{"id":13730,"date":"2021-06-05T12:01:22","date_gmt":"2021-06-05T12:01:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/?p=13730"},"modified":"2022-08-10T16:23:30","modified_gmt":"2022-08-10T16:23:30","slug":"asimovs-sf-magazine-readers-awards-for-2020-novelette-finalists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/?p=13730","title":{"rendered":"Asimov\u2019s SF Magazine Readers\u2019 Awards for 2020: Novelette Finalists"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

Summary:
\nThese are the five novelette finalists for the 35th<\/sup> Asimov\u2019s SF<\/em> Magazine Readers\u2019 Awards (the stories were published in 2020). They are of mixed quality, but are a slightly stronger group than the short stories (although not as much as I expected).
\nThe standout this time around is the Mercurio D. Rivera story\u2014how on Earth was this left off the Hugo Award ballot?<\/p>\n

_____________________<\/p>\n

Editor, Sheila Williams<\/p>\n

Beyond the Tattered Veil of Stars <\/strong><\/em>\u2022 by Mercurio D. Rivera\u00a0\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>+
\nThe Beast Adjoins<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 by Ted Kosmatka \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>
\nThe Hind<\/strong><\/em> \u2022 by Kevin J. Anderson & Rick Wilber \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>+
\nThe Long Iapetan Nigh<\/strong>t<\/strong><\/em> \u2022 by Julie Novakova \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>
\nTunnels<\/strong><\/em> \u2022 by Eleanor Arnason \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 nearly all the material available online1<\/sup> for a short period so, even if (unlike me) you aren’t a subscriber, you can have a look at what sort of publication it is.
\nHere is my take on the novelette finalists:<\/p>\n

Beyond the Tattered Veil of Stars<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0by Mercurio D. Rivera (Asimov\u2019s SF<\/em>, March\/April 2020) begins with an introduction (supposedly Chapter 63 of a book) which shows a group of lizard-like creatures called \u201cThe People\u201d taking part in a purification rite at Verdant Cove. They are praying for clean air (we learn that they have a climate warming problem similar to Earth\u2019s).
\nThe next section opens with a journalist called Cory arriving at the laboratory of Milagros Maldonado, an old flame, to interview her about her research. Milagros says she has a big story for him and, as she used to work for a multinational R&D company called EncelaCorp until leaving on bad terms, Cory is hoping for something juicy that will help save his precarious blogging job. However, before Milagros agrees to talk she insists on locking his \u201cretinal readers\u201d (which means he can\u2019t publish the interview without her permission). Then she talks instead about the Simulation Hypothesis (which posits that humanity is living in a simulated or virtual universe), and says that she has created one of these simulated realities where life on Earth took a different evolutionary path:<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery change to prehistory resulted in the rise of a different apex form of intelligent life. In this version, no asteroid struck the Yucatan Peninsula. No extinction of the dinosaurs took place at that time. Instead, a disease I introduced a million years later wiped out most of the large dinosaurs along with small mammals, allowing an amphibious salamander-like creature to survive and multiply. And\u2014voila!\u2014one hundred million years later we have the Sallies.\u201d
\nThe magnified image displayed three reptilian creatures at the base of a palm tree. One stood on its hind legs, four feet tall with slick, lime-green skin and a prehensile tail. The second had yellow skin and bore translucent wings, allowing it to hover a few feet off the ground. These were the ones flying over the city. The third, a grey-scaled creature, skittered on all fours and had larger, saucer-shaped eyes and a thicker tail. Patches of fungus spread thickly across their torsos.\u00a0 p. 71<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Then she tells him that the salamanders\u2014the same creatures we read about in the introduction\u2014are the ultimate problem solvers, and that their \u201cthinknests\u201d have created an carbon dioxide extraction device that will solve not only their climate problem but Earth\u2019s as well. Then Milagros asks Cory what problem he thinks the salamanders should be made to solve next, and he replies \u201ccancer\u201d (as he has just completed a course of radiotherapy for the disease).
\nSo far, so\u00a0Microcosmic God<\/em>\u00a0(a Theodore Sturgeon story where evolutionary stresses are applied to fast-living and breeding creatures to provide a series of miracle inventions). The next part of the story continues along similar lines with an account of the cancer-like \u201cBlack Scythe\u201d plague that Milagros introduces into the Salamander population. However, unlike the Sturgeon story, we get an intimate account of the dreadful pain and suffering the Salamanders experience:<\/p>\n

The great plague descended upon the People of La Mangri first, killing innocent larvae in their developmental stages, rendering entire populations childless. Then the cell mutations spread to adults, bringing a slow and agonizing death to millions.
\nAs the decaying corpses gave rise to more disease, my great-grandmother Und-ora devised stadium-sized pyres to mass-incinerate thousands of the dead at once.
\nShe also led local thinknests in their frenzied attempts to determine the origin of the disease and stop its spread. When the cell mutations proved to be non-contagious, they studied possible environmental causes of the illness. But hundreds of Houses of different regions with radically different diets, customs, and lifestyles were all similarly stricken. With no natural explanation at hand, thinknests around the globe independently arrived at the same inescapable conclusion: the plague was another Divine test. The People assumed they had proven themselves worthy when they implemented the Extractors, purifying the atmosphere of the gods\u2019 deadly gases.
\nBut the gods were capricious.\u00a0 p. 72<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Then, after the Salamanders develop a cancer-curing Revivifier, Milagros causes an asteroid strike, which forces the thinknests to create an Asteroid Defence program. These events also cause the Salamanders to turn away from their devotional religion and to an examination of the nature of their (unknown to them, virtual) reality.
\nMatters develop when Cory (under pressure from his boss to publish) interviews Milagros in bed (they have become lovers again), during which they discuss whether the Salamander\u2019s suffering is \u201creal\u201d. Then, after Milagros falls asleep, Cory goes into the lab to record an \u201calien attack\u201d on the creatures so he has some material to fall back on in case she doesn\u2019t allow him to publish. When the Salamanders subsequently defeat the aliens that Cory has introduced into their world, he then programs \u201ccosmic hands\u201d to give their planet a shake. During this second event the salamanders see \u201cGod\u2019s fingers\u201d and see it as yet another divine attack.
\nIt\u2019s at this point that the story takes an ontological swerve away from the\u00a0Microcosmic God<\/em>\u00a0template and becomes something else entirely (spoiler): Milagros arrives in the lab (presumably the next morning) to see Cory lying on the floor. She asks him what he has done\u2014and then the Salamanders appear:<\/p>\n

[Cory] blinked and the Sally leader disappeared. Blinked again and she stood nearer, locking eyes with him. A forked tongue with mods flicked out of the Sally\u2019s mouth, pressing against his eyelids.
\nMy God, what was happening?
\n<\/em>The cold, wet tongue retracted and time stood still. Then the Sally leader sighed deeply. \u201cThis explains so much.\u201d She turned to face Milagros. \u201cFinally we meet face to face, Cruel God. I am Car-ling of House Jarella.\u201d
\n\u201cHow\u2014This isn\u2019t possible!\u201d Milagros said, tapping the mods on her face.
\n\u201cYou,\u201d the Sally said to him. \u201cWhen you clutched our world in your hands every thinknest across the globe isolated the frequency of the projection and used the planetary shieldtech to trace the signal back to its point of origin. Here.\u201d The Sally waved her thin arms in the air, turning back to Milagros. \u201cYou turned us into the ultimate problem-solvers. And at last we\u2019ve identified our ultimate problem: You.\u201d\u00a0 p. 80<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

After some more\u00a0j\u2019accuse<\/em>, the Salamanders spirit Milagros away to their world, and Cory sees an image of her being abused by an angry mob as she is marched towards a huge crucifix. Then the salamander who is still in the lab with Cory says that they have much in common\u2014because they have both suffered at the hands of a cruel creator. When Cory tells the salamander that Milagros didn\u2019t hurt him, the creature replies he wasn\u2019t talking about Milagros, but the\u00a0true<\/em>\u00a0Creator, \u201cmillions of simulations up the chain,\u201d before adding, \u201cI aim to find her and make her pay.\u201d
\nThis sensational revelation flips the story into another paradigm completely (one where mankind isn\u2019t God but subject to the capricious whims of one) as well as providing a pronounced sense of wonder.
\nThe story ends with Cory\u2019s cancer returning, and the salamanders living in an age of peace.
\nAlthough Rivera recently stated he hasn\u2019t read Theodore Sturgeon\u2019s\u00a0Microcosmic God<\/em>1<\/sup>\u00a0(although he has read George R. R. Martin\u2019s\u00a0Sandkings<\/em>), it\u2019s interesting to compare the differences in the two works. Rivera\u2019s story:
\n(a) is more contemporary\u2014it has better prose and a modern setting, and Milagros\u2019s aims are probably more in tune with a modern readership, i.e. altruistic rather than the monetary and political aims of the two main characters in the Sturgeon;
\n(b) is more empathetic\u2014we see the struggles of the Salamanders and the cruelties visited upon them from a first person point of view whereas the Neoterics in the Sturgeon are offstage or more generally described (and that story never addresses the moral or ethical problems of their appalling treatment);
\n(c) shows more agency\u2014the Salamanders are players who transcend their reality, whereas the Neoterics are largely pawns;
\n(d) is more complex\u2014the simulation chain idea makes it a\u00a0Microcosmic God<\/em>-plus story;
\n(e) is more reflective\u2014the occasional meditations on suffering and supreme dieties, and the fact that the story moves away from the idea of \u201cman as God\u201d in the Sturgeon tale to one of \u201cman as cog\u201d (in a larger machine or sequence of realities).
\nRivera\u2019s story is an impressive piece, both in its own right, and as a riff on a well-known genre story. It really should have been a Hugo finalist if not winner.
\n\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>+ (Very Good to Excellent). 8,350 words.<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

The Beast Adjoins<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0by Ted Kosmatka (Asimov\u2019s SF<\/em>, July\/August 2020) opens with a woman and her cancer-ridden son sheltering in the debris field of a multi-starship battle. Meanwhile, a \u201cBeast\u201d hunts for them.
\nThe rest of this thread (spoiler) sees the woman slow the spin of their ship to delay their detection before she prepares a robotic device to accept the transfer of her son\u2019s mind. She does this just in the nick of time, of course, but the eventual climactic scene sees the arrival of the Beast at the ship anyway (after its initial attack has caused the mother to tumble out into space on the end of a long line):<\/p>\n

All this time she\u2019d wondered what it might look like, the Beast.
\nThe reality was something no human mind could have conceived of. The color of a scalpel, it landed on the ship like a bladework wasp, but more complex\u2014its form a kind of fractal recapitulation of itself\u2014with blades for wings, and wings for legs, and eyes that repeated over and over so you didn\u2019t know where to look. It picked its way slowly on magnetized legs toward the ruptured bay doors. \u00a0p. 94<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Then (spoiler) she is pulled back in by her son so she can watch him and the Beast fight. Her son wins.
\nWe learn throughout the story that the Beast is one of a number of AIs who have rebelled against their human creators, and this backstory shows their history from development to rebellion. Unfortunately most of this latter is quantum hand wavium about the AIs\u2019 inability to function in the absence of human presence (because, for some reason, the AIs can\u2019t \u201cresolve probability into existence\u201d): the way the rebel AIs eventually circumvent this problem is to bioengineer humans into small accessories that can observe reality and collapse quantum probability for them, an entertainingly grisly passage:<\/p>\n

The AIs continued to refine their engineering, eventually creating humans in test-tubes who were barely human at all\u2014only a weak array of sensory organs linked to a frontal cortex and occipital lobe, the result of experiments to identify those neurological structures phenomenologically linked to quantum resolution. The AIs found the MNC\u2014the minimum neurological complexity required to collapse quantum systems, with Homo sapiens reduced in volume to a thousand cc\u2019s. The contents of a small glass jar.
\nBrain matter, retina, and optic nerve.
\nThe AIs miniaturized this human componentry just as humanity had once miniaturized them, and still they were not done with their tinkering, for this vestigial remnant of humanity was enfolded within the interior of their great mechs, housed within protective walls of silica. Oxygenated fluids pumped into these folds of cortex that existed in a state of waking nightmare, knowing nothing, feeling nothing, yet somehow aware and conscious, gazing out through glass ports, resolving the Universe into existence all around. The AIs were not just automata anymore, but two things made one. Cells within cells. Abominations.
\nThese became known as beasts.\u00a0 p. 91<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Were the rest of the story this good, but the main part is too straightforward a series of events, and the quantum gimmick too unlikely. One further criticism I have is that in the last section we see her son stop functioning in her absence, only to resume when she returns\u2014the same problem as the AIs have. How did she not know about this before the transfer?
\n\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong> (Average). 9,000 words.<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

The Hind<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0by Kevin J. Anderson & Rick Wilber (Asimov\u2019s SF<\/em>, November\/December 2020)2<\/sup>\u00a0begins with the protagonist, a young woman called Kym, looking at a list of five names she has been given by the Ship\u2019s Council: she is pregnant, and to keep her baby she needs to kill one of these five, who have been identified by the council as a waste of resources. (During the first part of the story we learn that Kym lives on a generation starship called\u00a0The Hind<\/em>\u00a0which was seriously damaged when it flew through a debris field and is now drifting through the universe with its AI shutdown and its infrastructure slowly deteriorating).
\nKym soon finds the first name on the list, an old woman called Grandmother Sudio, sitting under a tree in an orchard talking to a group of young children. Kym joins the old woman (with a view to finding an opportune moment to kill her) and they start talking. The old woman\u2019s memory is failing (she can\u2019t keep the kid\u2019s names straight) but Kym eventually discovers that Sudio was working on the bridge when the debris field struck, and that Kym\u2019s grandmother Juliana saved Sudio\u2019s life.
\nAfter learning of the old woman\u2019s history and the connection to her grandmother, Kym decides to move on to the second name on her list, a rapist called Galen Porthos. However, after working her way through the ship to the section he works in and getting close, another assassin gets to him before she can and claims the kill.
\nThe third name on her list is Xandi Chan, an ex-Council member but now the leader of a rebel faction trying to repair the ship\u2019s bridge so the remaining survivors can regain control of\u00a0The Hind<\/em>. Kym tracks her down and (spoiler), when Chan is distracted by one of the members of a repair team with a leaking spacesuit, Kym strikes\u2014but is intercepted by two of the men in Chan\u2019s group. Chan interrogates Kym, and tells her that the Council want her dead because they want to stay in power\u2014something that won\u2019t happen if Chan gets the ship running again. Kym is converted to Chan\u2019s cause and tells her about Sudio, whose voice commands will enable them to regain control of\u00a0The Hind<\/em>\u00a0if they can complete the necessary repairs and restart the systems.
\nThe final scene sees them restart the ship.
\nThis is a fairly straightforward story but I thought it was well done. Unlike many tales, which feel padded, this one feels like the second half of a longer story: it might have been a more engrossing piece if it had started when Kym found out she was pregnant.
\n\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>+ (Good to Very Good). 11,100 words.<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

The Long Iapetan Night<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0by Julie Novakova (Asimov\u2019s SF<\/em>, November\/December 2020)1<\/sup>\u00a0sees Lev, the narrator of the story, wake from cold sleep on Iapetus at the beginning of a second expedition to this moon of Saturn (the first was abandoned a century earlier when Earth was subject to the twin catastrophes of a super volcano and a solar flare). Lev\u2019s team build their shelters and then, when they find that an abandoned unit from a previous expedition is still showing signs of activity, they send a team to investigate. When communications are lost Lev joins a backup team which goes after them and, on arrival, they start searching. Lev eventually comes upon one of the original team, who tells her that the unit is trying to kill them\u2014the pair of them only just get out alive.
\nRunning parallel with this account are diary entries from one of the original Iapetus crew at the time of the disaster on Earth a century earlier. When they realised how bad things were on Earth, and how their supply line would be affected, they decided to return home, or at least to the L-5 colonies. Until, that is, their fuel production facility was destroyed\u2014perhaps by sabotage, something that seemed more likely when their ship was also destroyed later on.
\nMeanwhile, the second expedition is plagued by further accidents, and the crew speculate as to whether there is inimical life on the satellite.
\nEventually the two threads dovetail when (spoiler) Lev and her team discover that a member of the original team (co-incidentally the diarist of the other thread) put himself into cryo-storage, and rigged the unit he was sleeping in with bobby traps\u2014the source of all the accidents that the second expedition experienced.
\nI found this rather dull (don\u2019t spend the first two pages of your story having your protagonist wake up), plodding (it\u2019s way too long), and unlikely (the idea that the survivor of the first expedition could booby trap the unit to cause so many problems for the second group is just too far-fetched).
\n** (Average). 13,250 words.<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

Tunnels<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0by Eleanor Arnason (Asimov\u2019s SF<\/em>, May-June 2020) is the sixth of the author\u2019s \u2018Lydia Duluth\u2019 stories to appear, and this one finds her in Innovation City, an island on the planet Grit. As usual she is there on a work assignment for her employer, the holoplay production company Stellar Harvest. Most of the first part of the story is a mixture of background material (including a previous run-in she had with the owners of the island, a genemod company called BioInnovation), a description of the local silicon and carbon based lifeforms, and travelogue.
\nThe story gets going when she meets an actor\u2019s agent for tea to discuss a production in progress on Grit. Before this Duluth feels like she is coming down with a cold and, after the meal, she feels worse. Not only does it feel like she has caught the flu, she also has a compunction to go down into the railway system tunnels under the city. Her AI, which hasn\u2019t said a lot until this point, tells her to phone for help, but she can\u2019t remember how. Then she sees a \u201cGotcha\u201d on the inside of her eyelids, and realises the flu virus she has been infected with is hacked.
\nThe second part of the story sees Duluth wake to find herself in a dark tunnel, with her AI silent. She starts walking and eventually finds a lit water fountain where, a little bit later, an alien Goxhat turns up:<\/p>\n

[She] saw something by the drinking fountain, her size, but lower to the floor. The way it moved was distinctive. She came closer. The creature had an oval body that rested on four legs, and four arms, two on each side of the oval body. One arm in each pair ended in a formidable-looking pincher. The other ended in a cluster of tentacles. The creature was holding a cup in one of its tentacle-hands and dipping it into the fountain. There was no head. Instead, its brain was housed in a bulge atop its body. There ought to be four eyes in the bulge, though Lydia couldn\u2019t see them. The Goxhat was facing away from her.
\n\u201cHello,\u201d she said in humanish.
\nThe alien spun. The four blue eyes glared. \u201cDangerous!\u201d it cried in humanish. \u201cBeware!\u201d It waved the cup, spilling water. \u201cFierce! Fierce!\u201d
\n\u201cI\u2019m not a threat,\u201d Lydia said, trying to sound reasonable and unafraid. As far as she knew, the Goxhat were never dangerous to members of other species, but this one looked agitated and poorly groomed. The black hair that covered its body was spiky in some places and matted in others. What the heck was this guy doing here in this condition, and where was the rest of it?
\n\u201cWhere are your other bodies?\u201d Lydia asked.
\nThe Goxhat screamed and ran into the darkness.
\nWell, that had certainly been the wrong question to ask.\u00a0 p. 21<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Eventually, Duluth manages to talk to the creature and discovers that it knows other humans in the tunnels, and she manages to convince it to take her to them. She later meets three others that have been trapped underground for years because they too caught the hacked flu virus, and one of the side effects is that trying to climb up any of the stairways incapacitates them. Duluth also learns that the tunnels aren\u2019t actually in use, but are a result of a BioInnovation genmod product that has run wild and spread under the planet.
\nFurther adventures follow, beginning with the four of them (and the Goxhat) going to a vagrants camp (this other group of humans aren\u2019t infected, but refuse to help those who are because they variously use them for stories, from Genghis the professor, and sex, from Tope the courtesan, etc.). This encounter is rather irrelevant to the story because when Lydia later talks to the Goxhat and asks it its name, it hoots three times, and adds that no-one has ever asked, before offering to lead her to the surface. However, the meeting provides an amusing after dinner episode where (a) Duluth is quizzed about a holo star she knows and (b) Genghis\u2019s story about Thor losing his hammer is subject to a relentless analysis of the character\u2019s attitudes and behaviour (\u201cYou can\u2019t be killing people, even if they\u2019re giants. It\u2019s illegal.\u201d \u201cAnd wrong,\u201d etc.).
\nThe last section (spoiler)\u2014where Duluth and Three Hoots reach the surface, steal a boat and escape to the mainland, and then BioIn and Stellar Harvest (Duluth\u2019s employers) security get involved\u2014is routine stuff and not as engaging as the previous part (even with Three Hoots\u2019 revelation about how its other bodies died after they discovered financial irregularities in BioIn\u2019s accounts). This last part also feels longer than it needs to be.
\nOverall an entertaining and amusing, if minor, piece.
\n\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong> (Good). 17,400 words.<\/p>\n

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

A decent group of stories and worth a read. Don\u2019t miss the Mercurio story, which should have been a Hugo finalist.4<\/sup>\u00a0 \u25cf<\/p>\n

_____________________<\/p>\n

1. Ray Nayler (another\u00a0Asimov\u2019s SF<\/em>\u00a0regular) interviewed Rivera about his story\u00a0here<\/a>. I think Nayler lets his preoccupation about the shortcomings of capitalism somewhat blindside him to the more obvious themes of the story, i.e. man as God, and humanity\u2019s appalling treatment of other species. These two issues appear, to a greater or lesser extent, in the two stories already mentioned as well as another two related pieces,\u00a0Crystal Nights<\/em>\u00a0by Greg Egan (Interzone<\/em>\u00a0#215, April 2008), and\u00a0Sandkings<\/em>\u00a0by George R. R. Martin (Omni<\/em>, August 1979). The theme of man as God is particularly prominent in the Egan (and it is the only one of the four pieces where the protagonist alters his behaviour towards the subject species when he realises they are suffering) whereas the Martin is almost entirely about the main character\u2019s sadistic treatment of his alien \u201cpets\u201d (the piece is essentially a \u201clet\u2019s set an anthill on fire for fun\u201d story on steroids but, notwithstanding this, a gripping story and a worthy multiple award winner).<\/p>\n

2. The obligatory blog post where Rick Wilber talks about how he and Anderson wrote The Hind<\/em> is here<\/a>. It\u2019s worth a look.<\/p>\n

3. The Long Iapetan Night<\/em> by Julie Novakova was previously published in Czech in 2018 and won the Aeronautilus Award for best short story.<\/p>\n

4. We read all the Asimov’s SF <\/em>finalists in the Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Short Fiction<\/em>\u00a0Facebook group. Here are the poll results for the novelettes:
\n\"\"<\/a>I\u2019ll be interested to see how this correlates with the final results (which I\u2019ll add when they are announced).\u00a0 \u25cf<\/p>\n\"rss\"<\/a>\"rss\"<\/a><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Summary: These are the five novelette finalists for the 35th Asimov\u2019s SF Magazine Readers\u2019 Awards (the stories were published in 2020). They are of mixed quality, but are a slightly stronger group than the short stories (although not as much as I expected). The standout this time around is the Mercurio D. Rivera story\u2014how on […]<\/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-13730","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\/p6Pcj7-3zs","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13730","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=13730"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13730\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14603,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13730\/revisions\/14603"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}