Editor-in-Chief, Scott H. Andrews
Other Reviews:
Gardner Dozois, ScienceFictionSite, #244, #245
Greg Hullender and Eric Wong, Rocket Stack Rank , All
Kevin P Hallett, Stephanie Wexler, Tangent Online, #244, #245, #246
Charles Payseur, Quick Sip Reviews, #244, #245, #246
Various, Goodreads, #244, #245, #246
Fiction:
#244:
The Starship and the Temple Cat • short story by Yoon Ha Lee ∗∗
El Is a Spaceship Melody • novelette by Maurice Broaddus
Where the Anchor Lies • short story by Benjamin C. Kinney ∗∗
#245:
Penitents • short story by Rich Larson ∗∗∗
Red Dreams • short story by R. Z. Held ∗∗
The Last Human Child • novelette by Milo James Fowler ∗∗+
Such Were the Faces of the Living Creatures • short story by Josh Pearce ∗
#246:
Do as I Do, Sing as I Sing • novelette by Sarah Pinsker ∗∗
The Emotionless, in Love • novella by Jason Sanford ∗∗∗∗
Gennesaret • short story by Phoenix Alexander ∗∗
Non-fiction:
Ugg • cover by Florent Llamas
As these three issues use the same cover artwork I’ve reviewed them together. These three are also the issues for ‘Science-Fantasy Month 4’.1
The Starship and the Temple Cat by Yoon Ha Lee gets #244 off to a promising start:
She had been a young cat when the Fleet Lords burned the City of High Bells.
Strictly speaking, the City had been a space station rather than a planet-bound metropolis, jewel-spinning in orbit around one of the gas giants of a system inhabited now by dust and debris and the ever-blanketing dark. While fire had consumed some of the old tapestries, the scrolls of bamboo strips, the altars of wood and bone and beaten bronze, the destruction had started when the Fleet Lords, who could not tolerate the City’s priests, bombarded it with missiles and laser fire. But the cat did not know about such distinctions.
Properly, the cat’s name was Seventy-Eighth Temple Cat of the High Bells, along with a number of ceremonial titles that needn’t concern us. But the people who had called her that no longer lived in the station’s ruins. Every day as she made her rounds in what had been the boundaries of the temple, she saw and smelled the artefacts they had left behind, from bloodstains to scorch marks, from decaying books to singed spacesuits, and yowled her grief.
To be precise, the cat no longer lived in the station, either. She did not remember her death with any degree of clarity. The ghosts of cats rarely do, even when the deaths are violent. p. 2-3
One of the starships involved in the attack returns years later. It is now a renegade and is being pursued by the Fleet Lords. While the ship talks to the cat they catch up, and battle commences. The cat (spoiler) summons other ghosts to aid the ship and, after victory, joins it on its journey.
The story does not combine the fantasy and SF elements successfully, and does not suspend disbelief.
El Is a Spaceship Melody by Maurice Broaddus, unlike the Lee, does not get off to a promising start:
The living crystals were displeased. The dissonant chords of a harried melody rocked the starship Arkestra. When Captain LeSony’ra Adisa was a young girl dreaming about one day commanding her own vessel, she had never considered it would be filled with so many day-to-day irritations. She sprang from her seat in the main bridge at the sound of the music. She was not one to be tested today.
“Overseer, we aren’t due for a command performance for another three hours.” On the verge of yelling, she opted to save her anger for the person who deserved it.
“Commander Marshall moved the performance ahead.” The timbre of the Overseer’s voice, emanating from the unseen broadcast units, vacillated somewhere between clearly male and clearly female. Its AI was integrated into every fiber along the length of the Arkestra, its calculations vital to monitoring the ship’s systems, including the harnessing energy from the kheprw crystals that powered the ship. p. 19
The warning flags here are the Star Trek-y beginning, and the weird name for the crystals. And that the starship is powered by crystals, which brings us back to the Star Trek comment. It gets worse as Captain LeSony’ra leaves the bridge with her two guards, apparently in fancy dress:
“Steppers, Chappel, you’re with me.” Cradling a small crystal ball in her hand, LeSony’ra nodded, and the two security officers flanked her. Breastplates covered chrome colored body suits. Each wore a gilded animal mask; Steppers an eagle, the Chappel a dog. They brandished shields, though their charged batons remained at their waist. The trio of women exited the bridge. p. 20
There is more of this as they arrive at the concert that has been started by Commander Marshall to, get this, recharge the kheprw crystals.
She cast a baleful glare in his direction, withdrew opaque citrus-colored glasses, and set the crystal ball on the keyboards at her station, unlocking the vintage Clavioline. Its amplifier fed directly into the kheprw crystals’ containment unit. Her voluminous black caftan whipped about her as she took her seat behind the Clavioline, its iridescent silver overlay interfaced with the keyboards. Her gold chainmail headdress lightly jingled as she began to work the instrument. Her striped platform oxfords—“moon boots” the crew called them, since they were designed for zero gravity situations—found the foot pedals.
Marshall used any opportunity to undermine her authority. Always eager to ingratiate himself to the crew, to prove who ought to be in command. He was in need of a reminder of who was in charge. It was time for a true command performance. p. 21-22
The story engine here is starship Captain LeSony’ra Adisa’s (a young, black, female martinet) conflict with Commander Marshall, her junior officer (he is older, male, white, and a ‘traditionalist’—he also has a facial twitch in case there is any remaining doubt that he is a bad ’un).
The trouble between these one-dimensional characters is telegraphed fairly early on, both in the opening paragraphs above, and in a discussion about Overseer, the ship AI—it is a pity that all the glam-rock stuff at the start disappears so quickly as they could probably have settled matters with a dance-off. As it is, the story continues on its predictable way, with Adisa showing all the emotional intelligence of a teenager who has fallen out with one of her friends. An asteroid strike, a murder and a mutiny are added to the mix, as well as the ship AI, Overseer, trying to find God.
I thought this was awful.
Where the Anchor Lies by Benjamin C. Kinney is a story that feels like an extract from a longer work (a common occurrence in Beneath Ceaseless Skies). This has a woman from the Polity on a pilgrimage to the ruins of a starship she was once bonded with. Once she arrives (spoiler) she will use the starship to warn her fellow citizens of the their leaders’ nefarious intentions. Apart from its structural deficiencies I thought this was okay.
Penitents by Rich Larson leads off #245. This story concerns two characters: Mara, who lives in the habs, and Scout, who lives in the wasteland outside. Mara has hired Scout to help her rescue her friend Io, who left the habs and was taken by an enigmatic black cube controlled by aliens:
Mara doesn’t know where to look, but then all of a sudden there’s an enormous black cube filling up the sky above them. No thunderclap, no sound at all, it just appears. A tremor runs through her whole body, and nausea hits her gut. Her ears are keening, her face is aching. There’s a rough staticky tongue licking her spinal column top to bottom.
The cube is like nothing she’s ever seen, an enormous black box composed of a thousand shifting slivers breaking and melding, rippling, almost liquid. Blinking red sensors swarm around its edges like flies. She can’t tell how close it is—one second it seems right on top of them, the next a mile away. Vertigo swamps her, and she retches.
[. . .]
As she watches, an enormous oily black bubble forms on the underside of the cube, like water beading at the end of a nozzle, then falls. It splashes apart on the slag, revealing its cargo. Mara takes a sharp breath. It’s an old man, scarecrowskinny, naked, with skin so pale it almost glows against the pebbly black rock.
But instead of a head, or perhaps enveloping it, there’s spiny black machinery, with a red sensor pulsing right where the old man’s face should be. p. 4-5
Eventually, (spoiler) they manage to rescue Io and, while they do so, we learn more about the aliens, and why they are make the captives march underneath the cube.
Another solid story from Larson, and one that wouldn’t be out-of-place in, say, Asimov’s SF.
Red Dreams by R. Z. Held has a good hook:
When Tarnish woke from her second red dream, she could deny it no longer—she had to leave, before that dreaming red became the kind of real red that drenched her hands. p. 32
It is a post-holocaust story that has two characters travelling across the country to deliver mail. One of them, Tarnish, starts having the ‘red dreams’ alluded to above, which have previously have led to violent blood-letting sprees in the afflicted. Although Tarnish feels it would be best to leave her partner Sol, the latter dissents, and they stay together. Later, when they come upon the remains of old tech, Tarnish finds her affliction is actually a need for rust not blood.
There is the seed of a good idea here but the story is another one with the feel of an extract. It also feels rather over written and consequently drags.
The Last Human Child by Milo James Fowler is another post-apocalyptic future, this time one where humans are dying out and are in conflict with the ‘spliced,’ humans produced from a mix of convict and animal DNA. Dahlia is (supposedly) the last human child, and she is fleeing through the jungle with Brawnstone, a troll ogre, while the spliced Enya, a ‘shapeshifter’ who is part of a patrol of humans, pursues her.
Just before Dahlia is caught (spoiler) she meets a man in the jungle. The acid rains do not affect him as he has as force shield, and he tells her he is part of a human community that is separate from the Elders Dahlia is trying to escape from. The resolution plays out when all the parties meet.
I enjoyed this, but it is slightly spoiled by a crude data dump start that synopsises what I presumed were earlier stories.2 This could have been more elegantly done, either as a proper prologue, or with the material worked more gradually into the story.
Such Were the Faces of the Living Creatures by Josh Pearce is yet another post-holocaust story, this time one with a hillbilly mutant vibe. A father takes one of his daughters to get medical attention but the autonomous train they attach themselves to is hijacked by humans that have a metallic skin. After they escape they end up in a convent, where the mother superior extracts genetic material from the father (in the traditional way) before explaining where he can find a group who can help the daughter. These turn out to be insect-like creatures who agree to cure one of them in exchange for the other . . . .
Although parts of this are interesting enough, it feels rather like something made up as the writer went along. I also think that it doesn’t quite get the tone right (it sometimes feels as if it is unintentionally teetering on the edge of humour).
Do as I Do, Sing as I Sing by Sarah Pinsker leads off #246. This story’s narrator is a girl called a Guerre who lives in a strange agrarian community. It seems that they only grow one main crop, koh, and this requires a ‘cropsinger.’ One day she and her brother return to the village after they finish playing and see a silver air car arrive, something that Guerre has never seen before. The occupants of the vehicle tell the villagers that the child they had sent train as a replacement cropsinger (their current one is failing) has died.
Guerre is chosen as a replacement; her brother is not impressed when he cannot go too. She leaves the village for the long trip to the training farm.
Several years later, Guerre completes the final test to become a cropsinger and returns to her village. She discovers that, after she had left, her brother went to the city. He then returns to the village with a machine he claims can do the job of a cropsinger, and proceeds to set up a demonstration for the villagers. As the machine works, Guerre and Kirren, the old cropsinger, discuss the effects the machine may have on the delicate societal system that has the lowlanders produce koh crops, and the highlanders breed goats. Later, matters take a turn for the worse when Guerre detects abnormalities in the test crop and feels compelled to act.
I liked this piece well enough but it suffers from three problems. To start with, it is obviously the first part of a longer work or series as the ending leaves matters largely unresolved; second, Guerre’s training is covered in a scant few pages when this section should have been a much longer one where, and this is the third deficiency, the strange ecology and society should have been at least partly fleshed out. No doubt we will learn more in future stories.
The highlight of the three issues is The Emotionless, in Love by Jason Sanford, a 28,000 word novella which is a sequel to the Nebula Award finalist Blood Grains Speak Through Memories (Beneath Ceaseless Skies #195, March 17th 2016). That story had as its central character Frere-Jones, who was the ‘anchor’ for her land, and this story concerns her ‘day-tripper’ son Colton. (The story takes place in a depopulated future that has ‘day-fellows’—itinerant humans—whose caravans are more or less constantly on the move across the land. The resident anchors are infected with ‘grains’—militant ecological nanotechnology which permeates the environment—and the anchors are used by the grains as environmental wardens. Should day-trippers overstay their welcome, or damage the environment, the grains are capable of swarming anchors from adjoining areas to deal with the problem and, more significantly, of transforming them into monstrous beasts to mete out anything up to lethal punishment.)
The story opens with Colton’s caravan, which is going to an area where an upcoming ‘Veil’ is expected, a rare occurrence where the grains in the land malfunction and die, allowing travellers to exploit the land for a short period without fear of attack. They come upon a tree that has been cut down with a laser, and realise that this is something that will enrage the local grains. When they catch up with the caravan responsible for this act it is being attacked by a number of anchors:
Elder Vácha and Colton watched the anchors attack the three wagons ahead. Like their caravan, these other wagons were armored boxes riding wheels two yards tall. But the other caravan’s wagons weren’t hardened ceramic like theirs. Instead, Colton saw rusty metal armor with actual rivets. The wagons looked cobbled together from previously destroyed ones, as if the people driving them hadn’t bothered to create anything better.
Only the strongest wagons could withstand an anchor’s onslaught, and the other caravan wasn’t close to that. The attacking anchors no longer looked human, their bodies rippling to massive muscles and height, to silvered fangs and claws. One of the anchors stood twice as tall as the others and towered over the wagons, her long red hair burning actual fire through the rain and her body swollen on the power and fury of her grains. Colton had never seen an anchor this big—even his mother, who’d been incredibly powerful when angry, wouldn’t have come close. p. 49
The second and third acts are a wild ride that involve, among other things: renegade grains, and Sri Sa’s resultant abilities; Ae’s neural connector; the last human city that fell in the war with the grains, which is partially buried on the site of the Veil.
Along the way, Sri Sa gives Colton grain injections that will enable him to feel individual emotions (he lost this ability when his mother killed off the grains in his body, and changed him from an anchor to a day-traveller):
“You want another emotion?” Sri Sa asked. “You can’t understand what I’m about to share without it.”
Colton nodded.
Sri Sa jumped into the stream beside Colton and grabbed his arm. “Emotions are like colors,” she whispered. “Only a few primary colors, combined, create all the others you see. It’s the same with emotions.”
A single claw grew from Sri Sa’s right index finger. She ran it from Colton’s elbow to wrist, stopping to tap the red dot there. “You need happiness this time,” she said with a grin. “Fear and happiness mix to create duty. You can’t understand why I’m angry without experiencing duty.”
Sri Sa stabbed the claw into Colton’s wrist.
Memories flooded him. He saw people laughing and loving and playing and dancing, each memory wrapping pure bliss through his body and mind. He held a newborn baby to his chest for the first time—his baby, a baby born of him and Sri Sa. He imagined kissing Sri Sa on the cheek as she whispered her love back to him.
“I created those two memories just for you,” Sri Sa said as she tapped his lips with a claw. “The next memories, though, are real. They’re my favorites.”
Colton laughed as he felt Sri Sa’s most precious memories, which came from a woman who’d lived in this city before its destruction. Colton experienced her life in the nano-built city among buildings gleaming to absolute whiteness or lost to perfect darkness. He played among gardens bursting with gene-altered flowers and cool-mist fountains. He learned in vast libraries containing all of humanity’s knowledge. He listened to innovative music flow from performance halls and theaters. He watched children play in beautiful parks and lovers hug as they walked warm-lit streets at night.
Colton grinned. He saw why Sri Sa loved these memories. p. 123-124
This all builds to an exciting climax, and one which has a fitting final line.
Although this is a very good piece overall, it does have a few minor weaknesses: it is perhaps a little too long, which causes pacing problems in the story (the section at the start of part two, for instance, drags a little); I also think that it could do with another draft as it feels a little unpolished. Notwithstanding this, those that enjoyed the previous story will love this one (and I strongly recommend you read it first): apart from the fact that we learn so much more about this world, it is a gripping story. One for the ‘Best of the Year’ anthologies, and I will be interested to see how it does in the Nebula Awards.
Gennesaret by Phoenix Alexander is an evocative story that tells of a woman and her son who are fleeing a conflict:
When there is nothing left in her, when the air boils in her throat and the muscles of her limbs scream and her toes, crushed together unnaturally in thick leather boots, throb with pain: then there is sand, and the sound of the sea.
Too exhausted for relief, she lowers the child from her shoulders and sinks, herself, down. She is on her back. The sand holds her. She claws at her bindings blindly, face-up and drinking in starlight. Her fingers are blocks beating against fabric, and then, and then, the shocking bliss of cool air on her feet, of sea air ruffling the sail-like skin that connects her long delicate dactyls. The flesh is pinched red, the soft lines of scales raw highlights. She weeps tearlessly as she raises her legs, feet forming a fan of flesh above her. The sky is far too alive. Stars show through the translucent film of her toes; galaxies blink between the digits.
The child mewls.
“Umma, I’m hungry.”
Blunt, vestigial claws fumble at her cheek, walking along the flesh to her jawline. She closes her eyes. Instinct directs his hands. As he paws the sack of skin around her gullet, her mouth falls open, and her child pushes his own eagerly into it. She feels the little darting of his forked tongue about the soft flesh of her cheeks, slipping further, sliding longer, and her esophagus spasms, bringing half-digested food up to him.
There is not much. The remains of a small dustrat; the slimed husks of insects. The fires and chemicals destroyed most of the fauna from the grasslands or forced them to flee.
Theirs is a time of running.
When the child has had his fill and slides from her — only then does she swallow the meager remains. Her breath is quick and repulses her: wretched meat. p. 176-77
They plan to cross to the country that is visible on the other side of the water but, before they can do this, her husband, his friends, and their tracking animals catch up with her, and try to take her back. She manages to escape them, and runs across the water in a trance, her webbed feet and speed keeping her and the child above the surface.
When she reaches the opposite side she finds a hostile reception.
This is a promising piece but the ending didn’t work for me (spoiler: her son dies and she is taken away by the crowd. This is followed by an awkward coda that has two of the crowd stand over the boy’s body before cutting off his mutilated crest.) A pity—if the narrative arc was as strong as the writing this would be pretty good.
The cover, Ugg, is an attractively done if unfortunately named piece by Florent Llamas.3
This issue is a mixed bag, just like the previous ones I’ve read. There is some good or very good reading (the Larson and Sanders) and some of the rest is also of interest (the Fowler and Alexander, etc.). More generally I would note that the magazine has something of a writers’ workshop vibe: a number of the stories feel as if they aren’t entirely finished products, and this is amplified by a number of clumsy sentences and typos. ●
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1. There is more wordage than usual in these three issues: at just over 90,000 words there is more here than in an issue of F&SF (82k in the 9/10-2017 issue) but not Asimov’s SF (112k in the 9/10-2017 issue).
2. I had a look at Milo James Fowler’s website and ISFDB page for more information about this series but neither is much use. I eventually came upon Dahlia and the Ronin at Amazon and, as it was only 99p, I bought and read it.
The ebook has four stories that form a prelude to the tale in this magazine (which will presumably be included once BCS’s exclusivity period expires). I say ‘stories’ but they are really four fragments, or the first four parts in a five-part novelette. They are:
While She Sleeps, Mountains Tremble (Triangulation: Morning After, 2012), 1000 words
Stone for Brains (The Fifth Dimension, 2013), 1000 words
Dahlia’s Feast (Aoife’s Kiss #44, March 2013), 3800 words
Dahlia and the Ronin (Perihelion Science Fiction, 2014), 4100 words
It would be helpful for the writer to put these details on his website (or the editor in the after-story material) for those who want to read the series from the start.
3. The full-size cover image is here. You can find more of Llamas’s work at Deviant Art. ●
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