{"id":13697,"date":"2021-05-27T13:44:55","date_gmt":"2021-05-27T13:44:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/?p=13697"},"modified":"2021-06-10T19:07:37","modified_gmt":"2021-06-10T19:07:37","slug":"asimovs-sf-magazine-35th-annual-readers-awards-the-short-story-finalists-2020","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/?p=13697","title":{"rendered":"Asimov’s SF Magazine Readers\u2019 Awards for 2020: Short Story Finalists"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Summary:
\nThese are the six short story finalists for the 35th<\/sup> Asimov\u2019s SF Magazine Readers\u2019 Awards (the stories were published in 2020). They are a mixed bag but worth a read.
\nDon’t miss the standout Rich Larson story, The Conceptual Shark<\/em>!<\/p>\n

_____________________<\/p>\n

Editor, Sheila Williams<\/p>\n

Father <\/strong><\/em>\u2022 short story by Ray Nayler \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>+
\nGO. NOW. FIX. <\/strong><\/em>\u2022 short story by Timons Esaias \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>+
\nRena in the Desert<\/strong> <\/em>\u2022 short story by Lia Swope Mitchell \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>
\nReturn to Glory<\/strong><\/em> \u2022 short story by Jack McDevitt –
\nReturn to the Red Castle<\/strong><\/em> \u2022 short story by Ray Nayler \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>
\nThe Conceptual Shark<\/strong><\/em> \u2022 short story by Rich Larson \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong><\/p>\n

_____________________<\/p>\n

Every year Asimov’s SF<\/em> 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<\/sup> 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.
\nHere is my take on the short story finalists:<\/p>\n

Father\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>by Ray Nayler (Asimov\u2019s SF<\/em>, July-August 2020) is set in an alternate 1950s America,2<\/sup>\u00a0and 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 \u201cfather unit\u201d; it starts to perform that role for the boy (whose real father died in the Afterwar\u2014the invasion of the Soviet Union after WWII) by pitching baseballs to him.
\nLater on, after some more robot-boy bonding, a local delinquent called Archie\u2014who has previously verbally abused the narrator, mother and robot\u2014flies by low in his aircar, and hits the latter with a baseball bat:<\/p>\n

We ran out of the house in time to see Archie\u2019s hot rod arcing off into the sky, wobbling dangerously from side to side on its aftermarket stabilizers.
\nThere 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\u2019s friends. As the hot rod zipped off one of them yelled: \u201cHome run!\u201d and hooted, the sound doppling off in the crickety night as they lurched away against the stars.
\nFather 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.
\n\u201cAre you all right, Father?\u201d I said.
\nHe swung around to look at me. It was awful\u2014his dented head, the one eye snuffed out. But the other one glowed, warm as a kitchen window from home when you\u2019re hungry for dinner.
\n\u201cThat\u2019s the first time you called me Father,\u201d he said. \u201cI couldn\u2019t possibly feel better, hearing that word from my boy.\u201d
\n\u201cWe should call the cops,\u201d my mom said.
\n\u201cI doubt they\u2019ll do much,\u201d Father said. \u201cAnd that young man and his friends really have trouble enough as it is. I feel none of them are headed toward a good end.\u201d
\n\u201cI\u2019ve said the same myself, many times,\u201d Mom said. She was rubbing a dirty mark off of Father\u2019s head with a kitchen cloth. \u201cWhat did they get you with?\u201d
\n\u201cA baseball bat, I\u2019m afraid.\u201d He paused. \u201cPerhaps they mistook me for a mailbox.\u201d
\n\u201cHilarious,\u201d Mom said.
\n\u201cI\u2019m here all week, folks . . .\u201d Father\u2019s bad eye flickered back to life for a moment, then went dead again.\u00a0 p. 49<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The rest of the story largely develops around Archie\u2019s 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\u2019s head and the second time to visit the narrator\u2019s 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 \u201csub-routines\u201d.
\nThe final part of the tale (spoiler) involves Archie supposedly making peace with the narrator by taking him to Woolworths for a milk shake\u2014while 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\u2019s house in the aftermath of this event, discusses with another military man the robot\u2019s lethal behaviour, and then what the pair did in the war (which includes a mention of\u00a0their<\/em>\u00a0sub-routines).
\nThe 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\u2019s true identity and its sub-routines is never adequately resolved, and it almost unravels the last part of the story. A pity\u2014if this had continued in the same vein as it started, it would have been a pretty good piece rather than a near-miss.
\n\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>+ (Average to Good). 7,200 words.<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

GO. NOW. FIX.<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0by Timons Esaias (Asimov\u2019s SF<\/em>, 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:<\/p>\n

A haze of powders and exploded aerosols hung in the cabin, but was already clearing. The scene made PandaPillow\u2019s systems surge. Everything was wrong. People were dazed, some were hurt. There was blood. The air was going away.
\nWith its selfie app PandaPillow recorded two panorama shots and two closeups before its battery finally declared the need for emergency shutdown. Shutdown initiated.
\nPandaPillow took one last survey of the area. A few rescue masks were dropping, here and there. And why was the air all nitrogen?
\nCOMFORT, DEFEND, said its pillow programing. Powering down wouldn\u2019t do that.
\nPandaPillow #723756 invoked Customer Support.\u00a0 p. 89<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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\u2019s hull, takes control, and lands the aircraft safely.
\nDespite its heroic actions, the PandaPillow is initially overlooked after they land before it is eventually f\u00eated as a hero.
\nSome of the early action is hard to visualise but it\u2019s an entertaining piece, and the touching last section drags it up another notch.
\n\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>+ (Good to Very Good). 3,900 words.<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

Rena in the Desert<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0by Lia Swope Mitchell (Asimov\u2019s SF<\/em>, March\/April 2020) opens with Rena driving across the Nevada desert in a barely functioning electric car when she comes upon a deserted automotel:<\/p>\n

[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\u2014maybe those Rock Springs still existed, underground somewhere now. Next to the pool, dangling small plump feet, sat a little girl, staring back.
\nHow 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\u2014only 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.
\nOn 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.\u00a0 p. 58<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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\u2019t anything available.
\nThe rest of this post-apocalypse story includes some backstory about Rena\u2019s trans lover Mike (who has ended up somewhere else for a reason I can\u2019t remember), and her discovery of a smuggler who has been locked in a room by the motel\u2019s security software. Rena also eventually realises that the automotel AI has been looking after the young girl.
\nThe 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.
\nThis is an engaging and well told story but matters rather work out of their own accord\u2014which makes for a rather pedestrian ending.
\n\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong> (Good.) 6,000 words.<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

Return to Glory<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0by Jack McDevitt (Asimov\u2019s SF<\/em>, 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.
\nThe story opens with the narrator getting a call from a call from a school friend to say he\u2019s found a copy of a long lost show called\u00a0Star Trek<\/em>\u00a0at a site he\u2019s developing, and the narrator\u2019s wife agrees to screen the show (the library she works at has the tech to read the recording\u2019s ancient format). The three of them then meet the next morning to watch it\u2014only 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.
\nThat night the narrator and his wife watch the show at home:<\/p>\n

The storyline wasn\u2019t great, but it was okay. It wasn\u2019t 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.
\n\u201cI think the magic,\u201d said Sara, \u201cis knowing it was put together by people who believed it was coming.\u201d \u00a0 p. 164<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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.
\nIf you are in the mood for a mawkish, boosterish tale about how\u00a0Star Trek<\/em>\u00a0will 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\u2019t up mine, and reads like something that was pulled out of\u00a0Analog<\/em>\u2019s slush pile.
\n\u2013 (Poor). 4,000 words.<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

Return to the Red Castle<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0by Ray Nayler (Asimov\u2019s SF<\/em>, March\/April 2020) is another of his \u2018Istanbul Protectorate\u2019 stories (these are set in a future where people\u2019s minds can be read and then written onto \u2018blank\u2019 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).
\nWhen 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.
\nThe rest of the story sees Umut being taken to the Institute by Irem to see if it is possible to retrieve the android\u2019s memories. Initially it seems that Umut is suffering from \u201cbitrot\u201d, a sort of data decay, but later on the Institute contacts Irem and tells her it looks like the android\u2019s memories were deliberately wiped by an \u201cicepick\u201d, 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.
\nUmut 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.
\nI 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\u2019m 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).
\n\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong> (Average). 7,250 words.<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

The Conceptual Shark<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0by Rich Larson (Asimov\u2019s SF<\/em>, 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.
\nThe next part of the story sees him at Nora the therapist\u2019s 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\u2019t talk, and she replies that they don\u2019t live in bathroom plumbing either! When he leaves Nora\u2019s office Adam bumps into Bastian, her boyfriend, who reappears later in the story.
\nThe next day Adam decides he has to have a shower\u2014by now he can smell himself\u2014and during this he falls through the bottom of the shower tray:<\/p>\n

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.
\nAdam knows that people do die in the shower\u2014they slip, they fall, they break their necks. It\u2019s almost definitely more common than dying in a shark attack. He doesn\u2019t think there are statistics for shower deaths by shark attack.
\nHis 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.
\nSomething nudges against his right arm. Retreats. Terror is paralyzing him in place; he can feel his limbs locking up. In a second he\u2019ll 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.
\nHe 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.
\nThe showerhead is sheared off its mount, dangling from the shark\u2019s mouth like a bit of dental floss.\u00a0 p. 173<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

After this Adam\u2019s problem only gets worse, and he sees the shark everywhere there is water\u2014washing machines, stacked water bottles, etc.
\nAt 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.
\nBastian orders Adam into the office, reassures him that he\u2019ll walk out alive, and begins to explain that the \u201cconceptual shark\u201d 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.
\nThe 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\u2019t seem like the pool is going to change into the ocean, Adam pricks his finger with a paperclip to produce a drop of blood\u2014at which point he plunges down into cold seawater. When the shark arrives it\u2019s like the climactic scene of the\u00a0Jaws<\/em>\u00a0movie played out in an office setting and, if that isn\u2019t sensational enough, we also discover that the shark has been hunting Bastian, not the other way around.
\nThen 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\u2019s face, and he sees he is floating on a vast ocean.
\nThis is an impressively original piece that crams a big plot and a thoroughly worked out idea into very little space.
\n\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong> (Very Good). 3,750 words.<\/p>\n

\u2022\u2022\u2022<\/p>\n

A mixed bag of stories but they are all worth a look, bar the McDevitt. Don\u2019t miss Rich Larson\u2019s piece!\u00a0 \u25cf<\/p>\n

_____________________<\/p>\n

1. Unfortunately the stories were put online<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

2. The alternate world pivot point in this story is the same as in Nayler\u2019s two \u2018Sylvia Aldstatt\u2019 stories (also published in Asimov\u2019s SF<\/em>): the recovery of a crashed flying saucer by the USA in 1938, and the subsequent use of the technology found.\u00a0 \u25cf<\/p>\n\"rss\"<\/a>\"rss\"<\/a><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Summary: These are the six short story finalists for the 35th Asimov\u2019s SF Magazine Readers\u2019 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! _____________________ Editor, Sheila Williams Father \u2022 short story by Ray Nayler \u2217\u2217+ GO. NOW. […]<\/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-13697","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\/p6Pcj7-3yV","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13697","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=13697"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13697\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13759,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13697\/revisions\/13759"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}