The Rise of Alpha Gal by Rich Larson (Asimov’s SF, September-October 2022) sees the narrator, Heli, meet her ex-girlfriend Nea in an all-night McDonalds. When Nea questions the choice of meeting place, Heli tells her it is ironic before launching into an explanation that involves (a) her reminding Nea of a cousin who got tick bites and developed an allergy to red meat (“The allergy’s unusual because it’s triggered by the Alpha Gal carbohydrate instead of by a protein”) and (b) that Heli has developed an Alpha Gal analog that can induce a permanent meat allergy with one dose. Heli then adds that she can make it contagious. . . .
After this revelation they debate the rights and wrongs of this type of eco-terrorism, before Heli eventually realises that her ex-girlfriend isn’t as enthusiastic about the prospect as she expected. They finally agree that the analog should be made available as a voluntary injection for those that want to give up eating meat (“Saving the world in slow motion”). After Nea leaves, however (spoiler), Heli inserts the contents of a vial into a sanitizer spray and starts spreading the agent.
This is a conversation about an idea, not a story—the novelette or novella that telescopes out from Heli’s final action would have been much more interesting.
** (Average). 2,300 words.
The Rules of Unbinding by Geoffrey A. Landis
The Rules of Unbinding by Geoffrey A. Landis (Asimov’s SF, September-October 2022) opens with Kharkov in the Negev desert looking for antiquities, preferably gold or silver ones. We learn that he hasn’t bothered to get a permit and has no intention of reporting anything he finds to the relevant authorities.
After wasting his time digging up a jeep axle from the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, he finds a bottle just before he gives up for the day:
The bottle was ceramic, still intact, beautifully decorated with geometric patterns in yellow and blue glaze, but bound with an intricate cage of bronze, which must have been what had set off the metal detector. A clay jar would be exactly what a fleeing family might use to put their stashed coins in, so for an instant he’d been hopeful, but this was more of a bottle than ajar, with the neck opening too small for anyone to slip coins into. It was closed with a carved stopper (ivory, maybe?) that was held in place with twists of bronze wire—green with corrosion now—and then sealed with wax. Ottoman era, he thought; perhaps fifteenth century. When he picked it up, he realized it was too light to hold anything metallic, but still, a piece of Ottoman ceramic could fetch something in the antiquities market.
But he was curious what it had held—wine? Perfume? The rules of the antiquity market said that an untouched bottle would be worth more than one with the seal broken, but to hell with the rules. He could reseal the wax later and no one would know. p. 80
Kharkov opens the bottle and smoke comes out, which eventually resolves into a genie clothed in modern attire. Kharkov quickly tells the genie that he wants his three wishes and then, when the genie begins to tell him the rules, says his first wish is that there should be no rules. The genie (spoiler) replies that without rules the universe would not exist in its current form (he gives several examples involving gravity, oxidation, etc. etc.) and asks Kharkov to reconsider. Kharkov complies and modifies his first wish to “no rules about wishes”—this means, of course (double spoiler), that the genie is not obliged to give him his three wishes.
Normally I don’t like short-shorts, but this one is well written and has a clever twist on an old theme.
*** (Good). 1,250 words.
Shoot your Shot by Rich Larson
Shoot your Shot by Rich Larson (Analog, September-October 2022) gets off to an entertaining start with its description of the story’s coke-head narrator in a club bathroom:
It’s been a while since I done coke—too expensive out East—but before Dante left the club he gave me his last two grams and the rolled-up fiver he was using, I think as an apology for bailing. I forgot just how fucking good it feels.
“Yo,” I say, pulling myself up to the sinks to make a new friend. “How’s your night going?”
My sink neighbor glances over, gives a bleary grin. “Yo,” he says. “Yo, not bad.”
“Heard you pissin’ while I was in the stall,” I say. “Terrific stream. Gotta say it. Real powerful-sounding.”
The guy looks confused for a second, then raises his soapy hand for a tentative fist bump. “Thanks, bro.”
I bump it, then start checking my nostril hairs for snowcaps. Clean. p. 61
Subsequently, the sink neighbour talks about how he was just talking to “the most beautiful girl”, a “dark-haired chick with the silver jacket”. He says he is going to ask for her number, and the narrator assures him that he will succeed . . . before promptly going out and picking up the woman himself.
After some conversation in the club she suggests they go outside, and they eventually end up in an alleyway. They kiss, and then, when the narrator suggests they do some coke, he notices that (spoiler) her words aren’t matching her actions, that she is talking from a hole in her throat, and that her mouth is peeling back to show something like broken razors. The narrator can’t flee as the kiss has numbed his face and body.
This reads like a short character sketch lifted from the writer’s notes and given a random horror ending.
* (Mediocre). 1,500 words.
Four-Letter Word by Alexy Dumenigo
Four-Letter Word by Alexy Dumenigo, translated by Toshiya Kamei, (Future Science Fiction Digest #14, March 2022) begins by introducing the idea of “calibration clinics”:
There were these government-run facilities where you could go and ask men in white coats to fix those aspects of yourself you didn’t like. Back then, fewer options were available, but it was at least possible to erase concepts from your mind, modify your character, and even take the first step toward personalizing your memories.
If you wanted to be more intelligent, more daring, or willing to tackle any project, you footed the bill and that was it. But those options, just like now, cost dearly and required special permits from the government.
Fortunately, other calibrations were inexpensive. p. 29
The narrator then states that, forty years ago, she went to get not only a word, but a whole concept removed because of a domestic quarrel with her boyfriend over her dog Hamlet (who had an implant and could talk, part of the boyfriend’s problem). We later find out that that word/concept she had removed was “love”, and we learn (in among some back story about her life) about the result:
I felt the same as before. Of course, I wasn’t in the mood to immerse myself in my memories either, or I would have noticed the gaps. On the way home I listened to a song I liked and the audio seemed to skip at times. I tried to remember the lyrics, but only bits and pieces came to me.
I soon discovered that, except for that inconvenience, my new conditioning offered only advantages. Unlike other breakups, now I didn’t feel the urge to call Carlos or spy on his social media. I dedicated myself to living my life. Even my work became less tedious. In the evenings, I went out with friends. I talked to my parents on the phone more often.
I spent most of my free time at home. I took care of Hamlet and we talked about the old days. pp. 34-35
Hamlet later developed a neural problem which meant he needed to have his implant removed. At the clinic, and while they waited for the dog to wake up after surgery, the narrator and the vet talked and she discovered that the vet had had the same treatment as her. When Hamlet finally woke up he could no longer talk, but communicated non-verbally with the narrator by putting his head on her lap.
The story ends (spoiler) with her and the vet presumably communicating in a similar non-verbal manner and ending up together. They never need any further calibration.
This piece has a neat idea and a number of interesting passages, but the ending didn’t really work for me: partly this was because I wasn’t entirely sure about the point the story was making—is it that you don’t need love to have a successful relationship?—and I also thought the pair of them ending up together runs against the story’s set-up (you don’t expect a narrator who has had the concept of love removed from their psyche to happily couple up with someone else). A pity, as this was pretty good for the most part.
I’d be interested in seeing more work from this writer.
**+ (Average to Good). 2,450 words. Story link.
Rat’s Tongue by Sing Fan
Rat’s Tongue by Sing Fan, translated by Judith Huang,1 (Future Science Fiction Digest #14, March 2022) opens with Ding Jie arriving at the planet Yan: he is there to get a delicacy for the Emperor, the tongue of the Silver Rat. Jie is surprised to discover that a close friend, Chen Guang, is in charge of this bleak outpost. Then, after they catch up (at length) with each other’s news, Guang tells Jie that the Silver Rat’s tongues are now black and poisonous. Guang has one edible tongue left, however, and he gives Jie a taste:
He opened his mouth and bit into the tip of the tongue.
Suddenly, the whole busy world before his eyes grew dim.
The taste skated across his consciousness and melted a little in his stomach.
He was overwhelmed with the feeling that nothing he could remember that came before this amounted to anything, and his very life appeared barren and meaningless, reduced to something absurd. He thought back to the magnificent fireworks bursting over the roof of the Royal Palace, the most splendid of skies he had ever seen, and they all those memories seemed strangely leached of color. Even the most complex, most spectacular and intricate architecture he had seen in the Afang palace, dating from the Qin dynasty, its exquisite beauty beyond anyone’s imagination, now seemed boring and monotonous in comparison.
Every single taste bud in his mouth exploded simultaneously, like a singularity bursting and expanding into infinity.
This extraordinary taste had flown beyond all description.
Could this thing still be considered food? Or was it rather, a vast epic rushing through the tongue and vaulting past the stomach walls, a mighty poem redolent of ancient song. pp. 46-47
The rest of the story sees the implantation of a mind-reading device into one of the rats, which later reveals that, when the rats meet each other in the wild, their tongues entwine—this is the way they communicate.
After this discovery Jie suspects the Silver Rats are sentient and he decides to decipher their language, a process that leads to the Silver Rat he has implanted eventually meeting the Grand Rat. When the Grand Rat then offers the implanted rat some dried tongue, the latter appears to gain access to all the Grand Rat’s memories.
Eventually Jie discovers that (spoiler) the rat’s memories and souls are contained in tongues, and the hatred they feel for humans—who have been hunting them—has made them poisonous. Guang subsequently hatches a plan to kill the Emperor by supplying him with a poisoned tongue, but what actually happens is that the Emperor falls ill (the rats have learned human language and made a taste that makes him feel nauseous every time he feels anger).
This story didn’t work for me, probably due to the strange (and barely) science fictional ideas which have been dropped into what feels like an oddly plotted fantasy. I think this would have worked slightly better if it had junked the SF furniture and been a fantasy.
* (Mediocre). 7,450 words. Story link.
1. There are unnecessary translation notes at the start of the story, mostly about the references to Chinese history: these could have easily been put at the back of the story, and then I wouldn’t have had to plough through them in case they were required to understand the story (they aren’t). Also, there are, for a story that is told in otherwise neutral fantasy language, a few odd colloquialisms: “nothing would have induced him to leg it” on p. 40; “it became super popular to eat Silver Rat meat”; “When their tongues met and entangled, the Silver Rats were, in fact, talking, not making out” on p. 51, etc. Jarring.
Paen for a Branch Ghost by Filip Wiltgren
Paen for a Branch Ghost by Filip Wiltgren (Future Science Fiction Digest #14, March 2022) begins with a time-retrieval team (consisting of the narrator and his two colleagues) learning that their special assignment will involve taking a Professor Rothman back in time to the “Age of Desolation” to retrieve her brother and three sisters. It materialises that Rothman is a time-probabilist who herself was extracted from the past, and whose exceptional contributions to the work of the Conglomerate have provided her the credit to pay for the journey back in time.
Almost immediately after they arrive at their extraction point it becomes obvious that the plan they have been briefed about is a cover story provided by Rothman, and that she has other ideas. This begins with them having to walk to a nearby railway station at a military camp:
A line of soldiers stood between us and the train, clumps of men in gray uniforms with long, iron-and-wood rifles. No electronic or magnetic signatures. Plain analog chemical reaction weaponry. Their uniforms looked enough like ours for us to blend in, although the soldiers had a black trim on their grey caps, which were adorned by two marks. I upped the magnification on my view, zooming in on the cap of the closest soldier.
The marks were the same bird of prey we had, and a skull below it. I sent the image to Ross, our historian, but he shrugged.
“Not my specialty,” he said.
Only Rothman seemed to know what was going on. She stared past the train, to the milling throng of humanity beyond. These had different clothes, mostly pants, skirts and coats in blacks, grays, browns, and dark blues. They carried bags and children. Unlike the soldiers, most of them were strikingly gaunt.
“Where are we?” I said, to no one in particular.
“Sobibor,” Rothman said. “One of the camps.” p. 85
They later find out that they have arrived at this Nazi concentration camp at the beginning of a prisoner revolt and, during the turmoil, they join the fight with their advanced weapons: the team targets the guards and Rothman searches for a sadistic officer called Frenzel, who she kills (a “ghost killing”). During the action the team becomes concerned that this branch timeline they are creating (their own will be “canonical”) may not last long enough for them to complete the mission and they worry that they will become “ghosts”. Rothman reassures them that vortex that took them there will last for “days, months, maybe longer”.
Eventually (spoiler) they find Rothman’s family, and it materialises that she intends to rescue a different group of people:
The rest of the family slowly got to their feet. All except the young woman with the two children, the one Rothman had called Eliza.
“Who are you?” she asked.
“We—” I began. Rothman cut me off.
“I am you,” she said. “Years from now, you will be me.”
I cursed, and flicked off the voice-over before it could translate. Never explain, never introduce a point of confusion.
The young Eliza looked at the old Rothman. The father, the mother, the siblings, everyone looked. I could see the Eliza in Rothman’s face, the lines sharper, more defined, the eyes harder, the lips thinner. They were the same person, ages apart. The family would recognize it, and panic.
Instead, they smiled.
“You are the Lord’s seraphim, coming in our hour of need,” the father said, bowing his head, thin, white hair flopping in front of his face.
“Yes, father,” Rothman agreed. “We need to go.”
The family all tried to touch her hands, and she let them, guiding them to stand as gently as a wind lifting dry leaves. p. 97
As they return to the extraction point the narrator tells Rothman that, if she returns to the future with her younger self, the Conglomerate will kill her and the child for breaching its rules. Rothman says she knows, and that she intends staying behind in this ghost timeline (“Now my children will live with their mother, and their family.”). Their problems aren’t over, however, and they then find that even without Rothman they are a hundred kilograms overweight for the return journey. After they all strip off all their clothes and dump their equipment they still have forty kilograms to shed, and the story finishes with the narrator volunteering to stay with Rothman.
The time travel hand-wavium, combat scenes, and Holocaust elements are blended together well, and produce a pretty good story.
***+ (Good to Very Good). 6,500 words. Story link.
A Friend on the Inside by Will McIntosh
A Friend on the Inside by Will McIntosh (Future Science Fiction Digest #14, March 2022) begins with Candace, a poor student, on the roof of her high school trying to hack into the school’s Axon network to get credit for lunch. Then, when she succeeds, she receives a message from an Izzy Mahfouz asking her if she is “outside”. Candace quickly disconnects and leaves. Later, after she is the victim of some routine bullying in the lunch hall (insert your own Heathers, Mean Girls, etc. scene here), Candace looks up Izzy’s name—only to find it belongs to a dead college basketball player.
When Candace next goes up on the roof and connects to the network Izzy comes online again and begs her not to leave. He tells her that his last memory was of a car crash, and that now he is in darkness and connected to three other “nodes” who are people like him. Then Izzy asks Candace to call his mother to let her know what has happened to him. When she pleads poverty, he provides her with a code for a “system” like the rich girls in school have, and which she later picks up from the shop:
[I] told her I was picking up a system. I gave her the code, and held my breath, half-expecting a platoon of Axon security people to come busting out of the back room, heaters raised.
A sparkly transparent ball rolled out of a slot. The ball, which felt like skin, broke open in my hands, like it was giving birth to the system rolled up inside. Triumphant music played.
I ran for the exit.
“Have an A day,” the associate called.
“Eat shit,” I called back as the door swung closed behind me.
Moving out of the flow of pedestrians, I unrolled the system. It was silver with green speckles, lighter than it looked, the material so thin it felt like it would dissolve in my hands. I pulled the sleeve up my forearm, looped my thumb through the smaller hole on the end. It extended just past my elbow.
Everything shifted. The air took on a golden tint. New Main Street was perfectly jet black, and each building was a different pastel color. Everyone who passed was smiling brightly. It was like I’d stepped into a new reality. I knew what the world looked like through a system—I’d seen it on TV a million times, but I’d had no idea it looked this real. I didn’t understand how something I put on my arm made my eyes see differently, and I didn’t care. I wanted to see like this for the rest of my life. pp. 7-8
The benefits of the system don’t last long because the phone connection drops when Candace tries to call Izzy’s mother: Izzy realises that Axon are monitoring the calls, and disconnects her from the net so she can’t be traced.
The rest of the story (spoiler) sees Candace learn from Izzy that there are lots of nodes, and Izzy later says to Candace, “I’m just a brain, aren’t I?” They realise what Axon’s “revolutionary [network] technology” is and, when Candace learns that Izzy’s body was donated to Good Medical like her sister’s, she wonders if her sister is one of the nodes. Candace tells Izzy that if he wants any further help he needs to find her (and during this conversation she learns that the nodes suffer terrible headaches and pain when they are not doing the network tasks assigned to them).
The story turns into a chase when Axon put Candace’s picture on the net and she is recognised by a group of teenagers. As she evades capture by them and the others who start pursuing her, she repeats her demand to Izzy about finding her sister.
Eventually, and after a few more narrow escapes courtesy of Izzy’s magic hacker skills, the story comes to a conclusion when Candace contacts Izzy’s mother and Candace is then shot and wounded by an Axon guard. A driverless car then drives into him, while Candace is protected by a cyclone of drones and vehicles controlled by the brains/nodes. Video of the event goes viral, along with the nodes/brains’ demand for time off and pay for their families. Finally, Izzy tells Candace he has found her sister.
This is a well enough told story (McIntosh is a slick writer), but it is essentially a piece about stealing brains for God’s sake, something that might work in 1932 but terminally strains credulity ninety years later. And even if this is all a metaphor about the way corporations treat their employees, it is a silly one. (I’d also add that having “Pay for our families. Time off” as the brains’ first demand is ridiculous—what about the fact that Axon have essentially been kidnapping sentient beings, using them as slaves, and torturing them?)
** (Average). 8,250 words. Story link.
Vagrants by Lavie Tidhar
Vagrants by Lavie Tidhar (Future Science Fiction Digest #14, March 2022) sees a man return to a space station he passed through twenty years ago, when he was on his way up from Earth and out into the solar system and what became his life (fighting in a war, etc.). He has various encounters with a robotnik beggar, a bar singer, and a robot hotel receptionist, during which various life observations are delivered:
“There’s a world right here”, Red said. She took a sip and studied him over the bottle. “You don’t get it, do you?” she said.
“Get what?”
“You think going out there fixes what’s inside here,” she said. She tapped him on the chest. It pushed him up so for a moment he was floating, just an inch or so above the seat. “Yeah,” Red said. She finished her beer and tossed it back to the bar. It floated to the old bartender. “I see guys like you every day of the week,” Red said. “Young and ignorant when you come up the gravity well. Old and ignorant when you come back. You think, if only you went out there you’d find whatever it is you’re searching for. But you never did find it, did you?”
“I don’t know,” Nugget said. “I lived a life.”
“No,” she told him. “You only ran away from one.” p. 69
This is an okay read, I suppose, but it’s a fragment not a story.
* (Mediocre). 2,200 words. Story link.
The Sweetness of Berries and Wine by Jo Miles
The Sweetness of Berries and Wine by Jo Miles (Future Science Fiction Digest #14, March 2022) opens with Shoshana on Kepler Station, where the quartermaster tells her he can’t supply the strawberries she wants for a Passover dish called charoset (he tells her, “The war in the Celosian System has messed up our supply lines”). Later on, Shoshana discusses the problem with her partner Kindra, who asks why it is important as she is not religious. When Shoshana replies that it is her daughter’s first Passover, and that she wants it to be perfect, Kindra suggests Shoshana call her grandmother on New Jerusalem.
The second part of the story sees grandmother set Shoshanna straight after some teasing (“A disaster! You’d better give up now”), when she reveals that charoset was originally made with apples but they changed the recipe on New Jerusalem when they couldn’t get any. Shoshana learns about resilience and adaptation.
This parable was too cutesy, too saccharine for me.
* (Mediocre). 1,150 words. Story link.
Modern Cassandra by Jennifer August
Modern Cassandra by Jennifer August (F&SF, May-June 2022) appears to be a fantasy where Cassandra met Apollo on Tinder, and she is now doomed to send out her prophecies as junk mail. It’s not that clear, but at least it is very short.
– (Poor). 600 words.