Birthday Review: The Ghost Brigades and The Lost Colony, by John Scalzi

Today is John Scalzi's birthday -- he reaches his half century. He doesn't write a ton of short fiction, so I've not reviewed him all that much in Locus. But I did write about the second and third volumes of his Old Man's War trilogy at my blog back when they appeared, so I figured I'd resurrect those reviews now, in his honor.

I also reviewed The Collapsing Empire here, last year as part of my series of Hugo nominee reviews.

The Ghost Brigades, by John Scalzi

a review by Rich Horton

John Scalzi won last year's Campbell Award for Best New Writer, and his first novel with a major publisher, Old Man's War, was on the Hugo ballot. That novel told of human colonies in a hostile galaxy, whose army consists of old people who have agreed to serve in the military in exchange for a new body. The backstory of that novel hinted at a complex political situation involving the many alien races the humans share the galaxy with. His 2006 novel, The Ghost Brigades, addresses that situation a bit more.

The title refers to the Special Forces branch of the Colonial Defense Forces. These are particularly enhanced soldiers, cloned from soldiers who didn't survive the period between agreeing to serve in the CDF and getting transferred to their new body. They have special abilities, most particularly a quasi-telepathic link with other members of their unit. But they are for the most part secret. In Old Man's War we met one Ghost Brigade soldier, Jane Sagan. (These soldiers are given names derived from famous scientists.)

In this novel a plot is uncovered: three alien races, the Rraey, the Obin, and the Enesha, have agreed to unite against humanity. And one human, Charles Boutin, a brilliant scientist, has turned traitor after the death of his daughter. Boutin's expertise is consciousness transfer. The CDF have a copy of his consciousness, and they transfer it into a clone of his body, hoping to find out what made Boutin go bad. But the transfer doesn't take (at first), and the clone, called Jared Dirac, becomes a regular Special Forces member.

He joins Jane Sagan's unit, and eventually participates in key actions, such as a mission against the Eneshans, in which his unit commits atrocities in order to convince the Eneshans to abandon their alliance against humans. This stress begins to recall his Boutin memories, and he is set on a path leading inevitably to the real Charles Boutin, and to some wrenching revelations about galactic politics, and about human interactions with aliens.

It is once again a lot of fun. There are weaknesses -- some excessive implausibilities in the plot most particularly. And I am not entirely convinced by the characterization of the Special Forces members (though Scalzi does try ...). But it's pretty good overall, and I did like the increased moral complexity of this future as described here. Not a great novel, but a nice fun novel with a bit of a deeper side. There are some nice ideas, some good thinking about such things as the importance of consciousness, and plenty of sharp and funny writing.

The Last Colony, by John Scalzi

a review by Rich Horton

The Last Colony is a nominee for the Hugo this year. It's John Scalzi's third book in his Old Man's War series -- and he intends it to close the series, and indeed it does finish the narrative arc well, answering the questions raised in the earlier books and coming to an satisfying and surprising conclusion. [I should note that he eventually added three more novels in this milieu.] And it's pretty enjoyable, though I wouldn't say it's worthy of the Hugo.

As the story opens, John Perry and Jane Sagan, now married and returned to normal human bodies, are living on a quiet colonial world, as local ombudsman and police chief respectively. But they get an offer from the Colonial Defense Forces and the Colonial Union -- to lead a new colony, an experimental colony. Unlike previous colonies, with colonists recruited entirely from Earth's poorer countries, this one will be composed of people from 10 well established human colony planets. This seems likely to be a political mess, dealing with 10 different groups with different goals. Not to mention the potential dangers on the planet (which turn out to include an unexpected intelligent species). But ... that's hardly even the least of Perry and Sagan's problems.

Revealing any of the twists -- and there are several -- might be unfair, so I won't. But Scalzi is concerned with helping to show us the real place of humanity in this very hostile universe, the real motivations of the Colonial Union (humanity's space based government), and a potential (however slim) for something like peace between the various alien species. Given the starting point, the ending point of the book is hard to see -- and to be honest I think the plot developments, while interesting and clever, are a bit farfetched. (Suffice it to say that Scalzi manages to make the extermination of humanity the most likely future.)

Anyway, it's a fun book, and a pretty thoughtful one, though there's a bit of deck stacking going on here and there. It's certainly not a humanity uber alles book. I thought the characterization a bit thin -- most everyone talks just about the same. And though Jane is a major character and is present almost throughout the book, somehow she almost doesn't seem to be there, and her relationship with John, that I thought worked well in the other books, comes off as almost an afterthought. Bottom line: good, not great, but quite well done in the sense of fairly resolving the series.

Birthday Review: Stories of Geoff Ryman

Today is Geoff Ryman's 68th birthday. He's a consistently provocative and original writer, with tremendous range. Here's a selection of my reviews of his work, for Locus and one taken from my year end Recommended Reading post, from before I was reviewing for the magazine.

2001 Recommended Reading

Three novelettes from F&SF really impressed me.  Geoff Ryman, in "Have Not Have" (April) shows us a woman in a remote Chinese village using her knowledge, her connections, and the villagers' lack of knowledge to forge a living for herself as a sort of "fashion expert". She is presented almost cynically, but we come to feel great sympathy for her. Then the idea of a universal net connection (via direct brain interface) is broached -- obviously this will completely change things for Mae in particular, and the rest of the village too. No answers are offered -- just the picture of one woman, a good if compromised woman, at the hub of a change she may not survive. This is a very fine, very quiet, effective story.

Locus, September 2003

Interzone for April leads with a strong story from Geoff Ryman, "Birth Days". The hero is a gay man born just prior to the development of a genetic screening test for homosexuality. As a result he is part of the last generation, it seems, in which gays will be a normal percentage of the population. He becomes a scientist, and one of his projects is a drug which will "cure" homosexuality even in adults. But this seems a betrayal, and he next works on something quite different -- a means by which men can bear children, without even a female ovum. Ryman takes the implication of this tech to the extreme (beyond where I could believe it, actually). But throughout it raises worthwhile questions -- even if one might disagree with the in-story answers. (For instance, it seems to imply that homosexuality is "justified" once it becomes possible for gays to bear children -- I shouldn't think that necessary!)

Locus, October 2006

The gem in the October-November F&SF is Geoff Ryman’s “Pol Pot’s Beautiful Daughter (Fantasy)”, set in very near future Cambodia. A young woman grows up isolated, and very rich: she is Pol Pot’s beautiful daughter, but she is obstinately naïve about her father’s legacy. She finally meets an interesting young man, who jumps to just the wrong conclusion about her mysterious past. She must come to terms with this man’s expectations, and with the expectations of the myriad tortured ghosts her father left behind. From an unexpected angle, the story manages to convincingly portray Cambodia, and to bring tears in its evocation of plight of Cambodia’s ghosts.

Locus, August 2008

Geoff Ryman and others stirred up a fair bit of controversy a couple of years ago with the so-called “Mundane Manifesto”, calling for a fairly rigorous sort of SF: eschewing implausible and perhaps tired tropes such as FTL and time travel, and insisting on fully imagined futures, not just the present writ large (or writ small with just a single change). Looked at that way – as a positive effort for a rededication to a certain SFnal discipline – it was a very promising effort. Looked at more negatively, as a rejection of SF that didn’t fit what the promulgators weren’t currently interested in (on grounds that seemed at times stridently moralistic), it was, as I said, controversial. That more carping tone seems to have been abandoned (was abandoned fairly early, I think), and what remains of the Mundane Manifesto is quite interesting, as shown in the June Interzone, a special issue guest-edited by Ryman, Julian Todd, and Trent Walters.

Perhaps the best story, not entirely surprisingly, is from Ryman himself. “Talk is Cheap” is set in a seemingly fairly near future, but a quite significantly changed one. The narrator is a Walker: he spends his days on his feet, gathering information about the environment. People seem to have always-on links to a future net, mediated by something they call a Turing. The narrator makes contact with someone else, named Jinny, a Doctor, and he is very interested in her, for all the old reasons. A couple of days pass, as we are introduced to other aspects of this future social system – such as the categorization of people by their social needs: the narrator, for example, is a Dog. And too we see just the beginnings a potential relationship. It’s dense throughout, always new – just what Ryman calls for in his introduction.

Locus, February 2009

The new Tor.com site is rounding very nicely into form. Two recent outstanding stories are “A Water Matter” by Jay Lake and “The Film-makers of Mars” by Geoff Ryman. ... Ryman’s story is clever fun, built around the discovery of very early, shockingly realistic, films of Burroughs’s Mars books, as a film buff tries to understand how such things could be – before encountering the even stranger truth.

Locus, October 2009

This is F&SF’s big double issue (October-November), and there’s a lot here. ... Geoff Ryman, in “Blocked”, mixes several odd ingredients intriguingly: a Cambodian casino manager trying to become a man while alien invaders drive humanity to some sort of virtual existence.

Locus, October 2011

The September-October F&SF has a very strong story from Geoff Ryman, “What We Found”. It’s set in Nigeria in the near future, and tells of a young man growing up with a more brilliant (it seems) brother and an abusive father and a beaten-down mother. In parallel threads we learn that he has become a noted biologist. His younger life goes from bad to worse, as his father loses his government job and his brother loses his mind – but his adult self is discovering links between genetics and nurture that he finds terrifying. This is a story with a real if modest scientific background that motivates a moving examination of character (in that way a bit like an earlier 2011 F&SF story, Carter Scholz’s “Signs of Life”).

Locus, November 2013

Two other stories excited me in the September-October F&SF. Geoff Ryman's “Rosary and Goldenstar” is a curious alternate look at a young Shakespeare and two of his best known minor characters, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern from Hamlet. It's subtle, and beautifully written – able to stand without shame with the greatest of all Rosencrantz and Guildenstern retellings, Tom Stoppard's tour-de-force Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. Here, Shakespeare is staying with Thomas Digges, who welcomes visitors from Denmark, and along with John Dee they discuss Tycho Brahe, Copernican astronomy, heresy, politics, even sexuality (in a hidden way) – a striking piece.

Locus, March 2016

Stories for Chip is a festschrift celebrating 2015 SFWA Grand Master Samuel R. Delany, one of the greatest SF writers of all time. It’s a suitably diverse mix of SF and fantasy, non-fiction and fiction, women and men, queer and straight, numerous nationalities, and writers from within and without the field. My favorite story is “Capitalism in the 22nd Century; or, A.I.r”, by Geoff Ryman, which tells of two sisters from Brazil, and a plan to escape on a starship … but more centrally, it’s about the two sisters’ relationship, and about their interactions with the A. I.s that, perhaps, rule this future world. Tremendously intelligent SF.

Locus, January 2019

Geoff Ryman's "This Constant Narrowing" (F&SF, October-November) is headed by a content warning, and the story does manage to be legitimately challenging, legitimately discomfiting. The narrator is an Hispanic man from Southern California, and the story opens with him being shot, then "rescued" by another man, and we realize that this is a world, reminiscent of Philip Wylie's The Disappearance, in which all the women are gone, and some men shoot others to claim them for sexual services. We learn more about his life, before the women disappeared, and his earlier friendship with a black cop. But things keep "narrowing" -- the black men gone, and Asians, and so on... There's a message here, or perhaps there's just a plea to think about the way we seem to be treating "others" -- from all sides. Ryman is consistently able to provoke thought about subjects we sometimes avoid.

Birthday Review: Stories of Gene Wolfe

Gene Wolfe was born May 7, 1931, just two months after my father. He would have been 88 today, but he died April 14. Back then I composed this selection of my reviews of some of his later work, mostly for Locus, but I contented myself with posting a eulogy then, and I saved that for today, his birthday.

Locus, July 2002

Notable recent offerings at The Infinite Matrix include a new short story by Gene Wolfe, "Under Hill".  This is a clever retelling of the tale of the Princess on the Hill of Glass, with an odd ending twist.  It's minor Wolfe, but definitely to be read.

Locus, March 2003

February was a strong month for Sci Ficton. Gene Wolfe's "Castaway" is one of his best recent stories, a moving tale of a man rescued from a devastated planet, and the woman he had to leave behind. I hope it doesn't give away too much to say it reminded me of James Tiptree's great story "The Last Flight of Dr. Ain".

Locus, May 2003

Gene Wolfe's "Graylord Man's Last Words" (Asimov's, May) reminded me a bit of his recent SCI FICTION story, "Castaway", in treating a fairly familiar situation at a slant. In this case an old being is telling a story from his youth -- soon we gather that he is a robot of some sort, and the story involves one of the last humans. It's fairly simple for Wolfe, but still quite effective.

Locus, December 2003

"Of Soil and Climate" (Realms of Fantasy, December) is a new Gene Wolfe story, which is recommendation enough. A psychiatrist in prison finds himself suddenly in a fantasy land, where he encounters alluring women and mortal danger, Night People, Tree People, and Sun People, and a Princess. I found it intriguing but incomplete: could it be a novel excerpt?

Locus, April 2004

Gene Wolfe is suddenly a Realms of Fantasy regular, which is good news: for one thing because it means he's writing lots of short stories. "Calamity Warps" (April) is a simple and quite short story about a man and his dog and his shadow, which implies much at the end. Like his last solo piece for Realms, "Of Soul and Climate", it seems thematically related to his new novel (The Knight) in suggesting a crossover from our world to a fantasy world.

The First Heroes is a strong collection of stories (mostly fantasy) on the subject of the Bronze Age. The book opens very well with Gene Wolfe's "The Lost Pilgrim". His hero is a time-traveler, and soon we gather that he had meant to join the Mayflower, but instead ended up thousands of years previously, on the Argo, with his memory damaged in the process. At first the story is a rather humorously skewed view of some of Jason's journey -- and quite effective as such -- but the ending is darker and more moving than the opening seems to promise.

Locus, July 2004

Peter Crowther of PS Publishing has started a magazine, Postscripts. The first issue features a whopping 13 short stories and shortish novelettes by an impressive array of authors – veterans, up-and-comers, and several writers best known outside the genre. Gene Wolfe is impressive as might be expected, with "Prize Crew", an SF horror story about an enemy warship found mysteriously abandoned, which the title crew takes back to Earth – unfortunately.

Locus, October 2004

Gene Wolfe's "The Little Stranger" (F&SF, November) is another of his simple yet thoroughly weird stories – a series of letters from an old woman to her dead cousin, telling of gypsies, witches, a gingerbread house – all quite naively told, disquieting, striking.

Locus, January 2005

Aeon is a promising new 'zine distributed in electronic form (on CD-ROM, or in versions for handheld computers). The first issue has an impressive lineup, including a long novel excerpt from Walter Jon Williams. The standout story is a reprint from Gene Wolfe – but a reprint from an obscure source. "Talk of Mandrakes" was originally scheduled for a 1987 issue of the briefly revived Worlds of If, which never appeared. It was unpublished until earlier in 2004, in a limited distribution chapbook. So this appearance is welcome. The story is a clever SF horror piece about what an expedition to an alien planet has brought back with them.

Locus, August 2005

From Postscripts I also really liked a flakily original story from Gene Wolfe, "Comber", about cities floating on huge waves, and an impending disaster when a city begins to head down a wavecrest.

Locus, February 2006

PS Publishing offers a Gene Wolfe chapbook free to Postscripts subscribers. Of course Postscripts is worth subscribing to regardless, but this is certainly a fine bonus. It’s a seasonal story, “Christmas Inn”, about a struggling rural Bed and Breakfast called the Christmas Inn. One bitter winter, as they fear foreclosure, they are visited by four (or five?) strange people. The story is told from multiple POV’s: first person narratives by the two owners and their teenaged son, as well as some third person sections. The visitors, mostly via sex, interact strongly with the residents, leading finally to a concluding séance. Here their nature is revealed – at least to one character, and perhaps to alert readers but not as of yet to this reader! But despite not quite getting the story, I enjoyed it and was moved by it. All things I can say about a lot of Wolfe!

Locus, May 2006

Online SF took a harsh blow with the loss of Sci Fiction at the end of 2005. One potential bright spot we’ve been looking forward to is a new venture from Baen Books, entitled Baen’s Universe, edited by Eric Flint. The first issue appears in June, and it’s rather promising. It’s stuffed: about 140,000 words of new short fiction, a couple of reprints, several serials and some articles. The fiction comes from a wide variety of writers: Baen stalwarts like Dave Freer and David Drake, several new writers, and some writers you wouldn’t think of in connection with Baen Books, like Charles Stross and Gene Wolfe.

Indeed Stross and Wolfe provide two of the better stories. Wolfe’s “Build-a-Bear” is set on a cruise ship. A lonely woman chances across a build-a-bear workshop, and ends up with a rather more impressive bear than she had expected.

Locus, November 2006

In October I thought two stories stood out – two that are perhaps not quite what a reader of Baen Books would expect. Gene Wolfe’s “The Old Woman in the Young Woman” is set after a holocaust, with a traveler meeting up with a young woman and her – mother? The women, of course, have a secret – not a terribly surprising one, but the story is still involving.

Capsule Review of Soldier of Sidon for Fantasy Magazine (2006)

Many years ago Gene Wolfe published two novels (Soldier in the Mist and Soldier of Arete) about Latro, a soldier in Ancient Greece (though Latro is Roman) who loses his memory each night as he sleeps. In addition, Latro can see gods, even as those around him see nothing. These are wonderful novels, but clearly Latro’s story was incomplete, and readers clamored for more. At last we have another: Soldier of Sidon. In this novel, he travels to Egypt, in hopes of finding someone who can cure him of his amnesia. Latro (or Lucius/Lewqys, as he is also called) becomes the leader of a group of soldiers on a boat heading south on the Nile, in service of the foreign King occupying Egypt. The book tells of many wonders and adventures encountered on this trip: his river wife (a prostitute hired for the journey) who may not be quite human, another woman who seems to be made of wax, numerous gods and their priests, in various forms: human, snake, panther, etc., a trip to the underworld, imprisonment in a mine, and so on. There is much intriguing detail about life in Ancient Egypt, much quite realistic and much delightfully fantastical. The characters are excellently portrayed, ever through the odd window of Latro’s intermittent consciousness. Wolfe has always been fascinated by shapeshifters, by questions of identity, by memory and its impact on character – and all these elements pervade this novel. Latro’s story is not finished – there is at least one more novel to follow, I believe [If, indeed, another was planned, it never eventuated] – and that is the only disappointment here. Taken as it is, this is both involving historical fiction and mesmerizing fantasy.


Locus, March 2007

Gene Wolfe published a two story chapbook, Strange Birds, last year. This features two good stories, the better being a rather different kind of circus story, “On a Vacant Face a Bruise”, in which a boy joins a circus – but rather a different sort of circus, with such wonders as automaton dancers and talking birds – the true nature of this circus being shown only at the end.

Locus, April 2007

The big news this month in SF magazines is the F&SF Special Gene Wolfe issue. This includes essays on Wolfe by Neil Gaiman, Michael Swanwick, and Michael Andre-Driussi, as well as a very long new novella from Wolfe, “Memorare”. This is the story of March Wildspring, a documentary producer making a feature on spec. It seems that it has become common for small asteroids to be used as memorials to the dead. Sometimes very dangerous memorials. March recruits the beautiful Kit Carlson to help him, and she brings along a friend who has just left her abusive husband. This woman, Robin Reed, turns out to be March’s ex-wife. March is now in love with Kit – and perhaps she returns his love. As they plan to explore one more asteroid, reputed to be the most dangerous of all, Robin’s new husband turns up, trying to get her back. Clearly this story is about more than the memorials to the dead – it is about marriage, and about sin, and about redemption – which may be available for some inside the mysterious asteroid/memorial March calls Number Nineteen.

Locus, April 2010

Full Moon City is an urban fantasy anthology about werewolves, which on the face of it is a pretty tired theme, these days. But it has a heck of a list of contributors, and it rises well above the average urban fantasy anthology. It’s true that a high proportion of the stories are fairly fluffy – light comic treatments of the subject, but still entertaining. And two true veterans stand out. Gene Wolfe’s “Innocent” is one of many comic stories in the book, nastily comic in this case, as a werewolf in prison tells his story to a priest … a story that involves accusations of child molesting, of which he protests innocence. Of course it becomes clear that there is innocence and innocence!

Locus, July 2010

The best of Jonathan Strahan’s recent anthologies is Swords and Dark Magic, co-edited with Lou Anders, which should be treated at more length. It’s a collection devoted to the “New Swords and Sorcery”, which is to say, more or less, the old Swords and Sorcery with extra cynicism. Granting of course that cynicism was hardly ever absent from Sword and Sorcery fiction, this book does seem more of our time. And it’s solid from beginning to end. There is plenty of nice stuff here, but I’ll content myself mostly with mentioning Gene Wolfe, whose “Bloodsport” is quite powerful, about people recruited to enact a chesslike game, much in the fashion of medieval tilts. The main character is a powerful knight, who falls in love with a pawn on the other side – but then their country is invaded, and the game players become a sort of resistance. And, of course, pawns can become queens … but Wolfe has a different question to answer.

Locus, February 2014

Shadows of the New Sun is a tribute anthology for Grand Master Gene Wolfe. Happily, it features two good new stories by Wolfe himself – “Frostfree” tells of a somewhat unpleasant man who receives an amazing new refrigerator, that not only provides food and washes dishes, but helps – we hope – with his love life as well. “The Sea of Memory” is the stranger, and stronger, piece, about a woman waking – she thinks – on an isolated island with a few other people, and slowly learning – remembering? – her true situation.

2019 Best of the Year TOC

Here's the TOC for The Year's Best Science Fiction and Fantasy, 2019. As ever, I'm thrilled at the wonderful set of stories these great authors have contributed.  This is in alphabetical order by place of publication, if anyone is wondering. 

• “The Spires” by Alec Nevala-Lee (Analog, 3-4/18)
• “The Unnecessary Parts of the Story” by Adam-Troy Castro (Analog, 09-10/18)
• ”A Witch’s Guide to Escape: A Practical Compendium of Portal Fantasies” by Alix E. Harrow (Apex, 2/18)
• ”Bubble and Squeak” by David Gerrold and Ctein (Asimov’s, 5-6/18)
• “The Gift” by Julie Novakova (Asimov’s, 11/12/2018)
• “Beautiful” by Juliet Marillier (Aurum)
• ”The Starship and the Temple Cat” by Yoon Ha Lee (Beneath Ceaseless Skies, 2/1/18)
• ”Carouseling” by Rich Larson (Clarkesworld, 4/18)
• ”The Persistence of Blood” by Juliette Wade (Clarkesworld, 3/18)
• ”Umbernight” by Carolyn Ives Gilman (Clarkesworld, 2/18)
• ”The Donner Party” by Dale Bailey (F&SF, 1-2/18)
• ”How to Identify an Alien Shark” by Beth Goder (Fireside Quarterly, 7/18)
• ”The Tale of the Ive-Ojan-Akhar’s Death” by Alex Jeffers (Giganotosaurus, 4/18)
• “Foxy and Tiggs” by Justina Robson (Infinity’s End)
• “Intervention” by Kelly Robson (Infinity’s End)
• ”The Temporary Suicides of Goldfish” by Octavia Cade (Kaleidotrope, Winter/18)
• ”Dayenu” by James Sallis (LCRW, Spring/18)
• ”Lime and the One Human” by S. Woodson (LCRW, 7/18)
• ”The Court Magician” by Sarah Pinsker (Lightspeed, 1/18)
• “Jump” by Cadwell Turnbull (Lightspeed, 10/18)
• ”Firelight” by Ursula K. Le Guin (Paris Review, Summer/18)
• “The Buried Giant” by Lavie Tidhar (Robots vs Fairies)
• ”Today is Today” by Rick Wilber (Stonecoast Review, Summer/18)
• ”The Heart of Owl Abbas” by Kathleen Jennings (Tor.com, 4/11/2018)
• ”Grace’s Family” by James Patrick Kelly (Tor.com, 5/18)
• “The House by the Sea” by P. H. Lee (Uncanny, 9/10/2018)

Birthday Review: Autonomous, plus two short stories, by Annalee Newitz

Annalee Newitz is primarily a science journalist, I believe, and so she hasn't written a ton of fiction. But I've liked what I've read. On the occasion of her birthday, then, here's my two reviews from Locus of her short stories, plus my review of her novel Autonomous, reposted from last year's Nebula Ballot review post.

Locus, January 2014

In the November Lightspeed my favorite story is "Drones Don't Kill People", by Annalee Newitz, which on the face of it is a bit cliche, about drones coming to self-awareness and realizing that their uses -- covert surveillance and assassination -- are immoral. But Newitz wraps this is an unexpectedly engaging and convincing tale, beginning with horror and ending with hope, with non-human characters that really hold the interest.

Locus, December 2018

In Robots vs Fairies ... I liked Annalee Newitz’ “The Blue Fairy’s Manifesto”, set in the future of her novel Autonomous, and featuring a robot calling itself the Blue Fairy setting free other robots, including in this story a robot RealBoy. Newitz’ story is particularly interesting (to me), reiterating some of the themes of Autonomous in asking what freedom really might mean for robots.

Autonomous

a review by Rich Horton

Annalee Newitz' first novel, Autonomous, is on the Nebula shortlist. I'd heard lots of buzz about it already, and I knew I liked Newitz' writing (I used her 2014 story "Drones Don't Kill People" in my Best of the Year book), so I meant to get to it -- and I finally did. I have to say, it met my expectations -- it's a really cool book, really hard SF, exciting and scary and moving.

Jack Chen is a patent pirate -- she reverse engineers patented drugs, sometimes ones critical for the health of people who can't affort corporate medicine, and sometimes just for money (a woman's got to live, after all). But her latest effort, a drug called Zacuity, which makes people love their jobs, and want to keep working, has backfired badly -- people are getting addicted to work, to the point of ignoring things like food. She desperately needs to find a cure, and her only hope might be her old lover Krish, who betrayed her a quarter century ago, when she went to jail for her anti-patent activism. She ends up freeing an indentured young man called Threezed (after the last two characters in his ID), and they make their way across Canada to Krish's lab, and to a safer place to work.

Meanwhile they are being chased by agents of the International Property Coalition, which enforces patents. The two assigned to her case are a human named Eliasz and a military bot named Paladin. Bots are nominally indentured for 10 years after their creation, after which they can become autonomous. (Similar rules apply to humans who have been indentured.) Not surprisingly, autonomy isn't quite as easy to achieve as that. And Paladin hardly knows what they -- he? she? it? -- wants -- as most of their wants are controlled by programming.

The story is on the surface about patents and drugs and so on, and about the tense chase as Eliasz and Paladin home in on Jack. And all that works really well. But that's just the surface -- an important surface, to be sure. But the title tells the truth -- the heart of the novel is "autonomy". For bots, sure -- Paladin's eventual realization that they might like to be autonomous is a major issue. But for humans, as well -- Threezed, in particular, who was indentured and sold and had his indenture extended for obscure legal reasons, wants autonomy and is pretty cynical about the whole thing.

But there's more -- what autonomy, for example, do workers who have been given a drug like Zacuity possess? How about Med, a heroic bot researcher who was created as a never-indentured bot -- is she truly autonomous or does her programming control her? And even when Paladin attains autonomy it's temporary -- and can she (as she by then identifies, sort of) trust her "feelings"? What about Eliasz? He's a fanatic about human indenture -- he hates it. And he loves bots, especially Paladin. But he's on the side of a truly evil entity -- well, mostly evil -- and in their service he -- and Paladin -- commit horrible murders. Are they autonomous in so doing?

This is a very thought-provoking book, and tremendously exciting. It's exceptional hard SF. It's not perfect -- the author's hand can be seen on the scales on occasion. And the end is fuzzed just a bit -- there's a cynical side to it, to be sure, but also some convenient resolutions. But what book is perfect? I really liked this novel, and it's pushed its way onto my Hugo nomination ballot.

Birthday Review: Short Fiction of Jack Sharkey

Jack Sharkey would have been 88 today. He was a pretty minor writer of SF, mostly for Cele Goldsmith Lalli's magazines, Amazing and Fantastic, between 1959 and 1965. After Lalli left those magazines he turned mostly to plays. He died in 1992.

I have to confess I don't like his work much -- I think he was one of Lalli's few weak spots. But let's take a look at some of this short stories. He also published two Ace Doubles, which I have already covered:

Ultimatum in 2050 A. D.;

The Secret Martians.

Anyway, here are several reviews of his short stories, from Amazing/Fantastic, published originally as Retro-Reviews at Black Gate:

Fantastic, November 1959

Jack Sharkey’s “Minor Detail” is, well, pretty minor. It’s about a blowhard General promoting his new superweapon, which will allow men to become strong enough to survive any fall, thus allowing them to dispense with parachutes. The idea is stupid, and the supposedly ironic reason it doesn’t work doesn’t make sense.

Fantastic, December 1959

“The Man Who Was Pale,” by Jack Sharkey, tells of a landlady welcoming a strange new tenant – he’s very pale, he’s nocturnal, he wants to live in the basement in a box full of dirt … what could he be? And what could go wrong?

No surprises here – just competent hackwork.

Amazing, March 1960

Sharkey’s “Old Friends are the Best” is a slight, mildly amusing, bit of SF horror… a plant is discovered on the Moon, and brought back to Earth as a scientific marvel – with, of course, unfortunate (and scientifically absurd) results.

Fantastic, April 1960

The cover story is “Doomsday Army,” by Jack Sharkey, an entirely too long story about a National Guard captain who ends up being the main intermediary to a bunch of (as it turns out) very small alien invaders. He’s portrayed as a fairly ordinary suburban husband, prone to taking shortcuts in solving problems his wife brings to his attention: so of course his solution to the alien problem will be a dangerous shortcut. And so it is, with an implausible solution.

There’s joke enough here for maybe 3,000 words at the outside, and this drags terribly at some 13,000 words. (I wonder if it was written to the cover, which does portray a scene from the story but in a very generic fashion.)

Fantastic, November 1963

"The Aftertime", by Goldsmith regular Jack Sharkey, begins as a very straightforward post-apocalyptic story, with a young man, Rory, waking to find his city bombed and his building mostly collapsed. He wanders the city, encountering a young woman and then a few more people, eating canned food, banding together for help, but slowly losing hope as nothing is heard on the radio, and then people start dying because of some strange energy organism. Then there's a shocking twist -- it fooled me -- and a quite strained ending concerning the less than plausible (to say the least) nature, origin, and weakness of the energy beings.

Fantastic, February 1964

Jack Sharkey was also a Goldsmith regular, and, in my view, one of her weak spots. He really wasn’t very good — though he was professional and, I suppose, reliable in his way. “The Orginorg Way”, that said, is better than usual for Sharkey, perhaps because it’s short. It’s about an unprepossessing man obsessed with a woman, who turns to manipulation of plants as a way to attract her — with, of course, unfortunate effects.

Fantastic, August 1964

Jack Sharkey's "Footnote to an Old Story" is amusing enough little piece about a 97-pound weakling who visits a Greek island and falls for a beautiful local girl. Somehow he gets the notion that letting his hair grow will make his body more attractive, and to his surprise it works -- soon he's a pretty impressive physical speciment, and the Greek girl is intrigued. So, it looks like the "Old Story" is the Samson story maybe -- but it turns out, in a slick enough conclusion, that it's another story entirely.

Fantastic, September 1964

Jack Sharkey's "Hear and Obey" is, like the Janifer story, a variation on a traditional theme, in this case the Genie in the Lamp. This Genie is a bit persnickety about how he grants the wishes, with, as one might expect, unfortunate results for his new owner. A bit strained, I thought.

Fantastic, October 1964

“The Grooves” is a brief horror story in which a young man vows to invade the troll’s cave in the mountains to claim at least some of the rumored treasure there… despite warnings that no one has ever returned, and that “you must never kill a troll, because trolls have inverted souls.” Minor work, but effective enough working out its fairly predictable premise.

Birthday Review: Short Fiction of Catherynne M. Valente

Today is Catherynne Valente's birthday, and so here's a selection of my Locus reviews of her short fiction, a great way to experience some of the loveliest prose in the field of recent years. She's on the Hugo Shortlist for Best Novel right now, for Space Opera.

Last year on this date I posted my review of her lovely novel The Orphan's Tales: In the Cities of Coin and Spice.)

Locus, December 2006

Slightly more strongly themed is Mythic 2, a short anthology focused mostly on fantasy (stories and poems) with a fairy tale slant. Catherynne M. Valente’s “Temnaya and the House of Books” plays bitter variations on multiple familiar tales (at least “Snow White”, “Cinderella”, and “Hansel and Gretel” that I recognized) in telling of a daughter rejected by father, mother, and stepmother.

Locus, February 2007

Electric Velocipede’s Fall issue includes “yet another Snow White” retelling, “Milk and Apples” by Catherynne M. Valente. Here the stepmother is a wet-nurse, a victim of her demanding stepdaughter, and her predicament is harshly and elegantly portrayed.

Locus, June 2007

Catherynne M. Valente's "A Dirge for Prester John" (Interfictions) is a delightfully exotic story of the legendary Prester John in the fantastical land he encountered -- complete with such creatures as the phoenix, the gryphon, and the blemmye.

Locus, July 2008

Catherynne M. Valente’s “A Buyer’s Guide to Maps of Antarctica” (Clarkesworld, May) is a delightful story of obsessive rivalry between two Argentinian mapmakers, of a perhaps slightly alternate Antarctica – one is naturalistic, one artistic – and it’s easy to guess which mapmaker is more interesting.

Locus, August 2009

Another strong online site, Clarkesworld, has been showcasing a lot of decidedly odd SF this year, and from August comes one of the oddest and most intriguing: “The Radiant Car Thy Sparrows Drew”, by Catherynne M. Valente, a difficult to describe but ever fascinating story, set in a sort of steampunk alternate Earth, and concerning the lost last film of a documentary filmmaker called Bysshe, about a mysterious city on a strange Venus.

Locus, September 2010

Lightspeed in its third issue features two original stories distinguished by the originality of their ideas, and by some distinctiveness in the telling. “How to Become a Mars Overlord”, by Catherynne M. Valente, purports to be a manual for potential rulers of the Red Planet – of any red planet of the many Mars analogs dotting the universe. The descriptions of variant overlords are well done, and the philosophical musings driving the piece are also worthwhile – so I enjoyed it, but in the end felt it a bit short of “story”.

Locus, October 2010

I’ve been keeping an eye on the various novella-length chapbooks available. Rabid Transit Press offers their second novella, Catherynne M. Valente’s Under in the Mere. This is a beautifully written (as we expect from Valente) series of pieces from the point of view of many of King Arthur’s knights, all from original angles, with a certain emphasis on California. I didn’t find it wholly successful – it has a static feel, and works more as a sort of commentary on the Matter of Britain than a complete story.

Locus, October 2011

At Tor.com for July there is a delightful story by Catherynne M. Valente, “The Girl Who Ruled Fairyland – for a Little While”, set in her Girl Who Circumented Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making world, about Mallow, who answers the King’s summons to the Foul, only to learn that the King, and Politicks, are bound to ensnare her. It’s full of whimsy – the serious kind – and linguistic invention, and a light touch over sometimes dark matter – first rate.

Locus, January 2012

Nick Mamatas and Masumi Washington offer The Future is Japanese, which collects a number of SF stories about, in some sense, a Japanese future, as well as a few stories by Japanese SF writers. ... “One Breath, One Stroke”, lovely fantasy from Catherynne M. Valente, about a house half in the real world and half in another place, such that the calligrapher who lives in the human half of the house is a calligraphy brush in the other place. The story follows the lives and loves of the brush's fellows in the other place, such as a skeleton woman and a catfish … Valente at her exquisite best.

Locus, June 2015

There is also the conclusion to a long novelette by Catherynne M. Valente, serialized in Clarkesworld in February and March, “The Long Goodnight of Violet Wild”. This is excellent work, extravagantly written on the subject of color, partly. Violet is “just a kid with hair the color of raisins and eyes the color of grape jelly”, from the Purple country of course, with her Mummery a Clarinaut and a sometime lover of the Ordinary Emperor, and her Papo is a Nowboy, herding mauve squirrels. Violet's best friend is a boy named Orchid Harm, and when he is killed, she and her Sorrow decide to travel across the 7 countries of the world to the Red Country. The story is luscious fun to read, partly for something as simple as the color words we encounter, the imaginative playing with time and with character and action is all of a lovely piece.

Locus, August 2016

Beneath Ceaseless Skies for May 25 is their 200th issue, so a special one, with twice the stories. And it’s exceptional: four first-rate pieces. Catherynne M. Valente’s “The Limitless Perspective of Master Peek; or, The Luminescence of Debauchery” is a gender-bending piece about a woman who inherits her father’s glassblowing business, and learns that her customers would rather deal with a man. So we continue, with Master Peek, who is gifted with unusually long life, acquiring several wives, a great deal of wealth, and eventually a fortuitous discovery – that the remarkable glass eyes he makes allow him to see what the wearer sees. Master Peek’s long career continues, especially when he falls for a dangerous and less than dependable woman … Valente’s prose, here pitched a bit to the humorous end of the scale, is a delight as ever, and so too is her extravagant imagination.

Jonathan Strahan’s new anthology is Drowned Worlds, a climate change anthology. Maybe because the theme is pretty depressing the two stories I liked best are somewhat desperately comic, and even almost optimistic, if sometimes in a black way. ... Less satirical is “The Future is Blue”, by Catherynne M. Valente. Tetley Abednego is a much detested woman in a city built on a massive raft of plastic garbage in the sea. The story tells of her childhood, her beloved twin brother, the boy she falls in love with in Electric Town, and the terrible but necessary thing she did that has led to her ostracism. It sounds depressing, but it’s not really, and it’s very imaginative, and, as I suggested, almost, in a black way, hopeful.