Wednesday, March 13, 2019

Birthday Review: Stories of Derek Künsken

Today is Derek Künsken's birthday. He's one of the smartest new writers we have, and he intrigued me with his very first sale. His first novel, The Quantum Magician, is good stuff as well! Here's what I've written about his short fiction in Locus:

Locus, February 2007

I also liked a very traditional SF story from last Fall's On Spec, “Tidal Maneuvers” by Derek Künsken, in the classical mode of depicting a very alien being in a very alien environment: in this case a metal creature on a planet orbiting a pulsar.

Locus, March 2012

“The Way of the Needle” by Derek Künsken (Asimov's, March) is quite intriguingly strange but perhaps for the same reason I didn't quite think it worked. It's set on a planet circling a pulsar, and its inhabitants are nourished by the effects of the star's magnetic field. The hero, Mok, has been ordered to assassinate one of his master's rivals, and to accomplish this he must abase himself and associate with “swarmers” (commoners, I suppose). This plot somehow doesn't seem alien enough to support the odd initial setting.

Locus, September 2012

Quite different is Derek Künsken's “Long Leap” (On Spec, Spring). Künsken seems interested in extreme Sfnal environments. Here, a generation starship is trapped by an encounter with a supernova remnant, a pulsar, and the main character, a psychopath but also the ship's only astronomer, finds a chance for redemption in an expedition to the highly magnetic planet they find orbiting the pulsar. It's a hard SF problem story, and as often with those pieces, it seems somewhat contrived, but it delivers an interesting problem and solution.

Locus, February 2014

The lead novelette in the February Asimov's is “Schools of Clay”, by Derek Künsken, who has written several really striking hard SF stories about intelligent creatures in extreme environments. This one is set in an asteroid belt around a pulsar, with a race of creatures made of clays, sometimes “ensouled” with independently thinking radioactive chunks, with an ecology based on the radioactive material, energy from the pulsar, and volatiles mined on the asteroids. The social structure is hivelike, and for this story the “worker” caste is ready to rebel, as a periodic migration, driven by time dilation induced by passage near a black hole, is about to start. Anyway you look at it, that's pretty cool stuff, and really nicely worked out here. The story qua story, and the characters, are well-enough handled if not surprisingly of lesser interest than the setting. Which is to say, I suppose, classic sense of wonder SF.

Locus, November 2014

Derek Künsken has made his mark so far with a number of stories set in decidedly exotic environments. His first story for Analog fits the mark, if the environment isn't quite as exotic as in some earlier stories. “Persephone Descending” opens with Marie-Claude Duvieusart on a routine maintenance job on a floating factory on Venus when her plane explodes and she is ejected into the harsh atmosphere. She soon realizes that her plane was sabotaged, and that she is being pursued by a drone, even as she ought to be dead at any rate. The bulk of the story is taken up with her remarkable efforts at surviving long enough to be rescued, with the unwitting help of some Venusian life. Intertwined are faux-non-fiction excerpts filling us in on the political background and on the aftermath of the attack on Marie-Claude: it seems Venus has been colonized by newly independent Quebec. The colony is struggling, and there is a (somewhat ironic) séparatiste movement. Marie-Claude, an influential union leader, is caught in the middle, and the question is, what does this attack have to with the political issues? Both aspects of the story – the SF adventure and the political intrigue – are interesting, but for me the political aspect didn't really work as well as the truly exciting battle for survival. Still,  Künsken remains a writer to watch.

Locus, March 2015

I also liked “Ghost Colors”, by Derek Künsken (Asimov's, February), mostly for its neat science-fantasy idea: ghosts that haunt people with a genetic predilection for it, and sometimes their relatives. Brian is haunted by the ghost of his rackety aunt's long-time unrequited admirer, Pablo. (His aunt had a disreputable profession.) The deeper story is the value of remembering the past, hinted at by Pablo's profession (paleontology) and Brian's slightly pack-rattish nature, in contrast to his girlfriend's neatnikness. Well-done characters and a nice idea, if a bit of of a listless story (about the girlfriend's desire that Brian have gene therapy to cure him of his ghost.)

Locus, September 2015

The July Asimov's features a novella by Derek Künsken, related to both of his major stories from 2014, “Schools of Clay” and “Persephone Descending”. Like the former it features an alien race with time travel built into their life cycle, and like the latter it is a politically oriented story (with lots of the politics on the dirty side) set in a future in which an independent Quebec has become a power in space after colonizing Venus. “Pollen from a Future Harvest” is set on a planet where a unit of the Sub-Saharan Union has stumbled across a pair of time gates, as well as some vegetable intelligences that send themselves messages via pollen from 11 years in the future using the gates. They have decided to take possession of this potentially extremely valuable discovery themselves and thus rebel against their rulers, the Venusian Congregate. That's a pretty rich setup already, and there's more: arranged tripartite marriages, a murder mystery, Congregate spies, and the question of why the pollen has suddenly stopped flowing through the gates. All this is neat stuff, and the main character, Major Okonkwo, an auditor pressed into leading an investigation after her senior husband's suspicious death, is well-presented. Somehow the story doesn't quite live up to its promise though – I think for my taste there was a bit too much following the ultimately slightly banal stories of corruption in the maneuvering for military leadership, and not quite enough focus on the really cool Sfnal elements – though it should be said that the conclusion uses time travel and its implications nicely – and I should add that my disappointment is really only relative to quite high expectations.

Locus, June 2016

Derek Künsken’s “Flight From the Ages” (Asimov's, April-May) is another story about AIs, and also a story set in the very far future. A couple of advanced AIs, bankers, are tasked to investigate the sudden interruption of the tachyon flow from a certain star system, and what they find is dangerous and disturbing … The story leaps farther and farther into the future, as the consequences of the original discovery broaden, and as the intelligences of the universe continue to evolve. The end is pretty much what we expect, and the story, like many very far future stories, ends up a bit abstract … but there’s no denying the interest of the radical hard SF ideas.

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