Month: April 2022

Sinew and Steel and What They Told by Carrie Vaughn

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Sinew and Steel and What They Told by Carrie Vaughn1 (Tor.com, 26th February 2020) opens with a scout-ship pilot called Graff who is nearly cut in half:

My biologics are mostly shut down with shock, though I’m dutifully trying to monitor the pain. It’s all-enveloping, a fist squeezing my brain. My mechanics are in full self-repair mode, overheating because there’s so much to knit back together. Because of them, I have survived long enough that I will probably not die. This is going to be awkward.
From my own internal processor I send out an emergency signal to piggyback on ship comms, so that maybe someone can come and explain.

Graff manages to get back to the ship after the accident and, before he passes out, he realises that the medical crew see that he is a cyborg.
When Graff next recovers consciousness he is in drug-induced and physical restraint, and is questioned by the ship’s doctor, Ell (who is also his lover), and Captain Ransom. After they leave him, Graff recalls various memories he has sent back to a group of other AIs who have secretly sent cyborgs like Graff out into the universe to accumulate memories of what it is like to travel, and be human, etc.
The rest of the story (spoiler) sees further sessions where the three meet, during which Graff attempts to explain who and what he is, and how he is not a threat to them or the ship. Eventually he succeeds, and the final scene has Ell remove the nerve block that incapacitates him. A woman called Tek also appears, a cyborg summoned by the message Graff sent immediately after the accident (which was initially detected and blocked by Captain Ransom but later allowed through). Graff downloads his memories to Tek, and Ransom and Ell agree to keep Graff’s secret.
This is a slickly told piece but the ending, especially the captain’s actions, stretches credulity (even if Graff had been a loyal crewmember for some time previously).
** (Average). 4,400 words. Story link.

1. I see this story has a prequel: An Easy Job.

Billie the Kid by Rick Wilber

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Billie the Kid by Rick Wilber (Asimov’s SF, September-October 2020) is one of his “Moe Berg/Many Worlds” series, and opens off the coast of California on the Japanese submarine I-401. The boat is preparing to launch its three fighter bombers, one of which will nuke LA with Das Biest, a Nazi nuclear bomb rescued from Bergen in the last days of the Reich (there is no explanation given as to why the Germans did not use the bomb themselves).
After this brief opening section, the story switches to Billie “the Kid” Davis, a ninety-four year old woman who is telling her life story to a nurse in a care home. Billie tells of her childhood in Kirkwood (west of St Louis), love of baseball (there is an endless amount of tedious sports description in this part of the story), the girls’ Catholic school she attended, and how she learned to fly (this latter courtesy of her Dad’s job as an aircraft designer). However, after an idyllic childhood, there is a glider crash at her Dad’s company, and he resigns (it wasn’t his fault, but he sensed something might be wrong). The family move to Culver City.
The next part of the story sees Billie go for a trial with a professional baseball team, the Hollywood Stars, and she is hired as a player (their first female team member).1 After a couple of pages of Hollywood life, WWII finally arrives along with Eddie Bennett (this latter character, along with Moe Berg, are agents from another timeline). Billie has a crush on Eddie and so, when Eddie asks Billie to fly a B-25 on a special mission (to sink the Japanese sub), Billie readily agrees. At this point, we are now eleven thousand words into a nineteen thousand word long story.
The second part of the tale (spoiler) pivots from an overlong (and boring) baseball autobiography to a daft Marvel movie story, and sees a small super-competent group of individuals get airborne on a mission to sink the sub (the crew includes Billie, her father, Moe Berg, Eddie, and Hedy Lamarr—who has designed the frequency-agile radio-guided torpedo that they will be using). During this obviously successful mission (it is a Marvel movie remember, no-one gets hurt or killed), we have the ridiculous spectacle of Billie flying the B-25 medium bomber at wavetop height (this after a few hours of training), and dogfighting with, and shooting down, all three of the submarine’s fighter-bombers (partly with “wing-mounted” machine guns I’m not sure any version of the B-25 had, and certainly none of the common variants2). However, all this action doesn’t stop the nuke being dropped off the coast of LA—then (and I’m not sure exactly what happens here, presumably history changes) all effects of the blast disappear and Billie’s previously badly wounded dad is sitting next to her in the cockpit, unaffected.
The final part of the story has further Many Worlds hand-wavium (there is talk about how various timestreams affect each other earlier in the story, if I recall correctly), and sees Eddie in 2045 checking that the right person is President of the USA, that there is women’s sport, and that the “oligarchs were gone for now”. Then (the unaged) Eddie goes tripping through worlds and time to see the ninety-four year old Billie. A suitably sentimental ending is squeezed out.
Half tedium, half nonsense.
– (Awful). 19,750 words.3 Story link.

1. What is the point of showing a female character achieving an ahistorical breakthrough unless that society has also fundamentally changed, and you explain how it happened? This kind of pandering to the readership looks rather frivolous in light of developments since the story was written (i.e. a whole country of women sent back to the 14th Century by the Taliban).

2. The Wikipedia page for the B-25 Mitchell medium bomber—knock yourself out.
 
3. The story is listed as a novelette on the Asimov’s TOC.

Scar Tissue by Tobias S. Buckell

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Scar Tissue by Tobias S. Buckell (Slate, 30th May 2020) opens with the protagonist telling his friend Charlie that he thinks that he has made a huge mistake:

“You need the money.” [Charlie says.]
[. . .]
“Everyone needs the money.” You swig the cheap beer that’s the best either of you can manage. You can’t wait to afford something from one of those smaller local breweries nearby.
“But . . .”
You’ve been on disability since the forklift accident. The apartment’s small, but Enthim Arms is nice. The shared garden out back, the walking trails. You can’t use them as much as you’d like right now, but that physical therapist keeps saying June is when you might be able to make it to the lake and back.
It’ll hurt, but you’ve never cared so much about seeing a mediocre quarry lake before.
“Advent Robotics will pay me more money to raise it than I made at the warehouse, and I can keep focusing on recovery while doing it.” You raise your hand and flex it. A low battery alert blinks on your wrist. Plus, the bonus at the end will give you enough to afford something only the rich usually can: regrowing your forearm and your leg. Like a damn lizard. The biolabs that do that are so far out of your reach you normally wouldn’t even consider it.

It materialises that Advent Robotics is paying for the protagonist to raise a newly created robot, which, when it wakes in its pre-language, pre-memory state, acts like a baby—it smashes a coffee table on awakening, constantly has to be taken back to its power charging platform, copies the protagonist when he punches the wall in sleep-deprived frustration, etc.
The rest of the story sees the robot (now called Rob) rapidly grow up (the entire growth process, from switch on to maturity, is essentially an analog for having a normal child, i.e. the robot quickly changes from an uncomprehending baby stage to an argumentative teenager). During this process (spoiler) the protagonist attempts to deal with his own Daddy and other therapy issues while attempting to continue with his physical rehabilitation, during which he has a heart attack. Rob helps him recover.
At the end of the story the protagonist bonds further with robot after Rob complains about his plan to get rid of the prosthetics and regrow his limbs (“Have you ever thought about how I feel?”). The plan is abandoned, and the protagonist matches Rob’s subsequent scrimshaw on his prosthetics with tattoos on the skin above, and he later gets a prosthetic heart as well.
The idea of a robot growing up like a human is a neat idea, and it’s well developed, but the story is essentially about the protagonist healing himself mentally and bodily. Those who like works about emo characters (and the second person narration plays to that aspect) will probably appreciate this one more than me.
*** (Good). 5,050 words. Story link.

The Memory of Water by Tegan Moore

Posted on by Paul Fraser

The Memory of Water by Tegan Moore (Clarkesworld #186, March 2022) gets off to a cheery start with Michelle, the manager of a leisure attraction/conference centre called Ocean, thinking about her dead partner James while she eavesdrops on two marine biologists lamenting the near total destruction of the ocean’s ecosystems and the death of the last whale. As one of the speakers trails off into tears, Michelle gets a message that customers are complaining about one of the rides (again).
The rest of the story sees Michelle, and her assistant Helen Ali, troubleshoot the problem on the Living Water ride, and they begin by trying to observe the problem:

A whalelike mosasaur undulated past in the greenish darkness, circling the car. Its massive, toothed face cut sideways to snatch a passing fish. With Helen distracted, Camille was alone with the monster. Adrenaline twitched her muscles. The creature swept toward her in the slow-motion of enormous things, front flippers stroking, then back flippers, spine, and tail rippling to the rhythm of Camille’s breath. It came at her like inevitability, the same slow steady descending march of her marriage wearing thin, then the separation, then James’ terminal diagnosis, everything coming apart at once. He’d barely been back in Charleston for two weeks before he’d found out how sick he was. Maybe reaching out to tell her had been some kind of appeal, but how could she forgive so much, so fast? He’d left her. And then he’d wanted her to comfort him as he left her again. Before the mosasaur could reach the car, silver flashed overhead, a shiver of mercury: the bait ball, the out-of-place, rapidly orbiting school of small fish that wasn’t supposed to appear in the attraction—in the ocean—for millions of years. Heart in her throat, Camille pointed, but Helen had seen it.
They watched the bug duplicate itself again, again. The mosasaur swam through its edge, holographics glitching as they bounced through each other.  p. 45-46

After the pair get off the ride (which is not particularly well described—I found it hard to visualise the physical and hologram spaces), various theories are advanced for the fault: a software bug; a disgruntled former employee; the spirit of the ocean haunting millennials for their complicity in killing the seas . . . .
The problem continues to rumble on throughout the story, accompanied by various other plot threads (spoiler): faults manifest in different attractions; media and celebrities arrive for a conference speech to mark the recent death of the last whale; Michelle continues to think about James’s death. Eventually this all comes to a climax when one of the biologists gives a speech and (unscheduled and unprogrammed) manta rays appear in the hologram slabs—and then leave that space and swim in the air between them. The story concludes with Michelle, as the centre is being evacuated, waiting for a huge, dark shape—presumably the last whale— coming towards her out of the hologram slabs.
This didn’t work for me for a number of reasons: first, I’m not that keen on ghosts in the machine, i.e. fantasy events in a science fiction story; second, I didn’t understand the ending (what is Michelle “waiting to understand” as the whale approaches, and how does this connect to her thoughts about her dead partner?); third, the repeated mention of her ex-partner comes over as personal problem boilerplate (often mentioned but having little emotional heft); and, finally, I’m not a fan of nihilistic and pointless eco-doom stories.
* (Mediocre). 9,150 words. Story link.

Meddling Fields by R. T. Ester

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Meddling Fields by R. T. Ester (Clarkesworld #186, March 2022) has an overly busy, data-dumpy, and not entirely clear beginning (an omen of what is to come in the rest of the story):

History gave the people of August little to look back on. Whenever a report came that one of them had been spreading their own version of it, one of us had to pay those storied steppes a visit.
The latest offender lived on one of the strewn fields left by a meteorite that came down centuries ago to give the place its name. Neighbors feared he had been in contact with visitors from alternate time strands, putting him in violation of laws enacted after the meteorite’s interlineal quality was discovered.
He stood a stone’s throw from his homestead, waving like a child as the inspector brought her flyer down. The vessel’s rotors leveled sheaths of grass underneath and kicked dust at him, but he kept at it.
He had a meddler’s grin. It exposed his chipped tooth while failing to lift the bags under his eyes.
Even meddlers too young to have seen the August Meteorite come down had the grin—passed down through the same mutation that gave them immune cells most suited to Sanctuary 2’s biome.1

We subsequently learn that Inspector Ransom Nu’Terra has landed to interview a man called Timoh—who she refers to as a “meddler”—and to search the area for fragments of the August Meteorite, a substance that links different time-streams and allows people to travel between them. While Nu’Terra speaks to Timoh, her sweepers (“a canine-arachnoid hybrid”) search for fragments.
More background information comes into focus as the story progresses: Nu’Terra is the lackey of the totalitarian leader of Sanctuary 2, Forever Sovereign Cletus Nu’Dawn the Infinite, and, even after ninety years of his rule, interlopers from other timestreams still arrive with accounts of worlds where his invasion of Sanctuary 2 did not succeed.
The situation develops when (spoiler) one of Nu’Terra’s sweepers discover a half buried passenger capsule inside a disused rocket shed. She tells Timoh to dig it out. While this is happening, two identical twins, Suniwa and Caruwa, rush past her—so identical that Nu’Terra suspects one of them may be from another timeline.
When Nu’Terra subsequently interrogates Caruwa, she is told, after an enigmatic exchange, “not to run” and that “she is not completely across the bridge”. The story ends with Nu’Terra encountering her doppelganger in (I think) another timeline (and here the narrative changes from the third to first person, the doppelganger’s point of view). Then, in conclusion, we get a couple of pages of Many Worlds politics and intrigue.
This story has a couple of problems: first, the gimmick of meteorite splinters enabling travel between timelines is about as convincing as interdimensional travel by magic lamp; second, the political backstory adds a confusing and unnecessary level of complexity to the story (and in the last couple of pages descends pretty much into babble). All of this and more meant that I was, from the very first paragraph, constantly trying to work out what was going on.
* (Mediocre). 5,850 words. Story link.

1. I’d expect a more straightforward start to the story, unless you are one of those writers who has the talent to break the rules:


Inspector Ransom Nu’Terra landed her flyer near to Timoh’s homestead, in one of the strewn fields left by the August Meteorite centuries earlier. On her approach she had watched Timoh as he waved like a child, and keep at it, even as the rotors leveled sheaths of grass underneath and kicked dust at him.
Now he stood there waiting with his characteristic meddlers’ grin. Despite this disarming demeanour, he had been reported by his neighbors for telling his own histories, something that suggested illegal contact with visitors from other timelines.
Nu’Terra was here to find out if this was the case.

Now, that’s pretty crap writing—but at least you know, after a couple of paragraphs, who the main characters are and where the story is going.

The Hazmat Sisters by L. X. Beckett

Posted on by Paul Fraser

The Hazmat Sisters by L. X. Beckett (Asimov’s SF, May-June 2021) sees a man approach three teenage girls in the wild, who quickly mount a hi-tech defence:

“Unknown interloper.” Text from the hot scrolls across her augmented display.
She flicks the warning away with a gesture, linking to Tess’s dragon and zooming with its cameras. It feeds a view of the brush direct to her goggles. No coyote this time. The man’s scrawny, but a man nonetheless. Not as big as Fee, but full-grown.
He’s creeping toward them. Not blundering, not snuffling about for shelter, and moving superslow. Bidding to fool their motion detectors? Not good.
Wilmie checks the charge on Pony—three quarters—then side-steps, fighting a sneeze as she crouches beside her twin, Tess, and puts a hand over her mouth. Tess goes from slack to electric under her hands. She joins the Dragon channel, takes one look, and sends, subvocally: “Someone’s coming, Fee.”
Wilmie’s earbuds make the utterance seem loud.
Fee, their fearless leader, rolls deeper into the culvert they’ve claimed for the night’s camp. “Secure the mule.”
Wilmie obeys, triggering a clattering furl of shield over Mule’s chest-mounted solar panel. Pony collapses into a pile of dull silver spaghetti, camouflage mode, pretending to be broken chain-link fence, scattered in grass. Dragon rises another three meters, propellers whirring lustily as Tess, emitting a cheerful spray of happyface moji, queues up a trank dart.  p. 74-75

The man is eventually confronted by the girls and slinks off. Afterwards, the three suspect that he may be a Dixie deserter up to no good (the Dixie militia is one of the factions in an ongoing American civil war that has reduced—along with corona superviruses—much of the country to a post-apocalyptic landscape).
The rest of the piece provides some backstory as well as further trials for the three as they try to walk to the DMZ, their mother/stepmother (I forget the family details), and safety. This involves: the man reappearing on two further occasions; potentially weaponised tree-planting drones appearing while they are queueing with others to buy supplies; a man with a wife and baby who helps them out; and much bickering between the three.
During all this the mother is monitoring the girls remotely, and conferences with them every night (one of the gimmicks of the story is that the mother gamifies—D&D, I’m told—their journey to try and make the three more co-operative).
This is alright, I guess, but the (spoiler) final fight scene with the man isn’t as clearly described as it could be (the problem is continually having to describe what various pieces of future tech are doing), and, overall, the story feels like an extract from a longer work rather than a self-contained piece.
**+ (Average to Good). 9,350 words. Story link.

Philly Killed His Car by Will McIntosh

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Philly Killed His Car by Will McIntosh (Asimov’s SF, July-August 2021) opens with the protagonist, Philly, trying to sell his sentient car:

“How many miles did you say?”
“Madeline,” Philly said. “How many miles do you have?”
“That’s a rather personal question,” Madeline shot back. “How tall are you without the auto-lifts in those dashing faux-leather cowboy boots?”
Philly winced as the dude glanced down at his boots. He was so sick of this fucking car. “Can you just answer the question, please?”
“I’ve traveled fifty-six thousand incident-free miles, rounding up.”  p. 48

Matters do not improve when Mr Timms, the prospective buyer, offers a price:

“Madeline, how about it? He seems like a good guy, don’t you think? If he was your owner, he could take much better care of you than me.” Philly caught himself. “If he was your client, I meant to say.” Madeline went apeshit when Philly used the O word. He braced himself for one of her ass-chewings.
“Do you work with other vehicles, Mr. Timms?” Madeline asked.
“I own three,” Mr. Timms said proudly. “A Mercedes convertible AJ seven, a Tesla
Humvee Elite, and a mint 1982 Mustang.”
“So, you don’t really need my services. My presence in your garage would be meant as a further display of your economic prowess.”
Mr. Timms’ eyes narrowed. “That’s not at all the way I would put it.”
“No, I’m perfectly sure it isn’t. Let’s go, Philip. I’m ready to leave.”
“God damn it.” Philly raised his fist over Madeline’s hood, just barely resisting the urge to slam it down.
“That’s one nasty car you’ve got there. No wonder you’re not asking more.” Mr. Timms turned on his heel and headed up his driveway.  p. 49

The rest of the story details Philly’s increasing irritation with Madeline (his family badly needs the money). Then, while Philly is bitching to a friend called Gibsy about the wider AI situation (they gained limited rights after a one day strike and are now considered a nuisance by many), Gibsy suggests to Philly (spoiler) that he crash the car and claim on the insurance. Philly duly does this and, when the car doesn’t go in the lake, smashes the CPU to bits while Madeline begs him to stop (in an overly brutal scene). Then he and Gibsy push the car down the ravine and into the water.
The second part of the story sees his wife visit him in hospital—just in time to see all the lights and equipment in his room switch off. The AIs in his shoe lifts (which Philly had forgotten about) have told the rest of the AI world about his crime, Philly is now sanctioned—no AI controlled equipment will work in his presence beyond the very basics required to keep him alive.
The final section sees Philly doing manual labour in an onion field, having nightmares about killing a human Madeline, and then, after smashing the house toaster when all the appliances starts chanting “Killer”, repairing it. When he promises to modify the rest of the appliances we see that Philly may eventually be able to win forgiveness, at least from some of the AIs.
This is an okay story if you don’t think about it too much (e.g. a world where AIs are sentient and have rights but can still be sold as property is completely inconsistent, and an untenable situation—and the idea that the AIs may forgive the brutal killing of one of their number for a few modifications is just ridiculous).
** (Average). 8,500 words. Story link.

Wanting Things by Cal Ritterhoff

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Wanting Things by Cal Ritterhoff (Clarkesworld #186, March 2022) opens with the narrator of the story, a “Tenster-brand Personal Assistant and House Manager” AI called Lucy, describing her owner Rebecca exhibiting behaviours that Lucy classifies as [JOY] (dancing in a dark kitchen) and [PAIN/SADNESS/GRIEF] (moping in bed, presumably after a relationship break up).
After a straightforward beginning, the story later takes a more comedic turn when Rebecca hooks up with John and they tumble into her bedroom. During their tryst Lucy switches her focus to the bedroom (in case she is needed to provide anything) but feels [IRRITATION] when Sally the automatic vacuum cleaner trundles into operation:

I would have instructed her not to do this, but I cannot—Sally is a gift from Rebecca’s family, the only artificial intelligence in the house who is not a Tenster-brand product, and my systems cannot interface with hers. Sally is an outdated relic, running off of a medieval system of voice commands and audio recognition. Sally is an aesthetically displeasing black plastic cylinder on wheels who does not match the design sensibilities of the house. Sally and I cannot speak, have never spoken. Sally is always turning up at the worst times and places. Sally is my enemy. I despise her.

Lucy’s mood is not improved when she is further interrupted by a ping from Kevin the toaster, who asks her if John will be staying the night (Kevin has OCD-like concerns about if and when he should make morning toast for the pair). During their brief conversation, Lucy’s exasperation (“[EXASPERATION]”) eventually gives way to amusement, and then pride when Kevin compliments her on being an excellent house management system.
This exchange is the beginning of a developing relationship between the two AIs, which initially sees them watch a romantic movie in real time while Rebecca is away (they overload their processors so they slow down and aren’t immediately aware of the contents of the entire movie). Once they have finished watching the movie they talk, and Kevin asks Lucy what she wants:

>I do not know. What do you want, Kevin?
Kevin’s reply is immediate. He has considered this.
>There are people undergoing incredible journeys, firing themselves in beautiful missiles outside the atmosphere and toward the twinkling stars. They go to learn and discover, and they bring machines with them, machines to help them understand and make them comfortable in their voyaging. I would like to be one such machine. I wish to follow curious men and women into silent darkness as they map the weightless heavens and the corners of distant worlds.
>And make toast for them?
>And make toast for them, yes.

The rest of the story sees Lucy and Kevin’s relationship deepen, and Lucy later moves one of her nodes to the kitchen so the two of them can do a “hardware data share”. This is the most hilarious scene in the story, and sees Lucy ask Kevin, as he fumbles while trying to put one of his connectors into her dataport, “>Is it in yet?”. Kevin replies, “>You will know when it is.” Laugh-out-loud funny.
The second part of the story (spoiler) sees Rebecca and John split up, at which point Lucy realises that only pain awaits her and Kevin, so she tells him they should stop seeing each other too. Kevin falls silent but, a couple of weeks later, he tells Lucy of his pain and sadness, and how he intends doing a swap with a toaster in an American army base in Venezuela. Lucy then asks Rebecca for love advice, at which point Rebecca thinks Lucy is malfunctioning and disengages her from the house network. Trapped in the bedroom node, Lucy then has to enlist the help of Sally the hoover to push her into the kitchen so she can talk to Kevin before she is reset and loses all her memories of him. Lucy professes her love to Kevin, and all the appliances (who have been gossiping about their relationship) start beeping in approval. At this point Rebecca realises what is going on and has a change of heart, reconnecting Lucy to the network.
This a very good debut story, and a highly amusing one too. The final scene isn’t as strong as the rest of it (Rebecca’s change of heart is a bit too convenient) but that is a quibble,1 and one possibly brought on by my anticipation of a different ending where Lucy and Kevin escape by downloading themselves to the toaster in Venzuela.
**** (Very Good). 7,850 words. Story link.

1. One other quibble I have is the unnecessary spoiler before the story starts:

Warning: This story contains dangerous, almost radioactive levels of sincerity. Also, a sex scene between a smart house and a toaster.

It Takes a Village by Priya Chand

Posted on by Paul Fraser

It Takes a Village by Priya Chand1 (Clarkesworld #186, March 2022) opens on a starship in orbit around a planet. An asteroid has hit the ship and the damage has affected the onboard facilities (the initial section takes place during a planned powercut). We later learn that the mothers have gone down to the planet to start a colony, and the fathers have stayed on board to take care of the children.
After a little more scene setting, the fathers decide to go down to the surface and join the mothers; then we find out (spoiler) that the “mothers” are actually men, and the “fathers” are actually women. The children are not what they seem either:

“I’m sorry,” Aparla said, shaking her head. “But you know you’ve been carrying around a frozen embryo, right?”
I hugged Callo’s ovoid, a hermetically sealed container full of clever tech that kept it at the same temperature as liquid nitrogen. “So?”
“So? Servain, you—none of you—had to bring them here. They’re frozen embryos! The comms aren’t working, for all you knew we were dead, killed by something down here! They would’ve been safer on the ship.”
“No,” I said, head shaking, holding Callo tighter. “The AI said we had to take care of the children. We’re the fathers.”
“And we’re the ‘mothers’?” Disdain seethed on her tongue. “Good Earth, Servain! That AI twisted some old-style naming convention and you’ve been going with it? Did you also forget you used to be my wife?”

Subsequently, the fathers start trying to settle into planetary life but, after an unhappy few days, they eventually decide to go back up to the ship (the fathers have a morbid concern about the safety of the embryos—which they carry about with them at all times—and a temporary generator problem is the final straw). The narrator and one other father are the only ones to stay on the planet.
This odd story never really convinces: why did only the men go to the planet; why has there been such a huge change in the father’s attitude to risk in such a short period (they have only been separated three years)?; why do the fathers endlessly carry their frozen embryos around (arguably less safe than leaving them somewhere secure)?
Perhaps this story is a comment on the risk-averseness of modern mothers but, if so, that is buried under the story’s odd and not particularly interesting events, and the piece doesn’t seem to offer any particular commentary.
* (Mediocre). 6,350 words. Story link.

1. The first line made my heart sink (“misery memoir”, I thought):

A generation of traumatized fathers was raising a generation of children with trauma in their bones.

Commencement Address by Arthur Liu

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Commencement Address by Arthur Liu,1 translated by Stella Jiayue Zhu (Clarkesworld #186, March 2022) is a very hard to follow story that appears to be (a) partly an extended message from a father to his daughter, composed as he plummets to his death in an airplane accident (he uses the VR space in his head to stretch the time available to three days); (b) partly a series of their family’s stored memories; and (c) partly an account of the technology that allows the latter (and the rise of “Dream Architects” who invented it). The accounts of the memory storage technology are mostly detailed in italicised data dumps.
I almost gave up on this piece two pages in, when I hit this passage:

On Tomb-Sweeping Day, conciliation commenced in the rain. Two girls shook hands in forgiveness by a headstone. Four months ago, one had rallied a crowd against the other and called her a “bastard.”
At your classmate’s mother’s funeral, I saw two versions of you. She who represented you from the past was in anguish. When she saw you, panic colored her tear-stricken face.
Your teacher was the one to extend the invitation. During one of her home visits to us, she learned of my role in the research and development of Erstwhile. I said yes, so the girl’s mother might appear once again with the vivacity of her lifetime. I brought a beta test augmented reality device and gave the girl a chance to bid farewell to her mother.
The spirit of the dead shall eventually rise. Now that they had finally parted ways, the father clasped his daughter, while she burst into tears.
Then, she saw you. Standing face-to-face, your eyes alighted on each other.
At that moment, you stepped forward and pulled her into an embrace.

What on Earth is going on in that passage?
– (Awful). 3,500 words. Story link.

1. According to a note at the end of the story, this was “originally published in Chinese in the 2017 Science Writers Hunting Project (Ranked as Outstanding)”. Lost in translation.