One Man's Treasure, by Sarah Pinsker

I think One Man's Treasure has a great premise, maybe could use more development to give the conclusion a heavier hit. Sarah Pinsker is an amazing author and other work I have read by her sets the bar really high. The discarding of magical items as a premise is great, and using that process to dispose of a body is great too. A novel could have a lot of twists and turns before getting to the reveal. A fun story to think about.

My Goodreads Review

Where Oaken Hearts Do Gather, by Sarah Pinsker

Gotta say I absolutely love Sarah Pinsker, and this is one darned clever story. Telling it as a Reddit thread is great, though that kind of thing is becoming more common now. She very accurately simulates people geeking out about their very specific knowledge space, which is a lot of fun, and also she's good at name dropping. Really glad I read this one, and that it has its own space here on Goodreads.

My Goodreads Review

We Are Satellites, by Sarah Pinsker

I am a huge fan of Sarah Pinsker's work. Her novella "And Then There Were (N-one)" is one of the most clever and entertaining things I've read, and I took a lot away from it. "Song For a New Day" is terrifyingly prescient.

The scale of this book is about the same, and I liked it a lot, but I have to say it just doesn't quite measure up to my favorites. We have a very interesting speculation that ties a technical advance to a social change--a company invents a device that stimulates the brain in a specific way, allowing people to multitask and be more productive. And they advertise that they have it with a blue LED on their temple. Pretty soon if you don't have one you're left behind.

The real driver of the story is the family--two moms, a son and a daughter (the daughter is neurodivergent--seizures--and cannot get a Pilot). They all get a lot of attention and build the story together, so that by the time the book is over you know these people. The moments of tension and tenderness are perfectly balanced, so that even with their significant flaws you can't help but love them. The book is worth reading for that.

The plot feels like we've been there before--brain controlling devices aren't super new. In fact they're going commercial next year. There is some plot tension around whether or not the parent company (Balkenhol) is aware that someone's Pilot has been disconnected. Umm...there's an app to control your Pilot, and the home screen gives a big old error message if you disconnect it. You really think Balkenhol doesn't know? More plot tension around whether they have exact records of the brain activity they are enhancing/controlling. Of Course They Do. And users willingly traded that information for the advantages. That could have been a believable plot driver.

When I said it felt like we've been there before, it's because we really have--with cell phones. They went from curiosity to advantage to necessity in 10-15 years. If you don't have a smart phone now you are at a disadvantage, and it's considered rude not to carry one so that people can find and communicate with you at all times. Some refuse, and I wonder if someone who will not carry a phone is employable beyond a menial job? And they're pretty good at tracking us. So the plot in this story is dressed-up nonfiction. Pinsker could have written a history of the smart phone.

I struggled with whether to round this up to a four. I think not. It's beautifully executed but the world has passed it by.

My Goodreads Review

Two Truths and a Lie, by Sarah Pinsker

I have to tell you it is a little frightening and intimidating how good a writer Sarah Pinsker is. In "Song for a New Day" she pretty much called our current times and had an incredibly moving and effective story arc. The story arc is just as good here in a shorter form. Our protagonist is a person used to lying about her past--even though these days it is pretty easy to check up on people. But she gets by with it. Then she makes up a lie that ends up being true and leading to a very creepy children's show host. This is told with a backdrop of her helping an old acquaintance (not quite a friend, and that explanation is good too) clean out his brother's hoarder home. It's just absolutely delicious to read, if for some reason you have not go do it now.

David Shontz’s review of Two Truths and a Lie | Goodreads

The Blur in the Corner of Your Eye, by Sarah Pinsker

Sarah Pinsker writes an amazing range of stories, and all are enjoyable.  The thread linking them all is strong characters--you get the sense of the people in a story right away, and keep it.  So it is with The Blur in the Corner of Your Eye, the first one of hers that I have read in the horror space.  Zanna the author and Sal the assistant have a great relationship, in pretty colorful circumstances.  Zanna writes a series of detective novels where the investigator is in town just long enough to solve the murder mystery--much the way Zanna and Sal live.  And in the story we find out why.

Read this for masterful writing, this is how you do it.  4 stars

Song For a New Day, by Sarah Pinsker

A Song for a New Day by Sarah Pinsker

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


It's pretty amazing that Sarah Pinsker wrote this before it became a documentary. OTOH, as predictions go it is not so difficult--mass shootings were our big concern when she wrote this, and it was widely acknowledged that a pandemic of some kind was going to happen in the near future. But the timing of my reading it is insanely on target, which made it sad to read even though the book itself is not a sad one. It's actually a very hopeful book, showing us how we might resist a relatively benevolent public-private partner dictatorship (I wonder if she deliberately substituted Wal-Mart for Amazon to make her universe slightly less parallel to ours?).

I tried to distance myself a bit from current events and appreciate it as well-written novel. Mostly unsuccessfully, but I still marvel at how deep and mature this book is. The characters are so real--Luce Cannon maybe moreso than Rosemary, but still both are great. Even the minor characters are real characters. Her generous view of human nature really comes through.

This book should go down as a marker of its time--if you want to understand how things are at the start of the second decade of the 21st century, read this. I hope this is the first of many Sarah Pinsker novels, we could see the field revive.



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The Court Magician, by Sarah Pinsker

The Court Magician by Sarah Pinsker

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


This is a good story, almost a 4 but not quite. Pinsker sets us up with an introduction about a curious orphan, and stage magic, and real magic, but the point of the story goes past those. The theme is common enough--what will you give up to learn the "real truth"? But the way this one works out saves it from being too ordinary. I think it's probably a contender for the award, but I haven't read them all yet...



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Wind Will Rove, by Sarah Pinsker

Wind Will Rove by Sarah Pinsker

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Sarah Pinsker has two strong pieces up for awards this year. And Then There Were (N-1) is perhaps the more imaginative of the two, but Wind Will Rove is emotionally powerful.

The story itself is about preservation of memory. The protagonist is a teacher of history on a generation ship heading for a distant star. Early on in the voyage, a disgruntled IT tech erased all their cultural history from the ship databases. The physical survival of the ship was not in doubt, but the loss of the history panicked people and nearly ended the mission anyway. They became hyperconscious of the past, and attempted to preserve as much of their history through their own memories as possible.

Some are simply depressed by the story, thinking it either didn't make a point or the point was too obvious. They would be rewarded by trying again. Yes, the rebellious children are kind of silly. They usually are. What adults who actually care about them do is try to reconcile with an eye to having them learn something from the rebellion, and keep their original ideas. Pinsker's protagonist is trying to do this, and on the face of it this is a harder road than simply kicking the kid's ass and telling him to get with the program. The just-barely-spoken acknowledgement here is that whatever tactics are used to reconcile the discontented have to work for seven or more generations without a break. Simple oppression is more likely to get you another disgruntled IT worker. And you can never plug all the holes.

The story illustrates the importance of memory in spite of, and eventually because of, its imperfections. Faulty memory begets evolutionary creativity, which is just as important as sui generis creativity, even if the young have not figured that out yet. Or the old.

Great stuff, and she could sweep the Hugos and Nebulas for both novella and novelette this year.



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And Then There were (N-One), by Sarah Pinsker

And Then There Were by Sarah Pinsker

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This story is the most clever take I've seen yet using the encountering-yourself-on-multiple-timelines/universes trope. It is an incredible piece of autobiography--she explores multiple versions of herself meeting herself--at a SarahCon! Too good.

The story itself is personal and gets appropriately meta, but never really weird--it's pretty apparent Sarah Pinsker imagines herself as an acutely normal person. But maybe not, the boundaries of differentiation of Sarah Pinskers is actually explained in the story. It's fascinatingly self-complete. I don't give out five stars very often, this is only the third time, but if this story isn't on multiple award ballots then the awards are messed up.



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Sooner or Later Everything Falls Into the Sea, by Sarah Pinsker

It's Nebula season again, and this year all the available novellas are published in book form, so I'll get to those later.  First up, the novelettes.

Sarah Pinsker has an entry on the short side entitled Sooner or Later Everything Falls Into the Sea.  It is standard post-apocalyptic stuff--we have two protagonists, a rock star and a scavenger.  The rock star gets sick of life on the cruise ships that took to the ocean when everything went to pot on land.  She takes a lifeboat and drifts away, washing up on the scavenger's shore.  The rock star is mildly famous--the scavenger knows who she is--but is not wealthy enough to be a passenger on the ships. 

They are each working through the consequences of the end of civilization.  It's OK as a story, I liked it fine, but there's not a lot there.  I guess 3 stars.

Our Lady of the Open Road, by Sarah Pinsker

Our Lady of the Open Road is nominated for a Nebula in the Novelette category, and I have to say it's my favorite so far.  Speculative fiction at its best is some combination of social and technical speculation--usually one drives, and it makes a point about the other.  In this case it's social speculation making points about technology.  I agree with some of the points and not others, which makes it even more interesting.

Our protagonist is an aging punk rocker, once famous in a different genre but now doing music she loves for just barely enough money to survive.  That would seem a typical musician's fate, but in this case it's driven by her determination not to give in to the new dominant recording technology, StageHolo.  The remaining live music acts are getting by on nostalgic venues in abandoned parts of cities.

The idea that recorded performances are going to drive out live ones goes back to the first recordings.  Pinsker adds some new drivers by extrapolating a continuing of a trend to pull into our devices and not risk contact with other people.  There are so many excuses not to go to a live venue--it's expensive, inconvenient (public transportation becomes inconsistent), and increasingly dangerous.  In this world, Wal-Mart has pretty much taken over retail, and employment in general.  Self driving cars have taken over the road.  And StageHolo, an apparently pirate-proof and immersive technology, has taken over performance.

The protagonist's drama within this setting is kind of prosaic--she is feeling her age and perhaps tiring of the struggle, but finds some hope--but the story is very well told and draws one in emotionally.

Do I think this future is realistic?  In my view it misses a lot.  Performers make most of their money doing live shows--ease of piracy and cheapness of streaming make recordings something of a loss leader.  That same ubiquity has given many more musicians a chance to find an audience online.  That never would have happened when radio was the only free mass distribution of music.  And we are a very long way off from duplicating both the realness of live entertainers and the feeling of experiencing a performance with others.  One can have somewhat similar experiences with recording and live tweets etc., but the experiences are complimentary, not competing.  No, this is only a plausible future in the saddest of dystopias, and the story is not otherwise set up that way.

Consider it a warning, with four stars.  Long live performers, live music, and written SF.

A Stretch of Highway Two Lanes Wide, by Sarah Pinsker

A Stretch of Highway Two Lanes Wide is one of the better nominees for the Nebula this year.  She made it available for free specifically to attract Hugo nominations, which turned out to be a waste of time.  But it's still a fine story.

Our protagonist is a farmer, son of farmers, and basically content with the life.  He is a young man, farming alongside his parents' place.  Then he has an accident, losing his right arm.  His parents are very much into technology--they "farm from an office"--and have him outfitted with a prototype prosthetic arm. 

The arm believes itself to be a road.  A very specific road.  This plays out through the story, which is very warm and fine to read.  It has a completely real feel, and madnesses have been stranger so it's not that hard to believe.  Read this for an excellent example of storytelling.  It's got a fine enough edge to it that I'm giving it 4 stars.

Pinsker, Sarah - In Joy, Knowing the Abyss Behind

The parents of the boomers are now very late in life.  They are old, their children are old too.  In Joy, Knowing the Abyss Behind uses a speculation to confront growing old, and what one sometimes has to do to survive and feed a family. 

Millie and George have been married over 60 years when he suffers a stroke.  It's pretty apparent to Millie that he will never come back from it.  Ground very familiar to this generation is covered--frailty, aging children, putting aside dreams.  George was an architect, and very much a dreamer when they met.  Events described in the story change him into basically a stoic.  He remains a dedicated family man and enthused about family projects, but work is not of interest to him any more.  In the hospital, he starts drawing, and brings the time of change back to Millie.

The story is very well written and a solid read.  I have not heard of Sarah Pinsker before, and this is a fine debut.  I don't think she really needed any speculative elements to tell the story, but they didn't hurt.  It's often easier to make a point in speculative fiction, since you have fully imaginary scenarios at your disposal.

I give it three stars, and can recommend it.  Decent stuff.