Tag: short story

The Roots of our Memories by Joel Armstrong

Posted on by Paul Fraser

The Roots of our Memories by Joel Armstrong (Asimov’s Science Fiction, January-February 2022) takes place in a strange graveyard of the future, where the memories of the dead can be accessed:

That morning I’m overseeing a burial. It’s going to be a scorcher, another record year, the meteorologists keep saying. For now a moist warmth hangs from the hemlock trees, the sky a foggy, rainless gray. I meet the cranial arborist at the open grave, where he’s exposed the roots and fungal mycelia needed to wire the body into the cemetery network. The things done to the body aren’t for the family to see, so we’re the only two present as we remove the corpse from the portable cryofridge and place it in the steel casket. Liam performs most of our corporeal insertions, and I’ve gotten to know him well over the years. I can never decide if it’s sacrilegious or fitting that we end up talking about family while he treats the roots with chemical binder and makes the incisions to thread the mycelia into the body’s brain stem and arteries. He asks how my daughter likes second grade; I ask if his wife’s finally found a new job. Liam injects probiotic and anticoagulant cocktails to encourage clean sap circulation, and then we seal the casket. He’ll return in a few days to make sure the insertion takes, but after that most corpses only need a yearly checkup.  p. 82

Into the narrator’s world comes Pamela, a young woman who initially wants to search her father’s memories but, when she is told they are embargoed for a year after death, decides instead to ask for access to her grandmother’s.
The rest of the story is a slow burn which sees Pamela, to the surprise of the archivist, repeatedly return to use the computers to access her grandmother’s memories. During these visits she is very tight-lipped about what she is learning, but nevertheless develops a growing friendship with the narrator and the regular researchers. We also learn about climate change effects which have caused an insect infestation threat to the hemlock trees that power the network (and if the trees die, her father’s memories will be lost).
At the end of the tale Pamela is more forthcoming with the narrator, and she tells him about her grandmother and the old woman’s attitude to life. There is no big reveal here, but it’s an engagingly strange and quietly effective piece.
*** (Good). 4,600 words.

Unmasking Black Bart by Joel Richards

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Unmasking Black Bart by Joel Richards (Asimov’s Science Fiction, January-February 2022) starts off with 43-year-old Connor on his way to a class reunion in the near-future. As he drives there the story’s plot devices are revealed—holo-masks, and a robber called Black Bart:

Connor couldn’t wear a mask at work. He was a police psychologist [. . .] and cops weren’t permitted to wear masks on duty. Transparency and accountability in law enforcement had mandated that exception to the libertarian and libertine ethos of the times wherein everyone had the right to represent his/her self as they wanted.
And many did, playing what role they wished.
Fantastical figures abounded. Historical personages, too, so long as they were dead. It was unlawful to represent as someone else still living. . . perhaps while robbing a bank or assaulting a neighbor.
Not that bank robbers had stopped robbing banks. Some who did masked themselves as John Dillinger or Jesse James or Bonnie and Clyde. A recent and active robber in these parts presented as Black Bart, augmenting his flour sack mask with Bart’s long duster coat, billycock derby hat, and penchant for leaving poems at the scenes of his exploits.  pp. 88-89

The rest of the story is basically a readable, if long-winded, piece about going to a high school reunion and all that entails—personalities, relationships, success, ageing, etc. Embedded in this is a thin plot thread which sees Connor socialise with another of the attendees, Harry, and (spoiler) sees him discover evidence that Harry may be Black Bart. The story closes with a third party account that makes this more probable.
It’s all a bit pointless, and this feels like a mainstream story in SF drag.
* (Mediocre). 6,300 words.

We Have Forever by Redfern Jon Barrett

Posted on by Paul Fraser

We Have Forever by Redfern Jon Barrett (ParSec #1, Autumn 2021) opens with one of the two narrators, Petra (her husband Felix is the other), meeting a man called Lorenzo at a party with what she thinks is his young mistress. When she objects (Petra knows Lorenzo’s wife) it materialises that the younger woman is his wife—she has had rejuvenation treatment.
The rest of the story alternates between Petra agonising about having the treatment herself (Felix is keen) and backstory about how the two came to meet before the fall of the Wall in East Germany (and eventually have kids). After an amount of this (spoiler), Petra and Felix have the treatment but she leaves him and ends up living with their son. The last line is:

I have a thousand lives ahead, and no more time to waste.  p. 45

Is suspect that the rejuvenation treatment is probably a metaphor for later-life couples growing apart and separating, but I was not convinced at all the hand-wringing that Petra does about whether or not to proceed (wait till you are in your sixties and you will see what I mean). Also, the arc of the story is quite slight.
This isn’t bad, but it’s essentially a mainstream story in drag.
** (Average). 3,350 words.

Christmas on Mars by William Morrison

Posted on by Paul Fraser

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

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

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

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

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

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

2. I reviewed Country Doctor here.

Winter Solstice by Mike Resnick

Posted on by Paul Fraser

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

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

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

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

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

Kitemaster by Keith Roberts

Posted on by Paul Fraser

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Bumblebee and the Berry by M. Bennardo

Posted on by Paul Fraser

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

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

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

Charioteer by Ted Rabinowitz

Posted on by Paul Fraser

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

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

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

Splitting a Dollar by Meghan Hyland

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Splitting a Dollar by Meghan Hyland (Analog, January-February 2022) is narrated by an AI which supervises a cache of advanced tech that has been left on the Moon by a previous human diaspora for future generations. The story opens with the AI watching two humans (“let’s you and I call them Amy and Brad”) approach.
The rest of the story is mostly about the disagreement between Amy and Brad about what they should take back to Earth: Amy wants equipment that will augment human intelligence; Brad wants to take back bacteria that can sieve out gold from mud. Then (spoiler) Brad punctures his suit, and Amy offers to trade her emergency O2 for his pouch space: he attacks her, she fends him off, and he is eventually forced to concede.
This is okay, I suppose, but I didn’t really buy the set-up, or the fact that they were supposed to be a couple (their arguments are contrived as well as irritating). And, a more minor point, the AI addressing the reader at the beginning of the story breaks suspension of disbelief.
** (Average). 5,200 words.

Track of a Legend by Cynthia Felice

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Track of a Legend by Cynthia Felice (Omni, December 1983) takes place at unspecified point in the future (but after a “Christmas Treaty of ’55”) and is narrated by a schoolgirl. After some preliminary scene setting at school, she goes on a sledging trip with a friend called Timothy to the top of a nearby hill where the latter’s aunt lives in a metal cylinder (the aunt came back from space after the treaty of ’55, and doesn’t go out because of agoraphobia). Their outing ends when they throw snowballs at the video sensors on the house, and the aunt sets her robotic grass cutter on them—they only just get over the big fence in time. As they return home they note the large footprints of a legendary creature they refer to as Bigfoot, and arrange to go hunting for it after Christmas Day.
The second act opens on Christmas morning, when the narrator finds that her parents have got her a new sledge—so she sets off for the hill. Once she arrives she notes the recent large snowfall and decides to build a ramp at the fence to use as ski ramp at the end of her downhill run. Subsequently (spoiler), she misses the ramp and ends up stuck upside down on the fence. Then, when she hears something moving behind her later on, she fears it is Bigfoot, but the thing unhooking her from the fence turns out to be someone in a mechanical space-suit: we realise that the Timothy’s aunt is “Bigfoot”.
This is a relatively plotless narrative with little in the way of complication, but it has an interesting setting and it’s well told. A minor, but pleasant, story.
*** (Good). 5,050 words. Story link.