The Odor of Sanctity

Short Story by Ian Creasey

Dora wants to ease the death of the priest who helped her and was a huge charitable figure in the Philippines, so she finds the scent of a forest near where he grew up, using a new scent-capturing technology. Since she can't afford such an imported scent, the shopkeeper wants her to capture the priest's scent as he dies. He's betting on the priest being canonized, and wants to trade on the medieval beliefs in the odor of sanctity. I like that Creasey named the church after a saint known for this odor.

Anyway, there is a clever but not unpredictable twist to the plot, and I do appreciate Dora's growth by the end of the story, but I just didn't see much to this one. It was written well enough, and things happened, but it dragged a bit and just doesn't leave me with much to think about, and didn't have me thinking much while reading either.

3 smelly saints out of 5.

I Was Nearly Your Mother

Novelette by Ian Creasey

Marian's mother died when she was a little girl. She always wanted her to come back, and one day, with the help of alternate-universe-jumping technology, she has. But this is a mom who goes by "Della" and whose timeline diverged at the point where she decided to have an abortion.

At this point I was a bit worried the story was going to turn into some sort of weird anti-abortion screed, but that isn't where it goes at all. In fact, four separate times I thought I knew where this story was going, and Creasey never took the easy, obvious answer. Much like Marian, Ian Creasey likes to look deeper and find the less obvious truth, the harder answer.

The story consists of Marian's alternate universe not-mother trying to get her forgiveness that isn't really Marian's to give, trying to develop a too-quick relationship with her, and trying to generally use Marian to help herself feel better about a life where she made all the bad decisions. It turns out she wouldn't have even cared about the abortion, specifically, except that she ended up infertile due to other bad choices down the line and never having kids is just one of a life filled with regrets.

What I like most is that Marian is infinitely more mature than her fake mother, exactly in the way of friends of mine whose parents died when they were young. And yet, she is also very clearly a somewhat-shallow teenage girl. She just oozes 'teenager', but with that edge of harsh reality that comes from experiencing real loss. And Della doesn't have that.

Just as I expected a sappy ending, Creasey takes it in an entirely unexpected, and harsher direction. And just as I think I know where that new direction is going, he gives us the unexpected, quieter finale.

I really like Creasey's writing, and I like his willingness to go for the harsher reality rather than feel-good fluffiness. But for a story almost entirely about the dialogue between two characters, the dialogue felt a little stilted at times, beyond the awkwardness you'd expect from the situation. Other than that I have no real criticism. The ending seems a little bit unlikely, and a little bit too harsh, but that is essentially the theme of the story, and it's a good meditation on grief and learning to move on with life instead of becoming obsessive and crazy. I enjoyed it.

4 bad mothers out of 5.

The Prize Beyond Gold

Short Story by Ian Creasey

Read for Escape Pod (free text & audio) by Josh Roseman

It stands to reason that the further we go into the future, the harder it is to break Olympic records, as we inevitably approach the asymptote of what is humanly possible. Delroy is one such Olympic athlete, and going into a race, he finally has the perfect wind, humidity, and pressure conditions to have a shot at breaking the 70-year men's hundred-meter dash record. The titular Prize Beyond Gold.

But what starts out as a sports story is really anything but. If Delroy breaks the record, his decision on what sort of bordering-on-transhumanism enhancements he gets, if any. Athletics is, of course, highly regulated, but after breaking the record, he'll presumably retire, and then it becomes a matter of international politics whether he chooses to stick with the "ancestral" model, or upgrade, and which new form of humanity he will choose to endorse.

There are some interesting thoughts here about the transition to new types of human bodies, and it's for the better that we don't see the action, or the result of the race. The important thing here is Delroy's state of mind and his quest for freedom-of-choice against the necessity of perfectly determined preparation. It's reassuring that Creasey knows this. So maybe freedom is the real prize beyond gold, and maybe that's harder to train for.

Not the most exciting thing ever, but worthwhile nonetheless. 3.5 milliseconds left to shave off the record.

Erosion

Short Story by Ian Creasey

Triple-layered title: Humanity is eroded as we replace more and more of our bodies with artificial parts. Our eroded protagonist, Winston, wanders the eroding cliffs of England, which is crumbling into a rising sea. While taking one last walk before leaving to colonize a new planet, he encounters the eroding AI of an old lady attached to a bench memorializing the woman she once was. He proceeds to get into and out of trouble, but the point of the story is more in how we are forced to give up bits of ourselves and will eventually be left with nothing of the original. And the feeling I get reading this is maybe that erosion won't be so catastrophic after all. A strangely hopeful take on a classically depressing trend; I like it. 4.5 out of 5 AI's are sick of haunting worn-down benches.