The Orangery is a very beautiful, literary fantasy story. It uses advanced literary devices (two points of view that are very different) and gorgeous language to tell the story of Apollo as an erstwhile visitor to a protected garden. The trees in the garden used to be women, but have chosen to forsake that form for a life in bark. The Guardian confronts Apollo with his nature.
This is a story to admire, and it's probably a contender, but I like more to happen. The plot is relatively thin here. 3 stars from me.
Wednesday, March 8, 2017
Monday, March 6, 2017
Blood Grains Speak Through Memories, by Jason Sanford
Continuing the tour of this year's Nebula awards for novellas, I read Blood Grains Speak Through Memories today. The title is interesting and unusual in that it is a compact, exact description of the story. You don't see that every day.
The story itself is on the border between fantasy and technology. We get hints of a post-apocalypse world, where some desperate means was taken or emerged to survive. The lands are tended by "anchors", people who acquire a special connection to the land through the title's "grains". Our protagonist is one such anchor, who is considering carrying out her late husband's plan to rid the world of the grains. They protect the world, but commit a fair amount of evil in the process.
The world is pretty fully built out for a novella. We get a good picture of what it's like to be an anchor on the land. The writing is powerful without getting sappy. I think this one is a contender, it will be hard to beat. I like it enough to say four stars. I haven't read any Jason Sanford in awhile (since 2010), but am glad he's back.
The story itself is on the border between fantasy and technology. We get hints of a post-apocalypse world, where some desperate means was taken or emerged to survive. The lands are tended by "anchors", people who acquire a special connection to the land through the title's "grains". Our protagonist is one such anchor, who is considering carrying out her late husband's plan to rid the world of the grains. They protect the world, but commit a fair amount of evil in the process.
The world is pretty fully built out for a novella. We get a good picture of what it's like to be an anchor on the land. The writing is powerful without getting sappy. I think this one is a contender, it will be hard to beat. I like it enough to say four stars. I haven't read any Jason Sanford in awhile (since 2010), but am glad he's back.
Sunday, March 5, 2017
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.
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.
Wednesday, February 22, 2017
Archangel, by Marguerite Reed
Archangel got a special citation from the Philip K. Dick award for 2015. The setting is familiar--an earthlike planet that is hospitable to humans is being evaluated for expanded colonization. Earth is spent and everyone wants to get off, but the 32K or so residents/evaluators on Ubastis are holding out for more study. Our protagonist, Vashti Lauren, is one of the most influential of these. She is a standout as a Natch (natural born human), and one who is willing to hunt, kill and eat animals. Her influence comes as a widow of Lasse Undset, a fierce founder and defender of Ubastis. She is confronted by her friend's importation of a BEAST, a bio-enhanced soldier, one of whom killed her husband.
The plot resolutions are pretty well telegraphed, though the suspense is maintained. Vashti is an incredibly emotional woman in a cooler society, and she has to reconcile blinding rage with the realities of the situation. We really get to know her through this book, the character is very completely developed. The writing is excellent and fully carries the story. I enjoyed it all, even as I knew what was coming. This is Marguerite Reed's first novel, and is meant to be the start of a series. I would say we'll see more of it, and it might be up for more prestigious awards. I give it 4 stars for the writing.
The plot resolutions are pretty well telegraphed, though the suspense is maintained. Vashti is an incredibly emotional woman in a cooler society, and she has to reconcile blinding rage with the realities of the situation. We really get to know her through this book, the character is very completely developed. The writing is excellent and fully carries the story. I enjoyed it all, even as I knew what was coming. This is Marguerite Reed's first novel, and is meant to be the start of a series. I would say we'll see more of it, and it might be up for more prestigious awards. I give it 4 stars for the writing.
Sunday, February 12, 2017
A Borrowed Man, by Gene Wolfe
A Borrowed Man was nominated for a Locus award in 2015. Gene Wolfe has written some amazing fiction in his time, so I figured it was worth reading. I would say so, but it's not a super strong work.
It's the 22nd century, and life has slowed down. There are far fewer people in the world, but it's a rougher place. The narrator and protagonist is E. A. Smithe, a mystery writer of renown. But this version is a "reclone", a recreation of a person from a scan. This copy of Smithe belongs to the Spice County Public Library, where human reclones wait to be checked out. He gets checked out by a beautiful heiress who is being pursued by shady figures.
There is some interesting social commentary in here--Wolfe has the narrator discussing the treatment of people who are not considered to be human. Smithe does not seem to consider himself human, except by sneaking up on it. Wolfe also comes back to a device he used in the Book of the New Sun--using words in odd ways. He refers to a woman's purse as a "shaping bag". But the book gets dry toward the middle as it becomes a more straightforward mystery. The speculations don't really drive one to think about the future, they just add a speculative element.
The book is OK, I will give it 3 stars, but a weak 3.
It's the 22nd century, and life has slowed down. There are far fewer people in the world, but it's a rougher place. The narrator and protagonist is E. A. Smithe, a mystery writer of renown. But this version is a "reclone", a recreation of a person from a scan. This copy of Smithe belongs to the Spice County Public Library, where human reclones wait to be checked out. He gets checked out by a beautiful heiress who is being pursued by shady figures.
There is some interesting social commentary in here--Wolfe has the narrator discussing the treatment of people who are not considered to be human. Smithe does not seem to consider himself human, except by sneaking up on it. Wolfe also comes back to a device he used in the Book of the New Sun--using words in odd ways. He refers to a woman's purse as a "shaping bag". But the book gets dry toward the middle as it becomes a more straightforward mystery. The speculations don't really drive one to think about the future, they just add a speculative element.
The book is OK, I will give it 3 stars, but a weak 3.
Sunday, February 5, 2017
Aurora, by Kim Stanley Robinson
Kim Stanley Robinson is an author that's really grown on me over time--maybe I've gotten wiser or he's gotten better, but I think it's very much both. Aurora was nominated for a Locus award for 2015, and I think it probably deserved a nomination for the Hugo and/or Nebula as well.
Aurora is the name of a near-earth size moon orbiting one of Tau Ceti's planets. Earth was sending out generation starships in the 2500's, and the story is set on the ship bound to Tau Ceti. There are a few promising candidates for settlement there. Our protagonist is Freya, child of the "chief engineer" (it's an unofficial title) of the starship, Devi. They are of the generation that will reach Aurora and try to settle it.
As always with Robinson, the book is brimming with excellent science speculation. We learn about "islanding" and "codevolution". The inhabitants of the starship shrink with each generation, and live shorter lives. The bacteria on their relatively small ship evolve faster than the macro life, of course, which is making each generation less healthy. Possibly less smart--Freya is wise in many ways but cannot handle numbers even close to the way Devi can. They have endured social stress and internal dissent. But they can get around all this if they can establish a healthy colony when they get to Tau Ceti.
I'm going to have to reveal important bits to make my points, so I am going to do something I rarely do--SPOILER ALERT.
The colony on Aurora does not take. The settlers are sickened by an extremely tiny almost-prion, and many die--all but one who went to the surface. Faced with a set of very bad choices, they end up splitting, some staying on Aurora and others equipping to go back.
Robinson uses this failure to illustrate how finely tuned we are to our home. As we pursue space exploration it becomes more and more apparent how difficult it will be to reproduce those conditions anywhere else. Robinson puts this forward as an explanation for the SETI problem--the fact that we have not found or heard from any other intelligent life. Other self-aware life may be out there, but we are too far apart and too different from each other to communicate. There's no real way to get around relativity.
This book isn't quite up to the standards of David Brin's Existence, but it's a pretty good try and makes a similar argument about what the sheer distances of space do to any thoughts of interaction with aliens. There is one odd sort of error in it. Toward the end of the book we get the idea that this book is set in the same universe as 2312, last year's major award nominee. He refers to a "city on Mercury, on rails and perpetually moving around the planet"--but in this story that city was built while the travelers were away (they return in the early 2800s). That continuity issue isn't like Robinson.
I give it four stars for entertainment and educational value. This is my kind of SF.
Aurora is the name of a near-earth size moon orbiting one of Tau Ceti's planets. Earth was sending out generation starships in the 2500's, and the story is set on the ship bound to Tau Ceti. There are a few promising candidates for settlement there. Our protagonist is Freya, child of the "chief engineer" (it's an unofficial title) of the starship, Devi. They are of the generation that will reach Aurora and try to settle it.
As always with Robinson, the book is brimming with excellent science speculation. We learn about "islanding" and "codevolution". The inhabitants of the starship shrink with each generation, and live shorter lives. The bacteria on their relatively small ship evolve faster than the macro life, of course, which is making each generation less healthy. Possibly less smart--Freya is wise in many ways but cannot handle numbers even close to the way Devi can. They have endured social stress and internal dissent. But they can get around all this if they can establish a healthy colony when they get to Tau Ceti.
I'm going to have to reveal important bits to make my points, so I am going to do something I rarely do--SPOILER ALERT.
The colony on Aurora does not take. The settlers are sickened by an extremely tiny almost-prion, and many die--all but one who went to the surface. Faced with a set of very bad choices, they end up splitting, some staying on Aurora and others equipping to go back.
Robinson uses this failure to illustrate how finely tuned we are to our home. As we pursue space exploration it becomes more and more apparent how difficult it will be to reproduce those conditions anywhere else. Robinson puts this forward as an explanation for the SETI problem--the fact that we have not found or heard from any other intelligent life. Other self-aware life may be out there, but we are too far apart and too different from each other to communicate. There's no real way to get around relativity.
This book isn't quite up to the standards of David Brin's Existence, but it's a pretty good try and makes a similar argument about what the sheer distances of space do to any thoughts of interaction with aliens. There is one odd sort of error in it. Toward the end of the book we get the idea that this book is set in the same universe as 2312, last year's major award nominee. He refers to a "city on Mercury, on rails and perpetually moving around the planet"--but in this story that city was built while the travelers were away (they return in the early 2800s). That continuity issue isn't like Robinson.
I give it four stars for entertainment and educational value. This is my kind of SF.
Monday, January 16, 2017
Karen Memory, by Elizabeth Bear
Having finished all the books and stories I could find related to the 2015 Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Awards, I branched out to the Locus awards. Lots of fine material there. I settled on novel nominee Karen Memory because it was available as an e-book from my local library and I have enjoyed many Elizabeth Bear novels.
Karen Memery is a "seamstress" in Rapid City, somewhere along the West Coast during the Gold Rush. The seamstressing is done on her back. She has the good fortune to work for Madame Damnable, an extraordinarily tough and fair madame who is well connected in Rapid City politics. The setting is Gold Rush steampunk--we have mostly horsepower for getting around, but electricity, dirigibles and advanced engineering are readily available. A Mad Scientist license in Rapid City costs about the same as one for being a seamstress.
Things get rough when Peter Bantle, a nasty local pimp, gets higher ambitions and decides to run for mayor with outside money and a steampunk mind control device. He is also harboring a serial murderer of white streetwalkers that brings Bass Reeves, a black US Marshal, to town.
The story is basically a good one. We have romance (lesbian--almost feels required), adventure, strong women and strong men. Bear is a good writer and brings it together well. But there are a lot of problems that detract from enjoyment.
Most steampunk novels, and lots of alternate history novels, are based around a speculation about the effects of a technological advance that takes place several decades ahead of time, like flight, electricity or computing. The story then flows from the logical consequences of that advance. But Bear is not a steampunk author--she writes fantasy. That seems to show here, since the steampunk advances feel random and don't coherently drive change. We have dirigibles, "surgery machines" that somehow harness analog power to do advanced medical care, and sewing machines that are operated from the inside like a tank (literally so later). And a mind control device that acts through a focusing device at a distance, like some sort of early Bluetooth.
The title character's name is after a friend of the author's. She alludes to the name pun early on but doesn't do anything with it. Karen has memories, but she does not exemplify or otherwise interact significantly with Memory in the book.
Karen speaks in rural dialect, which I find kind of distracting.
All in all this feels like a book that didn't come together nearly as well as it could have. The afterword describes her research and adds a lot to the enjoyment, which is why in the end I will give it 3 stars. Possibly a stretch to consider it for an award.
Karen Memery is a "seamstress" in Rapid City, somewhere along the West Coast during the Gold Rush. The seamstressing is done on her back. She has the good fortune to work for Madame Damnable, an extraordinarily tough and fair madame who is well connected in Rapid City politics. The setting is Gold Rush steampunk--we have mostly horsepower for getting around, but electricity, dirigibles and advanced engineering are readily available. A Mad Scientist license in Rapid City costs about the same as one for being a seamstress.
Things get rough when Peter Bantle, a nasty local pimp, gets higher ambitions and decides to run for mayor with outside money and a steampunk mind control device. He is also harboring a serial murderer of white streetwalkers that brings Bass Reeves, a black US Marshal, to town.
The story is basically a good one. We have romance (lesbian--almost feels required), adventure, strong women and strong men. Bear is a good writer and brings it together well. But there are a lot of problems that detract from enjoyment.
Most steampunk novels, and lots of alternate history novels, are based around a speculation about the effects of a technological advance that takes place several decades ahead of time, like flight, electricity or computing. The story then flows from the logical consequences of that advance. But Bear is not a steampunk author--she writes fantasy. That seems to show here, since the steampunk advances feel random and don't coherently drive change. We have dirigibles, "surgery machines" that somehow harness analog power to do advanced medical care, and sewing machines that are operated from the inside like a tank (literally so later). And a mind control device that acts through a focusing device at a distance, like some sort of early Bluetooth.
The title character's name is after a friend of the author's. She alludes to the name pun early on but doesn't do anything with it. Karen has memories, but she does not exemplify or otherwise interact significantly with Memory in the book.
Karen speaks in rural dialect, which I find kind of distracting.
All in all this feels like a book that didn't come together nearly as well as it could have. The afterword describes her research and adds a lot to the enjoyment, which is why in the end I will give it 3 stars. Possibly a stretch to consider it for an award.
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