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<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Other reviews: Fiction: Non-fiction: I was going to say that the cover layout is better this issue than some I\u2019ve seen recently\u2014and indeed the type does complement\u00a0the artwork better than some of the recent examples\u2014but then I noticed a couple of other things: first, the title and story title lettering has jagged edges, which I thought may have been a function of a low resolution image being used in the Kindle edition, however when you zoom the image it doesn\u2019t pixelate particularly but the type edges become badly serrated; secondly, the title is off centre for some reason: there is about fifty percent more space to the right of the title than there is to the left (I\u2019m talking about the original Kindle cover image here not the slightly cropped version above). The short stories in this issue are the usual average to below average mixture that I am beginning to expect from this magazine. Clearance<\/em><\/strong> by Sarah Pinsker is a peculiar story about a woman looking for a seaside souvenir for her daughter and all the different ones she considers. Half way through the story she starts doing this again at another location and this time her daughter is there. The SFnal element to this is that they are at a location where four oceans come together as if\u00a0in a kaleidoscope, perhaps some kind of spatial anomaly:<\/p>\n \u201cHow do we get to the other ones?\u201d she asked after a minute. This phenomenon is never explicitly explained, so perhaps the story here is supposed to be about her relationship with\u00a0her daughter. Project Symmetry<\/em><\/strong>, the novelette by Dominica Phetteplace, is the third instalment of her \u2018Watcher\/AI\u2019 series. In this one the point of view changes from the AIs to Bel, the seventeen year old with the Watcher chip installed. At first I didn\u2019t really get on with change of voice from the cool detached AIs to that of someone who superficially sounds like\u00a0a teenage Valley girl. Nor did I really buy how quickly she comes to terms with the fact that she has a Watcher chip installed:<\/p>\n I looked down at the piece of paper. Actual paper, how quaint. \u201cHow to Kill Your Watcher Chip.\u201d The instructions had been sent to me by a well-meaning adult. I wadded up the paper and tossed it into my wastebasket. What\u2019s the point of living if no one\u2019s going to see? \u201cNice to meet you,\u201d I said. I curtsied to the empty room; it seemed appropriate to the occasion. \u201cI have some auditions tomorrow.\u201d<\/em> However, it didn\u2019t take me long to get past this and, as with the previous entries, there are some striking scenes about\u00a0the social mores of the plutocratic\u00a0future society she lives in, such as when she visits Angelina, a hostess at the Reserve who has been ill:<\/p>\n \u00a0\u201cWow,\u201d I said. I couldn\u2019t imagine getting cards from Blue Cup guests, but most of my guests were tourists. <\/em> Or when she agrees to meet Vincent, one of the programmers of the script-writing algorithm of a show she has a minor part in. They go for drinks at a strange kind of club:<\/p>\n \u201cDo you like this place?\u201d he asked. <\/em> The general drift of this story is that Bel gets a minor role in a TV show while also dealing with her dysfunctional parental relationships. The best story in the issue, and I am looking forward to next month\u2019s Project Entropy<\/em>.<\/p>\n I quite liked What We Hold Onto<\/em><\/strong> by Jay O\u2019Connell, but wonder if it is really much more than a tale of a female mid-life crisis in SF-nal drag. Sophia Bauer has a mother in a coma, and two children who have left the nest. She is recently separated from her husband. Into this mix comes a \u2018Nomad\u2019 called Concord who she hires to \u2018Simplify\u2019 her mother\u2019s belongings. This turns out to be a process where all physical possessions are scanned and uploaded to the cloud before being disposed of: at one point in the story Sophia wanders around a VR simulation of her childhood house that Concord has created from all the material that her mother had in storage.2<\/sup> In this month\u2019s editorial, Behind the Scenes<\/em><\/strong>, Shelia Williams talks about\u00a0three of her co-workers and their jobs: production artist Cindy Tiberi, editorial assistant Deanna McLafferty, and Emily Hockaday, the assistant editor, who also has a poem at the end of this piece. They all seem to be kept quite busy with their numerous responsibilities. I\u2019m in my eighties now and much less interested in reading instruction manuals.<\/em> p.6<\/p>\n A man reading an instruction manual? Burn the heretic! Overall, this a solid issue thanks to the two longer works.<\/p>\n Other reviews: Greg Hullender\u00a0and Eric Wong, Rocket Stack Rank\u00a0(forthcoming) Sam\u00a0Tomaino, SF Revu\u00a0(forthcoming) Coleen Chen, Tangent Online Various, Goodreads Mark Watson, Best SF (forthcoming) Fiction: Clearance \u2022 short story by Sarah Pinsker \u2665 Unreeled \u2022 short story by Mercurio D. Rivera \u2665\u2665 Rambunctious \u2022 short story by Rick Wilber \u2665\u2665 Project Symmetry \u2022 novelette by Dominica […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1364","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asimovs-science-fiction"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Pcj7-m0","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1364","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1364"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1364\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1376,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1364\/revisions\/1376"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nGreg Hullender\u00a0and Eric Wong, Rocket Stack Rank<\/a>\u00a0(forthcoming)
\nSam\u00a0Tomaino, SF Revu<\/a>\u00a0(forthcoming)
\nColeen Chen, Tangent Online<\/a>
\nVarious, Goodreads<\/a>
\nMark Watson, Best SF<\/a> (forthcoming)<\/p>\n
\nClearance<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Sarah Pinsker \u2665
\nUnreeled<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Mercurio D. Rivera \u2665\u2665
\nRambunctious<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Rick Wilber \u2665\u2665
\nProject Symmetry<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 novelette by Dominica Phetteplace \u2665\u2665\u2665+
\nRats Dream of the Future<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Paul J. McAuley \u2665\u2665
\nWhat We Hold Onto<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 novella by Jay O\u2019Connell \u2665\u2665\u2665<\/p>\n
\nCover<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 Dominic Harman
\nPoetry<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 Emily Hockaday, David C. Kopaska-Merkel, Tony Daniel , G. O. Clark, Andrew Darlington, Geoffrey A. Landis
\nBehind the Scenes<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 editorial by Sheila Williams
\nMy Trip to the Future<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 essay by Robert Silverberg
\nThere\u2019s Something About Mars<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 essay by James Patrick Kelly
\nNext Issue <\/em><\/strong>
\nOn Books: Very Hard Science Fiction<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 by Norman Spinrad
\nSF Conventional Calendar<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 by Erwin S. Strauss<\/p>\n
\nI know this all sounds like I\u2019m off my OCD meds but I think it is something worth mentioning at least once.1<\/sup><\/p>\n
\n\u201cWe don\u2019t.\u201d
\nHer face fell.
\n\u201cWe don\u2019t this time. It\u2019s a different permit, with a vetting process. And a waiver for that one over there.\u201d I pulled out the pocket map they\u2019d sent, and pointed in the direction of what was labeled AtlanticP1. Ours was AtlanticP4, so I didn\u2019t really get the numbering. Or what the P stood for. \u201cAnd that sunny one has an age restriction. But we\u2019ll be allowed to travel to the one on the upper left after two more visits, if we don\u2019t get in any trouble while we\u2019re here.\u201d
\nShe drew back into herself, shuttering her excitement. Despite the fact we were looking at something utterly impossible, that I\u2019d brought her someplace better than anything she could have imagined.
\n\u201cI can rent you a wetsuit if you want to go in the water,\u201d I said. \u201cOr we can go on a glass boat tour.\u201d
\n\u201cGlass-bottomed?\u201d
\n\u201cI think it\u2019s more like a submarine or a bubble or something. Glass all around.\u201d
\nA patrol gull winged past us, flapping hard against the wind. A patrol gull, so close we heard its wing hydraulics. It landed on a beer can in the sand, crumpled it with metal talons, tossed it into its mouth. There was a grinding, a smell of hot aluminum.
\nMaya looked at me. \u201cThat\u2019d be cool, I guess.\u201d<\/em> p.18<\/p>\n
\nUnreeled<\/em><\/strong> by Mercurio D. Rivera is about Jonathan meeting his returning wife. She works as a \u2018streamer\u2019 and has just had her brain patterns returned to her body after exploring a black hole. The story is then about their son, who was involved in a car crash and now has ASD\u2014Acquired Savant\u2019s Disorder\u2014and the changes that Jonathan starts noticing about his wife. Later, at a party he also notices that the other crew members seem to be different as well. At the end (spoiler) it all ends up a bit Invasion of the Body Snatchers<\/em>. I wasn\u2019t entirely convinced.
\nRambunctious<\/em><\/strong> by Rick Wilber is told from the point of view of a precocious ten year old. It is set in a near-future world where a Yellowstone volcanic eruption has badly disrupted the environment. Emma lives with her grandparents, and her grandmother says that they are shortly going to be picked up by aliens. As well as this Emma is different: she can read very quickly, hold her breath for sixteen minutes under water, etc. The story has a slight whiff of Zenna Henderson\u2019s \u2018The People\u2019 about it, and ultimately promises more than it delivers in the end but it is pleasant enough.
\nRats Dream of the Future<\/em><\/strong> by Paul J. McAuley tells of a scientist who works for an investment bank networking rat\u2019s brains together to create a stochastic computer to predict the financial markets. Unfortunately they create a tesseract of altered reality that traps two humans. Then there are rumours of super smart rats in the area. This has an \u2018if this goes on\u2019-ish ending.<\/p>\n
\n\u201cIndeed.\u201d<\/em>
\n\u201cWill you help me run lines?\u201d<\/em>
\n\u201cIndeed.\u201d<\/em> P.41<\/p>\n
\n\u201cI mean, these were sent by assistants of course, but still very nice.\u201d She handed me a card. I opened it up and a tree grew out of the center. In the margin was a haiku that had nothing to do either with trees or getting better. <\/em>
\n\u201cI don\u2019t get it,\u201d I said. <\/em>
\n\u201cMe neither, but it\u2019s composed by Jade,\u201d she said. I saw it there, in the lowermost corner of the card. JADE, burned into the paper with a laser. <\/em>
\n\u201cI don\u2019t know who that is,\u201d I said. <\/em>
\n\u201cShe won the Pulitzer. She\u2019s also the staff poet of the St. Vincent-Williams-Carollo-Van Buren family.\u201d<\/em> p.47<\/p>\n
\n\u201cIt\u2019s unusual,\u201d I said. <\/em>
\n\u201cI thought you might say that,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s a speakeasy.\u201d \u201c<\/em>
\nWhat is that?\u201d <\/em>
\n\u201cIt\u2019s a black-out site. A place under no surveillance,\u201d he said. \u201cGet it? Speak. Easy. You can speak easy if you\u2019re not worried about being listened to.\u201d <\/em>
\nI laughed, I couldn\u2019t help it. \u201cIs that what they told you?\u201d I asked.<\/em>
\n\u201cIt\u2019s true,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s why they make you surrender your phones and wristbands by the door.\u201d<\/em>
\n\u201cDo they? I still have mine.\u201d I took my phone out of my pocket and flashed my wristband.<\/em>
\n \u201cWow, that is a very primitive phone,\u201d he said. That was true. After I found out about Watcher, I downgraded my phone to save money. You don\u2019t really need a phone when you have a computer implanted in your head, but I still carried one around so I could fit in. I laughed again. He smiled because he thought I was laughing with him. Really, I was laughing at him. And his naivety. I may be the suburban teenager, but he\u2019s the one that believed in invisibility. Watcher was watching him right now.<\/em> p.48<\/p>\n
\nWhile this is going on she finds herself attracted to Concord. She also has to decide whether or not to let her mother die or put her into \u2018storage\u2019, a process that will leave her in suspended animation for a decade at considerable cost. Subsequently (spoiler), her mother comes out of her coma but later dies. Concord leaves to do relief work, and Sophia ends up disposing of most of her material goods and starts travelling and working in different parts of the USA. Towards the end of the novella she meets up with Concord, who has been sorting out his own issues.
\nIn the background there are mentions of climate related disasters at which the Nomads, a stateless tribe that seems to have grown out of various disparate organisations and groups, do relief work. They have body modifications that mean they need little food.
\nThose readers who are happy with relationship driven\/minimal plot material will quite like this; those who want a more SF-nal read will probably find it\u00a0frustrating as they will want to know a lot more about this\u00a0future world.<\/p>\n
\nMy Trip to the Future<\/em><\/strong> by Robert Silverberg is about his irrational dislike of smartphones despite a lifetime of having the newest gadgets. However, he and his wife Karen were recently lost in France and the iPhone she had insisted on buying before the trip helped\u00a0them with guidance to their destination. Silverberg recounts how listening to the spoken instructions from the phone seemed like something out of a 1942 issue of\u00a0Astounding<\/em>.
\nThere is a shocking admission in this essay:<\/p>\n
\nThere\u2019s Something About Mars<\/em><\/strong> by James Patrick Kelly is about various novels and films concerning Mars, several of which I really should have read and\/or seen by now.3<\/sup>
\nFinally, Norman Spinrad\u2019s On Books<\/em><\/strong> column looks at three works by David Walton, Ted Kosmatka and Kim Stanley Robinson, and finds them all wanting to a greater or lesser extent. He writes about these novels in a very perceptive and cogent way which puts this review column head and shoulders above all the others I’ve read so far this year both here and also in F&SF<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n
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