AirBody by Sameem Siddiqui (Clarkesworld, April 2020)1 opens with a young man preparing for an “AirBody” job from a “Desi aunty” the next day (the client, a fifty-nine-year-old woman from Karachi called Meena, will use his body for a short period of time—like Airbnb, but using the person’s body rather than their house).
After this promising start the story pretty much goes into reverse: when Meena takes possession of his body the next morning he watches her (he is still mentally present for safety and facilitation reasons) cook dal and answers any questions she has—when he is not contending with her snarky comments about the cleanliness of his kitchen. We also get a chunk of backstory about his own family and a failed relationship with a woman called Karla.
The second part of the story (spoiler) sees him drive Meena to a house where she attempts to give another women the pot of dal: she has the door slammed in her face. Later, the woman turns up at his flat—and then she and Meena make love (apparently they used to be lovers). This scene—where the woman makes love to Meena while she inhabits someone else’s body—did not convince (and that is before you consider that the AirBody is of a different sex, and its owner could be watching you in action).
This is pretty much a mainstream story about cooking and relationships (not my favourite themes) which has some SF furniture in it. The ramifications of the technology are barely hinted at beyond the convenience of not having to travel.
* (Mediocre). 4,950 words. Story link.
1. This was the winner of the Clarkesworld Readers’ Poll for 2021.
Shape by Robert Sheckley
Shape by Robert Sheckley (first published as Keep Your Shape, Galaxy, November 19531) sees a spaceship of shape-shifting Glom arrive in Earth orbit; they are on a mission to place a displacer in one of Earth’s atomic reactors to open up a wormhole for an invasion. Previous expeditions have failed.
Before they descend to the surface, the commander of the ship, Pid, addresses his crewmates Ger and Ilg:
“A lot of hopes are resting on this expedition,” he began slowly. “We’re a long way from home now.”
Ger the detector nodded. Ilg the radioman flowed out of his prescribed shape and molded himself comfortably to a wall.
“However,” Pid said sternly, “distance is no excuse for promiscuous shapelessness.”
Ilg flowed hastily back into proper radioman’s shape.
“Exotic shapes will undoubtedly be called for,” Pid went on. “And for that we have a special dispensation. But remember—any shape not assumed strictly in the line of duty is a device of The Shapeless One!”
Ger’s body surfaces abruptly stopped flowing.
This sets up the story’s conflict, which is that, although the aliens on Glom can assume any shape they want, there are strict caste rules which determine those they are allowed to adopt in society—and Pid has learned before his departure that his two crewmates may not be reliable in this respect:
“Ger, your detector, is suspected of harboring alterationist tendencies. He was once fined for assuming a quasi-hunter shape. Ilg has never had any definite charge brought against him. But I hear that he remains immobile for suspiciously long periods of time. Possibly, he fancies himself a thinker.”
“But sir,” Pid protested, “if they are even slightly tainted with alterationism or shapelessness, why send them on this expedition?”
The chief hesitated before answering. “There are plenty of Glom I could trust,” he said slowly. “But those two have certain qualities of resourcefulness and imagination that will be needed on this expedition.” He sighed. “I really don’t understand why those qualities are usually linked with shapelessness.”
After the three of them land on Earth they dissolve the ship (spoiler), and it isn’t long (there are some episodes that play out beside the reactor) before Ilg and Ger disappear. Pid later discovers that Ilg has become a tree and a thinker, and Ger a dog and hunter. Worse, Pid learns that another dog Ger was chasing earlier is a member of a previous Glom expedition.
The final section sees Pid eventually manage to get inside the reactor building, where the alarm is raised and he is pursued by guards. Then, plagued by thoughts about freedom of shape, and just as he is almost able to activate the displacer, he looks out a nearby window:
It was really true! He hadn’t fully understood what Ger had meant when he said that there were species on this planet to satisfy every need. Every need! Even his!
Here he could satisfy a longing of the pilot caste that went even deeper than piloting.
He looked again, then smashed the displacer to the floor. The door burst open, and in the same instant he flung himself through the window.
The men raced to the window and stared out. But they were unable to understand what they saw.
There was only a great white bird out there, flapping awkwardly but with increasing strength, trying to overtake a flight of birds in the distance.
This is a great finish to a good story, and puts this on my list of Sheckley’s best stories (Specialist, Pilgrimage to Earth, etc.).
One of the things that particularly struck me about this piece was how concisely and clearly written it is and, although there is a message here about social conformity, we aren’t continually bludgeoned with it (I shudder to think what a modern day, MFA’d version of this story would look like).
**** (Very Good). 4,550 words. Story links (see footnote 1).
1. The version of the story I read was in The Arbor House Book of Modern Science Fiction, but the original version in Galaxy magazine (as Keep Your Shape) is longer (5,900 words) and has a completely different ending (and one that makes it a much weaker and more pedestrian story).
In the latter version (the story changes from “He studied himself for a moment, bared his teeth at Ger, and loped toward the gate.” on p. 16 of Galaxy, section break bottom right/p. 67 of the Arbor House anthology) Pid first turns into a dog, and then a man, but can’t stand either shape, so eventually changes into a sparrow. As Pid flies towards the reactor building he is attacked by a hawk and, after slipping through its grasp, changes into a bigger hawk and scares it away. Then Pid drops the displacer and flies after the attacking hawk to find how it hovered in the air.
Theodore Sturgeon used to say something along the lines of, “Horace Gold could turn an average story into a good story, and an excellent story into a good story”. One wonders if this is an example.
Story link (Shape, Arbor House, recommended version).
Story link (Keep Your Shape, Galaxy).
Tell-Tale Tit by Margo Lanagan
Tell-Tale Tit by Margo Lanagan (New Worlds, 2022) is a short piece that begins with all of England’s dogs being brought together to feed on the tongues that have been cut from the mouths of “tattles” (“women, mostly, because telling tales has always been a woman’s offence”):
There is always some gentleman complaining in the parliament of the cost of this waiting, this gathering, this holding. Would it not be more efficient, he wonders, to take in smaller batches of tattles and of dogs, closer to the conviction dates, hard upon each assizes, and closer also to the district where the judgements are passed?
Whereupon other good sirs leap up to correct him: It is a national scourge, this betrayal, this calumny, and should be dealt with in a nationalised manner. The horror is not for the fact that a dog, any local dog, should have a taste of you, but that every dog in England shall have his little bit. A convicted tattle should never know whether any dog she meets thereafter contains a particle of herself. She has become dog, and that knowledge is brought home to her, not only by her silence but also by the sight of any representative of the creatures from wolfhound to lady’s lap dog, forever after. p. 115
The rest is not much more than a (grisly) description of how offenders’ tongues are surgically removed in the Cutting Hall, ground up, and then fed to the massed pack of dogs in the Distribution Hall (the narrator’s job is to ladle out the minced tongue meat to the animals). While the dogs eat, the punished and the public watch on.
There is no story here, just a descriptive account of a bizarre practice—but it is a striking and immersive piece for all that.
*** (Good). 2,750 words.
Sinew and Steel and What They Told by Carrie Vaughn
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.
Scar Tissue by Tobias S. Buckell
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.
Meddling Fields by R. T. Ester
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.
It Takes a Village by Priya Chand
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
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.
Saturn Devouring His Son by E. A. Mylonas
Saturn Devouring His Son by E. A. Mylonas (Clarkesworld #186, March 2022) begins with the narrator, Jacob, recounting a childhood memory of his father being fitted with a prosthetic arm—the first of two he would eventually receive as a result of accidents at the pig processing factory where he worked. So, from the start, we have a near-future society that is sophisticated enough to fit high-tech prosthetics to injured people, but where they are still doing manual labour in factories that apparently have no concept of health and safety. In short, the arm is from the 2050s, the factory setting from the 1970s.
Jacob then returns to his home town for his father’s funeral. He is greeted by his brother, to whom he hasn’t spoken for years, and then learns that that his mother has turned into a bed-bound vegetable:
Ma, who was only fifteen years older than me, but whose hair had already turned gray. Ma, who joined the plant soon after she had me, where she got a job at the head table. They called it that because that’s where pig heads ended up. After noses and eyes and ears and cheeks and jowls and snouts were removed, the brains got scooped up. The Company sold the slurry to canned goods producers. It made soups thicker.
Back then, it used to be that one had to work through the skull with a meat saw, and then cut the brain out. One day, the Company figured it was faster firing compressed air into the skulls, then siphoning the remains.
Ma inhaled pig brain for years. Her own body, going into overdrive, started destroying itself. Who knew pig brains and human brains shared so much biology? Not something they taught at my school. Built and paid for by the Company.
The rest of this piece is an equally miserabilist, anti-capitalist tract that has (spoiler) the brother try to convince Jacob to come back to work in the company-run town. Jacob refuses (obviously). Then, after their father’s funeral, Jacob’s brother reveals his plan to keep his father’s prosthetic arms and have them attached to himself after having his arms surgically removed (the company are looking to recycle the—ten, fifteen-year old?—prosthetics onto another maimed worker, but the brother has a plan to trick them). Jacob becomes complicit with his final words, “Let’s talk to the doctor tomorrow.” This latter development doesn’t really flow from what has occurred previously, but it is maybe suggesting that “you take the boy out of the town, but you can’t take the town out of the boy”.
As I’ve suggested above, this is a rather backward looking story (and the arms plot at the end makes it an unlikely one too), and I couldn’t help but think that this would probably have worked better as a straightforward literary small press piece—where the writing and characterisation wouldn’t have been hobbled by the unconvincing premise.
Finally, even if factories like this are still around today (it’s hard to believe such appalling Health & Safety would be tolerated in Western countries), the robots are coming.
* (Mediocre). 5,000 words. Story link.
Rain of Days by Ray Nayler
Rain of Days by Ray Nayler (Clarkesworld #186, March 2022) is about a woman called Sandra whose partner has died (and is referred to as “Deadwife” for most of the story). Sandra, the narrator, now lives in a near-future coastal retirement facility with three other individuals and a variety of support robots.
The story alternates between Sandra’s dream therapy sessions—she is suppressing memories about Deadwife—and her time in the facility. Although the story generally has a brooding atmosphere (Sandra is troubled, and it has been raining for days), some of the snarky interactions between the residents and the robots are quite droll:
Annabel shakes her head. One of the service bots is clearing the table. She reaches over and thumbs the sticker from her banana peel onto its head, where it joins the hundreds of other stickers Annabel has been plastering it with since she got here.
“Is that my tip?” the bot asks.
“No, this is your tip: Electricity and water don’t mix. Whatever you do, stay dry on the inside.”
“Useful information. I’ll keep it in mind for the robot uprising. Gotta work on our weak points.” It totters off with our trays.
“I like that one,” Annabel says. “Of all the things in here that talk, I think it has the best sense of humor.”
“I’m taking that personally.”
“You should.”
The story ends (spoiler) with the alarms going off in the middle of the night and Sandra awakening to find the Lifter robot picking her up. She is taken through the pouring rain to the refuge of a nearby lighthouse. There she reunites with the other residents, and they watch a tsunami hit the facility. During this cataclysm, Sandra remembers walking through tropical rain to the hospital and discovering her partner, finally named as Josephine, dead.
I liked this, but it is essentially a mainstream story about a woman triggered into remembering a traumatic memory—albeit one pepped up with snarky robots and a disaster movie ending.
*** (Good). 5,050 words. Story link.