Tag: 2.5*

Sundance by Robert Silverberg

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Sundance by Robert Silverberg (F&SF, June 1969) opens with this:

Today you liquidated about 50,000 Eaters in Sector A, and now you are spending an uneasy night. You and Herndon flew east at dawn with the green-gold sunrise at your backs and sprayed the neural pellets over a thousand hectares along the Forked River. You flew on into the prairie beyond the river, where the Eaters have already been wiped out, and had lunch sprawled on that thick, soft carpet of grass where the first settlement is expected to rise. Herndon picked some juiceflowers, and you enjoyed half an hour of mild hallucinations. Then, as you headed toward the copter to begin an afternoon of further pellet spraying, he said suddenly, “Tom, how would you feel about this if it turned out that the Eaters weren’t just animal pests? That they were people, say, with a language and rites and a history and all?”
You thought of how it had been for your own people.

We learn that the protagonist, Tom Two Ribbons (a Native American from a long line of unsuccessful men), is having doubts about the liquidation operation on this alien planet—he recalls the historical slaughter of bison and the Sioux on Earth. Later, we see he is in an open relationship with Ellen, another team member, and find out that he previously had a “personality reconstruct” after the collapse of a previous business (not his first failed venture, and he has also had two failed marriages).
The rest of the story sees Tom apparently witness ritual eating behaviour among the Eaters, and he later begins to believe they are intelligent. He withdraws into his research (to the concern of the other team-members), and eventually ends up out in the field, intoxicated on one of the local plants, dancing and, he thinks, communicating with the aliens:

We move in holy frenzy.
They sing, now, a blurred hymn of joy. They throw forth their arms, unclench their little claws. In unison they shift weight, left foot forward, right, left, right. Dance, brothers, dance, dance, dance! They press against me. Their flesh quivers; their smell is a sweet one. They gently thrust me across the field to a part of the meadow where the grass is deep and untrampled. Still dancing, we seek the oxygen-plants and find clumps of them beneath the grass, and they make their prayer and seize them with their awkward arms, separating the respiratory bodies from the photosynthetic spikes. The plants, in anguish, release floods of oxygen. My mind reels. I laugh and sing. The Eaters are nibbling the lemon-colored perforated globes, nibbling the stalks as well. They thrust their plants at me. It is a religious ceremony, I see. Take from us, eat with us, join with us, this is the body, this is the blood, take, eat, join. I bend forward and put a lemon-colored globe to my lips. I do not bite; I nibble, as they do, my teeth slicing away the skin of the globe. Juice spurts into my mouth while oxygen drenches my nostrils. The Eaters sing hosannas. I should be in full paint for this, paint of my forefathers, feathers, too, meeting their religion in the regalia of what should have been mine. Take, eat, join. The juice of the oxygen-plant flows in my veins. I embrace my brothers. I sing, and as my voice leaves my lips it becomes an arch that glistens like new steel, and I pitch my song lower, and the arch turns to tarnished silver. The Eaters crowd close. The scent of their bodies is fiery red to me. Their soft cries are puffs of steam. The sun is very warm; its rays are tiny jagged pings of puckered sound, close to the top of my range of hearing, plink! plink! plink! The thick grass hums to me, deep and rich, and the wind hurls points of flame along the prairie. I devour another oxygen-plant and then a third. My brothers laugh and shout. They tell me of their gods, the god of warmth, the god of food, the god of pleasure, the god of death, the god of holiness, the god of wrongness, and the others. They recite for me the names of their kings, and I hear their voices as splashes of green mold on the clean sheet of the sky. They instruct me in their holy rites. I must remember this, I tell myself, for when it is gone it will never come again. I continue to dance. They continue to dance. The color of the hills becomes rough and coarse, like abrasive gas. Take, eat, join. Dance. They are so gentle!
I hear the drone of the copter, suddenly.

Tom watches the helicopter drop pellets: the Eaters consume them and die, and their bodies dissolve into the ground. Then the helicopter picks him up and takes him back to base. We find out (spoiler) that the team hasn’t been killing the Eaters but that Tom has been experiencing a fantasy that is part of his psychological reconstruction, something designed to ameliorate his anger about the treatment of the Sioux.
After this Tom goes outside again and dances (he thinks) with generations of his people, and the story finishes with him switching between delusion and reality.
This is an interesting and generally absorbing piece about a man’s descent into madness, but it doesn’t quite work for a number of reasons: first, it is hard to accept that someone would still be so conflicted about what had happened to their forefathers—fathers or grandfathers perhaps, but once you get beyond that it is difficult to accept the idea of serious psychological problems (especially if you are so removed, i.e. on another planet, from that reality); second, it is ridiculous to think that making someone help with a massacre on another planet is going to help them come to terms with their own people’s trauma; third, you wouldn’t include someone with serious mental problems as part of a colonisation crew; and fourth, the shuttling between the first, second and third person has a distancing effect—a story about someone losing their mind would be more engaging if it was all written in the first person (and these point of view changes seem little more than a performative writing trick designed to make the story look like literature1).
Still, worth a look for the parts that are done well (the stream of consciousness delusions, etc.).
**+ (Average to Good). 5,700 words. Story link.

1. This story was nominated for that year’s Nebula Award (no surprise there: point of view changes, tick; near stream of consciousness writing, tick; indeterminate ending, tick; drug-taking, tick; Native American protagonist, tick) but was withdrawn in favour of Passengers (Orbit #4, 1968), which won.
Robert Silverberg has this to say about the story in his To the Dark Star: The Collected Stories of Robert Silverberg, Volume Two:

I was still living in rented quarters [in 1968]—in exile, as I thought of it then—but I had begun to adapt by now to the changed circumstances that the fire had brought, and I was working at something like the old pace. I was working at a new level of complexity, too—sure of myself and my technique, willing now to push the boundaries of the short-story form in any direction that seemed worth exploring. Stretching my technical skills was something that had concerned me as far back as 1955 and “The Songs of Summer”—but I had been a novice writer then, still a college undergraduate, and now I was in my thirties and approaching the height of my creative powers. So I did “Sundance” by way of producing a masterpiece in the original sense of the word—that is, a piece of work which is intended to demonstrate to a craftsman’s peers that he has ended his apprenticeship and has fully mastered the intricacies of his trade. Apparently I told Ed Ferman something about the story’s nature while I was working on it, and he must have reacted with some degree of apprehensiveness, because the letter I sent him on October 22, 1968 that accompanied the submitted manuscript says, “I quite understand your hesitation to commit yourself in advance to a story when you’ve been warned it’s experimental; but it’s not all that experimental….I felt that the only way I could properly convey the turmoil in the protagonist’s mind, the gradual dissolution of his hold on reality, was through the constant changing of persons and tenses; but as I read it through I think everything remains clear despite the frequent derailments of the reader.” And I added, “I don’t mean to say that I intend to disappear into the deep end of experimentalism. I don’t regard myself as a member of any ‘school’ of s-f, and don’t value obscurity for its own sake. Each story is a technical challenge unique unto itself, and I have to go where the spirit moves me. Sometimes it moves me to a relatively conventional strong-narrative item like ‘Fangs of the Trees,’ and sometimes to a relatively avant-garde item like this present ‘Sundance’; I’m just after the best way of telling my story, in each case.” Ferman responded on Nov 19 with: “You should do more of this sort of thing. ‘Sundance’ is by far the best of the three I’ve seen recently. It not only works; it works beautifully. The ending—with the trapdoor image and that last line—is perfectly consistent, and just fine.” He had only one suggestion: that I simplify the story’s structure a little, perhaps by eliminating the occasional use of second-person narrative. But I wasn’t about to do that. I replied with an explanation of why the story kept switching about between first person narrative, second person, third person present tense, and third person past tense. Each mode had its particular narrative significance in conveying the various reality-levels of the story, I told him: the first-person material was the protagonist’s interior monolog, progressively more incoherent and untrustworthy; the second-person passages provided objective description of his actions, showing his breakdown from the outside, but not so far outside as third person would be—and so forth. Ferman was convinced, and ran the story as is.

You could argue that if you cannot “properly convey the turmoil in the protagonist’s mind, the gradual dissolution of his hold on reality” in a first person story then you haven’t “fully mastered the intricacies of [your] trade”.
Perhaps I should run a poll to see who agrees with Ferman, and who with Silverberg.

Oannes, From the Flood by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Oannes, From the Flood by Adrian Tchaikovsky (Avatars Inc., 2020) opens with the narrator searching what appears to be an underwater archaeological site using an “avatar” (robotic technology that makes him feel like he is there):

Opening my lids and a great stone paw is reaching for me. From the Avatar’s vantage point it’s about to claw my eyes out. Cue yelp of primeval fear from a professional archaeologist who should know better.
But the Faculty rushed the training, didn’t have many people they could call on, short notice. I never signed up for this kind of technology when I was studying.
Jetting backwards I ram the insanely expensive piece of kit into the wall, and a fresh curtain of clouding dust filters down from the ruin above.
I freeze, because it’s a toss-up whether the flood water is bringing this place down or actually holding it up. No great slide of masonry descends to bury my remote self or those of my fellow researchers.
Researchers.
Tomb raiders.
Thieves. Call it what it is, we are nothing but thieves. But our cause is just, I swear to God. We steal from the past that we may gift to the future.

The narrator and the rest of his team are attempting to recover Sumerian relics (tablets about Oannes, a man or mythical water creature, and an earlier flood), and it soon becomes apparent that this isn’t an archaeological site in the Middle East but a rich collector’s house in a recently flooded future-Louisiana.
Eventually, despite the potentially imminent collapse of the building (spoiler), the narrator finds the tablets he is looking for—and a man and two children who have been trapped in an air pocket by the rising waters. As the team rescue the tablets the building starts to collapse, and the narrator uses the avatar to signal the family to leave the building. Initially they do not respond, so he holds out its arms and uses his broken English to implore them to come:

[Who] knows if I have time? But I will be true to Oannes. I will bring wisdom from the flood, but also I will bring life.

This story has an intriguing idea (rescuing relics from museums and private collections in a climate-changed world), but the storyline is too simple and the dramatic ending feels tacked on (I also had my doubts about how long the family’s oxygen would have lasted in the air pocket).
**+ (Average to Good). 3,850 words. Story link.

The Possibly Brief Life of Guang Hansheng by Liang Qingsan

Posted on by Paul Fraser

The Possibly Brief Life of Guang Hansheng by Liang Qingsan,1 translated by Andy Dudak (Clarkesworld #188, May 2022) gives the narrator’s account of his researches into Xijin Guang Hansheng, the author of Ascent to the Moon: Travel Notes of Guang Hansheng (an incomplete Chinese newspaper serial from 1905-1906):

It wasn’t the content of the fiction that drew me in, but the small, blurry illustrations accompanying it. Ratlike humanoids stood on the cratered surface of the Moon. They were rigging up a crude, concave reflector like a present-day satellite dish, using a crater rim for support.
I knew it was a reflector because in the far corner of the image was the Sun, shining a beam of light onto the Moon, which the dish redirected at Earth. Black smoke rose from the focal point on Earth.
This gave me pause. Someone from the Late Qing knowing the Moon was cratered? Then again, it made sense. Part of the ether fantasy propagated back then was a notion that the fabled substance might fill the Moon’s craters, so that from Earth, the Moon would appear smooth. But my brief doubt caused me to linger on this newspaper, originally no more interesting than the other exhibits. Serialized novel chapters, each with a summarizing couplet, were the main form of fiction in the Late Qing.
This sheet of newspaper featured the ending of the seventeenth chapter of the novel in question.  pp. 70-71

The rest of the story isn’t much more than an account of the narrator’s obsessive and detailed research (mostly of the library’s microfilms), but his commentary on what he finds paints a interesting picture of China at the turn of the century. As various leads go cold, others turn up and, along the way, we also learn a little more about the narrator (he isn’t an academic, but won’t reveal his social status to the librarians he chats with).
Eventually, the narrator finds what he thinks is Hansheng’s last article (most of the rest of Hangsheng’s work is popular science), and his research ends. He concludes with an observation about the writer (and, perhaps unwittingly in the final part, himself):

I like to imagine an awkward, cantankerous savant possessed of scientific insight transcending his epoch, but unable to communicate it effectively. Understanding much that others can’t, proud yet distracted, getting no approbation, insignificant, at the end of his rope, nowhere to go, nowhere to vent, and not even knowing himself clearly—and suddenly, death is coming. He has squandered his rare smidgeon of talent, while watching others advance while he stays where he is. Alone. Just like countless literati of the time, and now, and even the future.  pp. 82-83

I suspect that this will be a Marmite piece—some will be engrossed by the detail of the library detective work, and amused by the narrator’s occasionally mordant observations (“Self-important people cannot abide silence or anonymity”, “I’d heard the PhD student looking for Reunions in the [vast ocean of the] microfilm archive had ended up with detached retinas”), while others will be bored witless. Even those in the former camp (such as myself) may find that, ironic ending or not, it rather fizzles out. Still, an interesting piece if not a totally satisfying one, and I’m glad I read it.
**+ (Average to Good). 5,500 words. Story link.

1. This was originally published in Chinese in Science Fiction World, Supplemental issue, 2016.

Alpha Ralpha Boulevard by Cordwainer Smith

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Alpha Ralpha Boulevard by Cordwainer Smith (F&SF, June 1961) is one of the author’s “Instrumentality of Mankind” series, and takes place at a time1 when the Instrumentality has decided to dismantle, or at least partially dismantle, the stable society it has created:

We were drunk with happiness in those early years. Everybody was, especially the young people. These were the first years of the Rediscovery of Man, when the Instrumentality dug deep in the treasury, reconstructing the old cultures, the old languages and even the old troubles. The nightmare of perfection had taken our forefathers to the edge of suicide. Now under the leadership of the Lord Jestocost and the Lady Alice More, the ancient civilizations were rising like great land masses out of the sea of the past.

We knew that all of this was make-believe, and yet it was not. We knew that when the diseases had killed the statistically correct number of people, they would be turned off; when the accident rate rose too high, it would stop without our knowing why. We knew that over us all, the Instrumentality watched. We had confidence that the Lord Jestocost and the Lady Alice More would play with us as friends and not use us as victims of a game.

The story continues with the narrator Paul pairing up with the French-speaking Virginia, who, during their conversation, reveals that she has previously visited the Abba-dingo computer located half-way up the twelve-mile-high Earthport. As Paul quizzes her about the experience, they follow a ramp down into the underground, where he is unsettled by the homunculi and hominids that work there tending their society’s machines. In particular, a female d’person (dog person), gives him a provocative look. Shortly afterwards, a drunken bull-man charges at them, and they are only saved when a cat person called C’mell lures the bull-man away with a telepathic projection. C’Mell shows the couple to a stairway that leads to the surface. Virginia tells Paul that he will see C’Mell again and, when he asks how she knows this, Virginia tells him it is a good guess, but also mentions her visit to the Abba-dingo computer again.
The rest of the story sees the couple travelling to Abba-dingo, the journey beginning when they go to a café and meet a man called Maximilien Macht, who “can take them to God” (this offer is made after he overhears an upset Virginia protesting to Paul that she does not know how much of what she feels is genuine, and what is predestined by the Lords of the Instrumentality). Macht adds, after his offer, that the Abba-dingo said he would meet a brown-haired girl, and then Virginia says that her aunt heard also heard the couple’s names from the Abba-dingo some time ago.
Macht says they can get there by using Alpha Ralpha Boulevard, a processional street in the sky which leads to Earthport. When Paul asks the point of such a journey, Virginia tells him:

“If we don’t have a god, at least we have a machine. This is the only thing left on or off the world which the Instrumentality doesn’t understand. Maybe it tells the future. Maybe it’s an un-machine. It certainly comes from a different time. Can’t you see it, darling? If it says we’re us, we’re us.”
“And if it doesn’t?”
“Then we’re not.” Her face was sullen with grief.
“What do you mean?”
“If we’re not us,” she said, “we’re just toys, dolls, puppets that the lords have written on. You’re not you and I’m not me. But if the Abba-dingo, which knew the names Paul and Virginia twelve years before it happened—if the Abba-dingo says that we are us, I don’t care if it’s a predicting machine or a god or a devil or a what. I don’t care, but I’ll have the truth.”

There are (spoiler) various incidents on Alpha Ralpha Boulevard: Macht stands on some bird eggs and Paul hears a telepathic distress message from the parent (there has been lots of telepathic communication thus far)—and when Macht does not desist, Paul, prompted by the bird, strangles him till he falls unconscious. Later, the three of them get on a high-speed walkway at the side of the highway but, when they encounter a break in the bridge, Paul and Virginia make it over the gap while Macht falls onto the cables below.
They leave Macht behind and proceed to the Abba-dinga. When they get there it prints out a message for Virginia which says, “You will love Paul all your life”, and then, after Paul fights off a bird man attempting to stop him using the machine, he gets one which says, “You will love Virginia twenty-one more minutes.”
The pair set off back down the road as the weather deteriorates. Eventually, in the middle of a wild lightning storm, they reach the gap in the road: there, both Macht, who has been climbing up the cables, and Victoria fall to their death; Paul is saved by C’Mell, the cat woman from earlier in the story.
There are a lot of fascinating scenes and ideas in this story, as well as a lot of exotic background detail about the world of the Instrumentality, but ultimately this piece does not amount to much: the questions raised earlier about free will and predestination do not appear to be addressed.
Perhaps this is best read as an exotic and bizarre piece of future myth.
**+ (Average to Good). 11,250 words. Story link.

1. The timeline of the Instrumentality of Mankind is as follows:

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.

Light Up the Clouds by Greg Egan

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Light Up the Clouds by Greg Egan (Asimov’s SF, March-April 2021) begins with Anna landing a glider on a forest floating in the atmosphere of a gas giant. After she disembarks she has a discussion with Tirell (the story’s main character), Selik, and Rada about her observations above the clouds, which includes a comment that “the Cousins might be back”. When Selik doubts Anna’s observations, Rada suggests that she take a fresh pair of eyes with her on her next flight—and so Tirell is recruited as her apprentice.
When Anna subsequently takes Tirell up on his first flight the thermals in the atmosphere soon take them above the cloud tops. There we see that Maldo, Anna and Tirell’s floating forest home is not the only exotic feature of this world, but so is the solar system they are part of: Tirell sees the small, bright Far Sun is just about to drop below the horizon, and that the massive, dull Near Sun is so close to them that it is siphoning gas from their planet, causing the Near Sun to heat up. Then, in the distance, at an equilibrium point between the planet and the two suns, are not three but now six bright points of light—the “Cousins”.
The middle part of the story develops this intriguing setup—we learn something of the history of this people from the frequent mentions of their Recitations, a verbal history that suggests that much earlier human settlers split into two groups to settle their solar system—and, when nineteen lights (now described as propelled asteroids) are later sighted, the decision is made to attempt to contact the Cousins. Unfortunately, the explanation of the construction of the catapult system later used to launch an unmanned glider to the equilibrium point is (a) overlong and (b) unclear,1 which means that the middle of the story comes close to grinding to a halt at points (although, that said, in among all this there is an undeveloped but intriguing scene where Tirell fertilises Delia’s eggs, a sign of how long this offshoot of humanity has been on its own, and how differently evolved it has become).
When there is no contact after the launch of the unmanned glider (and a subsequent observation flight sees even more asteroids at the equilibrium point and an increase in the gas loss) it becomes clear that the cousins are responsible for the siphoning (which is now causing the death of parts of Maldo). The group decide to launch a manned flight.
The final part of the story (spoiler) sees the problems of breathing (a canopy) and re-entry (a parachute) addressed before Tirell sets off in a glider to the equilibrium point. When he gets there one of the humans there deigns to talk to him but basically tells Tirell to get lost—the Cousins won’t stop the gas bleed as they need the Near Sun to heat up so they can settle two other planets in the solar system (we learn there are billions of them and only ten thousand of Tirell’s people). Tirell returns to Maldo to tell them the news, and then says he need to hear the full Recitation so they can prepare for their future.
This has a fairly good start and a decent enough ending but, as I’ve already mentioned, the middle is a drag, and I also didn’t buy that the Cousins would be so offhand—if they have the technology to bleed a planet and fire up a sun they could surely help or cope with ten thousand indigents/refugees. I don’t think this entirely works, but it is a pleasant enough tale and may appeal to readers of traditional science fiction (it doesn’t hurt that it has echoes of Brian W. Aldiss’s Hothouse and Bob Shaw’s The Ragged Astronauts).
**+ (Average to Good). 19,500 words. Story link.

1. This was a recent group read in my Facebook group, and several others struggled to visualise the catapult/launch mechanism.

The Short Path to Light by William Ledbetter

Posted on by Paul Fraser

The Short Path to Light by William Ledbetter (Asimov’s SF, March-April 2022) is the sequel to his Nebula Award winning novelette The Long Fall Up (F&SF, May-June 2016). In that earlier story, Jäger Jin is sent by the Jinshan Corporation (an asteroid belt company) to kill an illegally pregnant woman called Veronica Perez (childbirth laws are enforced for commercial reasons). During the trip out to intercept the woman Jin has a change of heart, partially due to events and partially due to Hinzu the ship AI, who is compelled to obey the corporation’s orders but who also keeps giving Jin hints on how to circumvent its programming. The end of this tale (spoiler) sees Jin with the child on Veronica’s ship, and his JS-4567R, which has Hinzu on it, on their way out of the solar system.1
This story continues on directly after these events and sees Jin, after a rendezvous with the grandparents to give them the child, meet a female Catholic priest called Reverend Gabby. She tells him that the church (in the form of her and her ship) is going to salvage JS-4567R to prove to the rest of the solar system that Jinshan (a) attempted to kill Perez and her child and (b) that they are developing sentient AIs (like Hinzu). Jin soon joins Gabby in the Andrea Caraffa, her non-AI controlled ship, and they set off.
The rest of the story sees the pair discover, against a background of political manoeuvring by various factions, that a Jinshan robot ship is en route to JS-4567R (and Hinzu), and that it will arrive ahead of them. Jin and Gabby develop a plan (spoiler) to mount an improvised EMP attack on the Jinshan ship to slow it down, and the story eventually closes with Jin and Gabby on JS-4567R arguing over whether Hinzu (which has been remote wiped by Jinshan but has rebooted itself) should be allowed to live (Gabby is militantly against the idea until the very end, when she folds).
This isn’t bad, but it suffers from the need to recap the first story at the beginning of the piece, and also from Gabby’s unconvincing change of heart at the end (after being belligerent about the matter for most of the story).
**+ (Average to Good). 9,300 words.

1. My longer review of The Long Fall Up is here.

“The Mindano Deep” by Robert F. Young

Posted on by Paul Fraser

“The Mindano Deep” by Robert F. Young (F&SF, March 1980) is one of the later stories in this writer’s Spacewhale series1 and opens with Jonathan on the asteroid-size leviathan Starfinder. He is watching various events from the American War of Independence concerning Nathan Hale, Colonel Prestcott, and Patrick Henry (during these episodes we learn that Starfinder the spacewhale has the ability to travel through space and time). We also learn that a young woman called Ciely Blue, who also lives on Starfinder, appears to be under the guardianship of Jonathan and is currently attending school on Earth.
Once this series housekeeping is dealt with Jonathan decides to use his solo time to “dive to the bottom of the Space-Time Sea” in Starfinder, i.e. go back to the creation of the Universe. At this point we see that Starfinder communicates with Jonathan using mental hieroglyphics:

The rest of the story is a strange account which sees reality dissolve around Jonathan when they get to the bottom of the Space-Time Sea, leaving him standing in a little room with two doors, a fireplace, and a picture window. Later he sees a model of the whale and, when he looks through the portholes, sees a miniature version of himself doing the same; this Mobius-reality effect is then repeated a couple times more, most strikingly when he goes through one of the doors of the room and, while looking over his shoulder, sees himself—and eternity’s worth behind him—doing exactly the same.
These weird events are accompanied by various philosophical observations, the last of which comes from Starfinder, which suggests that Jonathan himself has created this microcosmic reality as there is no macroscopic one at the beginning of Time. After this they climb up off the bottom of the Space-Time sea and return to 1978.
This non-story, its initial series-itis, and the (possibly cod-) philosophical musings may sound like an unpromising mix but I enjoyed it anyway, even though it doesn’t really work.
**+ (Average to Good). 4,900 words.

1. The ISFDB page for Robert F. Young’s ‘Spacewhale’ series. I note that the first story does not seem to be set in the same world as these (it has a Spacewhale, but there are substantial differences—see my review here).

Seven Vampires: A Judge Dee Mystery by Lavie Tidhar

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Seven Vampires: A Judge Dee Mystery1 by Lavie Tidhar (Tor.com, January-February 2022) is the fourth story in the writer’s ‘Judge Dee’ series, and opens with the vampire judge and his familiar Jonathan (the perpetually hungry narrator of the story) walking away from a Paris that is not only on fire but also experiencing a vampire pogrom. Further down the road they meet six other vampires and, after some tense introductions and exchanges (Judge Dee has to forbid the others from feeding on Jonathan), they later discover the body of a seventh member nearby, sans head.
As the group journey to Calais to get a boat to England we learn more about the various members (including the fact that Dee appears to be an enforcer of the Unalienable Obligations of Vampires) while, one by one, three of them are murdered.
By the time they get to Calais there are only four vampires left, and Dee eventually calls them together to solve the mystery of who the killer is (we then find out (spoiler) that Dee has previously tasked Jonathan to search the vampires during daytime for the evidence he requires to confirm his theories).
Dee explains to the group (“You might be wondering why I have assembled you all here”) that there are two killers: Jack killed Nils and Gregor with a silver knife (discovered by Jonathan) for a treasure map of a Western continent called Vinland (ditto), and Melissandra killed Lady Aisha, who she disliked, in an unrelated act. Dee throws the two miscreants overboard.
When the three remaining travellers arrive at Calais the (still religiously pious) Brother Borja steals the map and disappears. Judge Dee tells Jonathan that Borja will regret this due to the treatment of vampires on that continent.
This is pleasant enough fluff but it is one of those stories where only the author can solve the mystery as there are insufficient clues provided to the reader—who are little more than passive passengers for the duration of the tale (probably not a good thing in a murder mystery story, even a semi-humorous one).
**+ (Average to Good). 9,550 words. Story link.

1. I’m not sure why Tor didn’t keep the “Judge Dee and . . . ” format of the previous three stories, i.e. Judge Dee and the Seven Vampires.

The Tale of Ak and Humanity by Yefim Zozulya

Posted on by Paul Fraser

The Tale of Ak and Humanity by Yefim Zozulya (1918),1 translated by Alex Shvartsman, begins with an announcement of the formation of the Board of Supreme Determination, an organisation that will decide who has the right to live. Those deemed to be unnecessary will be required to leave life within twenty-four hours:

For those unnecessary people who cannot leave life, because of their love thereof or due to their weak character, the judgment of the Board of Supreme Determination is to be carried out by their friends, neighbors, or special armed squadrons.

This announcement causes panic amongst the populace until they learn that the highly respected Ak is one of the Board’s members.
The next part of the story sees a family interviewed: the son gets a five year deferment; the mother and father do not. The supervisor mentions to the guard that the couple will probably be unable to leave life themselves.
We subsequently see records of other assessments—then Ak starts to have doubts about the process, and stops it before he disappears. When AK later returns at the end of the story he appears to have changed his mind (or has gone mad), but the officials ignore him and continue with their new task describing their joyous observations of the populace. The latter continue living their lives as if Ak had never existed.
I thought this might be an allegory about Stalin’s purges, but it is actually, according to the introduction2—and I would have guessed from the date had I known—about the Bolsheviks shortly after the Russian Revolution.
It’s not a bad piece given its age, but the back and forth ending is weaker than the rest.
**+ (Average to Good). 3,800 words. Story link.

1. There is also a 1919 publication date for this story, and a 1922 one, too (this may be for the story’s subsequent book publication).

2. The introduction also states that the story “helped establish the anti-utopia genre, and directly inspired and influenced Zamyatin’s We, which was finished a year later.”