The Empire of Ice Cream, by Jeffrey Ford

Today I read a very fine story called The Empire of Ice Cream, a story from the Star Ship Sofa anthology. The vehicle for this story is synesthesia, a condition in which a person's senses are cross-linked. The protagonist's condition goes as far as figurative synesthesia, in which the cross-sensations form concrete hallucinations. When he tastes coffee, he enters the life of another synesthete. But which one is the illusion?

The story also speaks well to the social isolation of those who perceive the world differently. We all get the feeling of being misunderstood, but for most of us it's not constant and permanent. One in that position might think oneself mad, even if it wasn't true.

The story was nominated for several awards, and won the World Fantasy Award in 2004. I give it three stars

Oceanic, by Greg Egan

For my most recent read I went back to Greg Egan, a favorite author of mine. Oceanic is a Hugo award winning novella from 1999. It presents a study of Christianity lightly translated through a space colony, and takes on the difficult topic of whether religious faith can survive scientific discovery of its roots.

Spoiler Alert

I'll go ahead and give a spoiler here to make a point--go read it and come back if it is important. In Oceanic, the colonist's faith turns out to be biochemically induced. When the story was written this was purely speculative, but many scientific reductionists have believed all along that something like this was the case. Recent evidence is starting to lead in the direction that religious experiences can be stimulated from outside (see this Wired article for a skeptical view). If this turns out to go somewhere, whither faith? It will be interesting to see.

3 stars for the story itself.

Random Draw

Yesterday I gave the new random story feature at Free SF Online a spin. I've found many goodies just by trolling around. I found The Vine That Ate the South, by Bill Kte'pi. This is a cute, competent little story--what a time traveler would be like if he were an ordinary sort of fellow. The focus of the story is on the time traveler's love interest, one Adamae. She doesn't think much of the fellow she met, but he always seems to know what to say and do with her, so she falls for him. Until she finds out.

This is a good exercise, but not a groundbreaker. 2 stars

Favorites: Life On the Moon, by Tony Daniel

One of my favorite discoveries on Free SF Online is Life On the Moon, by Tony Daniel. This is probably Daniel's best work, and it's a finely crafted story. Nell is an architect, and Henry a poet, and their professional pursuits intertwine in a fully complex and satisfying way. It would be a really good romantic movie, but too hard to film. The stories on Infinity Plus vary widely in quality, and it's no longer an active site, but as of today it's still around. Read this one before it goes away. A four star special

Recent Reading

Just finished Lion Loose by James Schmitz. I haven't read much of Schmitz, though he wrote quite a bit in the 60's and 70's. Probably the most famous books are the Witches of Karres set. This story is a very straightforward action tale, and though it's well put together it just didn't hold my interest. It had a Hugo nomination in 1961, but not all award nominees are created equal. 2 stars.

Fortitude, by Andy Duncan

My latest read is an alternate history story, Fortitude by Andy Duncan. The story was nominated for a Nebula in 2000. It tells the story of George S. Patton's career, as if he knew he had lived it before. I have heard he really thought this, but couldn't find confirmation. The story itself is well told, but it mostly sticks to events, with a lot of time inside Patton's head. And I didn't really find him compelling. 2 stars.

Harry Turtledove and David Drake do this sort of thing well. Harry Turtledove has a new set of stories, Hitler's War, out this year.

Favorites: Truth, by Robert Reed

Robert Reed is an author I enjoy reading, but in small doses. He tends to make me worry and have nightmares, as his stories are harrowing and have a deep ring of truth. Eponymously enough, Truth, a 2009 Hugo nominee, is one of his best and is a bit easier to read. Agents have captured an agent they are sure is from the future, and is much more sophisticated than they are. It's been impossible to break him or get anything significant from his interrogation. And yet he has the wherewithal to bring the world to an end in service to a future conflict.

The thread of the interrogation is really well done, and the ending is powerful. You should check this one out. It's a four star.

Read of the Day

Today I read The Man Who Lost The Sea, by Norman Spinrad, a Hugo award nominee for 1959. It's a kind of hallucinating tale of a shipwrecked astronaut, a theme that was common at the time. This method of storytelling had a strong thread through the sixties and early seventies, and Spinrad was very good at it. The method makes it feel just as dated as those early 1930's efforts, though. 2 stars, unless you're a history buff.

The Planck Dive, by Greg Egan

There's a nice trove of Greg Egan stories on Free SF Online, and for the past few days I've been reading The Planck Dive, a 1999 Hugo nominee. Egan writes the hardest of hard SF--as with Gregory Benford, he is a practicing physicist. Egan goes even further than Benford, sometimes attempting to explain String Theory, even.

The Planck Dive goes very deep in this sort of explication, at the expense of the narrative. Really, the story part doesn't even make much sense, and didn't grab me at all. The story itself is 2 stars at best. But I bump it up a notch for this particular version, which includes very good background material on the physics involved. So as a textbook, I'll give it 3 stars