The Goats are Going Places

Short Story by Tina Connolly

Read for Podcastle by Melissa Bugaj

A teenage girl moves in with her aunt and starts at a new junior high school. She quickly integrates into a social group, and pursues a boy for social advantage. She does such a good impression of Mean Girls that her witch of an aunt decides to teach her a lesson and gain a little respect. Unfortunately for our protagonist, I didn't mean "witch" idiomatically.

A story about teenage girls, for teenage girls, the lesson learned at the end was a bit heavy-handed although it was believable. There is plenty to enjoy here even if you aren't a teenage girl, but it isn't subtle, and there really isn't that much plot to work through. This isn't nearly as good as Connolly's Turning the Apples in Pseudopod, but I may well be nominating that for best of the year over there, so it's sort of a high standard to set. 3 out of 5 goat costumes are more real than you'd think.

Turning the Apples

Short Story by Tina Connolly

Originally published in Strange Horizons, available for free online.

Audio version from Pseudopod read by Cayenne Chris Conroy, also available free online.

It's worth noting that Tina Connolly also wrote my second favorite poem of the 2009 Asimov's Science Fiction magazines.

So this is an SF/horror story dealing with a very unusual brand of crime on another planet. A small number of tourists contract a unique disease on first visiting the unnamed planet of the story. Adults are turned into walking coma patients, most children die, and a select few survive and gain psychic mind-rewriting abilities. Criminals use the orphaned children to program the coma victims for manual labor, and the reprogramming effort has a narcotic effect, getting the kids addicted to helping the criminals.

Szo, our protagonist, is one such orphan, addicted and never able to escape because he hopes to someday find a way to help his mother, who's thoughtless body hauls nuclear waste. One day the police officer he sometimes informs to offers him hope.

The story isn't so much horrifying as exceedingly dark. But it is still the stuff of nightmares rather than good dreams. This is a very different take on the addiction/psychic powers connection, something I'd like to read more of. I'm not sure what it is, but this story will stick with me for a long time.

A brief comment on narration: It is quite good. Another example of the narrator actively improving my enjoyment of the story rather than just relaying the events. His voice makes the thing seem even more gritty.

4 out of 5.

Poetry Roundup: Asimov's August 2009

The top 5 poems of the year are split between this issue, and October/November's.

Chicken From Minsk by Karin L. Frank

Poor little chickens aren't dinosaurs anymore.

Kind of funny, awkward wording in places, actually rhymes. Not bad.

Osteometry by Erin Hoffman

Another poem in remembrance of dinosaurs.

Spacing is a bit distracting, interesting thoughts on extinction, but ultimately forgettable, like our civilization is implied to be.

Doing Splits by Ruth Berman

Pithy variations on "split"-containing idioms.

A bit disjointed, but I like it.

And My Sinuses Are Killing Me by Tina Connolly

Not everyone wants to turn our cities back into forests.

Good flow, good idea, unique sentiment, best of issue.

The editor really screwed up here, DC (as in the city) is distractingly typo'd as KC.

Human Resources by F.J. Bergmann

Well done surreal imagery, funny yet meaningful ending. Second best.

After reading everything, and rereading, I think And My Sinuses Are Killing Me & Human Resources are the second and third best poems of the year.