Summary:
These are the six short story finalists for the 35th Asimov’s SF Magazine Readers’ Awards (the stories were published in 2020). They are a mixed bag but worth a read.
Don’t miss the standout Rich Larson story, The Conceptual Shark!
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Editor, Sheila Williams
Father • short story by Ray Nayler ∗∗+
GO. NOW. FIX. • short story by Timons Esaias ∗∗∗+
Rena in the Desert • short story by Lia Swope Mitchell ∗∗∗
Return to Glory • short story by Jack McDevitt –
Return to the Red Castle • short story by Ray Nayler ∗∗
The Conceptual Shark • short story by Rich Larson ∗∗∗∗
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Every year Asimov’s SF magazine runs a poll so readers can vote for their favourite stories, covers, etc. from the previous year. The magazine also makes (most of) the material freely available online1 for a short period so, even if (unlike me) you aren’t a subscriber, you can have a look at what kind of material they run.
Here is my take on the short story finalists:
Father by Ray Nayler (Asimov’s SF, July-August 2020) is set in an alternate 1950s America,2 and begins with the narrator of the story, a young boy, answering the door to find that the Veterans Administration have sent his mother a robotic “father unit”; it starts to perform that role for the boy (whose real father died in the Afterwar—the invasion of the Soviet Union after WWII) by pitching baseballs to him.
Later on, after some more robot-boy bonding, a local delinquent called Archie—who has previously verbally abused the narrator, mother and robot—flies by low in his aircar, and hits the latter with a baseball bat:
We ran out of the house in time to see Archie’s hot rod arcing off into the sky, wobbling dangerously from side to side on its aftermarket stabilizers.
There were four or five faces sticking out of it. Laughing faces: a girl in red lipstick with her hair up in a kerchief, and the hard, narrow greaser faces of Archie’s friends. As the hot rod zipped off one of them yelled: “Home run!” and hooted, the sound doppling off in the crickety night as they lurched away against the stars.
Father was laying on the ground. His head was dented, and one of his eyes had gone dark. As we came over to him, he was already getting up to his feet.
“Are you all right, Father?” I said.
He swung around to look at me. It was awful—his dented head, the one eye snuffed out. But the other one glowed, warm as a kitchen window from home when you’re hungry for dinner.
“That’s the first time you called me Father,” he said. “I couldn’t possibly feel better, hearing that word from my boy.”
“We should call the cops,” my mom said.
“I doubt they’ll do much,” Father said. “And that young man and his friends really have trouble enough as it is. I feel none of them are headed toward a good end.”
“I’ve said the same myself, many times,” Mom said. She was rubbing a dirty mark off of Father’s head with a kitchen cloth. “What did they get you with?”
“A baseball bat, I’m afraid.” He paused. “Perhaps they mistook me for a mailbox.”
“Hilarious,” Mom said.
“I’m here all week, folks . . .” Father’s bad eye flickered back to life for a moment, then went dead again. p. 49
The rest of the story largely develops around Archie’s continued persecution of the family, which includes the house getting bricked from the air when the father-robot and the narrator are out trick-or-treating (although the next time Archie flies over, the robot throws a hammer at him and hits him in the face). During this period there are also a couple of visits by an ex-military repairman, the first time to fix the robot’s head and the second time to visit the narrator’s mother. On the latter occasion the repairman says something vague that suggests that robot may be partially or all his real father and, re the hammer attack by the robot on Archie, something about malfunctioning “sub-routines”.
The final part of the tale (spoiler) involves Archie supposedly making peace with the narrator by taking him to Woolworths for a milk shake—while the rest of his gang lure the robot out of town and attack and kill it (but not before the robot gets one of them). The repairman appears again at the narrator’s house in the aftermath of this event, discusses with another military man the robot’s lethal behaviour, and then what the pair did in the war (which includes a mention of their sub-routines).
The bulk of this story, with its small town America, father-robots, air-cars, and amateur rocket fields, has a likeable Bradburyesque vibe. That said, the later material about the robot’s true identity and its sub-routines is never adequately resolved, and it almost unravels the last part of the story. A pity—if this had continued in the same vein as it started, it would have been a pretty good piece rather than a near-miss.
∗∗+ (Average to Good). 7,200 words.
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GO. NOW. FIX. by Timons Esaias (Asimov’s SF, January/February 2020) sees a PandaPillow, an AI comfort accessory discarded in the overhead locker of an aeroplane, sense an explosive decompression in the cabin:
A haze of powders and exploded aerosols hung in the cabin, but was already clearing. The scene made PandaPillow’s systems surge. Everything was wrong. People were dazed, some were hurt. There was blood. The air was going away.
With its selfie app PandaPillow recorded two panorama shots and two closeups before its battery finally declared the need for emergency shutdown. Shutdown initiated.
PandaPillow took one last survey of the area. A few rescue masks were dropping, here and there. And why was the air all nitrogen?
COMFORT, DEFEND, said its pillow programing. Powering down wouldn’t do that.
PandaPillow #723756 invoked Customer Support. p. 89
This call to a (perplexed) customer support team is the only distress message sent from the aircraft and, while they raise the alarm, the PandaPillow starts doing what it can to help the other bots in the cabin deal with the unconscious human passengers and seal the hull. It performs a number of key actions during the emergency, and ultimately glues itself over a failing window. Eventually (spoiler), a limpet repair missile docks with the plane’s hull, takes control, and lands the aircraft safely.
Despite its heroic actions, the PandaPillow is initially overlooked after they land before it is eventually fêted as a hero.
Some of the early action is hard to visualise but it’s an entertaining piece, and the touching last section drags it up another notch.
∗∗∗+ (Good to Very Good). 3,900 words.
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Rena in the Desert by Lia Swope Mitchell (Asimov’s SF, March/April 2020) opens with Rena driving across the Nevada desert in a barely functioning electric car when she comes upon a deserted automotel:
[Here] sat the Rock Springs AutoMotel like a postcard from the past, its electric sign flashing SWIM and AC and VACANCY: a single-story, L-shaped building, spread low beside a parking lot with one lonesome, dust-coated truck. Behind a chain-link fence the pool sparkled in the sunlight, a cleaning skimmer dancing across its surface. It had to be real, that water—maybe those Rock Springs still existed, underground somewhere now. Next to the pool, dangling small plump feet, sat a little girl, staring back.
How was that even possible? Settlement was illegal from the Rockies to the Sierras. Back in Chicago the tabloids babbled about outlaw gangs preying through the mountains, doomsday cults, radioactive corpses piled by the roadside. Military escorts guarded cargo trucks driving between Vegas and LA. But on 50 Rena had seen nothing and nobody—only the remnants of gas stations, dried-out husks of ruined towns, and dispirited clumps of dead brush. From horizon to horizon, nothing was moving but her and a few wary birds.
On the Coast, with its forests and desalinization plants and fish-filled oceans, tourists still drove up and down, burning money on hotels and restaurants. Or so people said back home, wondering in hushed tones, dreaming in the winter cold. So Rena wanted to believe. p. 58
Rena tries to communicate with the eight-year-old girl but her Spanish lets her down, so she goes into the reception and gets a room from the automated system. Then she has a shower, and is delighted that the motel seems to have plentiful water. But, when she tries to order food, she finds that there isn’t anything available.
The rest of this post-apocalypse story includes some backstory about Rena’s trans lover Mike (who has ended up somewhere else for a reason I can’t remember), and her discovery of a smuggler who has been locked in a room by the motel’s security software. Rena also eventually realises that the automotel AI has been looking after the young girl.
The story ends (spoiler) with Rena freeing the man, who has promised to drive her to Tahoe. After some discussion, including about how much food the motel has left, Rena manages to convince the AI to let the girl go with them to the coast.
This is an engaging and well told story but matters rather work out of their own accord—which makes for a rather pedestrian ending.
∗∗∗ (Good.) 6,000 words.
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Return to Glory by Jack McDevitt (Asimov’s SF, November/December 2020) is set on Earth two hundred years from now. It is a better place than now, but one that has abandoned its Mars colony and dreams of space exploration.
The story opens with the narrator getting a call from a call from a school friend to say he’s found a copy of a long lost show called Star Trek at a site he’s developing, and the narrator’s wife agrees to screen the show (the library she works at has the tech to read the recording’s ancient format). The three of them then meet the next morning to watch it—only to find the disc contains a fan production. The friend shrugs off his disappointment, and agrees to let the wife copy the disc for the museum.
That night the narrator and his wife watch the show at home:
The storyline wasn’t great, but it was okay. It wasn’t the narrative that caught our attention. It was entering the ring system at the gas giant. And watching stars pass steadily through the windows of the Republic. And looking down on other planets. The special effects took us for a serious ride.
“I think the magic,” said Sara, “is knowing it was put together by people who believed it was coming.” p. 164
The show becomes a hit at the museum, and then the series is remade, which in turn provides stimulus for new research in space/warp flight.
If you are in the mood for a mawkish, boosterish tale about how Star Trek will inspire future generations to travel into space, and one that includes a three page synopsis of a fan show, then this will be right up your street. It wasn’t up mine, and reads like something that was pulled out of Analog’s slush pile.
– (Poor). 4,000 words.
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Return to the Red Castle by Ray Nayler (Asimov’s SF, March/April 2020) is another of his ‘Istanbul Protectorate’ stories (these are set in a future where people’s minds can be read and then written onto ‘blank’ bodies). This one begins with a woman called Irem being debriefed about her trip to a distant planet called Halis-3. During the interview we learn that, despite five attempts to survive there, she found the planet uninhabitable and died, and eventually her mind was transmitted back to Earth (we learn this abortive mission was due to terrorists tampering with the code of the exploratory ships that were sent out many, many years before).
When Irem arrives back on Earth she finds herself living in a society two hundred years in her future (due to the time it took her mind to be sent out to Halis-3 and come back again) and everyone she knew when she was last there is now dead. However, she eventually tracks down an android called Umut which taught in the Red Castle, her childhood school, but finds that it cannot remember her.
The rest of the story sees Umut being taken to the Institute by Irem to see if it is possible to retrieve the android’s memories. Initially it seems that Umut is suffering from “bitrot”, a sort of data decay, but later on the Institute contacts Irem and tells her it looks like the android’s memories were deliberately wiped by an “icepick”, a computer virus. This leads to Irem researching historical anti-android prejudice and discovering that many of them served as mercenaries in a vicious war to gain citizenship.
Umut eventually tells Irem it is aware of the war atrocities it participated in and deliberately erased its recollections of those times. Irem replies that the Institute gave her a copy of the Red Castle memories, and that they can visit that period together.
I suppose that this is a piece about people wanting to return to an earlier time in their lives, but what it feels like is two different stories welded together with a lot of Protectorate history dropped in. I’m beginning to wonder if Nayler is better at writing longer work where he has the room to more fully develop his ideas: there is just too much going on in this short piece (a failing that his other story above shares towards the end of the piece).
∗∗ (Average). 7,250 words.
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The Conceptual Shark by Rich Larson (Asimov’s SF, September-October 2020) opens with Adam washing his hands in the sink when the bottom of it disappears and becomes the ocean. Worse, he knows there is a shark down there coming towards him: he runs out of his bathroom.
The next part of the story sees him at Nora the therapist’s office, where he tells her about what he has seen that morning and, later, about a childhood essay he wrote on sharks. Nora suggests the next time he has an episode, he should tell the shark how much he admired them when he was a kid. Adam tells her that sharks don’t talk, and she replies that they don’t live in bathroom plumbing either! When he leaves Nora’s office Adam bumps into Bastian, her boyfriend, who reappears later in the story.
The next day Adam decides he has to have a shower—by now he can smell himself—and during this he falls through the bottom of the shower tray:
A wave crashes over him and yanks the showerhead out of his hand. He struggles his way vertical again, treading the choppy water, but not before he catches an upside-down glimpse of a dark shape below him. The sight sends a surge of chemical terror through his whole body; he feels a tiny warm cloud against his thigh before the current whisks it away.
Adam knows that people do die in the shower—they slip, they fall, they break their necks. It’s almost definitely more common than dying in a shark attack. He doesn’t think there are statistics for shower deaths by shark attack.
His outflung fingers touch the plastic-coated edge of the stall just as another wave hits. He tumbles backward, nearly bangs his head on the opposite wall. The fear ratchets up to frenzy. He can feel the size of the shark circling below him, the water displaced by its powerful slicing tail.
Something nudges against his right arm. Retreats. Terror is paralyzing him in place; he can feel his limbs locking up. In a second he’ll sink like a stone whether the shark eats him or not. Sandpaper skin rasps against his other forearm. He pictures the blunt nose of the shark, pictures its maw opening up. It triggers another cascade of chemicals in his nervous system, and this time flight beats freeze.
He throws himself at the edge of the stall, seizes it with both hands. He hauls himself out of the shower and flops onto the dirty bathroom floor just as the shark breaches. Over his shoulder he sees its massive head breaking the surface in a spray of foam, sees row on row of razor teeth, sees one dull black eye staring back at him.
The showerhead is sheared off its mount, dangling from the shark’s mouth like a bit of dental floss. p. 173
After this Adam’s problem only gets worse, and he sees the shark everywhere there is water—washing machines, stacked water bottles, etc.
At this point, what is a very weird (but engrossing) story (spoiler) gets even weirder when he goes to see Nora again, and opens the office door to see Bastian pointing a gun at him. Nora is tied up, and in the middle of the office is a kiddies paddling pool that has been partly filled from water containers. There is also a spear gun nearby.
Bastian orders Adam into the office, reassures him that he’ll walk out alive, and begins to explain that the “conceptual shark” is real, not an illusion, and that he has been hunting it since childhood (when it killed his grandmother). What Bastian plans to do is use Adam as bait and, when the shark appears, kill it. Adam eventually agrees to go along with his plan, and Bastian releases Nora from the office.
The climactic scene sees Adam standing in the paddling pool wearing a lifejacket attached to a rope that Bastian will use to pull him out of the pool when the shark arrives. When it doesn’t seem like the pool is going to change into the ocean, Adam pricks his finger with a paperclip to produce a drop of blood—at which point he plunges down into cold seawater. When the shark arrives it’s like the climactic scene of the Jaws movie played out in an office setting and, if that isn’t sensational enough, we also discover that the shark has been hunting Bastian, not the other way around.
Then the story bootstraps up another level when the paddling pool splits and the office fills up with the sea: the roof becomes the sky, sunlight warms Adam’s face, and he sees he is floating on a vast ocean.
This is an impressively original piece that crams a big plot and a thoroughly worked out idea into very little space.
∗∗∗∗ (Very Good). 3,750 words.
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A mixed bag of stories but they are all worth a look, bar the McDevitt. Don’t miss Rich Larson’s piece! ●
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1. Unfortunately the stories were put online the day the Hugo nominations closed, which is a pity as I would have voted for three or four if I had seen them in time.
2. The alternate world pivot point in this story is the same as in Nayler’s two ‘Sylvia Aldstatt’ stories (also published in Asimov’s SF): the recovery of a crashed flying saucer by the USA in 1938, and the subsequent use of the technology found. ●
