My Father's Singularity

Short Story by Brenda Cooper
Text and Audio from Clarkesworld, read by Kate Baker.

Paul's father told him from childhood that he would see the Singularity, never die, and become the next step for humanity. Paul goes off to school, becomes successful, and comes back to realize his Alzheimer's-afflicted father no longer recognizes him.

A sad rumination on how we don't notice our own changes, or those that happen gradually enough. The singularity might be able to sneak up on us that way, but also might not be as big a concept as some would expect, or it might never come. Expectations for the future, or for your own children, aren't always met the way you think they will be.

Beyond that, this is also a story about how father and son talk past each other. Son feels rejected by his father's insistence not to be like him, and his later failure to recognize his own son. At the same time, the father's expectations aren't met, and yet his son still leaves him behind, without even realizing it. Neither understand each other, the future, or themselves. And then there is the less technological definition of singularity. What is it that we emotionally just can't see past? Expectations for the future, or fond memories of home and how things used to be. Both men have clouded judgment based on what they want to believe, rather than reality.

Heartbreaking, but also insightful. And blessedly short, where many stories run on too long with these sorts of themes. We just get enough of a glimpse of the future to get the point.
4.5 imagined singularities out of 5.

Torquing Vacuum

Short Story by Jay Lake

Text and Audio on Clarkesworld

I put this in the same category as Genevieve Valentine's Seeing, a good, exceptionally well-written story that doesn't take us anywhere we haven't all been many times before. Engineering Supervisor Domitian Spanich is a tech on a space station, out in deep space. He is infatuated with a hooker, who one day, despite his being broke, turns to him for help. It turns out the ship Spanich has been working on has more important and dangerous passengers than he knew. And now his probably-unreciprocated love interest has dragged poor Spanich into the whole mess.

Don't get me wrong, this is an interesting story, it's just that I've seen it before. Same with the worldbuilding. There is some great and clever world building in an interesting, nicely cramped-yet-huge feeling world (more details, with spoilers, on this blog, with a very nice post about Lake's technique). But the world, and the mysterious Mistake isn't that fresh. I do want to learn more about it, and I can imagine it exceptionally well, but some of that is because it fits space station tropes I know very well. I might just as well have read a story in this world before, if you take away a big, irrelevant, mysterious event we don't hear anything about besides the name.

But the story does keep me interested, and the world does pull me in, the writing is of excellent quality, so I shouldn't complain too much. The one thing I haven't seen enough of before is that Spanich and his hooker-friend are both men. The reason I didn't mention it until this far into the review, was that it was nice that the main character was gay, while being totally irrelevant to the plot. It wasn't a story about him being gay, or about sex-in-the-future or anything, it was a plot we've seen before, where a character just happened to be gay. The same feel and (rough) plot could have come from a noir story where some 1930s private eye hooks up with some dame he's been after, and it turns out she was using him, to drag him into helping out with problems way over his head. Nothing new, and in a way, that is some of the charm of the story. You would have assumed heteronormality in 1940, but that's the one difference.

Oh, and the climax is a bit weird. It's tense and interesting, but Spanich solves things by basically saying: "Central problem, I hereby declare you Solved!" And then he walks out the door and everything really is resolved. I mean I can imagine this working in that situation, but it is a bit weird.

Another 3.5 out of 5. I'm giving these a lot lately, while trying to review stories others are talking up a lot for Best of Year. I keep thinking they are good and recommendable, but not really interesting enough to be award nomination worthy.

The Jekyll Island Horror

Novelette by Allen M. Steele

The story is presented as a manuscript by another writer, discovered by Allen Steele while visiting Jekyll Island for a wedding. The story takes place in March, 1934 and is told by the Sol Hess, the valet of a wealthy but struggling pulp magazine publisher, Mr. Russell.

While wintering at the fancy Jekyll Island Club in Georgia, Russell and Hess both enjoy themselves in their own ways, meeting women, and Hess finds time for his ambition to be a pulp SF writer. But one day, a strangely large meteorite is seen falling towards the island, and then things move into traditional Lovecraft story territory.

In that vein, I actually like Steele's style here better than Lovecraft's or Howard's, although it's still a homage to the era. There is a partially explained, implied scientific explanation for events, and the ending is nice and unresolved, but I'm not terribly impressed. Mostly I think it's that I was underwhelmed by the horror itself, and not terribly interested in the first half or so of the story, although by the end I was pretty interested in Hess' life.

The main value of the story is in the possibility that a pulp SF writer left a story as a sort of one-last-joke on his descendants, and the whole thing being within Steele's supposedly true frame narrative adds another layer to our examination of the plausibility of "true stories" told by SF writers. So an interesting conceit, in an average, not bad, not great, story.

3 gentlemens' gentlemen out of 5.

Seeing

Short Story by Genevieve Valentine

Text and Audio from Clarkesworld, read by Kate Baker

A beautiful story about a girl who is basically drafted into becoming an astronaut, on another dying world with a water shortage (same one?) She's a bit of a screw-up, but she goes into space, and ends up part of the crew on a mission to scout a new planet that humanity can colonize as they try to flee Earth.

It is a strange, gorgeous, falling-apart world these characters inhabit, and between that, the descriptions, and the constant parenthetical commentary/foreshadowing/authorial musing, Valentine takes a rather pedestrian (though emotional) Hard SF Fix-this-shuttle-malfunction story and makes it something worthwhile. Not like anything that was being published when these stories were common (or in Analog).

The characters aren't the most well realized, and the plot is nothing new, but this is still a gorgeous little story with a different background (which does help). It's all in the style here though.

3.5 broken fingers out of 5.

The Language of the Whirlwind

Short Story by Lavie Tidhar

Text and Audio on Clarkesworld, narrated by Kate Baker

A story about religious belief, both some people's need for it, and it's potential futility in the face of real disaster. Tel Aviv (and probably the rest of the world) has been destroyed, when a giant mountain rose in the center of the city, strange whirlwinds came from the sea and killed thousands of people, and a giant black wall trapped the survivors within the decimated metropolis.

Strange, powerful beings I take to be aliens are living on top of the mountain, and our main character, The Priest, thinks they are gods. To explain the devastation to himself, he's created a complicated mythology and is writing a Holy Book. He expects a fireman who was taken by the aliens to return as a prophet and savior, and the Priest has created a small congregation out of the people breeding and eating rats in the wreckage of Tel Aviv.

A constantly whistling little boy follows him, and the Priest thinks the whistling might be the language of the whirlwinds, that the boy might be able to communicate with them, and is protected by them. But after witnessing further horrible events, the Priest is left wondering how it fits into his new religion, why he believes what he does, and why would his gods do what they do?

"I pray for salvation. Yet what sort of salvation could a Fireman bring?"

The story asks a lot of questions, and leaves them all unanswered. Chief among them is "Why?" Why would powerful beings do what they do? Why do we believe what we believe? And all this is backed up by a fairly standard, yet hauntingly described post-apocalyptic setting. Still, I didn't love this story. The characters were poorly explained and generic, even the priest didn't have the depth of crazy I'd have liked. We didn't get to see where his religion came from, and I'm still confused about some factual details of the whirlwinds, things the character observed . The conclusion is dark and haunting, but feels a bit like a trick. We are lead to believe things which aren't true, fair enough, but the heads exploding just sort of took me out of the story. Not bad, and well written, but not enough detail to truly draw me in. Or perhaps just the wrong details. Frankly, the story was a bit boring as well, it felt like it took longer to listen to and read than it did. 3 whistling whirlwinds out of 5.

Unexpected Outcomes

Short Story by Tim Pratt
Read for Escape Pod by Tom “Devo Spice” Rockwell

Tim Pratt and his girlfriend break up when the world comes to an end in 2001. We've all been living in a simulation, and it turns out that it's over. We can't just be turned off for ethical reasons, but there is going to be a "reduction in non-essential services." With no more weather, or other chaotic systems, and the knowledge none of them are real, society starts to break down. A couple of young science fiction authors, better at dealing with this than some, decide to resist the urge to surrender silently.

It's a great end-of-the-world story, with some Matrix themes, but the best part of this is all the metafiction. I've seen some whining about writers having main characters be writers, but the metafictional, autobiographical aspect of this story adds a lot of emotional power, and makes me think about what the me in this other world would be doing. Maybe I'd become friends with Tim Pratt.

Seriously, the author as a main character absolutely makes this story. In some stories it can seem a bit wankish, but it can also be a useful device, as Pratt shows us here. And all the winking little references to real life add some nice humor. I saw this described somewhere as "Chicken Soup for the Post-Apocalyptic Soul", but it is darker and more combative than that would imply. Tim Pratt is not endorsing passive resignation to our fate, even if we are all simulations.

The best part of the story is both Pratt's anger toward the end, and the reader's ability to capture it.

4.5 out of 5 science fiction writers would be leading the resistance in worlds with more science-fictional threats.

Wind From a Dying Star

Short Story by David D. Levine
Read for Escape Pod by Meg Westfox

Old John is the last remnant of humanity, in a post-human society where he has left his old body behind and become an energy being. Humans have become a race of hunter-gatherer energy beings, roaming space, feeding on zero-point energy and the like. He hears that Sol is dying soon, and wants to go back for one last visit before he dies. But the tribe may not be able to survive such a journey.

It's an interesting bit of far-future speculation with two memorable characters: Old John and Gunai, the tribe's leader. Their relationship is well realized, as conversations between energy beings go. The conclusion is sad-yet-hopeful-yet-heat-death-of-the-universe-is-coming-anyway. Basically this is "Clan of the Cave Bear"... IN SPACCCEEEEE.

4 energy-wolves out of 5.

A Programmatic Approach to Perfect Happiness

Short Story by Tim Pratt

Read for Escape Pod by Steve Eley

Originally published, and free online, from Futurismic

A sentient robot's examination of his marriage to a human woman. He adjusts his programming to make her happier, and in return, maybe he is adjusting her as well.

There is a definite correlation to the need of human couples to compromise and change themselves in subtle ways to make their partners happier, with some dark, robot-war overtones and some hilarious bits of subtle humor. Also, his emo human stepdaughter seems to have caught a "happiness virus". Very convenient.

I love Tim Pratt as always. This isn't his best work, but it is subtle and funny and thoughtful. And Steve Eley's outro bit about "topping from the bottom" made me giggle a bit as well. P.S. not a story for kids.

3.5 out of 5 fathers are less chill than Robopop.

Little M@tch Girl

Short Story by Heather Shaw
Read for Escape Pod by Mur Lafferty

A couple of party girls take drugs and go out every night. One day, Em's father loses his job and his pension, and her college hopes are scuttled. She has to take a low-paying, low class "jacker" job to support her family instead. When she finally get a vacation, she gets back together with her friend, they take some more drugs, and there are terrible consequences this time.

It feels like the story wants to be about class differences, particularly relating to the types of drugs, and the effects of them, as they differ by financial/social class. But really it comes across as just an overly long, weird warning against doing drugs.

For one thing, I'd have liked a bit more resonance with the original Little Match Girl (text on wikisource). But the writing was good, and I have no real complaints other than a general lack of story or depth. 3 out of 5 m@tches are needed to get a good fl@me.

Advection

Short Story by Genevieve Valentine
Read for Escape Pod by Mur Lafferty

First published free on Clarkesworld

Sarah and Kay are two (teenage?) girls sparing over a boy, Fortuni. They are all students in a New York City where the world faces a massive water shortage. All water is rationed harshly according to social status, as desalination from the oceans appears to be the only source of water. Houseplants are illegal, to the point that Sarah worries about jail time for bringing one home from a trash can. The U.S. seems even closer to a police state, but the wealthy are allowed to ignore most of the rules.

What seems like a rather plotless teen romance gets more exciting when it seems Fortuni is part of a group of outlaws/"terrorists" intent on bringing back natural rain and the water cycle. The central conflict of the story, beyond jealousy between the two girls, is Sarah's internal conflict as to how far she'll let herself go in Fortuni's direction, and how she'll change her own goals and take more risks to make his dreams of rain come true. Enthusiasm/rebellion are infectious, and that is what I take to be the point of this slice-of-waterless-dystopian life story.

Advection is the transport of substances/particulates/energy/other conserved properties by a fluid via the fluid's bulk motion. Wikipedia says advection in meteorology is the transport of some property of the atmosphere or ocean, such as heat, humidity or salinity; it is important in cloud formation and precipitation. As the title of the story, it literally stands for the changes in climate leading to no natural rain and a water shortage, as well as the meteorology classes Sarah takes. Metaphorically, I read it as the transference of passion/hope/rebellion, from Fortuni to Sarah.

By the end of the story, she is dreaming of his dream to create rain, gathering illegal condensation on her bowl under the bed, and while she hopes he is alive, I suspect her life and career aspirations have shifted to keep his memory and hopes alive, if nothing else. She expands beyond her non-ambition, takes more classes, and has goals for her life she never had before meeting Fortuni.

I still love Mur Lafferty's voice, but her reading of this story is one of the worst I've heard from her. She captures emotion well, and is as dynamic a reader as always, but she stumbles over words many times, and has awkward pauses and loud background noises. I get the impression this was rushed, and she had to do the whole story in one take.

4 thirsty thirsty jade plants out of 5.

God of the Lower Level

Short Story by Charles M. Saplak
Read for Escape Pod by Steve Anderson

A water-treatment plant worker has been keeping a newly sentient tank of bacterial slime on the lower level, he works third shift and just wants someone to talk to at night, but it wonders if he is its god. Fredrick has given it television and internet feeds, a sound card and voice synthesizer, and has been teaching it things. He calls the slime Horatio.

One day Horatio wants to learn more of the world than Fredrick can tell him, and they come into a parent-child sort of conflict. Steve Anderson's voices add a lot to this story, especially his changes in tone based on Horatio's moods.

Nothing outstanding here, it goes pretty much where you'd expect, although the ending surprised me and is much better than the one I'd anticipated, which is worth some bonus points. The narrative device of having the entire story in dialog between Horatio and Fredrick is neat, and works well in places, but feels overly forced in others. Particularly in Fredrick's description of himself, and Horratio's monologging towards the end. Like I said, it is a nice ending, to a funny, if mostly predictable story. Both sad and funny.

Good fun, not too deep, but still a bit better than it seems on the surface, despite the strained dialog at times. The pop culture references are fairly amusing at least. 3.5 out of 5 gods are keep their valves meticulously labeled.

Text also now available from The Soundproof Escape Pod

Kachikachi Yama

Short Story by Michael R. Underwood

Read for Escape Pod by Lauren Harris

An extended, stealthy pokémon joke or an oddly generic cyberpunk/samurai tale. Yuriko lives in a future Japan where samurai are back, with all the service to feudal lords and whatnot intact. But due to some modernization, women are now allowed to be samurai warriors, and Yuriko is one of these female samurai. Sadly, her lord doesn't treat her with any respect, demanding she prostitute herself out in the course of an increasingly petty vengeance mission. Having already caused her father's death with similarly dishonorable orders, Yuriko doesn't seem willing to die for her own personal honor.

This is both where the story is, and where I think it fails. First, there isn't much plot-wise. Yuriko seduces the guy her boss wants embarrassed, embarrasses him, and kills him, before even thinking about what she should be doing in the bigger picture. Then we have a much shorter amount of story devoted to wrap-up with the boss, which should have been the main story, since he basically killed her father and is the real villain of the piece.

Second, Yuriko does an amazingly small amount of thinking about honor for how much she claims to be bound by it all the time. Maybe that is the point, that it is fear of death keeping her in line rather than any devotion or honor, and she takes her first escape when she has the chance, but why kill Tanuki then? Especially given how haunted she's supposed to be by previous kills. She shows none of the personal growth it's implied she should be showing, she neither finally understands honor (would probably require her dying at the end, a better story) or finally renounces the whole thing, tells tradition to go to hell, and does what she thinks is right (also a better story). Committing to either resolution would be fine, but the author, like Yuriko, can't seem to figure out which way to go. There is no emotional resolution besides a touch of revenge, and it seems like we're expected to see her growing, but she is still stuck in limbo.

Third, Tanuki's crime is a lot more serious and rape-y than author or any characters seem to be admitting. Sure he embarrassed a lord or whatever, but neither he, nor the lord, nor any of the female characters seem to think about the surprise-sex implications for the helpless wife. I mean I know he isn't supposed to be a good person, but Yuriko doesn't even seem bothered by it (after whoring herself out to him against her will too), and he thinks it is a funny joke. Moral relativity isn't a good defense for this also being a future story with women's rights and trying to make sense to a modern audience. It should at least be addressed, although I think the story would work better with a legitimately more petty affront.

Finally, the real sin of this story: it did nothing for me. It wasn't exciting, it didn't inspire any deep thoughts, suspense, surprise, or emotion at all. I could forget the setting by tomorrow, and it should have been an interesting one. I took Japanese, I'm interested in these things, so how did it lose me? Maybe because I've read real cyberpunk, reducing the novelty value to zero here. OMG he had a computer interface in his neck!!1!

And another thing! Hacking-as-magic got obnoxious by about 1990, that isn't how computers work. I love a good pokémon joke. I was just too annoyed by that point to even laugh.

1.5 out of 5 Magikarp used Splash... but nothing happened.

Trivia: カチカチ山, the title of this story, is the title of a Japanese folktale (translating roughly as "Fire-Crackle Mountain"). You can find an English version here, and read a summary and some modern references on wikipedia.

The Horror of the Heights

Short Story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Read for Pseudopod by Alasdair Stuart

This is Alasdair's favorite short story ever, and I can see why our beloved host/narrator decided to read it for us, rather than farming it out to some lackey (or editor). I don't love it as much as he does, and for my money it isn't ever the best of Doyle, but it is a pretty darn good story.

Not so much horror as weird fiction, Horror of the Heights is about an English aviator who wants to set the world height record. He's been defending a crackpot theory about "air jungles" and various carnivorous beasts living up so high that only the highest airplanes reach them. A few pilots have never come back, and one was found... missing his head. He is determined to fly up there with his shotgun, set the new record, and maybe bring back evidence that he isn't such a crackpot afterall. I won't spoil the story, but in the first few sentences, we learn that we're getting this story from his diary, found in a crash with no body...

Published in 1913, we knew a lot less about the upper atmosphere back then, but something about this story still works. A bit slow at times, not bad, but it's more neat idea than great story. 3.5 out of 5 sky-creatures are herbivores. Somehow.

Text of the story is in the public domain, available at wikisource and many other places.

Note: This is part of a Pseudopod 200th anniversary doubleshot, along with Oil of Dog.

Oil of Dog

Short Story by Ambrose Bierce
Read for Pseudopod by Ben Phillips

Ben Phillips does an awesome southern accent for this story, and it absolutely makes it for me. I actually have owned a physical copy for years, in my complete collection of Bierce's short works. I've read the story before, but with Phillips' voice and accent, I can't imagine it any other way. Another example of a great narrator improving an already great story. He really captures the dry, dark humor, which is what it's all about.

And that's about my summary of the story as well, dry, dark, hilarious, horrible, and brilliant. One of Bierce's best, very short works, it's the story of a boy whose mother runs a back alley abortion clinic and whose father makes medicinal oil from local dogs. Humor and social commentary alongside creepy, vivid descriptions of murder and bubbling cauldrons. You can see a lot of foreshadowing and underlying craft in this story that lesser authors would have missed. And the last line is brilliant, both funny and sad/scary for the kid.

5 disagreeable instances of domestic infelicity out of 5.

Text of the story is in the public domain, available at wikisource, and several other places

Note: This is part of a Pseudopod 200th anniversary doubleshot, along with The Horror of the Heights.

The Moon and the Mesa

Short Story by Daniel Braum
Read for Pseudopod by Ben Phillips

A bizarre desert meditation on revenge and forgiveness, blame and acceptance. Both on the small scale of high school bullying, and the gigantic scale of the holocaust. The story isn't plotless, but it is light enough in plot that I can't actually add much to that sentence. Meditation really is the best word. Another one well worth thinking about, but not transcending thoughts you've probably already had with more complex stories. I'd compare this strongly with Set Down This, although I think that is a stronger story as it has a bit more nuance. Still not bad.

3 ancient scorpion spirits out of 5.