Different Kinds of Darkness is a nice little gem that got a World Fantasy Award nomination in 2001. It belongs to an interesting little subgenre of stories that speculate on what life would be like if a thought or visual pattern put the brain in the equivalent of a Windows blue screen state--frozen up. Ted Chiang's story Understand contains such a pattern. I have read at least two others, but they aren't coming to mind right now. Different Kinds is a good one, worth a read, though it might be just a touch naive. 3 stars.
The World Fantasy Awards confuse me. I think of fantasy as involving magic somehow, not being too concerned with technical details of how the fantastic element comes about. Though technical magic may be involved. This story seems very hard SF, yet it's nominated for Fantasy. Stretchy. Oh well.
Friday, December 7, 2012
The Death of the Duke, by Ellen Kushner
The Death of the Duke is set in Ellen Kushner's Riverside series, as Jed Hartman indicates in its introduction. He regards its main significance as having a gay romance at a time when this was less normal. Maybe if you hadn't read LeGuin. In any case, the story reads as a sort of postlude to the series--the Duke was one of the protagonists of that romance, but he has had many since, and we see him here at the end of his life with a woman. I guess it stood well enough on its own to get a World Fantasy Award nomination in 1999, but still goes to show that you should read a series from the beginning to really get it, regardless of what the author or series fans tell you. Three stars if you read the series, 2 stars if not.
Thursday, December 6, 2012
TAP, by Greg Egan
TAP stands for Total Affect Protocol, a brain implant that gives the user a new, personal language--a way to express any emotion or thought, no matter how complex. Nothing is ineffable. One of its early users has died from what appear to be complications of the implant, but her daughter does not think so--she thinks it is murder. So begins this story.
As always with Egan, the premise is one that will make you think hard. In this case the premise is a bit of a stretch for me--it's hard to figure out what it truly means. But the way the story proceeds makes it clearer as it goes along. The story winds up as a powerful combination of two future technologies--TAP and immersive virtual reality--and a very difficult moral dilemma. Both technologies are frightening when carried to their logical conclusion, but even worse would be to have one without the other. You'll have to read it to see why, the argument builds through the whole piece.
It's not hard to see why it was nominated for a Hugo in the novelette category in 1996. Also understandable that it didn't win, because it's a challenging story to read, and you probably should read it more than once. Now, I almost never read things more than once, but I do think about them, and the more I consider this story the better I like it. Go read it, more than once if that's something you do, or read it closely if not. Four stars.
As always with Egan, the premise is one that will make you think hard. In this case the premise is a bit of a stretch for me--it's hard to figure out what it truly means. But the way the story proceeds makes it clearer as it goes along. The story winds up as a powerful combination of two future technologies--TAP and immersive virtual reality--and a very difficult moral dilemma. Both technologies are frightening when carried to their logical conclusion, but even worse would be to have one without the other. You'll have to read it to see why, the argument builds through the whole piece.
It's not hard to see why it was nominated for a Hugo in the novelette category in 1996. Also understandable that it didn't win, because it's a challenging story to read, and you probably should read it more than once. Now, I almost never read things more than once, but I do think about them, and the more I consider this story the better I like it. Go read it, more than once if that's something you do, or read it closely if not. Four stars.
Tuesday, December 4, 2012
Morning Child, by Gardner Dozios
Morning Child is another war story, I think a theme for the collection it is in. The weapons are fantastic, but they have passed beyond understanding. Williams and John pass their days in a depopulated post-apocalypse world, near the ruins of their old home.
To describe the story further would be to fully quote it. It's pretty short, nominated for a Nebula Best Short Story in 1984. It's a good short story--the relationship brings out what has happened to them, not any sort of exposition. Except toward the end, where it adds poignancy. Read it to fill a few minutes. Three stars, kind of by default.
To describe the story further would be to fully quote it. It's pretty short, nominated for a Nebula Best Short Story in 1984. It's a good short story--the relationship brings out what has happened to them, not any sort of exposition. Except toward the end, where it adds poignancy. Read it to fill a few minutes. Three stars, kind of by default.
Slow Tuesday Night, by R. A. Lafferty
The introduction to Slow Tuesday Night is by Gardner Dozios, the great editor, and he tells us that "only those stories that were the most radical and farfetched in their
conception of life in 1970 bear even a conservative correlation to
reality"., of stories written before 1965. The pace of change is tremendous. He tells us, "If you’re still around forty years from now, do the existing societal equivalent of reading it again" and see what you think. So I'm reading it--not downloading it into my brain or something--but reading it on a tiny device that can hold several encyclopedias (a first-generation Kindle). Things change both more and less than expected.
So what's happening here? In this world, everything is tremendously accelerated, and people have several entire careers and marriages in the course of one evening. Fortunes are made and lost several times. The fortunes part is coming close to true--with electronic trading, hedge fund companies make and lose hundreds of millions of dollars in one day. Easy come easy go. But Lafferty makes the assumption that humans will personally speed up their interactions and living by the same rate. But the wetware does not change. We can now communicate instantly with someone halfway around the world--but no faster than we can type or talk. If humans uploaded to computers and lived their lives as fast as clock speeds, they could work this way. But not as flesh and blood. Good speculative fiction builds contexts for changes--the more radical the change, the more radical the context shift. Hard to do in a short story, though. 3 stars for the introduction.
So what's happening here? In this world, everything is tremendously accelerated, and people have several entire careers and marriages in the course of one evening. Fortunes are made and lost several times. The fortunes part is coming close to true--with electronic trading, hedge fund companies make and lose hundreds of millions of dollars in one day. Easy come easy go. But Lafferty makes the assumption that humans will personally speed up their interactions and living by the same rate. But the wetware does not change. We can now communicate instantly with someone halfway around the world--but no faster than we can type or talk. If humans uploaded to computers and lived their lives as fast as clock speeds, they could work this way. But not as flesh and blood. Good speculative fiction builds contexts for changes--the more radical the change, the more radical the context shift. Hard to do in a short story, though. 3 stars for the introduction.
Monday, December 3, 2012
A Special Kind of Morning, by Gardner Dozios
A Special Kind of Morning is a war story. It was nominated for the 1971 Nebula and 1972 Hugo awards for novelette and novella, respectively. So war was much on our minds at the time, when we did not know how we were going to get out of Vietnam.
It's told in the form of an old war story, told by a broken down veteran to someone who has stopped to listen. As a war story it's not too unusual, but definitely well executed and teaches the lesson war stories should tell--how humanity can emerge from such horror. I can't say it uniquely teaches a lesson from that time. It could have been written during WWII, or the Gulf War. Stories of horror and undeserved survival are pretty common. But it's worth perusing, I am glad I read it. 3 stars for me.
It's told in the form of an old war story, told by a broken down veteran to someone who has stopped to listen. As a war story it's not too unusual, but definitely well executed and teaches the lesson war stories should tell--how humanity can emerge from such horror. I can't say it uniquely teaches a lesson from that time. It could have been written during WWII, or the Gulf War. Stories of horror and undeserved survival are pretty common. But it's worth perusing, I am glad I read it. 3 stars for me.
Saturday, December 1, 2012
The Gods of Mars, by Gardner Dozios, Jack Dann, and Michael Swanwick
Back to catching up on award winners on Free SF Online--visit when you can, you will never see so much free stuff again. And I found one from 1984 that was recently posted, a Nebula nominee for best short story in 1985, called The Gods of Mars. The authors were old-school guys even nearly 20 years ago, and the story definitely is--it is a near-future Mars exploration story, and of course something goes wrong or it wouldn't be a story. But what specifically goes wrong is a shout-out, or throwback, to Ray Bradbury's Mars stories. What they see with their instruments is the standard Red Planet--dry, dusty, no life--but what they see with their eyes is Barsoom. Which is real? It's a fun but not too ambitious read. I'll give it three stars, but with a nagging feeling of generosity.
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