Month: December 2021

Fasterpiece by Ian Creasey

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Fasterpiece by Ian Creasey (Asimov’s Science Fiction, January-February 2022) opens with the wife of an artist watching him at work:

As Elaine harvested plums, carrying them from the garden to the kitchen, she glanced through the large windows of Barnaby’s studio. She could barely see her husband: only a blur as he moved with superhuman rapidity, augmented by the Alipes system. He flitted between three separate canvases, executing portraits simultaneously in watercolors, oils, and pastels. Today’s client sat at the far end of the studio, her stillness emphasized by the contrast with Barnaby’s whirlwind. Elaine disliked these Alipes-assisted commissions, but many customers appreciated the shorter modeling time.  p. 124

It turns out that the husband, Barnaby, has some sort of time-acceleration device fitted (similar in effect, I guess, to Gully Foyle’s commando wiring in The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester).
His wife is not happy, however, for two reasons, (a) he isn’t using the time saved to spend more time with her and (b) she fears that, with so many using the Alipes system, the market will be saturated with artwork. After discussing the latter problem with Barnaby (she is his agent), he decides to head off to the Birmingham Wipe (the site of a nanotech accident that has turned a large swathe of terrain into glass) to see if an artists’ collective he knows of can produce something special—and saleable—before the art bubble bursts. After he leaves Elaine goes to see her sister, who is living as a refugee in a half-drowned London.
So far, so good: there is a novel SF gimmick, interesting characters, and an intriguing background. Unfortunately, however, the rest of the story sees Elaine head up to Birmingham to find her husband (Barnaby is spending too much subjective time away from her), at which point (spoiler) all the Alipes time-acceleration stuff is jettisoned and the story devolves into a bland fantasy adventure in a virtual reality populated with charismatic queens, dragons, etc. (and this latter part is not much improved by worthy discussions about art or mentions of Picasso’s Guernica). Very much a game of two halves.
** (Average). 9,100 words. Asimov’s SF store.

The Santa Claus Planet by Frank M. Robinson

Posted on by Paul Fraser

The Santa Claus Planet by Frank M. Robinson (The Best Science-Fiction Stories: 1951) opens with a spaceship landing on a planet to celebrate Christmas; two of the crew are later sent to a nearby village to greet the humans that settled there previously and invite them to the ship.
En-route the pair are met by the natives, who proffer gifts, and a voice from the sleigh tells them to destroy the gifts and hand over their pistols. After some reluctance the two crew members do so, whereupon the natives break the pistols into pieces. Then they discover that the man who spoke is a recent arrival called Reynolds, who they subsequently take back with them.
The rest of the story consists (apart from another bookend to finish the story) of Reynolds telling of how he came to be on the planet, which starts with him arriving after he damaged his spaceship tubes. While he was trying to repair his ship the natives arrived, and he was drawn into their strange gift giving custom (which is later explained by a friendly female tribe member called Ruth):

She thought for a minute, trying to find a way to phrase it. “We use our coppers and furs in duels,” she said slowly. “Perhaps one chief will give a feast for another and present him with many coppers and blankets. Unless the other chief destroys the gifts and gives a feast in return, at which he presents the first chief with even greater gifts, he loses honor.”
He was beginning to see, Reynolds thought. The custom of conspicuous waste, to show how wealthy the possessor was. Enemies dueled with property, instead of with pistols, and the duel would obviously go back and forth until one or the other of its participants was bankrupt—or unwilling to risk more goods. A rather appropriate custom for a planet as lush as this.
“What if one of the chiefs goes broke,” he said, explaining the term.
“If the winning chief demands it, the other can be put to death. He is forced to drink the Last Cup, a poison which turns his bones to jelly. The days go by and he gets weaker and softer until finally he is nothing but a—ball.” She described this with a good deal of hand waving and facial animation, which Reynolds found singularly attractive in spite of the gruesomeness of the topic.

This unlikely gimmick works through a few gift-exchange plot loops until (spoiler) Reynolds runs out of potential gifts, and also realises that Ruth is also going to be poisoned for helping him. He avoids this unpleasant end by giving the impression that he is going to destroy the planet with fire (I think) after they destroy his rocket. The chief concedes before the oil fire Reynolds previously set burns out.
There is another twist revealed at the end (when Reynolds is once again on the visiting ship): Reynolds married Ruth and became the wealthiest man on the planet because they had 15 children, each of which attracted ever-increasing dowries.
This story revolves around an unconvincing and contrived gimmick, the ending is a fudge, and the last twist just adds even more nonsense to what has come before (and seems to be the only reason the sections that book-end the piece are there). Why Bleiler and Dikty (the editors of the ‘Best of the Year’ anthology where this first appeared) thought it a good idea to use this original story beats me (and I can only assume Terry Carr reprinted it1 for Towering Inferno2 name recognition).
* (Mediocre). 8,500 words.

1. Terry Carr used this story in his Christmas SF anthology, To Follow a Star (1977).

2. The Glass Inferno by Thomas N. Scortia and Frank M. Robinson (1974) was made into a big-budget disaster film called The Towering Inferno (1974), more here.

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

Posted on by Paul Fraser

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens (A Christmas Carol in Prose: Being a Ghost Story of Christmas, 1843) is a story that I suspect everyone in the Western Hemisphere knows but, if you don’t, here is a recap of the five staves:
Stave One (19 pp.) sees a miserly old businessman called Scrooge visited in his ill-heated office by his nephew, who is full of Xmas spirit; Scrooge Bah Humbugs him:

‘If I could work my will,’ said Scrooge indignantly, ‘every idiot who goes about with “Merry Christmas” on his lips, should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart. He should!’

After the nephew leaves Scrooge then repels two chuggers who visit wanting donations for the poor and destitute (Scrooge asks, “Are there no workhouses [. . .] prisons?” etc.). Finally, Scrooge reluctantly gives his clerk, Bob Cratchit, Christmas Day off before going home.
Later that night Scrooge is disturbed by (his ex-business partner) Marley’s Ghost and his clanking chains. Marley tells Scrooge that he is condemned to wander the Earth because he didn’t involve himself with the affairs of men when he was alive, but that Scrooge can avoid the same fate if he pays attention to the three ghosts that will visit him.
There are some nice turns of phrase in this stave (when Scrooge thinks Marley is a figment of his indigestion, he says, ‘There’s more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!’), but there is also some padding/rambling too.
Stave Two (18 pp.) sees the arrival of The Ghost of Christmas Past (which has a jet of light shooting out of its head), and Scrooge is taken back to his past. We see Scrooge at school; his sister arriving to take him home; as an apprentice at Fezziwig’s, who is a generous and genial boss; and breaking up with his fiancé. Last of all we see him watching the latter and her future family—and at one point her husband returns home with the news that he saw Scrooge working in his office when Marley was on the point of death.
Eventually Scrooge begs the ghost to stop the visions and, when he pulls the ghost’s cap onto its head, the light is extinguished and he slips back to sleep. Even though the ghosts’ visits have just begun, it is already clear that Scrooge has already begun to crack and will duly reform his character.
This section is probably the baggiest of them all, and I didn’t entirely understand some of the references or scenes.1
Stave Three (23 pp.) sees the Ghost of Christmas Present arrive and take Scrooge through the bustling town to Bob Cratchit’s house (the level of detail provided on their journey is very suggestive of the time and place). There, Scrooge watches Bob’s family have their Xmas dinner, and sees Tiny Tim, Cratchit’s crippled son, for the first time. Later, Scrooge learns of the boy’s fate:

‘A Merry Christmas to us all, my dears. God bless us!’ Which all the family re-echoed.
‘God bless us every one!’ said Tiny Tim, the last of all.
He sat very close to his father’s side upon his little stool. Bob held his withered little hand in his, as if he loved the child, and wished to keep him by his side, and dreaded that he might be taken from him.
‘Spirit,’ said Scrooge, with an interest he had never felt before, ‘tell me if Tiny Tim will live.’
‘I see a vacant seat,’ replied the Ghost, ‘in the poor chimney-corner, and a crutch without an owner, carefully preserved. If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future, the child will die.’
‘No, no,’ said Scrooge. ‘Oh, no, kind Spirit! say he will be spared.’
‘If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future, none other of my race,’ returned the Ghost, ‘will find him here. What then? If he be like to die, he had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.’
Scrooge hung his head to hear his own words quoted by the Spirit, and was overcome with penitence and grief.

Directly after this exchange, Cratchit proposes a toast to Scrooge—against the protestations of his wife—and a temporary pall is cast over the feast.
The ghost takes Scrooge away to see the Christmases taking place in a miners’ hut and a lighthouse before they arrive at Scrooge’s nephew’s family dinner. Yet again Scrooge hears himself talked about—this time in pitying terms—but once more there is a toast to his health.
At the end of Scrooge’s foray the Ghost of Christmas Present reveals two children hiding under his shroud:

They were a boy and girl. Yellow, meagre, ragged, scowling, wolfish; but prostrate, too, in their humility. Where graceful youth should have filled their features out, and touched them with its freshest tints, a stale and shrivelled hand, like that of age, had pinched, and twisted them, and pulled them into shreds. Where angels might have sat enthroned, devils lurked, and glared out menacing. No change, no degradation, no perversion of humanity, in any grade, through all the mysteries of wonderful creation, has monsters half so horrible and dread.
Scrooge started back, appalled. Having them shown to him in this way, he tried to say they were fine children, but the words choked themselves, rather than be parties to a lie of such enormous magnitude.
‘Spirit! are they yours?’ Scrooge could say no more.
‘They are Man’s,’ said the Spirit, looking down upon them. ‘And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased. Deny it!’ cried the Spirit, stretching out its hand towards the city. ‘Slander those who tell it ye! Admit it for your factious purposes, and make it worse. And abide the end!’
‘Have they no refuge or resource?’ cried Scrooge.
‘Are there no prisons?’ said the Spirit, turning on him for the last time with his own words. ‘Are there no work-houses?’

The moral of the story, I suppose: give generously to relieve want.
Stave 4 (15 pp.) is the shortest—and perhaps eeriest—of the three ghostly visits, and begins with the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come showing Scrooge a group of businessmen talking about someone who has died (during this encounter and the subsequent ones (spoiler), the person referred to is obviously Scrooge, but he does not realise this until the final revelation). After this the ghost and Scrooge go to the home of a fence who is appraising goods stolen from the house of a dead man (which include the fine shirt that a woman has taken off his corpse). Next, they see the body, whose face is covered, before going on to Bob Cratchit’s house: there, we learn that Tiny Tim has also died.
Finally, the ghost takes him to a graveyard, where Scrooge sees an untended grave and realises it is his own—Scrooge breaks down and asks the ghost whether it is possible for him to change the future.
Stave 5 (7 pp.) sees Scrooge wake in his own bed on Christmas morning—and he quickly sets about changing his ways. First he sends a big turkey to Bob Cratchit’s, then he goes to his nephew’s house for Christmas lunch. The next day, after teasing Cratchit about his late arrival, he gives Bob a pay rise and promises to help his family (Scrooge promises to discuss these matters in the afternoon, “over a Christmas bowl of Smoking Bishop”2).
In conclusion, I enjoyed this story a lot more than I thought I would, especially given (a) my overfamiliarity with the plot and (b) a distant memory of it being written in old-fashioned prose. Generally, though, the writing didn’t feel like that at all, and the story moves along reasonably slickly with some stand-out scenes (the Cratchit’s Christmas dinner, the scene in the fence’s house, etc.). If I do have a reservation it is about the moral of the story which, superficially, seems to be an exhortation to rich people to give to the poor—but only so they will be thought well of by others and not forgotten (I presume that nowadays Scrooge would do some politically correct messaging on Twitter instead). For me, however, the more admirable behaviour in the story is that of Bob Cratchit and Scrooge’s nephew: the kind things they have to say about their antithesis at their Christmas dinners is a properly non-transactional form of altruism.
**** (Very Good). 30,200 words. Story link.

1. One part of the story which lost me was a passage which refers to Ali Baba and various other childhood characters. Footnote 31 (in the Oxford edition) explains these various references, including the information that “Valentine . . . and his wild brother, Orson: [are] the heroes of a fifteenth century French romance, The History of two Valyannte Brethren, Valentyne and Orson, which became a popular English children’s story.”

2. Footnote 90 explains that “smoking bishop [is] a mulled wine drink composed of wine, oranges, sugar, and spices, so called for its rich purple colour.”
There is a recipe here, and I was, in a moment of misplaced seasonal enthusiasm (Bah Humbug), going to try it—but it seems a bit of a faff.

Christmas on Mars by William Morrison

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Christmas on Mars by William Morrison (Thrilling Wonder Stories, December 1941) is an early piece1 by the author of the reasonably well-known Country Doctor (Star Science Fiction Stories, 1953).2 This one perhaps gets off to a more realistic and gritty start than other works of the period with Kel, the leader of a group of four ragged youths, sharpening his knife for an impending robbery:

“I ain’t gonna cut nobody up,” Kel grunted. “Not if they come across, I ain’t. But if they’re wise guys”—his arm flashed out suddenly and the jovite blade glittered in the air—“I’ll slash ’em to pieces. That’s what I’ll do. That’s what my old man would have done.”
They were silent, impressed by the mention of Kel’s father. Buck Henry was the first to recover.
“Hey, fellows,” he piped, “you know what night this is? Just before Christmas. It’s a holiday.”
Monk, proud of his changing voice, growled: “You’re nuts. Christmas comes in winter. This is right in the middle of summer.”
“Are you a dope!” Skinny put in. “Everybody knows the seasons on Earth ain’t the same as here. It’s winter on Earth, or at least on one hemisphere—eastern or western, I forget which. That’s what counts.”
“They say a big, fat guy called Santa Claus,” Buck Henry offered uncertainly, “gets all dressed up in a red suit and comes around handing out presents.”  p. 84

After Kel ridicules Buck for offering up this children’s tale, the group prepare to rob the next passerby—but that turns out to be the local cop, who suggests they go to the Martin Rescue Home for a free meal, but that they should move along in any event. Later, they hear the sound of whistling, and the four leap out to rob the man they have heard—who quickly disarms and restrains them, and reveals himself to be Michael Diston of the Interplanetary Police. He tells them that he sees no point in handing them over to the local police, but that he can’t set them free to rob someone else—so he asks the group if they would like to go for a meal and to see Santa Claus:

“Save that stuff,” Kel growled. “We ain’t babies.”
“Yeah,” said Skinny. “A guy gets dressed up in red, puts a pillow next to his stomach and makes believe he came down a chimbley. You can’t kid us.”
“I wouldn’t dream of trying,” the man drawled, “but it’ll be some swell dinner.”
He couldn’t lose them after that.  p. 87

Dilston takes them back to his mother’s house where, after they get cleaned up, they wolf down Christmas dinner. During the meal we learn about the kids’ troubled domestic situations—mostly parental sickness, addiction or absence, but we also get confirmation of earlier comments that Kel’s father is the Black Pirate. Afterwards, the kids are invited to go through to the living room, where they find a Xmas tree that wasn’t there previously. Then they see it is snowing outside (impossible on Mars) and someone starts coming down the chimney. Santa appears, and gives each of the four kids a present that particularly suits them. Then, exhausted, they go to bed.
Afterwards (spoiler) Dilston tells his mother that Santa was really the unused robot butler he got for her some time previously, the snow was from a machine on the roof that he installed last year and, finally, the presents were originally intended for the neighbourhood kids, but he discovered what would suit each of the four as he listened to them over dinner. Dilston then asks his mother to sort out the kids and their dysfunctional families (Dilston has to return to work the next day).
The story finishes with Dilston listening to a news report where he is mentioned as the one who has just finished hunting down the remanants of the Black Pirate’s gang, and who also killed the Black Pirate—Kel’s father—in hand-to-hand combat several years earlier.
This is better than a lot of stories from the period—gritty start, sentimental Xmas section, and a bittersweet ending which offsets what has come before. I thought it much better than the recent Asimov Christmas story I recently read.
*** (Good). 6,200 words. Story link.

1. This was the author’s seventh SF story from his first year of publishing.

2. I reviewed Country Doctor here.

Happy Birthday, Dear Jesus by Frederik Pohl

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Happy Birthday, Dear Jesus by Frederik Pohl (Alternating Currents, 1956) is, partially, an “if this goes one” satire about the commercialisation of Christmas, and begins with the story’s narrator, Mr Martin, recruiting a young woman called Lilymary Hargreave for his department at Heinemann’s store. Her job is to gift-wrap and label shoppers’ Christmas purchases, and it’s here where we get the first dose of satire (apart an earlier mention that this Christmas rush is happening in early September):

[Lilymary] called me over near closing time. She looked distressed and with some reason. There was a dolly filled with gift-wrapped packages, and a man from Shipping looking annoyed. She said, “I’m sorry, Mr. Martin, but I seem to have done something wrong.”
The Shipping man snorted. “Look for yourself, Mr. Martin,” he said, handing me one of the packages.
I looked. It was wrong, all right. Heinemann’s new wrinkle that year was a special attached gift card—a simple Yule scene and the printed message:

The very Merriest of Season’s Greetings
From …………………………………
To ……………………………………
$8.50

The price varied with the item, of course. Heinemann’s idea was for the customer to fill it out and mail it, ahead of time, to the person it was intended for. That way, the person who got it would know just about how much he ought to spend on a present for the first person. It was smart, I admit, and maybe the smartest thing about it was rounding the price off to the nearest fifty cents instead of giving it exactly. Heinemann said it was bad-mannered to be too precise—and the way the customers were going for the idea, it had to be right.

When Lilymary says she can’t complete the job as she needs to go home to her father, Martin does it himself. Then, when she doesn’t come in the day after, Martin goes to her house. There he finds that the father, Lilymary, and the other three daughters are Sabbath observant.
The rest of the story sees Martin romantically pursue Lilymary, which provides a clash-of-cultures situation between him and the family, who have just returned to the United States after a long time in Borneo as religious missionaries. Consequently, they don’t have a TV or dishwasher or any mod-cons, or any interest in them. They also provide their own entertainment and, during an after dinner session, when Martin sings a particularly commercialised version of ’Tis the Season of Christmas (“Come Westinghouse, Philco! Come Hotpoint, G.E.! Come Sunbeam! Come Mixmaster! Come to the Tree!”), the atmosphere sours. Then, when he later arranges for the visit of a Santa Claus and the Elves sales team to the house, the relationship breaks down completely. Eventually (spoiler), at the suggestion of his boss, Martin proposes to Lilymary (“Why not marry her for a while?”), she rejects him, and then he finds out the family is leaving once again for Borneo, so he tries again. He eventually succeeds when he tracks them down to a church service, prays with Lilymary, and then gets religion.
This is okay I guess, but it would have been a more interesting piece if it had concentrated on the Christmas satire and not the boy-wants-girl story.
** (Average). 8, 250 words.

Winter Solstice by Mike Resnick

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Winter Solstice by Mike Resnick (F&SF, October-November 1991) doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the Winter Solstice but, instead, tells of the wizard Merlin, who in this story is quite a different creature from the one of myth—a man experiencing his life in reverse, starting from a point in the far-future where he could “pass among the stars and galaxies”. Unfortunately, his memories are slipping away from him, so he is of little help when he is called upon to deal with the problems of the present:

An old woman comes to see me in the early afternoon. Her arm is torn and miscolored; the stench of it makes my eyes water; the flies are thick around her.
I cannot stand the pain any longer, Merlin, she weeps. It is like childbirth, but does not go away. You are my only hope, Merlin. Cast your mystic spell, charge me what you will, but make the pain cease.
I look at her arm, where the badger has ripped it with his claws, and I want to turn my head away and retch. I finally force myself to examine it. I have a sense that I need something—I am not sure what—something to attach to the front of my face; or, if not my whole face, then at least across my nose and mouth, but I cannot recall what it is.
The arm is swollen to almost twice its normal size, and although the wound is halfway between her elbow and her shoulder, she shrieks in agony when I gently manipulate her fingers. I want to give her something for her pain. Vague visions come to mind, images of something long and slender and needle-like flash briefly before my eyes. There must be something I can do, I think, something I can give her, some miracle that I employed when I was younger and the world was older, but I can no longer remember what it is. I must do more than mask her pain; this much I still know, for infection has set in. The smell becomes stronger as I probe, and she screams. Gang, I think suddenly: the word for her condition begins with gang—but there is another syllable, and I cannot recall it; and even if I could recall it, I can no longer cure it.  p. 134

The story is told in a near stream of consciousness style which yo-yos between Merlin’s fragmentary memories of the future and his present concerns, one of which is what to do, if anything, about Launcelot and his illicit affair with King Arthur’s wife, Guinevere. This particular problem comes to a head when (spoiler) Arthur seeks out Merlin for advice on the matter towards the end of the story. Merlin realises that Arthur is more worried about his own death, and this makes Merlin reflect on what the future (or past) holds for him:

I decided to try once more to look into the future, to put his mind at ease. I close my eyes and I peer ahead, and I see not a mindless, babbling old man, but a mindless, mewling baby, and that baby is myself.
Arthur tries to look ahead to the future he fears, and I, traveling in the opposite direction, look ahead to the future I fear, and I realize that there is no difference, that this is the humiliating state in which man both enters and leaves the world, and that he had better learn to cherish the time in between, for it is all that he has.  p. 142

Merlin finally tells Arthur that he will die the death he wants.
There isn’t really any story here, but it’s not a bad mood piece.
*** (Good). 5,050 words.

Kitemaster by Keith Roberts

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Kitemaster by Keith Roberts (Interzone #1, Spring 1982),1 is the first of eight stories that make up the mosaic novel Kiteworld, and the opening of this piece, with its gloomy and atmospheric evocation of hangars and steam-driven machines, seems to consciously evoke that of his most successful novel Pavane: 2

The ground crew had all but finished their litany. They stood in line, heads bowed, silhouetted against the last dull flaring from the west; below me the Launch Vehicle seethed gently to itself, water sizzling round a rusted boiler rivet. A gust of warmth blew up toward the gantry, bringing scents of steam and oil to mingle with the ever-present smell of dope. At my side the Kitecaptain snorted, it seemed impatiently; shuffled his feet, sank his bull head even further between his shoulders.
I glanced round the darkening hangar, taking in the remembered scene; the spools of cable, head-high on their trolleys, bright blades of the anchor rigs, fathom on fathom of the complex lifting train. In the centre of the place, above the Observer’s wickerwork basket, the mellow light of oil lamps grew to stealthy prominence; it showed the spidery crisscrossings of girders, the faces of the windspeed telltales, each hanging from its jumble of struts. The black needles vibrated, edging erratically up and down the scales; beyond, scarcely visible in the gloom, was the complex bulk of the Manlifter itself, its dark, spread wings jutting to either side.

This passage also evokes another ‘Pavane’ story, The Signaller, but whereas that story was about a guild of signallers who transmitted messages the length and breadth of a Vatican dominated Europe by the use of huge semaphore towers, the organisation in this piece, a Corps of Kitemen, fly kite-like Manlifters or Cody rigs above the Badlands to ward off an unspecified threat.
There isn’t really much of a story here, and the narrative mostly concerns itself with the interplay between two characters: Kitemaster Helman, a high ranking official cum religious figure who is visiting the kitebase, and an unnamed Kitecaptain, who is the commander. As they watch the night launch of a Cody rig, the drunk Kitecaptain provides a stream of heretical comments about (a) their strange society (there are hints this is set after a nuclear apocalypse), (b) the salient wide malaise among the kitemen (it seems a string of suicides may have prompted Helman’s visit), and (c) the pointless of the defence they mount against the demons in the Badlands:

‘The Corps was formed,’ [Helman] said, ‘to guard the Realm, and keep its borders safe.’
‘From Demons,’ [the Kitecaptain] said bitterly. ‘From Demons and night walkers, all spirits that bring harm. . . .’ He quoted, savagely, from the Litany. ‘Some plunge, invisible, from highest realms of air; some have the shapes of fishes, flying; some, and these be hardest to descry, cling close upon the hills and very treetops. . . .’ I raised a hand, but he rushed on regardless. ‘These last be deadliest of all,’ he snarled. ‘For to these the Evil One hath given semblance of a Will, to seek out and destroy their prey . . . Crap!’ He pounded the desk again. ‘All crap,’ he said. ‘Every last syllable. The Corps fell for it though, every man jack of us. You crook your little fingers, and we run: we float up there like fools, with a pistol in one hand and a prayerbook in the other, waiting to shoot down bogles, while you live off the fat of the land. . . .’
[Helman] turned away from the window and sat down. ‘Enough,’ [he] said tiredly. ‘Enough, I pray you. . . .’

Later, the Kitemaster takes out a radio or similar device to listen to the Cody rig’s pilot, Observer Canwen, a legendary flier, and they briefly listen to his delusional ravings about his dead father and wife. The Kitecaptain eventually denounces the device as “necromancy” and smashes it, before recalling Canwen. As they draw him in there is a lightning strike, and the Cody rig crashes—although Canwen survives.
The next day a sheepish Kitecaptain, sober now and realising he has seriously overstepped the mark, arrives to see the Kitemaster off on the next leg of his journey. The Kitemaster is pragmatic and affable, and exhorts the Kitecaptain to keep the Codys flying “until something better comes along. . . .”
This was probably my fourth time reading this story and I enjoyed the atmosphere and the interplay of the fully realised characters—but, if you come to this cold, and/or on its own, your mileage may vary. (It struck me as an odd story to start a series.)
*** (Good). 6,400 words. Story link.

1. This story first appeared in a German language anthology, Tor zu den Sternen (“Gate to the Stars”), 1981.

2. More accurately, I’m referring to the opening of the first of the ‘Pavane’ stories, The Lady Margaret (Impulse #1, April 1966, as The Lady Anne).

At three in the afternoon the engine sheds were already gloomy with the coming night. Light, blue and vague, filtered through the long strips of the skylights, showing the roofties stark like angular metal bones. Beneath, the locomotives waited brooding, hulks twice the height of a man, their canopies brushing the rafters. The light gleamed in dull spindle shapes, here from the strappings of a boiler, there from the starred boss of a flywheel. The massive road wheels stood in pools of shadow.  p. 6

Miracle by Connie Willis

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Miracle by Connie Willis (Asimov’s Science Fiction, December 1991) gets off to a leisurely start with some office chit-chat about Christmas between the protagonist, Lauren, and one of her office colleagues, Evie, and this lays out most of the elements that will feature in this tale: two of their co-workers, Scott Buckley (“too cute to ever notice someone like me”), and Fred Hatch (“the fat guy in documentation”), and the movies Miracle on 34th Street and It’s Wonderful Life.
The final character in this Unknown-like fantasy appears when Lauren gets home, and she is door-stepped by an irritating young man saying he is there to give her a Christmas Present. Despite her shutting the door on him twice, he appears in the apartment:

The young man was sitting on the couch, messing with her TV remote. “So, what do you want for Christmas? A yacht? A pony?” He punched buttons on the remote, frowning. “A new TV?”
“How did you get in here?” Lauren said squeakily. She looked at the door. The deadbolt and chain were both still on.
“I’m a spirit,” he said, putting the remote down. The TV suddenly blared on. “The Spirit of Christmas Present.”
“Oh,” Lauren said, edging toward the phone. “Like in A Christmas Carol.”
“No,” he said, flipping through the channels. She looked at the remote. It was still on the coffee table. “Not Christmas Present. Christmas Present. You know, Barbie dolls, ugly ties, cheese logs, the stuff people give you for Christmas.”
“Oh, Christmas Present. I see,” Lauren said, carefully picking up the phone.
“People always get me confused with him, which is really insulting. I mean, the guy obviously has a really high cholesterol level. Anyway, I’m the Spirit of Christmas Present, and your sister sent me to—”
Lauren had dialed nine one. She stopped, her finger poised over the second one. “My sister?”
“Yeah,” he said, staring at the TV. Jimmy Stewart was sitting in the guard’s room, wrapped in a blanket. “Oh, wow! It’s a Wonderful Life.”
My sister sent you, Lauren thought. It explained everything. He was not a Moonie or a serial killer. He was this year’s version of the crystal pyramid mate selector. “How do you know my sister?”
“She channeled me,” he said, leaning back against the sofa. “The Maharishi Ram Das was instructing her in trance-meditation, and she accidentally channeled my spirit out of the astral plane.” He pointed at the screen. “I love this part where the angel is trying to convince Jimmy Stewart he’s dead.” pp. 143-144

After this he tells her that he is there is give what she really wants for Christmas, “her heart’s desire”, before going on to criticise her computer addressed cards, store wrapped presents, etc. Then he disappears, along with her cards, and leaves a Christmas tree growing out of her kitchen floor.
The rest of the story sees Lauren recruit Frank to help her deal with her spirit problem, and the two of them work together to try and get rid of him, as well as cope with various other changes Chris the spirit makes, such as Lauren’s off-the-shoulder black party dress—bought to impress Scott—being changed into a Yanomano Indian costume (Frank helpfully suggests she could wear last year’s pretty red number).
At this point (spoiler) I could see that Lauren was going to end up with Frank and not Scott, and so it materialises (dates with Scott are thwarted by Chris, Frank and Lauren have to come up with last minute gifts for everyone at the office when only Office Depot is open, Fred arrives at the party with the cheese puffs Lauren was meant to bring, Evie arrives wearing the black dress, etc., etc.). Finally, Chris arrives at the party dressed as Santa Claus.
This is an entertaining fantasy rom-com that gets off to a very good start, but I thought it tailed off towards the end (I’m not sure if this is because of pacing/padding problems, or because I guessed where it was going). I also thought that the two movies are referenced too much—but this is maybe a function of describing enough about them to those who aren’t familiar with them. Overall, though, not bad.
***+ (Good to Very Good, or, more accurately, Very Good to Good). 14,000 words.

The Bumblebee and the Berry by M. Bennardo

Posted on by Paul Fraser

The Bumblebee and the Berry by M. Bennardo (Analog, January-February 2022) takes place on hollowed-out asteroid, a generation starship which is making its fourth approach to a star system after missing on the first three attempts (over the previous twenty-seven years). While the ship gets closer to the planet they are aiming at, Axel, the governor of the colony, watches the local wildlife in their small biosphere—in particular a bumblebee that keeps trying to land on a bowl of blackberries. He wafts his hand nearby to disrupt the air currents, which causes it to fly away.
After this scene setting is complete the story closes with Axel getting an update from a woman called Raina about the approach. During this exchange she clumsily swats at the bumblebee; he shows her how to waft the nearby air instead. Axel (spoiler) then has an epiphany that the planet they are heading for may be occupied, and that they are the ones who are being kept away from what they want:

They would simply continue, as they had been. They would have no choice but to keep living as they were: making what room they could for the deer and the rabbits and the bumblebees, doing their best to avoid stepping on ants and wildflowers. Anything else would mean their own destruction. And who knew? Perhaps if they could prove they could do it. . . For a hundred years, or for a thousand. . . Then they might one day make another pass, and might one day be allowed to make starfall. They might no longer be brushed away.  p. 95

Apart from the fact this piece is a notion or eco-lecture and not a story, I’m not convinced by the bumblebees making for the blackberries—wasps and butterflies maybe, but I’m pretty sure the bees in my garden always go for flowers and their pollen.
I’d also note the language used at the beginning of the story is unnecessarily confusing—they aren’t making “starfall”, they are making planetfall, i.e. they intend landing on a planet not a star. And what has the “heliopause” (a word I bounced off of) got to do with anything? More unnecessary Analog jargon.
* (Mediocre). 2,200 words.

Charioteer by Ted Rabinowitz

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Charioteer by Ted Rabinowitz (Analog, January-February 2022) is essentially a re-do of Arthur C. Clarke’s Sunjammer, except this one has a woman pilot: she is a prisoner who is racing around the sun trying to win her freedom from the tyrannical “Executive”, and someone has sabotaged her sail-ship.
Most of the story tells of how she engineers her way out of her predicament, and a lot of this is written in that jargon-filled Analog prose that makes your eyes bleed:

Now that power was flowing, the sensor net was active throughout the entire field of sail. It told her that the power spike had done more than blow out the main nodes; it had deactivated the carcerands in the sails. Each carcerand was a molecular cage trapping a second, free-spinning cluster of atoms inside. The inner cluster could be oriented by a magnetic field. Polarized in one direction, it rendered a sail opaque; in another direction, it created the brilliant mirror of a lightsail.
The power spike had fused 90 percent of those inner clusters with their carcerands. She was riding a giant disc of ashes.  p. 73

That last sentence isn’t bad, but I’m pretty sure there is a more elegant way to write the paragraph that precedes it.
Ultimately (spoiler) she manages to fix things but discovers she has received a fatal dose of radiation—so she crashes her ship into the station where the politicians are watching the race.
Apart from the bad writing (mostly too much engineering jargon), the political prisoner gimmick doesn’t convince.
* (Mediocre). 3,300 words.