Queen Lily, by Theodora Goss

Queen Lily crept onto the Locus Award list, probably because Theodora Goss has written some other good things.  I just couldn't get into this one at all.  The point of view changes without warning or sense, and is just confusing.  The setting is Alice In Wonderland, which has had a lot of rework over the years so if one is going to go back there one has to have something really new to say.  About all there is here is that Lewis Carroll was a pedophile--we knew that already.  I have to rate this one down.

The Donner Party, by Dale Bailey

The Donner Party is a Locus Award finalist in the novelette category.  It has nothing to do with the historical Donner party.  So that name just has a hard go of it.  Because it actually does have to do with the Donner Party--in that the people in the story eat human flesh ("ensouled" flesh).  In this case by choice, with full awareness.  The story is set in Victorian England, and the protagonist is a social climber--it's more of a horror story than anything speculative, but it's pretty darn horrible.  Weak 3 stars from me.

The Only Harmless Great Thing, by Brooke Bolander

The Only Harmless Great Thing by Brooke Bolander

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Brooke Bolander writes like a boxer. Punch, punch, punch. If you're ready for it, you can appreciate it. I wasn't ready when I read And You Shall Know Her By the Trail of Dead (and also I really don't think the story was that good). This time I was ready, and can appreciate what she's doing. It's a really searing look back at two unrelated historical cruel acts, one in slow motion (Radium Girls) and one faster (electrocuting an elephant). I know in my gut that this kind of lookback is coming for those of us living now (climate change, plastic, strip mining, etc, etc, etc). And in fact this take on history is supposed to make us think in just that way--how will our actions (and inactions) be seen 50 years from now. It's jumbled beyond what it needs to be to get the point across, so I can't give it 5 stars, but I'm glad I bought it.



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No Flight Without the Shatter, by Brooke Bolander

No Flight Without the Shatter by Brooke Bolander

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Brooke Bolander's work can be hard to read. Sometimes it's just in-your-face violent. At other times she crosses over into unsparing hard truth. That's when she's at her best, and this story represents that side. Life on earth is not going to come to an end because of humans, but it's going to be so different that humans as they are won't be able to live outside of bubbles. Neither will any other complex oxygen-breathing creature. That's what Bolander is describing here. It's a fable. Fables can clarify what is only dimly seen in reality. Like all apocalyptic SF, Bolander is mourning what we have not yet lost.



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No Flight Without the Shatter on TOR.com

How to Swallow the Moon, by Isabelle Yap

How to Swallow the Moon is a Locus Award 2019 finalist. And an OK choice I guess, though it's a really old story that gets retold a lot.  The only twist, and anymore it's a pretty mild one, is that the lovers from extremely different social castes, where the lower caste one is the tutor to the higher one, is that they are both women.  Now, the ending does in fact have a twist worth the read, and that makes it worthy of consideration.  So I got a surprise out of that.  It's a good story, I can recommend it.

Okay, Glory, by Elizabeth Bear

Okay, Glory is the first piece of what could be considered "hard" SF by Elizabeth Bear that I have read.  Except it's almost not speculative, seems just about a year or two in the future.  An eccentric tech billionaire who likes to be left alone has constructed an IOT Fortress of Solitude and turned control over to a house AI called Glory.  It takes good care of him and he's very fond of it.  Except it gets hacked--the AI gets convinced that the outside world has had the Zombie Apocalypse--and locks him in.  Who'd 'a thunk it?

We're getting to the point where it's easy to believe that anyone who turns that much of their life over to IOT devices is asking for trouble.  Might have been more interesting if his Smart House was air-gapped and they still found a way to hack it.

In any case it's a good story, and nice that it found its way into a free online source from the print collection (Twelve Tomorrows) that it was in.

Quality Time, by Ken Liu

Quality Time is part of the anthology Robots vs. Fairies, and was a finalist for the Locus award for novellas this year.  Liu is a master storyteller at this length, and in this one he takes on Silicon Valley.  The protagonist is a liberal arts major hired on as a project manager at a robot company.  It's got all the tropes--engineers going forward heedless of the problems their inventions are causing, founder worship, and an older female engineer providing a needed dose of skepticism.  But it's a more positive story than many in this vein.  I think Liu believes that technology is on balance going to continue to be a force for good, if we watch over it.  I hope so.  A strong 3 stars.

Umbernight, by Carolyn Ives Gillman

Umbernight was a Locus novella nominee for 2018, the only one that is available online.  The story has a very classic feel--an explorer from a colony on a hostile planet leads a team of colonists on a mission to recover a shipment from Earth.  They have barely been surviving, in part because the planet is actually orbiting a binary with a nasty X-ray star, which was not anticipated.  The colony normally shelters through the long time when Umber's X-rays bathe the planet, but the X-ray season came early and the colonists were caught out.  They find that the planet is teeming with life, much of it hostile.  It's a good nostalgic tale, kind of like older Venus stories.  But less optimistic, more burnt out.

The Freeze Frame Revolution, by Peter Watts

The Freeze-Frame Revolution by Peter Watts

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Well...of the other stories in the Sunflower Cycle I have only read The Island, and I don't remember it well, and also I have not decoded the red letters in the book. With those caveats, I have to say that I liked the story a lot and can highly recommend it. Watts' very intellectualized and engaged pessimism about human nature leads him to write interestingly layered plots and characters. The plot itself reminds me of another book featuring a rebellion across time--I thought it was Vernor Vinge's A Deepness In the Sky but I can't confirm it. Sunday as a heroine struck me as very brave and real. It's a fine and satisfying read on its own--probably would feel more complete if I read it in with the others in the series.



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The Calculating Stars, by Mary Robinette Kowal

The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


It's no surprise this novel scooped up all the major awards this year. It's a solid book by a veteran author in a year of many good first efforts and less great books from the usual suspects. It showcases how SF can illuminate current events, and has enough hard SF in it to be satisfying to a technical fan. Is it the best thing I ever read? Not quite. As much as this book sprawls (covering race, gender, and religious discrimination, as well as science denial) it ends up missing a lot that's important in alternate histories. The tension comes entirely from the aforementioned social context issues, and while that's real, in the outside world those issues intertwine with geopolitics and personal conflict. We get none of the latter. The result for me is that Elma's story is compelling (I eagerly read it all the way through) but not really challenging in any way. Stetson Parker, overbearing white-guy test pilot, is about the only character with any real complexity in the book.

Still, I liked it, and it's an easy book to like.



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