Semiramis

Short Story by Genevieve Valentine

Published free in Text & Audio at Clarkesworld

Valentine opens and closes this story with a with something between a thesis statement and a rallying cry.

Inevitably, eventually, you started to care.

The story follows two thieves embedded in deep cover at the Seed Bank in Svalbard. They work for some sort of idealistic underground organization in a dystopian future where the seas have risen so high they're swallowing up cities and a Global Coalition works to keep member states isolated and subjugated. The Global Coalition moves in to take over new countries when flooding gets too bad and when it does, it sells seed banks, coal mines, and anything else to big companies. (I like that the biggest corporate threat in this world is called MediaVox rather than an oil or engineering type company.) Anyway, it seems seed banks get mishandled and shut down by these companies and the Coalition and the protagonist is there to steal some of the seeds before it's too late.

But his partner isn't a true believer, she likes birds, but is just in the seed business for the money. The story is really her story, observed by her partner as he frets about seeds and the state of international politics, he watches her decide what principles she really supports.

Valentine is urging readers to wake up and give a damn, but the message comes quietly, against an evocatively described background of a very hot future. I would have liked to see more detail, ideology of their organization, but it's a thoughtful story.

4 bird of paradise seeds 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.

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.