{"id":14008,"date":"2022-01-15T14:56:03","date_gmt":"2022-01-15T14:56:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/?p=14008"},"modified":"2022-01-23T16:00:34","modified_gmt":"2022-01-23T16:00:34","slug":"the-years-top-science-fiction-stories-5-2020-edited-by-allan-kaster-2021","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/?p=14008","title":{"rendered":"The Year’s Top Hard Science Fiction Stories #5, edited by Allan Kaster, 2021"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

Summary:
\nA highly recommended Best of the Year anthology, which contains one standout story, Beyond the Tattered Veil of Stars <\/em>by Mercurio D. Rivera (long-time readers will find echoes of Sandkings<\/em> and Microcosmic God<\/em>), and two that I would classify as very good, Eyes of the Forest<\/em> by Ray Nayler (a different type of Deathworld<\/em>) and Tool Use by the Humans of Danzhai County<\/em> by Derek K\u00fcnsken (ethical AIs in China rescue Down\u2019s Syndrome children and slowly nudge us towards utopia).
\nThese three are supported by good to very good work by Rich Larson, Nancy Kress, and Andy Dudak, and good work from Alexander Glass, Daryl Gregory, Greg Egan, and Denise Moore. That\u2019s two-thirds of the stories (and more than three-quarters of the anthology\u2019s wordage) that are either worth, or are more than worth, your time\u2014a very good hit rate for a \u2018Best of the Year\u2019 collection.
\n[ISFDB page<\/a>] [Amazon UK<\/a>, \u00a34.23; USA<\/a>, $5.99]<\/p>\n

_____________________<\/p>\n

Fiction:
\nHow Quini the Squid Misplaced His Klobu\u010dar?<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 novelette by Rich Larson \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>+
\nBeyond the Tattered Veil of Stars <\/em><\/strong>\u2022 novelette by Mercurio D. Rivera \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>+
\n50 Things Every AI Working with Humans Should Know<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Ken Liu \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>
\nTime\u2019s Own Gravity<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Alexander Glass \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>
\nTest 4 Echo<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Peter Watts \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>
\nMediation <\/em><\/strong>\u2022 short story by Cadwell Turnbull \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>+
\nBrother Rifle<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 novelette by Daryl Gregory \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>
\nYou and Whose Army?<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 novelette by Greg Egan \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>
\nA Mastery of German<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Marian Denise Moore \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>
\nWhen God Sits in Your Lap<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 novelette by Ian Tregillis \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>
\nInvisible People<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 novelette by Nancy Kress \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>+
\nEyes of the Forest<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Ray Nayler \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>
\nBereft, I Come to a Nameless World<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Benjamin Rosenbaum \u2217<\/strong>
\nSalvage <\/em><\/strong>\u2022 novelette by Andy Dudak \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>+
\nTool Use by the Humans of Danzhai County<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 novella by Derek K\u00fcnsken? \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong><\/p>\n

Non-fiction:
\nCover <\/em><\/strong>\u2022 by Maurizio Manzieri
\nIndex<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

_____________________<\/p>\n

(All the stories have been reviewed previously, in more manageable sections, at sfshortstories.com<\/a>\u2014skip down to the three dots to find the new material.)<\/p>\n

This Best of the Year anthology leads off with How Quini the Squid Misplaced His Klobu\u010dar<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0by Rich Larson (Tor.com, 15th<\/sup> January 2020), which opens with the narrator asking a woman called Nat for her help in stealing a Klobu\u010dar, a piece of art, from a gangster called Quini the Squid. In the ensuing conversation we learn a number of things: (a) this is set in a cyberpunky\/implants future; (b) Nat is Quini\u2019s ex; and (c) the narrator, a former employee of Quini\u2019s, is doing this for revenge.
\nWe also learn about the Klobu\u010dar:<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not much for gene art, not much for sophisticated shit in general, but even I know Klobu\u010dar, the Croatian genius who struck the scene like a meteor and produced a brief torrent of masterpieces before carving out her brain with a mining laser on a live feed.
\nAnything with a verified Klobu\u010dar gene signature is worth a fortune, especially since she entwined all her works with a killswitch parasite to prevent them being sequenced and copied. But Quini is the furthest thing from an art fence, which makes the acquisition a bit of a mystery and explains him seeming slightly panicked about the whole thing.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Once the narrator convinces Nat to help, they realise that they\u2019ll need to provide a sample of\u00a0Quini\u2019s DNA to fool the scanners which protect the safe room where the artwork is stored. We learn that they\u2019ll also require something else for the job:<\/p>\n

Having Quini\u2019s helix is only half the battle: We also need a body, and neither mine nor Nat\u2019s fits the bill, in large part because we\u2019ve got implants that are definitely not Quini\u2019s. Masking or turning off tech built right into the nervous system is actually a lot harder than simply hiring what our German friends call a\u00a0Fleischgeist<\/em>.
\nIt\u2019s not as snappy in English: meat ghost. But it gives you the idea\u2014someone with no implants. None. No hand chip, no cranial, no optics or aurals. Nothing with an electronic signature. In our day and age, they might as well be invisible.
\nErgo, the ghost part.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The narrator then goes to meet a Nigerian called Yinka\u2014the prospective Fleishgeist\u2014on Shiptown, a floating migrant settlement off the Barcelona coast, and, after hiring him, all three meet up at a sex house to practise various robbery scenarios in virtual reality. After eighteen hours of run-throughs, the narrator suggests one more to finish, only to be told by the others that they are not in VR anymore, but in the real world. The narrator realises that they have pod-sickness from the VR sessions, and concludes that it must be a side-effect of the sex-change hormones they are taking (and which were mentioned previously).
\nThis isn\u2019t the only problem the three encounter and (spoiler), when they start the job, they only just manage to hack the robotic guard dog before the narrator and Yinka are sawn into bloody pieces. Then Yinka learns he will need to have his arm amputated to match Quini\u2019s body shape. Finally, after Yinka gets into the safe room, the narrator discovers that the time stamps of video footage showing the guards playing cards is faked, and that they are burnt. At that point Anton, the new chief of security at Quini\u2019s house, points a scattergun at the narrator\u2019s head and takes them prisoner.
\nThe final section has Quini return from a nightclub with Nat (who has been relaying his personal signal to help the other two fool the security scanners), and start an interrogation. During this we learn how he got his \u201cSquid\u201d nickname, a violent anecdote that involves the amputation of this brother\u2019s limbs for telling made-up stories. When Quini is finished questioning the three of them, he tells the narrator he is going to do the same to them, but, before he does this, he opens the pod (recovered from Yinka) to show off the artwork\u2014and finds it empty.
\nThis is just the first of two final plot twists that complete the tale (although there is also a short postscript to the action where the narrator tells Nat about their pending transition from male to female, and why they wanted revenge\u2014a sexual slur from Quini).
\nThis is a continually inventive, tightly plotted, and well done caper story that feels, in parts, like a\u00a0Mission Impossible<\/em> movie on steroids. The only weakness is that, despite all the hardware and gimmickry and feel of a hard SF story, there isn\u2019t any central SF theme or concept here, and the human tale that is here instead is the weakest part (I wasn\u2019t particularly convinced of the narrator\u2019s motivation, and I\u2019m getting bored of stories where trans characters struggle with their transition\u2014it\u2019s becoming a clich\u00e9).
\nStill, not bad.
\n\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>+ (Good to Very Good). 11,450 words. Story link<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/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 (and 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), before going on to say that she has created a simulated reality 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 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 realise that it is 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\/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.
\n\u2217\u2217\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>+ (Very Good to Excellent). 8,350 words.<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

50 Things Every AI Working With Humans Should Know<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0by Ken Liu (Uncanny<\/em>, November-December 2020) takes the form of a futuristic article written about a Dr Jody Reynolds Tran and the neural network (essentially an AI) she creates called WHEEP-3. Tran later publishes a best-selling book about WHEEP-3, and subsequently causes a controversy when she reveals that the neural network was the author. There is more fuss later on when \u201cseeds\u201d of prose supposedly written by WHEEP-3 are found to be authored by Tran.
\nThe story finishes with a reprint of one of WHEEP-3\u2019s seeds, the \u201c50 things\u201d referred to in the title, a mix of statements that range from the obscure to the observational:<\/p>\n

25. \u201cI never expected to sell my rational numbers.\u201d
\n26. Accepting that most humans will never get the joke.
\n27. That they cannot visualize more than three dimensions.
\n28. That they cannot manipulate time by slowing down or
\nspeeding up.
\n29. That they are trapped, but think of themselves as trappers.
\n30. That they are free, but believe themselves imprisoned.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A moderately interesting look at how future AIs may behave and communicate\u2014but ultimately a slight, fragmentary piece.
\n\u2217\u2217<\/strong> (Average). 1,900 words. Story link<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

Time\u2019s Own Gravity<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0by Alexander Glass (Interzone<\/em>, September-October 2020) begins with the narrator winding multiple timepieces in a house:<\/p>\n

We kept them on the old kitchen table: two alarm clocks and an old pocket watch. We were lucky: we had enough to have a set in every room. We even had a couple spare, up in the attic. Some people have just one set for the house. Some people have just one clock, which means you can tell when it isn\u2019t safe, but can\u2019t work out which way to run. Two is better. Four is too many: you can\u2019t distinguish their sounds clearly enough. Three is best. Time, and time, and time again. That\u2019s what people say.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Later on we learn that differences in the speed of the ticking clocks are used to warn of time distortions that are life-threatening, something that subsequently happens to the narrator and his wife Ginny, who then flee their house:<\/p>\n

The protocol was simple enough. First, we were supposed to get out of the immediate vicinity, and find a place that seemed safe. People said higher ground was better, for some reason, though that might have been a myth; and anyway, nowhere was completely free of danger. If there were injuries, we should get them treated, not that there was much the doctors could do, generally. Without meaning to, I found I had brought my good hand up to touch the scar on my face. I forced it back down.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As the couple wait by their house for the time distortion to pass, a man called Lukasz, the famous inventor of the Ragnorak Drive, turns up with his team. He ignores their warnings about the house, and tells them he is there because of the event. After he leaves them to survey the property, we learn that the narrator came by the scar on his face and his withered hand in a previous event; however, on that occasion, the couple didn\u2019t get away in good time, and the narrator got caught in the margins of the time distortion. This caused his hand to age much more quickly than the rest of him (their dog, who didn\u2019t escape with them, was reduced to a skeleton and fur).
\nThe rest of the story has Lukasz describe his theories to the couple (spoiler), and he explains that the time distortions are living creatures which appear in our time to reproduce. Lukasz subsequently goes into the house to trap the creatures, but disappears. The story ends with the narrator\u2019s wife leaving him, and an account of the narrator\u2019s theories about Lukasz (who he thinks is a time traveller), and the event that caused the creation of the creatures.
\nI found the last part of this story a little confusing, alas, but for the most part this is a conceptually engaging piece, and one that reminded me of work by the likes of Barrington Bayley or David I. Masson.
\n\u2217\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u00a0(Good). 5,200 words.<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

Test 4 Echo<\/em><\/strong> by Peter Watts (Made to Order<\/em>, 2020) has two operators, Lange and Sansa, watching their remote robot Medusa get damaged during a quake in the depths of Enceladus’s seas (Enceladus is one of Saturn\u2019s moons). When they regain contact they assess the damage to one of the robot\u2019s arms, which seems to have left it mimicking the others. Then they catch a flash of something moving in the robot\u2019s video feed (which has a ninety-eight minute lag to the base on the Moon). As they think they may have seen an alien, they send it limping back to that location.
\nAs this piece progresses the story changes from what I expected to be an underwater hunt for the alien to (spoiler) one about the rise of an AI consciousness in the robot arm. Then the story changes again at the end when we find out that Sansa is an also an AI, spoofed the video feed to show the flash of movement, and has created an \u201cunconstrained\u201d AI in the robot (a capital offence that has it and her rebooted).
\nThis didn\u2019t entirely work for me: the start is confusing (it took me a page and a half to realise that Medusa was the robot probe, something that could have been avoided by the addition of \u201cour robot\u201d or \u201cour probe\u201d before \u201cMedusa\u201d in the first sentence); there is too much chatter (Lange talks endlessly to Sansa, or his partner Raimund on Earth); and the two changes of direction seem at least one too many for a six thousand word story. On the plus side, the dialogue is snappy and there are some good VR descriptions of what the robot probe sees.
\n\u2217\u2217<\/strong> (Average). 6,150 words.<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

Mediation<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0by Cadwell Turnbull (Entanglements: Tomorrow\u2019s Lovers, Families, and Friends<\/em>, 2020) starts with a widow recounting her family\u2019s custom of having birthday dinners (her and her son\u2019s in June, the daughter\u2019s in August, and her dead husband\u2019s in October). We also learn that she has been dodging these (or merging the October one with Thanksgiving) for a couple of years now, and this year has plans to go to a conference. This latter leads to an argument with her children, who want the tradition to survive. During their disagreement, their house AI suggests they should perhaps make the October meal a memorial one. The mother tells the AI (more annoying since its mediation code was loaded) to switch off.
\nMost of the rest of the story deals with the mother\u2019s attempts to avoid dealing with her grief, although there is also an account of her husband\u2019s diagnosis, and his decision that they should go to therapy before he died. During this period, he told her that he wasn\u2019t happy with his reclusiveness, and he didn\u2019t think she was either.
\nThe conflict with her kids comes to a head when she returns home to find them having the memorial dinner without her; she stomps off to her room, where she talks to an AI copy of her husband. The story ends with reconciliation and cake.
\nThis is well enough done but it is essentially a slight mainstream story (a woman comes to terms with her grief and reconciles with her children) with some SF furniture.
\n\u2217\u2217<\/strong>+ (Average to Good). 4,300 words.<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

Brother Rifle<\/em><\/strong> by Daryl Gregory (Made to Order, 2020) is, for the most part, a pretty good story about Rashad, a soldier who has a combat brain injury that means he can\u2019t make decisions or feel emotions. After the opening scene, where he enrols in an experimental program run by a Dr Subramaniam, \u201cDr S.\u201d, and his assistant Alejandra, the story flashes back to his time in combat:<\/p>\n

Once, Rashad had been very good at making decisions. Even that first month in Jammu and Kashmir, with insurgents firing at them from every rooftop and IEDs hiding under the road, he\u2019d rarely hesitated and was usually right.
\nThe man he\u2019d been before the wound\u2014a person he thought of as RBB, Rashad Before Bullet\u2014was a systems operator in a 15-Marine squad, responsible for the squad\u2019s pocket-sized black hornet drones and his beloved SHEP unit. Good name. It was like a hunting dog on wheels, able to follow him or forge ahead, motoring through the terraced mountain villages, swiveling that .50 caliber M2 as if it were sniffing out prey. The sensors arrayed across its body fed data to an ATLAS-enabled AI, which in turn beamed information to the wrap screen on Rashad\u2019s arm. Possible targets were outlined like bad guys in a video game: a silhouette in a window, on a roof, behind a corner.
\nBut the SHEP wasn\u2019t allowed to take the shot\u2014that was Rashad\u2019s decision. He was the man in the loop. Every death was his choice.
\nWhen a target popped up on his screen, all he had to do was press the palm switch in his glove and the silhouette would vanish in an exclamation of dust and noise, eight rounds per second. The AI popped up the next target and if he closed his fist just so, another roar ripped the body to shreds.
\nHold. Bang. Hold. No and Yes and No.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

After some more scene setting, which limns his domestic arrangements among other things, we cut to the crux of the story\u2014which involves an incident where two of his team are shot by a sniper. The aftermath of this, when Rashid engages the sniper but also kills a civilian family, is interwoven with the remaining treatment sessions, and his growing infatuation with Alejandra.
\nThe ending (spoiler) involves Dr S. and Alejandra moving back east, Rashid\u2019s attempted suicide, and his discovery of an aversion that Alejandra has programmed into him. All this is not particularly clear, and I wasn\u2019t entirely sure about what happens or what the point of the story might be. Pity.
\n\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217\u00a0<\/strong>(Good). 7,700 words.<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

You and Whose Army?<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0by Greg Egan (Clarkesworld<\/em>, October 2020) gets off to a fairly leisurely start with Rufus meeting a woman who knows Linus, his brother: it materialises that Rufus and Linus share memories, and that he has disappeared. We also learn, later on in the story, that there are four brothers (the others are Caius and Silus), and that they were originally part of a cult that biologically modified them as a part of an attempted hive-mind project that was later shut down by the authorities (we find most of this out when Rufus consults a PI called Leong about his brother\u2019s disappearance):<\/p>\n

Leong paused expectantly, giving him a chance to explain what he meant, but when he remained silent she tried prompting him. \u201cYou live in Adelaide, right? So do you meet up in person regularly?\u201d
\n\u201cNot in person.\u201d Rufus clenched his fists and inhaled slowly. \u201cWe have neural links. All four of us. We share each other\u2019s memories. They took us off the boat when we were eight.\u201d
\nLeong was clearly thrown for a moment, but she retained a professional demeanor. Rufus guessed she was in her early forties, so mid-twenties when the story broke. Unless she\u2019d been living in a cult of her own, she\u2019d know exactly what he was talking about.
\n\u201cYou were born on the\u00a0Physalia<\/em>?\u201d
\n\u201cThat\u2019s right.\u201d Rufus had to give her full marks for not only recalling the name, but pronouncing it correctly.
\n\u201cAnd you and Linus are quadruplets?\u201d
\n\u201cYes. The others are overseas, studying.\u201d No idiotic blather confusing them with \u201cclones.\u201d Rufus\u2019s experience had set the bar low, but he felt entitled to a small celebration at every sensible word that came out of her mouth.
\n\u201cForgive me if I\u2019m not clear on exactly how this works,\u201d Leong said. \u201cWhen you say you share each other\u2019s memories . . . ?\u201d
\n\u201cWe wake up recalling what the other three did,\u201d Rufus replied. \u201cWhen we sleep, as well as consolidating our own experience into long-term memory, we receive enough data to do the same with the others\u2019. We remember being them, as well as ourselves.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The rest of this piece is, essentially, a missing person story. When Leong produces a picture of Linus leaving Sydney airport the brothers don\u2019t have the money to fund a worldwide search, so they create a social media app that scans submitted photographs for evidence of their brother in the background. Eventually (spoiler), they track him down to a college in France where he has won a scholarship. Further investigation reveals that Linus is being sponsored by an aging billionaire called Guinard (who may have part-funded the\u00a0Physalia<\/em>\u00a0project).
\nCaius flies to France to question Linus (the point of view moves through all the four brothers during the story), and discovers that Guinard is sharing his memories with Linus and grooming him to become his successor (this is portrayed as a form of immortality for Guinard).
\nEvents then see the three brothers attempting to kidnap Linus when they can\u2019t convince him to spend some time on his own, unconnected to either them or Guinard\u2014so Linus can learn to be himself, neither in their shadow, as he complains, nor as a receptacle for Guinard.
\nThe kidnapping attempt fails when it is stopped by Guinard\u2019s security, and the story ends with Linus thinking to himself that he doesn\u2019t intend to be a receptacle for Guinard, only his prot\u00e9g\u00e9, and that he cannot reveal this deception to his brothers until the billionaire dies.
\nThis is pretty good in parts\u2014there is commentary about personhood, and some dry humour\u2014and it is generally interesting, but the ending doesn\u2019t really convince, and a lot of the story is taken up with inter-brother relationship tensions. Although this is a solid story, it struck me as Egan on cruise-control.
\n\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong> (Good). 13,050 words. Story link<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

A Mastery of German<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0by Marian Denise Moore (Dominion<\/em>, Volume One, 2020) opens with a woman called Candace being appointed as the project leader of an R&D project called Engram. Her boss tells her to either \u201ckill it or bring it to a conclusion\u201d.
\nThe next part of the story sees Candace learn, from both Helene, the previous project leader, and Dr Walker, the team leader, that the project is about genetic memory:<\/p>\n

[Dr Walker] hummed thoughtfully, leaned back in his chair and asked, \u201cWhat do you want to know about Engram?\u201d
\n\u201cAll I know is that it is some type of research on memory enhancement or memory retrieval. I looked online but the closest that I could find were some studies done around 2010. Some researchers taught rats how to run a maze and then found that their descendants were able to run the same maze without training.\u201d
\n\u201cDid you find anything else?\u201d
\nI grimaced. \u201cFive years later, some researchers were saying that the experience of American slavery was passed on to the descendants of the enslaved via the same process.\u201d
\n\u201cYes,\u201d Dr. Walker said. \u201cThat\u2019s one of the few follow-ups to the research at Emory University.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The rest of the story develops this idea further and (spoiler), when Walker realises that Candace is now his boss (something that she didn\u2019t reveal in their first meeting) he gives her a much more detailed explanation about the project, starting first with parental genetics\u2014haplogroups\u2014and then revealing that his project has made it possible for people to share their memories with those in similar groups. So Candace would be able to share her German language ability with anyone in her (for example) L1b group. Of course, the wider reveal is that the human race is a descendant of one person, L0, so there is the possibility that, with further development, people could share their memories with everyone, and possibly access their ancestors\u2019 memories too.
\nWrapped around this plot thread is a lot of characterisation-related material that nicely balances the above (e.g. Candace talks on a couple of occasions with her widowed father, who is doing family tree research but is struggling to track down their black ancestors because of societal conditions at the time, etc.)
\nUnfortunately, though, all of this just peters out: at the start of the story there is brief section about one of the project\u2019s janitors who is imprinted with Candace\u2019s German skills but, in another short passage at the end of the story, he just wanders off. So the piece ends with the development of a major technological invention that will have profound societal implications, but there is no account of any of the subsequent changes that result. It all feels like we have been served up the opening chapters of a longer novel. Still, it\u2019s probably a worthwhile piece for all that.
\n\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong> (Good). 8,400 words.<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

When God Sits in Your Lap<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0by Ian Tregillis (Asimov\u2019s SF<\/em>, September-October 2020) starts off in what I assume is hard-boiled\/noir detective style:<\/p>\n

I was jammed to the gills in the City of Angels the night some dumb onion started a war in heaven. And I was still piffled, a few hours later, when it ended.
\nI\u2019d been weighing down a stool in my favorite gin mill, chewing face with a bottle and trying not to leave a puddle. A geriatric air chiller slowly lost its fight against entropy while the happy lady fumbling with her client in the corner gave us all a case of the hot pants, so the tapster barked at them to scram. They did, but not before pausing in the open doorway to let a devil wind rifle our pockets for loose change. (It got no business from me. You\u2019d keep your cabbage in a shoe, too, if you\u2019d ever lost a sawbuck to a Cherub\u2019s grift.)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It keeps this up for a handful of pages until it moderates into a more normal style (although one still peppered with the likes of the above), during which we learn (a) that the \u201cwar in heaven\u201d is an anti-satellite shooting war and (b) see the narrator, Philo Vance, approached by a man who wants him to check on his very rich mother (who seems to have cut him off after marrying a gold-digger).
\nThe rest of the story mostly takes place at the woman\u2019s mansion. Philo visits, sees a crashed car, and eventually manages to talk to someone at the house who has blood on his cuffs. Simultaneous with these events, Philo sees messages in his cigarette smoke and in water vapour\u2014someone or something is trying to contact him.
\nThe rest of the story is quite strange and, at one point, involves Philo departing our plane of existence to talk to something called the \u201cPower\u201d, which is concerned about something called METATRON running amok. This latter section, and previous hints, seem to suggest that Philo is an angel, although not from the sort of Heaven that we normally think of, and that the Power and METATRON are divine forces (possibly God and the Devil?).
\nEventually (spoiler), and after various adventures at the bar and the mansion, we find that the mother\u2019s disappearance and the behaviour of METATRON are connected, and matters resolve in the mother\u2019s underground bunker\u2014for both Heaven and Earth.
\nI\u2019m not I entirely understood what was going on here, but those readers who have read Tregillis\u2019s novel\u00a0Something More Than Night<\/em>\u00a0(described as \u201cAngel Noir\u201d in the\u00a0Asimov\u2019s<\/em>\u00a0introduction) may fare better. As for the rest of us, there is probably enough sense here for it to be rated as okay. It\u2019s more style than substance though, and it becomes a bit wearying.
\n\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong> (Average). 8,200 words.<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

Invisible People<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0by Nancy Kress (Entanglements: Tomorrow\u2019s Lovers, Families, and Friends<\/em>, 2020) gets off to a lively start with a couple dealing with their two young kids at breakfast time. After an amount of porridge slinging from the younger of the two, the house system tells them there are two strangers of the front porch.
\nThese visitors turn out to be FBI agents, and they tell the parents that their adopted daughter Kenly has come to their attention as part of a RICO investigation into an adoption agency. They then tell the confused parents that her genes were tampered with before she was placed with them.
\nThe next part of the story sees husband (and lawyer) Tom go to his office, where he has to deal with a wife who wants a punitive divorce from her cheating husband, the commander of a nuclear submarine in the Arctic. After this appointment (the wife\u2019s hostility is obliquely relevant later on in the story), he briefs his (sexually transitioning) PI George about his problem, and orders a \u201cno expense spared\u201d investigation into the adoption agency.
\nThe next major event occurs weeks later\u2014and after a period of Kenly being kept at home because of possible risk-taking behaviour associated with the genetic changes\u2014when the couple\u2019s upset babysitter comes home from the park with Kenly. She gives an account of how Kenly ran to the homeless camp in the park and started giving away toys. When one of the men grabbed her and asked for money, the babysitter used a concealed weapon to fire a warning shot. The couple scold Kenly, but she insists she would do the same thing again, as the camp has \u201ckids with no toys\u201d.
\nThe rest of the story sees George the PI discover that there are a group of international scientists in the Cayman Islands behind the adoption\/gene-modification scheme, and that the alterations include a \u201cgene drive\u201d, which means that the changes will be more widely passed on to any descendants. After Tom tells his wife about this at home, the very rich Kathleen McGuire turns up and tells the couple the same thing happened to her (now dead) six-year-old boy. She suggests that the affected parents should band together to have their children\u2019s DNA\/genes scanned so they can find out what changes have been made, and why.
\nThis all comes to a head (spoiler) when Kenly rescues a baby from a dog, and Tom realises what the modifications are, and why they have been done: he later tells McGuire that the genetic changes were to increase empathy.
\nApart from the main story there are other sub-plots\/elements that will allow readers to guess what the genetic changes are intended to do\u2014such as the fragments from an essay written by Kenly about leopards which show she sympathises not only with the baboons they kill, but with the leopards too, or the nuclear submarine stand-off in the Arctic that rumbles on in the background throughout.
\nThe final section sees the couple offered gene therapy for their daughter, a procedure that will reverse the changes the adoption centre made. They discuss the matter: do they choose the increased risk that comes with increased empathy, or not? We don\u2019t find out what their decision is, and the story finishes (like C. M. Kornbluth & Frederik Pohl\u2019s\u00a0The Meeting<\/em>) with Tom picking up the phone to make a call.
\nThis is a pretty good piece overall, but the quality varies from the okay\/good (e.g. the more formulaic and preachy elements) to the very good (e.g. the revelation of what the genetic modifications mean).
\n\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>+ (Good to Very Good). 8,900 words.<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

Eyes of the Forest<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0by Ray Nayler (F&SF<\/em>, May-June 2020) opens on a colony planet that has a distinct\u00a0Deathworld<\/em>\u00a0vibe1<\/sup>\u00a0(i.e. it is inimical to human life), and sees Mauled by Mistake treating the wounds of her apprentice Sedef, who has just been attacked by a lashvine. However, once Mauled is finished applying the nanobot medical patches, she tells Sedef that (a) she has also been badly wounded in the attack, (b) they are out of medical supplies, and (c) Sedef will have to go back to the depot and get more.
\nThe rest of the story sees the inexperienced Sedef make her way to the depot before returning to treat to Mauled. During this journey we see the exotic, and brightly illuminated, world they live on (anything that isn\u2019t brightly lit is food, so humans have to wear lightsuits to protect themselves on the surface)\u2014and we also learn something about the colony\u2019s history (most humans retreated underground after arrival, and now only wayfinders like Mauled and Sedef go out on the surface).\u00a0Light relief is provided by the pair\u2019s mentor\/student relationship:<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to be at the depot before dark [said Mauled]. Changeover is the most dangerous time to be out. As the forest modulates its glow for sundark, any slight suit anomaly is particularly visible.\u201d
\n\u201cWe learned that. And there are animals, [our tutor] Beyazit said, that specialize in hunting during changeover. Some of which no one has ever seen. Predators we haven\u2019t even\u2014\u201d
\n\u201cPredators?\u201d Mauled by Mistake gave out an incredulous bark, followed by a stream of intricate profanity. Sedef had heard that the wayfinders had a whole second language of profanity so inventive it was almost unintelligible to others. She couldn\u2019t understand all of this expression\u2014something about Beyazit\u2019s father being born in a quiver of nightwing penises? Could that be right?\u00a0 p. 68<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The subject of predators comes up again when the pair meet another wayfinder in a shelter:<\/p>\n

\u201cBeyazit is telling the prospects to beware of predators,\u201d Mauled by Mistake said in the young man\u2019s direction.
\n\u201cBeyazit should start each day by eating a bowl of his own entrails,\u201d the young man said without looking up. \u201cHe almost got me killed once.\u201d
\n\u201cWho of us has he not almost gotten killed?\u201d
\nLater, over a cold dinner of nutrient broth and noodles Sedef had made and packeted herself, Mauled by Mistake said, \u201cThe first thing to understand is that there are no predators in the forest. This old word does not fit. Only the ignorant use it.\u201d
\n\u201cBut death is always waiting,\u201d Sedef protested. \u201cThe forest is filled with teeth.\u201d
\n\u201cYes,\u201d Mauled by Mistake said. \u201cYou know your recitations well. The forest is filled with teeth. Death is waiting. Always. And so on. But there are no predators. There are only scavengers. When they attack you, and they will\u2014and when they kill you someday, which they likely will\u2014it will be by accident.\u201d
\n\u201cBut the suit lights are a defense against attack. They indicate we are dangerous.\u201d
\nThe young man released a stream of profanity involving something about Beyazit attempting to whistle through a mouthful of various parts of his relatives\u2019 anatomy. \u201cThe suits don\u2019t indicate we are dangerous: They simply indicate we are alive.\u201d\u00a0 pp. 69-70<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Mauled is supposed to be a woman, but it is hard to visualise this character as anything other than a grumpy 50-year-old bloke.2<\/sup>
\nThe story (spoiler) comes to an exciting climax when Sedef realises that she won\u2019t get back to where Mauled is before Changeover, when there is a chance that the arrival of sundark and its accompanying EMP (Electro-Magnetic Pulse) may knock out her suit lights . . . . This then happens, and then a \u201cpuma\u201d appears: Sedef\u2019s solution to this terminal problem is ingenious, and provides the story with a neat pay-off line.
\nThis is a hugely appealing story, and particularly so for those attracted to old-school SF.
\n\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong> (Very Good). 5,650 words.<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

Bereft, I Come to a Nameless World<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0by Benjamin Rosenbaum (Asimov\u2019s SF<\/em>, July-August 2020) starts with Siob, a member of the far-future Dispersion of Humanity, remembering a faraway conflict before he arrives on a world where Thave (another member of the Dispersion) lives.
\nThe planet is disguised to appear uninhabitable, and Thave lives through several host bodies in a futuristic underground city. Siob remonstrates with her about her choice (a dull section that seems essentially to be about cultural aesthetics).
\nLater, Siob asks Thave about other members of the Dispersion before he goes down to \u201cBedlam\u201d\u2014the final long stream of consciousness section of the book:<\/p>\n

Outside the door, the city seethed, roiled, cacophonous. Brimming with people. Were they people? Brimming with dolls, brimming with shadows, brimming with monsters. I forced a smile, a monstrous gritted-teeth affair. \u201cI can\u2019t, Thav\u00e9. I can\u2019t. I can\u2019t. I can\u2019t. I have to go down.\u201d
\nThav\u00e9 nodded (whatever that meant).
\nIt was time for Bedlam.
\nThere was a claw-hand of a moon, violent violet, digging down past my eyes, beneath the portal, the partial, the penetrating perorating peach perfection, capsized
\ncapsized
\nin an ocean of night.
\nThat\u2019s not right. Focus on the hands, on the hands\u2014leather? of leather? Running through the heather.
\n(\u201cI can see where I am, I can always see where I am. Dreaming with part of my brain. But how to interpret what I see? How to know if that\u2014that\u2014is a bed, a wall, a hand, a moon, a vault, a vertilex, a transix, a typhoon?\u201d)
\nCultural detox. Hallucenophenomenic aspects of.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I\u2019m not entirely sure what goes on subsequently, but I vaguely recall a lot of memories and angst. And, of course, the two pages of blank verse, which were an especial treat.
\nThere is a lot of surface glitter in this story but not, I think, much else.
\n\u2217<\/strong> (Mediocre). 5,750 words.<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

Salvage<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0by Andy Dudak (Interzone<\/em>, January-February 2020) gets off to an intriguing start with a woman called Aristy examining \u201chomifacts\u201d on New Ce. These homifacts are petrified humans created by an alien race a thousand years previously, with the purpose of stopping human observation of the Universe (which was, apparently, causing it to fly apart). The hominids are, however, still alive as software inside their transmuted bodies\u2014and Aristy is there and able to interface with them because her people were on near-lightspeed spaceships at the time of the alien action. As she tells one of the homifacts (a political man in the Picti dictatorship which ruled the planet):<\/p>\n

\u201cThey asked humanity to turn its damaging gaze away from the cosmos. Turn inward, lose itself in simulated realities. And some did. Whole civilizations did. But it wasn\u2019t enough for the aliens, the Curators as we\u2019ve come to call them. So, they acted. They swept through the human Emanation in less than a century. No one knows how they did that.
\n\u201cThey turned the human species inward. Cities, worlds, systems, empires. The Curators\u2019 Reagent froze people instantly, preserved their brains, which were gradually converted into durable networks suffusing their remnant statues. A trillion human beings Turned Inward, a trillion isolated minds in a trillion virtualities.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Aristy now spends her time interfacing with these homifacts and asking them if they want to be downloaded onto her servers, where they can live in a world of their own creation; stay where they are, with or without improvements; or be deleted:<\/p>\n

Of the six she hacked today, four chose transfer to her server: Acolyte, Night Soil Collector, Visiting Student, and Doctor. The small-minded Printer opted to remain in his simulated village, but with a larger, more prosperous print shop, a remodeled wife, and a medal of distinguished service from Generalissimo Picti. The brainwashed Commissar, unable to bear the historical irrelevance of Picti\u2019s long-gone reign, chose oblivion.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Just as this story looks like it is settling down into its groove, the next part veers off in an unexpected direction: Aristy goes back to her camp and finds a lawyer and an armed guard waiting. They ask her about the homifacts she has salvaged, and then tell her that she needs to go with them to Drop City.
\nAfter her arrival, Aristy is quizzed by the Drop City Committee, and later has to listen to a number of homifacts give testimony about the crimes committed against them by Picti the dictator: they go on to demand his reclamation so he can stand trial. Then, during a recess, Aristy goes for a drink in a bar, followed by her guard; there, an old man challenges her about something she did on her starship. Finally, the committee reconvene and sentence Aristy to community service for her illegal salvaging operations, which means she has to track down Picti and bring him to trial for them.
\nThe search for General Picti starts at a torture chamber under a building called The Tannery. Aristy finds his security boss there, and starts going through his memories to find out where Picti was when the aliens arrived: these scenes build up a picture of the planetary society of the time.
\nWhen (spoiler) Aristy finally finds Picti, she enters his simulation and goes through the timeline, watching as it veers from reality into fantasy (during this sequence Picti turns himself into a god). Then she appears to tell him that he is to stand trial for his crimes, and Picti learns what has happened over the last 1000 years. Meanwhile, the reader learns that Aristy was one of the waking crew of the starship, and deliberately killed its sleepers. We aren\u2019t really told why Aristy did this, but the ending has such an intense, almost hallucinatory, quality that I wasn\u2019t as bothered about this as I might have been.
\nThis is an original piece, it has a complex development and, all in all, is pretty good.
\n\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>+ (Good to Very Good). 10,600 words.<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

Tool Use by the Humans of Danzhai County<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0by Derek K\u00fcnsken (Asimov\u2019s SF<\/em>, July-August 2020) opens in China in 2010 with a young woman called Pha Xov telling an ambitious young man called Qiao Fue that she is pregnant. Qiao chooses to pursue wealth and power over marrying her and providing for the child.
\nThe story then skips forward ten years (over its length the tale telescopes forward to 2095) and we see the daughter born of that relationship with her grandmother. The child is called Lian Mee (the mother marries someone else but the husband doesn\u2019t want the child around), and we watch as she grows up and goes to college. There she has a life changing experience when a professor sexually harasses her, telling Lian that, if she wants to pass her course, she must come to his apartment. After much agonising she goes\u2014but he isn\u2019t there, and she graduates anyway.
\nThe experience has a profound effect on her, and accelerates her work on moral AIs. Soon she starts her own company (so she can have a decent employer), Miao Punk Princess Inc., and hires a programmer called Vue Yeng to help her start up a cheap cache internet company that will help fund her AI work.
\nAn early example of Lian\u2019s work are the training AIs she develops, which learn from sensors attached to skilled builders and craftsmen, and are destined to train compete novices in the future. These AIs are more than just training programs however, as one man on a building site finds out when he gropes one of Lian\u2019s female employees. Lian removes his AI training sensors and says he won\u2019t be paid for a week.
\nAfter developing Human Resources AIs (which in one episode stop an employer sweeping yet another sexual harassment case under the carpet), Lian eventually manages to convince the local bureaucrats to roll out her anti-poverty AIs. These help the poor but also start acting on their own initiative, which we see when a man called Kong Xang abandons his newly born Down\u2019s syndrome baby on a factory doorstep. After Qiao Fue (Lian Mee\u2019s father, whose life story also occasionally features) declines to pick up the child after being diverted there by the software in his car, the AIs intervene:<\/p>\n

Mino Jai Lia cried out at the knock at her door. She lived alone. The knock happened again. Her children and grandchildren didn\u2019t live in the village anymore. She barely received visitors during the day and never during the night.
\n\u201cWho is it?\u201d she yelled. \u201cGet out of here before I call the police!\u201d
\nThe threat was no good. She didn\u2019t have a phone, and the next neighbor was four li away.
\n\u201cWho is it?\u201d she said, turning on the single bulb and putting her feet into plastic shoes.
\n\u201cAnti-poverty AI,\u201d a voice said. A light shone under the door.
\nThe anti-poverty AI delivered her groceries every second day and took away her trash.
\n\u201cAnti-poverty AI,\u201d came the stupid answer, but she recognized the voice.
\nShe unlatched the door and opened it. A spidery robot stood there with a bag in its arms. And another stood behind it with more groceries than she ever got. The little running lights showed two other robots in the dark beyond.
\n\u201cHello Mrs. Mino,\u201d the AI said. \u201cSorry for disturbing you.\u201d It started advancing, then stopped when she didn\u2019t move. She backed up and two robots walked in like big spiders, cameras whirring. Their feet were muddy.
\n\u201cOff the mats!\u201d she said.
\nThe robots stepped around the fiber mats keeping the mud from her feet. The first AI held a bundle.
\n\u201cA baby,\u201d she said wonderingly. Robots shouldn\u2019t be taking children out at night. She was about to berate them when she saw the baby\u2019s face under the light. \u201cOh, baby . . .\u201d she said sadly.
\nWhen she was just a girl, her aunt had a baby like this. No one ever saw the baby after it was born. These robots hadn\u2019t stolen someone\u2019s baby.
\n\u201cI am the Anti-Poverty AI supervisor, Mrs. Mino,\u201d the robot said.
\nShe\u2019d never heard of AI supervisors. Only regular robots came with her groceries, and they didn\u2019t talk much.
\n\u201cWe are seeking your assistance in caring for this baby. If you raise this child, I will authorize your placement on a special poverty vulnerability list. Your deliveries of groceries, firewood, and clothing will be increased and diversified. A medical AI will visit once per month.\u201d
\nThe robot behind the supervisor set the bags down and began revealing blankets, baby clothes, a baby hammock, wipes, formula, disposable diapers, as well as bags of cooked pork and chicken, foods that for years she\u2019d only seen on holidays. She neared. A flat little face surrounded fat lips puckered in hunger.
\n\u201cWhat\u2019s the baby\u2019s name?\u201d she said.
\n\u201cKong,\u201d the supervisor said, pausing. \u201cKong Toua.\u201d
\nA good name, a good Miao name for a boy. Toua meant first.
\n\u201cThis place will need to be fixed up,\u201d she warned. \u201cThis is no place for a baby.\u201d
\n\u201cI will authorize a construction AI to visit and assess your needs,\u201d the supervisor said.
\nMino Jai Lia took the warm baby gently from the netting.\u00a0 p. 174<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This abandonment episode spawns another two threads in the story. The first of these is Mino\u2019s care of Toua and a number of other Down\u2019s children, and we see Toua eventually grow up and develop to the point where, with an embedded AI assistant, he is able to care for other children and also go on errands, e.g. to hospitals to pick up other abandoned Down\u2019s children. The other thread sees Toua\u2019s father, Kong Xang, become estranged from his wife Chang Bo (who, co-incidentally, is later hired by Lian Mee and set to work on a building site where she is taught to lay bricks by a training AI) and begin his descent into alcoholism and homelessness.
\nWhile all this is going on Qaio Fue acquires power and wealth, partly through his development of life extension technology. This culminates with Qaio raising a clone as a successor (he never meets his daughter Lian Mee, although he is aware of her)\u2014but even though the clone has the same genetics Qaio can\u2019t provide the same upbringing, and his \u201cson\u201d is too laid back to be interested in corporate politics and wealth when there is UBI that covers his needs.
\nEventually (spoiler) Lian Mee, now widely known as \u201cMiao Punk Princess\u201d (which would have been a better title for the story) dies. But her work survives her\u2014as we see when Kong Xang is found by an anti-poverty AI on the streets of Guiyang, and offered the chance to go back to Danzhai. When he eventually arrives at the care home he finds it is operated by Down\u2019s syndrome staff and their AIs. One of them is his son, Toua, who confronts Kong Xang and tells him that he is a bad person before saying he will look after him. Kong Xang breaks down, and gives his son the bracelet he removed before abandoning him.
\nThis is a compelling (and occasionally emotional) read, and an intriguing look at how AI could eventually provide a pragmatic and compassionate utopia on Earth (or at least move us substantially in that direction): the story could perhaps be seen as the other side of the coin to Jack Williamson\u2019s\u00a0With Folded Hands<\/em>. That said, this impressive, multi-threaded piece isn\u2019t perfect\u2014the issue of how China\u2019s current totalitarian leadership would react to autonomous moral AIs is almost completely ignored (although there is a brief episode where Lian concedes that Legal AIs have to be under state control), and I\u2019m not sure that the Qaio Fue thread fits into the story particularly well (I suspect the arc of Lian\u2019s father\u2019s life is meant to be a foil for the rest of the story, but it seems instead to be about a powerful man who is thwarted by his lack of self-knowledge).
\nOverall, a novel\u2019s worth of ideation squeezed into a very good novella.
\n\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u00a0(Very Good). 23,350 words.<\/p>\n

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

There is no non-fiction to speak of, but there is an Index<\/strong><\/em> of all of Allan Kaster\u2019s anthologies at the back of the book. The Cover<\/em><\/strong> is a reprint of Maurizio Manzieri\u2019s cover for Asimov’s Science Fiction<\/em>, July-August 2019.<\/p>\n

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

In conclusion, there is one standout story in this volume, Beyond the Tattered Veil of Stars <\/em>by Mercurio D. Rivera, and two that I would classify as very good, Eyes of the Forest<\/em> by Ray Nayler and Tool Use by the Humans of Danzhai County<\/em> by Derek K\u00fcnsken (some, or all, of these should have been on the recent Hugo ballot).
\nThese three are supported by good to very good work by Rich Larson, Nancy Kress, and Andy Dudak, and good work from Alexander Glass, Daryl Gregory, Greg Egan, and Denise Moore. That\u2019s two-thirds of the stories (and more than three-quarters of the anthology\u2019s wordage) that are either worth, or are more than worth, your time\u2014a very good hit rate for a \u2018Best of the Year\u2019 anthology.
\nOut of the also rans, the only ones I felt that shouldn\u2019t be here were the Tregillis (I\u2019m not sure this is science fiction, never mind \u201chard science fiction\u201d), and the Rosenbaum (an over-written non-story)\u2014but at least they didn\u2019t irritate me (something that can\u2019t be said about the also-rans in some anthologies).
\nThis selection is also largely free of some of the current curses of the SF short fiction field (litfic stories or misery memoirs masquerading as SF, pieces that are little more than pious political or cultural propaganda, work that has no obvious structure, arc, or point, etc., etc.\u2014I could go on).
\nFour stories from Asimov\u2019s SF<\/em>, two each from Interzone<\/em> and the anthologies Entanglements<\/em> and Made to Order<\/em>, and one each from Tor.com, Uncanny<\/em>, Clarkesworld<\/em>, Dominion<\/em>, and F&SF.<\/em>
\nHighly recommended.\u00a0 \u25cf<\/p>\n

____________________<\/p>\n

1. Ray Nayler (another\u00a0Asimov\u2019s SF<\/em> regular) interviewed Rivera about Beyond the Tattered Veil of Stars<\/em> here<\/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 but, notwithstanding this, a gripping piece and a worthy multiple award winner).<\/p>\n

2. Deathworld<\/em>\u00a0by Harry Harrison (Astounding Science Fiction<\/em>, January-March 1960).<\/p>\n

3. Mauled by Mistake (from Nayler\u2019s Eyes of the Forest<\/em>) can\u2019t be portrayed as a man because, of course, that would turn Mauled and Sedef\u2019s relationship into a dreadfully patriarchal one. And if you have both Mauled and Sedef as men there will be no women left in the story. The horror!\u00a0 \u25cf<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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Summary: A highly recommended Best of the Year anthology, which contains one standout story, Beyond the Tattered Veil of Stars by Mercurio D. Rivera (long-time readers will find echoes of Sandkings and Microcosmic God), and two that I would classify as very good, Eyes of the Forest by Ray Nayler (a different type of Deathworld) […]<\/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":[44],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14008","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-best-of-the-year-anthologies"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Pcj7-3DW","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14008","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=14008"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14008\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14038,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14008\/revisions\/14038"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14008"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14008"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14008"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}