Tag: Asimov's SF

Maryon’s Gift by Paul McAuley

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Maryon’s Gift by Paul McAuley (Asimov’s SF, March-April 2022) is (we eventually discover) a campfire story told by an alien !Cha, and initially tells of an explorer called Iryna who discovers a virgin planet but chooses not to land there. Instead, she gifts the exploration rights to her niece (the Maryon of Maryon’s Gift), who then transfers them to a Gaian sect who set up defence drones around the planet to keep it in a virgin state.
Later, various intruders try to come through the nearby wormhole and land on the planet—but only two get close: one is a young fellow who hides in one of the supply ships and plans to surf through the atmosphere; the other is the Admiral, Iryna’s world-hunting rival:

He called himself the Admiral, although he had never held that rank, having only briefly served as a rating in the Commons police. He was around a hundred and fifty years old and claimed to be much older, and had spun a cocoon of vivid stories about himself, for he was not only a skilled and fearless explorer, but also a tireless self-mythologizer. We knew each other quite well—I had once traveled with him and the circus of his entourage for a couple of years—but even I do not know his true name or origin. Fame had displaced everything he had once been. No one believed the stories he had spun about himself more than he did, and as Iryna predicted, he was supremely irritated when he heard that she had discovered a habitable but untouched world and had taken steps to ensure that it would remain pristine. It was forbidden fruit, as in one of your myths, and there was nothing more that he craved, for he was a full-blown believer in the fitness of humanity to claim all the worlds in the galactic network, and the worlds beyond it, too. To step from star to star, galaxy to galaxy. To prove that humans were greater than any other client species and might even be their secret masters—he liked to promote the story that the Jackaroo were the distant descendants of the human species and had used tweaked wormholes to travel back in time to ensure their eventual triumph on the galactic stage.  p. 130

The Admiral (spoiler) starts a huge diversionary battle near the wormhole and sneaks through the main defences in a multi-shelled stealth ship. However, he is caught in a net near the planet and burns up in the atmosphere.
The !Cha narrator finishes his tale with some philosophical observations, one of which concerns whether or not its story is really finished.
This is more an account than a story, but I found it an interestingly detailed and imaginative one. Reader reaction to the passage above will likely predict their enjoyment of the piece.
*** (Good). 4,150 words.

The Gold Signal by Jack McDevitt & Larry Wasserman

Posted on by Paul Fraser

The Gold Signal by Jack McDevitt & Larry Wasserman (Asimov’s SF, March-April 2022) opens with the English teacher narrator and her scientist friend (they were in the Girl Scouts together) listening to an incoming message from a probe that has arrived at Proxima Centauri, four light-years away, after a twenty-three year journey. At the end of this section there is a moan about the amount of space junk in Earth orbit, and how it is hampering—and possibly preventing—any further missions (there have already been catastrophic accidents).
The next part of the story sees the scientist friend develop an FTL drive that is eventually tested on a flight to Jupiter (they use a previously abandoned probe in Earth orbit rather than ship all the parts up there). More complaints about space junk. The FTL ship, after a successful test flight, later sets off towards a plant called Wolf.
When the ship arrives there (spoiler), Earth (eventually) receives messages saying that they have discovered an abandoned alien ship, and then abandoned alien cities and planets. There is one final moan about space junk before the scientist observes, “It’s kind of like having invented the radio in a place that has no electricity”.
What is the point of this?
* (Mediocre). 4,150 words.

Do You Remember by Steven Rasnic Tem

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Do You Remember by Steven Rasnic Tem (Asimov’s SF, March-April 2022) opens with an elderly man called Roy going to the topmost room in his house to speak to a screen simulation of his dead wife Susan. After we witness a few of the, sometimes imperfect, conversations between the two, Roy’s daughter Elaine (who is cool on the simulation idea) visits along with granddaughter Jane and a baby grandson.
When Jane asks to go up and see her grandmother, Elaine isn’t keen, but she allows her to go. While Jane is upstairs, Elaine asks her father some difficult questions:

Elaine gazed at the infant, stroking his hair. “Does it cost a lot, the maintenance, the remote storage, whatever’s involved?”
“I can afford the fee. You remember, I was good with a budget.”
“Did she even want this?”
He wasn’t sure how to answer. “You knew your mother. She wanted me to have anything that might help me, or any of us. Otherwise, all I can say is the idea didn’t seem to bother her much.”
“Because she wouldn’t be aware of it. She’d be gone.” She leaned over and smelled the baby’s head.
He watched the child stir, fuss, then go back to sleep. “I think—” He stopped. “That’s right. She’d be gone.”
Elaine turned her head away from her son to look at him. “Dad, after you die, am I supposed to keep her, put her someplace in my house and visit her like you do, pay for all that? Is that what I’m supposed to do? And then am I supposed to keep both of you around after you die? Am I supposed to like having ghosts in my house?”
Roy hadn’t considered any of this. He should have. “It’s okay, honey. You’re free to do whatever you need to do for you and your family.”
“You make it sound like it’s not going to be hard.”  p. 155

When Jane comes downstairs she tells her mother that simulation-Susan would like to see her and the baby. Elaine and the grandson go upstairs.
The story then skips forward a generation to a time when the granddaughter Jane has her own children, and is taking them to Memorial Plaza. We learn that this is a place where people can talk to various historical figures, and where her children will be able to talk to their great-grandparents Susan and Roy. At the end of the story Jane’s children ask if they can also talk to their grandmother Elaine (Roy’s reluctant daughter): Jane tells them that their grandmother didn’t want to leave a simulation behind after she died.
This has an impressively contemplative first half, but the second part doesn’t really go anywhere—the reveal of Elaine’s refusal to do the same as her parents isn’t really enough to complete the story other than in a cursory fashion. I couldn’t help but think that this is the seed of a longer, and more profound and satisfying, story.
** (Average). 4,200 words.

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.

Offloaders by Leah Cypess

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Offloaders by Leah Cypess (Asimov’s SF, March-April 2022) is a series of social media messages in a freecycle group which start with Liz giving away twenty bags of clothes, sourdough starter (“prefer to give to someone who will use it”), and a blue size 6 dress. Another member, Olwu, immediately asks why Liz is giving away the dress when she looked “awesome” in it at the gala last year. Olwu’s questions quickly become an accusation that Liz is “uploading”, and matters quickly spiral off-topic from there:

Matti: Look, I don’t want to sound preachy, but our planet can no longer sustain us physically. If those of us who can afford to upload don’t do it now, we’re basically consigning the rest of humanity to extinction. And humanity contains a disproportionate number of women and people of color. So here’s our choice: be selfish, wait until our world is uninhabitable and it’s too late for everyone else, and then upload and save ourselves. Or upload now and help everyone. It’s our moral and civic duty.
Olwu: *message deleted*
Matti: *message deleted*
Liz: Dress claimed! Sourdough starter still available.
Matti: Passing this book along: UPLOAD: Humanity’s New Stage and How It Can Benefit Us All.
Olwu: SERIOUSLY? @Moderator, please.
Matti: I’m sorry, are there rules about what we’re allowed to give away on this group?
Olwu: So if someone was trying to give away a gun, would you be okay with THAT?
Matti: *eye-roll 3D gif* Yeah, that’s exactly the same.
Steph: I’m sorry, but what would be the problem with giving away a gun? It’s probably illegal to not allow that.
Sima (moderator): Guns are not allowed, and let’s steer clear of anything having to do with uploading, too, please. I have a day job, you know. I can’t spend every second monitoring this group.  p. 161

Short and quite amusing to begin with, but it runs out of steam at the end.
** (Average). 1,500 words.

Dollbot Cicily by Will McIntosh

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Dollbot Cicily by Will McIntosh opens with Cicily, the down-on-her-luck narrator, in a burger joint eating her basic menu food and browsing gig economy jobs when she is hassled by a young man. He asks her if she was the original model for his dollbot (sexbot). She rebuffs him but, after she leaves the restaurant, he and his (premium menu) friends hassle her again:

I picked up my pace as Red Sideburns’ friends raced from across the street to intercept me. One was carrying a lifesized female dollbot in a negligee. I wound through pedestrians.
“Just look,” Red Sideburns called. “Tell me this isn’t you.”
They weren’t going to give up. I’d have to make a scene. I stopped short, spun to face them. “Leave me alone. Stop following me, or I’ll call the police.”
One of the premium boys was holding the doll out, its lifelike nipples visible through gossamer fabric.
It looked exactly like me.
Not sort of. Not even, Oh what a strange coincidence. Exactly like me, down to the freckle. Down to the crescent-shaped scar on my knee I’d gotten roller-skating when I was ten, although not the long surgery scar on my shoulder that I got in the car accident.
A small crowd had formed. They looked at the doll, back at me. I was blinking and swallowing. A teenaged boy let out a high-pitched giggle.
“Were you the model for the body, or just the face? It’s hard to imagine this body is under those clothes.” Red Sideburns gestured at me with his chin, his gaze locked on my chest.
The boy holding the doll switched it on. Its eyes rolled open, revealing my light brown irises, flecked with hazel. The doll turned its head from side to side, taking in the scene.
“Is this a gang-bang?” she asked brightly. “You know me, I love a good gang-bang.”  p. 54-55

If this squirm-worthy (and unlikely) encounter doesn’t put you off reading further, the story then sees Cicily set off to her home in a drainage tunnel (I wasn’t kidding when I said she was down on her luck). On the way there she realises that the 3D images used in the dollbot’s construction probably came from a previous modelling job she had when she was younger.
When Cicily arrives home she tells her friend what happened to her before she changes her appearance (during this section we also learn that Cicily is a single mother whose child is in the temporary care of Child Protection Services—something that will become permanent if she can’t get some money together).
The now disguised Cicily starts looking for gig jobs repairing Cicily dollbots so she can learn more about them, and her first customer (of three) is Conrad, a seventy-something “old bastard” who Cicily notes isn’t even “mildly embarrassed” at getting his “fuck doll” repaired, and who refuses to pay when she leaves a scar on the dollbot after she has finished. Cicily, seeking revenge, quickly installs a patch to the dollbot’s software that lets her remotely telepresence to it later that evening. When Cicily does so, she finds the old man asking his dollbot to the prom, at which point she starts overriding the software and giving her own replies to his conversation. Later on she uses the override to take a hundred dollar bill and throw it outside the window while Conrad is having a shower.
Cicily later sets up the same scam with two other dollbot users, Jasper (a sensitive type who reads Anna Karenina to her) and Joey (who runs nine different types of dollbot, “a veritable United Nations of ethnicities”, through various fashion or strip shows, etc.). These jobs take place in the same time period that Cicily visits her daughter, who has been rented out as child labour by CPS to do hazardous tasks. We also, at another point in the story, see Cicliy almost drowned in the tunnel when it floods.
Over time (spoiler), Cicily become increasingly attracted to Jasper—he thinks his dollbot has become sentient, and they (Jasper and the dolbot, with Cicily telepresent) later go away for a couple of nights to a dollbot conference. Eventually, of course, this burgeoning relationship turns out too good to be true, and Jasper loses his temper when he and the dollbot (Cicily) argue: he goes on to trash and bury the dollbot.
Some time after this pivotal event Jasper summons Cicily to repair his dollbot and, once she has finished, she slips into the bathroom before leaving to change her appearance back to what it was before her encounter with the Premium boys at the start of the story. Cicily gives a stunned Jasper his money back and (essentially) dumps him out of a relationship that he never knew he had, giving him some life advice on the way out the door (peak irony from someone who is living in a drainage tunnel, is a voyeur and thief, and is perilously close to losing custody of her only daughter).
The final scenes see Cicily steal a lot of money from Conrad (she has the dollbot make it look like the money is burnt so it isn’t reported as stolen) and, on the way to recover her daughter from CPS, she telepresences to Joey’s dollbot and throws all his other bots out the tower block window before making the Cicily dollbot do the same.
On finishing the story I thought it reasonably well done (McIntosh creates entertaining and/or amusing plots), but the more I thought about it the more the piece soured. This reaction was, I eventually realised, due to the story’s facile worldview and its stereotypical characters—the three rich, male (and probably white) characters (as well as the Premium boys at the beginning) are all portrayed as losers, weirdos, scumbags, or all three—even Jasper, who Cicily is attracted to at one point, flies into a deranged rage towards the end of his story arc. Meanwhile, our hero Cicily is painted as a sexually and economically oppressed single-mother. These are, essentially, clichéd identarian characterisations that stem from viewing sex and wealth through the lens of critical theory, where men are always oppressors and women always the oppressed (likewise for the “rich” and “poor”). These binaries also suggest that Cicily has never had any agency in, or responsibility for, anything that has ever happened in her life.
The other thing that bothered me is the way that reader sympathy is manipulated—I’ve already described what the men are like, but more troubling is the story’s portrayal of Cicily as some sort of hero, even though she is someone who, with her gross invasion of privacy, thefts, and criminal damage, is more unpleasant than any of the men—unless, I guess, you subscribe to the idea that, if you are in the oppressed class, anything you do to your oppressors is fair game (for Old Testament types, think “an eye for an eye”). That can, of course, mean you end up as morally repellent as your so-called “oppressors”.
If you can stomach the above, there may be something for you here.
∗∗ (Average). 17,350 words.

Aurora by Michael Cassutt

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Aurora by Michael Cassutt (Asimov’s SF, March-April 2022) begins with Vera Vorobyova, the seventy-nine-year-old retired director of a Russian “science institute” north of the Arctic Circle, summoned to a meeting at her old workplace. When she gets there she is met by the new director, Nikitin, a “networked” individual who has implants that connect him to his colleagues. Nikitin tells Vorobyova that a returning spaceship is in trouble and doesn’t have the fuel to avoid an asteroid on its route. He then asks about Search, a mothballed energy beam weapon used once over two decades ago when she was the director (and which created a new crater on the Moon).
The rest of the story sees Vorobyova help them get Search operational to fire at the asteroid, an experience which sees her pendulum from providing essential information (she initially finds hardcopy manuals in the basement when she learns the digital archives have been deleted) to being completely ignored. During the latter periods she goes back to her flat, drinks heavily, and thinks about the past:

She was [. . .] unhappy, questioning everything from her constant drinking and lack of goals to every decision she had made since the age of twenty-nine, including her turn away from research to administration, then every financial and personnel choice she had made on her path to the directorship—and as director.
She had not applied to work at Aurora. She was busy at the Institute for Applied Physics in the capital and expected to spend her entire career there. She had only heard of Aurora because its northern sky surveys had appeared in some popular science publication.
[. . .]
Other than a single visit for her mother’s funeral, she had not returned to the capital, [and] aside from two fleeting, furtive affairs, Vera had made no deep personal connections in forty years.  pp. 107-108

Vorobyova is, however, more proactive than this sad-sack description might suggest and, after some more back and forth (she later provides a firing code), Vorobyova realises, when she looks at photographs of the asteroids flat surface (spoiler), that it may reflect back enough of Search’s electromagnetic energy to affect Nikitin and the other networked humans. With the clock ticking down she then struggles to contact him or get into the facility.
The story eventually ends with her and Nikitin firing the device after the others are evacuated, and saving the ship. The reflected energy mostly lands elsewhere, and Nikitin’s companions are affected but they can be repaired. Nikitin then tells Vorobyova that there is now no longer an age limit on the process so she can be networked too.
The best parts of this story for me were the setting, Vorobyova’s alcoholic melancholy, and the initial part of the plot. The latter part of the story, where the suspense increases, seemed a little formulaic; I also didn’t entirely buy the science (the Earth would have moved in space during the time between firing and the reflection); finally, the revelation that Vorobyova can be networked and lead a different life is a twist too far. Still, it’s not a bad read for the most part, especially if you have a penchant (as I do) for gloomy Russian novels.
*** (Good). 11,750 words.

Sailing to Merinam by Marta Randall

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Sailing to Merinam by Marta Randall (Asimov’s SF, March-April 2022) has the narrator onboard a boat that is taking a group of male passengers (unpleasant religious types) from Cherek to Merinam. As the story progresses we find out that the narrator is intersex, but is disguised as a man, and that they can conjure up the wind by singing. Both of these would be intolerable to the Merinami passengers:

What do these stern people and their ugly religion do to people like me, women who are not boys and boys who are not girls, people who sing, people who whistle up the wind? [. . .] If the yellow priest knew he would have hurled that accusation at me. Worse than singing or being inbetween, worse than being in disguise? What do the Merinami do to singing witches wearing the wrong clothing? Will they try to hang me and drown me both? My knees give out and I scoot backward under my master’s bunk, where the ship’s cat finds me and head-butts my thigh until I make a lap for her, she hops into it, I lift her and rub my face against her belly. Warmth, softness, purring, I begin to catch my breath.  p. 86

After various events (the narrator saves a sailor caught by a rope, is seen momentarily conjuring the wind by singing, etc.), the Yellow Priest of the Merinami accuses them of being a woman. After a period of confinement (spoiler) they are brought in front of the captain. The narrator then conjures the wind and a huge wave that has the face of the Sea God. This briefly imperils the boat but, after the vessel has stabilised, the captain orders everyone below deck and the narrator is not troubled further.
After the ship reaches Merinam, and the passengers are disembarked, she becomes one of the crew (the captain is a pragmatist who realises the value of someone who can summon the wind).
I thought this was quite good, mostly because it is one of those immersive pieces1 that you can lose yourself in—and it has an arc/plot as well. I hope this is the first of a series.
***+ (Good to Very Good). 5,000 words.

1. Although the prose is better than normal, there are some very odd sentences which look more like copy-editing mistakes than stylistic choices by the author:

They don’t like it [on deck] for the wind and the spray they are, I think, afraid of the ship of the sea of the crew of the captain.  p. 84

Is this supposed to be “They don’t like it there because of the wind and spray and are, I think, afraid of the sea and the crew and the captain.” If not, I’m not sure this jumbled sentence structure tells us anything about the character or is enough to make it stream-of-consciousness.
There is also this:

He raises an eyebrow. You have no interest in Merinami religion I know you too well, if you have done anything, Nothing just curious, that’s all, perhaps, I offer, disingenuous, they consider it a sin if someone can carry a tune.  p. 85

I suspect there are other examples I missed.

Why I’ll Never Get Tenure by Peter Wood

Posted on by Paul Fraser 1 Comment on Why I’ll Never Get Tenure by Peter Wood

Why I’ll Never Get Tenure by Peter Wood (Asimov’s SF, July-August 2020) starts on the Frying Pan Tower (modelled on an oil rig), where the narrator, a physics professor called Kate Nardozi, watches as “huge bursts of sand bubble up through the shallow water.” When the event is over, she calls her robot Mitch and asks him how big the new atoll is: nine hundred and twelve feet.
After this confusing start we get information about gravity wave transmitters and “quantum sparks” before Kate’s ex-girlfriend and her boyfriend Duke (another academic) turn up. The rest of the story sees land and sea continue to swap, and romantic and academic competition between Kate and Duke. Eventually they all land up on a ship that runs aground, and Kate finds that Duke has tampered with her gravity machine. Then the robot goes back in time to stop it all happening in the first place.
I know that this is supposed to be a tongue-in-cheek piece but the story’s odd events are hard to follow, and it’s not amusing.
* (Mediocre). 4,150 words.

Generations by Megan Lindholm

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Generations by Megan Lindholm (Asimov’s SF, July-August 2020) is a short squib that opens with a young woman waiting with a wheelchair for an elderly auntie. At first we think that this is happening at an airport, but when the auntie arrives it soon becomes clear (spoiler) that they are in a park, and that she is an exhausted superhero who has just finished saving people from a fire. I’m not sure what the point of this is supposed to be.
* (Mediocre). 950 words.