humans in the past, and are slowly recontacted, somewhat as in Le Guin's Hainish civilization. Fodhaman must deal with enforced separation from her twin, with the difficult situation of Prebendary Shodmer, both personally and politically, and with questions of loyalty: to her nation, her world, or all of humanity.

Constellations review (Locus, March 2005)

Ian McDonald contributes my favorite story here, "Written in the Stars". This is set in a world where astrology seems literally true. People get horoscopes several times a day, and plan their lives by them. Banbek Shaunt (a curiously Vancean name) is a functionary in the Distributions and Deliveries department of the Astrocratic service. His current worries include his daughter's objections to the man the stars have said is right for her, and a horoscope that predicts trouble for him at work. But his worries reach a different level when he receives an incomprehensible horoscope. It turns out to be another man's, and he decides to visit this other man, who is of all the shocking things an astronomer. This warm and humanistic story is at heart about freedom in a deterministic world – and, perhaps, about the origins of determinism.

Locus, June 2005

The other standout in the June Asimov's is Ian McDonald's "The Little Goddess", about a Nepalese girl selected to be a goddess, and as such raised in isolation in a palace. Only by the intervention of a sympathetic servant does she gain any knowledge of the outside world (the story is set in the next few decades). When, inevitably, her reign is over, she is abandoned to a fractured future India. The shortage of women (caused by sex-selection of children) gives her one marketable quality – the potential to become a wife. But another future complication – genetically enhanced rich people – leads to a distressing choice of husbands, and the heroine is forced to a dangerous alternate way of making a living – ferrying illegal AIs to another Indian state. The story is a sort of pendant to McDonald's Hugo-nominated novel River of Gods, and it offers a fascinating look at an intriguing and plausible near future.

Locus, June 2006

Asimov’s for July features a long novelette from Ian McDonald, “The Djinn’s Wife”, set in the same future India as his wonderful novel River of Gods and last year’s excellent Asimov’s story “The Little Goddess”. Both of those became Hugo nominees, and “The Djinn’s Wife” has a chance as well. An older woman tells a story about a beautiful dancer who married a djinn. But human/djinn relationships never turn out well. So is this a fantasy? No, for the “djinn” here is an AI, capable of interacting with people’s phones/PDAs (or “’hoeks” in the story’s idiom) to project images, talk, and even make love. The backdrop is the water war that was central to River of Gods. The dancer and her AI lover are from the two rival countries, Awadh and Bharat. Their love affair is played out against the backdrop of that coming war, and of threats against the continuing existence of high-level AIs, and inevitably one or the other or both will be tempted to betrayal. It’s a strong and moving story driven by both human problems and by intriguing SFnal ideas. I did feel, just a bit, that its impact was lessened for one who has already read the novel: but it remains a first rate piece.

Galactic Empires review (Locus, June 2008)

Finally, best by far is Ian McDonald’s “The Tear”, which as Dozois’s introductory material notes has sufficient ideas and plot for many writers to make a trilogy from. It’s set in a future McDonald has visited before, in which the Galaxy (and perhaps beyond) has been colonized by the Clade – a vast variety of beings, all apparently based originally on Homo Sapiens, but with genetic modifications (and sometimes more extreme changes) to allow human life to spread to many different environments. On Ptey’s planet most people develop different “aspects”: completely separate personalities that take over when needed. Ptey – or the aspects he has become – play a vital role in a crisis involving a curious group of beings fleeing an implacable enemy. The story keeps leaping to radically different futures, following different aspects of Ptey, through parallel love affairs, centuries long space journeys and battles, meetings with new branches of humanity – it is fascinating, tragic, hopeful, imagination-stuffed, and powerful. One of the stories of the year.

Fast Forward 2 review (Locus, November 2008)

Ian McDonald returns with yet another of his tales of future India. “An Eligible Boy” is trying to attract the attention of any sort of woman in a culture in which sex selection has led to an overabundance of marriageable men. The central SFnal aspect is an AI assistant who helps the young man present himself to women. But the women, of course, have AI help of their own. And the AIs may have motives, too … The human center of the story is rather subdued, as we are always noticing the involvement of the main character’s roommate in things.

Life on Mars review (Locus, March 2011)

Finally the best two stories come from Ian McDonald and John Barnes. McDonald’s “Digging” has something of the flavor of his Martian novels, particularly Ares Express, in telling of a girl on the cusp of adulthood, part of one of several families working on digging a huge hole in Mars, a short of shortcut to terraforming at least a bit of the planet. Tash is invited to accompany her revered “In-Aunt” Mihala on a trip to the top of the hole, where she unexpectedly is pressed to deal with an emergency – and ultimately, to deal with a traumatic change in her family’s circumstances.

Locus, January 2014

A different slant comes in Ian McDonald's “The Queen of Night's Aria” (Old Mars), in which an over the hill singer is touring a Mars which Earth has invaded in revenge for a Wellsian Martian invasion. The singer's tour takes him dangerously close the to front, and an unexpected fan. The story is near farce at times, and very well told, through the voice of the singer's accompanist.

Locus, June 2014

Other good stories in Robot Uprisings include Ian McDonald's “Nanonauts! In Battle with Tiny Death Subs”, in which a self-absorbed remote operator of nano-machines tries to pick up a woman with tales of his battles to save the President from bad nanotech. A nice mixture of humor, a look at a dark side of nano-enhancement, and a subtle closing twist.

Locus, May 2015

Ian McDonald's “Botanica Veneris: Thirteen Papercuts by Ida Countess Rathangan” (Old Venus)
is a nice take on the traditional Victorian adventure story, with the hero (heroine, in this case) exploring untrodden places. The title Countess is a widow (of a rather bad man), and also a noted artist, of papercuts of flowers. She has come to Venus with her companion (and presumed lover, though with Victorian restraint such details go unmentioned) the Prince Latufui, ostensibly to make papercuts of the Venusian flora, but it seems more likely to track down her rascally brother, perhaps to solve the mystery of the theft of their family's valuable jewel, the Blue Empress. The story is, then, something of a travelogue, and a lovely one: the flora she records by the by are intriguing, the politics revealed, and the history of Venus (including a very early colonization from Earth!) is fascinating, and the Countess is a wonderful character.

Locus, July 2018

And finally, a Tor.com novella from Ian McDonald, Time Was. This is told by Emmett Leigh, a used bookseller with an interest in history, who comes across an old book of privately printed poems with a letter from a WWII soldier inside. He begins to investigate, finding curious evidence of the presence of the soldier, Tom Chappell, and his lover Ben Seligman, in other conflicts at widely disparate times. We get glimpses of Tom and Ben as they first meet, and Emmett gets involved with an earthy Lincolnshire woman with a tenuous link to Tom and Ben. Are Tom and Ben immortals? Or time travelers? And by what means? The story is sweet and interesting and becomes something even more impressive as Emmett becomes more and more entangled, less of an observer. This fits the “time-slip” genre, beloved by non-SF writers – I was reminded just a bit of Robert Nathan’s wonderful Portrait of Jennie.

Birthday Review: Stories of Rich Larson

I am surprised that the first story I review here is from 2015. Rich Larson has been publishing stories with Robert Reed-like frequency -- and also with Reed-like quality and range, since 2012 or so. His first novel, Annex, appeared last year. Today is his birthday -- I haven't checked how old he is, but I have a feeling he's younger than my kids! [Okay, I checked -- he's younger than my daughter, but (slightly) older than my son.] Here is a selection of my reviews of his short work, a remarkable set of stories.

Locus, April 2015

Beneath Ceaseless Skies' issue of February 5 has two strong stories. “The King in the Cathedral”, by Rich Larson, features an exiled royal brother, and his automaton guard, playing endless games in the desert until a woman sent as a temptation to him offers instead to help him escape. She hopes he will take the crown back from the usurper – but he is getting old, and not terribly interested in the burdens of rule (and gay anyway, so unswayed by her temptations). The story is in its outlines and even resolution quite familiar, but Larson's telling, and the little variations he plays, make it work.

Locus, February 2015

Rich Larson continues to impress with a nice variety of SF and fantasy stories in his newish career, and I quite liked “The Delusive Cartographer”, in the November 24 issue of Beneath Ceaseless Skies. Crane and Gilchrist come to an island prison in search of a map that a dying cartographer suggests is in the cell with a certain prisoner. The map perhaps leads to treasure, though for the cartographer it brought him only, we learn, to shipwreck and prison time. We follow Crane’s disguise as a prisoner, and his attempts to get to the map, while Gilchrist waits with the cartographer, and learns his real story. Neat fairly traditional cynically-toned fantasy in a mode somewhat resembling Joe Abercrombie or perhaps Scott Lynch.

Locus, April 2016

In Lightspeed’s March issue I liked a sweet romantic story by Rich Larson, “Sparks Fly”, in which the fantastical element is that a significant amount of people, including the protagonist, are “sparkheads”, who cause anything electronic to fail in their presence, at least when they lose control. Of course, emotions engendered in a romantic relationship make maintaining control a challenge – certainly for Arthur. Not to mention his worry about rejection. So his date with Christina goes swimmingly – but he won’t tell her his issue, and he tries to keep himself under control, until, well, “sparks fly”. It’s not the deepest of stories, but it’s sweet and fun and another indication that Larson has not just talent but considerable range.

Locus, July 2016

Finally, the best piece in the May-June F&SF might be “The Nostalgia Calculator”, by Rich Larson, which posits that the cycle of nostalgia is spiraling up, so that people are becoming nostalgic sooner about more recent things. It turns out this is a bad thing, especially when used by corporations for evil, as Noel finds out when while working for his Uncle’s company notices the problem and tries to take (clumsy) action. Clever Galaxyish stuff.

In Clarkesworld there are as usual a couple of strong stories. Rich Larson’s “Jonas and the Fox” is a fine story set on a colonized planet that has just been through a revolution. Jonas is a young boy and the Fox is his brother – sort of – we learn quickly that the brother died but that the recorded mind of an aristocrat, on the run from the revolutionary authorities, has been implanted in his. The story turns on a chance for true escape for the Fox, and on who really needs the opportunity. The furniture is, to be sure, fairly familiar, but the execution is strong, and the conclusion emotionally convincing.

Clockwork Phoenix is back, and its fifth number is another tasty mix of stories that test the borders of genre. So my favorite story, again from Rich Larson (author of the month, for sure!), is really pure SF, though weird enough to fit in. “Innumerable Glittering Lights” is about the battle of a scientist to keep his investigations going while dealing with cynical and budget-conscious politicians and radical know-nothings. So far, so familiar – and, indeed, the conceptual revelation, that this story is set among intelligent sea creatures under an ice sheet, is really fairly familiar. But Larson executes it well – the names (Four Warm Currents, Six Bubbling Thermals, etc.) are a nice touch, and the milieu is believable: and the conclusion really nails it.

Locus, August 2016

Rich Larson’s “Masked” (Asimov's, July) perhaps extrapolates just a tad more, as three rather privileged girls get together after one of them has had to have a “virus” removed from her social interaction software – software that controls her “Face”, quite literally in that it affects how others see her, and also affects what she sees of the world and news and gossip. The moral is kind of obvious from the word go – as indeed it is in Cypess’ story. So these are nice and effective stories, but not surprising enough to be more than “nice”.

Locus, December 2016

The Asimov’s Double Issue for November/December includes yet another strong story from Rich Larson. “Water Scorpions” is about Noel and his new “brother”, Danny, who is actually an alien child, rescued from a ship that has crash-landed in Chad. Noel’s mother is a xenobiologist working with the aliens, and somehow Danny has bonded with her. Noel resents this, perhaps mostly because he associated Danny’s arrival with his dead sister, and the story plays out as a sad character-driven piece, about two lost children.

Locus, January 2017

In the November/December Interzone, who should turn up but Rich Larson! “You Make Pattaya” is a fine caper story. Dorian is a grifter in the tourist town of Pattaya, Thailand. He concocts a scheme with a prostitute he’s taken a bit of a fancy to, involving blackmailing a pop star in Thailand on a sex vacation. The story is straightforward and slick noirish near-future crime, with minimal but well-placed SFnal elements (a bit of gender ambiguity, some plausible surveillance tech).

Locus, April 2017

Two other stories I liked in the March-April Asimov's are both, in very different ways, about the future of dating. The more cynical is “Cupido”, by Rich Larson, about Marcel, who makes a living by creating tailored pheromones, that will cause the targeted person to fall in lust with Marcel’s client. Marcel himself has a pretty sad love life, and so the story turns on what happens when he falls for one of his “targets”. The moral issues here are straightforward – and Larson navigates them effectively.

Locus, September 2017

Rich Larson is back as well in the July-August Asimov's, showing off his stylish caper/adventure mode. “An Evening with Severyn Grimes” concerns Girasol, who has gotten involved with a radical group (sort of Occupy ramped up to full terrorist mode). She has agreed to help them kidnap Severyn Grimes, a very rich man who can afford to download his mind into young bodies. So far, so familiar, but the story goes in interesting directions, not taking any hackneyed sides, and also features some cool tech, as Girasol can download her own consciousness, dangerously, into intelligent systems. Girasol has her own motives, of course, if no very clear path to realizing them. The story is fast-paced, intelligent, and exciting.

Locus, October 2017

Apex in July features another new Rich Larson story, “L’Appel du Vide”, a solid thriller in which Pau, who is working on a promising project for Ceylan Industries is kidnapped – even though his brain is locked down in way that nothing can be extracted from it. He eventually learns who his kidnapper is, which leads to the rather wrenching motive, predictably closely tied to the nature of the research project. By this time experienced readers can more or less plot the rest of the story – but that doesn’t matter all that much, as Larson, if indeed working familiar territory, handles things very well.

Locus, January 2018

The really exciting news in the magazine field is the long-anticipated Omni revival, with Ellen Datlow returning as fiction editor. The first issue has a time travel theme, for both the nonfiction and the fiction. Rich Larson’s “Verweile Doch (But Linger)” is a fine story about a man who can freeze time. Cesar has used this ability throughout it adolescence and early adult years to help him come up with neat comebacks or to steal money, but he is tortured by his failure to save his mother from an accident – and, it becomes clear, to have a real relationship with two other women: his sister, and a high school crush. Solid work.

Locus, April 2018

The 2/15 issue of Beneath Ceaseless Skies had a couple of intriguing pieces. Rich Larson’s “Penitents” portrays a wholly ruined future Earth, in which the more privileged live underground. Mara is one of those, and she’s come to the surface with the help of the wily Scout, to try to rescue her friend Io from the spooky alien creatures who have captured her – it seems these aliens attach to humans they find on the surface and, apparently, take over their minds and send them on forced marches. But Scout knows how alluring the attraction of these aliens is – and Mara eventually learns just why, which gives the story (and its title) its moral point.

Locus, May 2018

In Asimov’s for March-April I was most impressed with a few of the shorter stories. Rich Larson’s “In Event of Moon Disaster” is fine work about a two-person team investigating a mysterious crevasse on the Moon, when all of a sudden a second copy of one the team members appears – followed by a third, and so on. There are obvious existential questions here (echoes of course of Rogue Moon!), but also practical questions, as their shuttle can only take so many people.

Locus, June 2018

Clarkesworld’s April issue includes a somewhat simple but really effective story from Rich Larson, “Carouseling”. Ostap is an artist, and his lover Alyce is a physicist. She and her team are in Mombasa, ready for a major experiment involving something called the Slip. While they’re apart, they use a virtual reality sort of system, linkwear, which allows them a semblance of conflict, even to the point of dancing. Ostap wants to ask her to marry him, but it’s not fair right before the experiment – but he does suggest she brink the linkwear with her to the lab. I think the reader can see where this is going – the experiment is a disaster, and the lab destroyed with no survivors – and Ostap is devastated, but – well, as I said, the next revelation is obvious. Larson handles it beautifully and steers the story to a proper and touching ending.