Saturday, December 14, 2019

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.

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