Tag: 2020

The Mermaid Astronaut by Yoon Ha Lee

Posted on by Paul Fraser

The Mermaid Astronaut by Yoon Ha Lee (Beneath Ceaseless Skies #298, 27th February 2020)1 has a title that pretty much describes the story: a mermaid called Essarala wants to travel among the stars but lives in a planet-bound culture. Then, when an interstellar trading ship arrives in orbit for the first time, Essarala thinks she may have found a way off-planet—until she realises that the ship has no water for a mer to live in. Her sister Kiovasa suggests they should visit the witch beneath the waves for help.
After arriving at the witch’s lair, and discussing the matter with her—during which the witch gives warnings about the dangers and difficulties that will lie ahead—she says that she can give Essarala two legs like the humans. Essarala is determined to go and, even though she doesn’t understand everything the witch has warned her about, asks what the price is. The witch replies that one day Essarala will want to come home and, when she does, she should visit her again. Then the witch gives her a knife that will cleave her tail into two legs.
Later, after Essarala has cut herself and been accepted onto the crew, she is given to an alien called Ssen to be mentored. We see her develop as a crew member, and learn about some of her adventures:

Essarala learned to fly in skysuits in vast and turbulent gas planets, some of which had corrosive atmospheres. She saw twin sunsets over methane seas and meteor showers flung across brilliantine nighttime skies. She walked through forests of towering trees sharded through with crystal and breathed in the fragrance of flowers that bloomed only once a millennium. And she kept her promise, too: for every world she visited, she sang her sister’s name.

Someday I will go back and tell her of the things I have seen, Essarala thought again and again. But not yet, not yet.

Then, towards the end of the story (spoiler), Ssen teaches Essarala about special relativity, and she realises that time will be passing much more quickly for her sister on her world. Essarala begs the captain and crew to take her back home, and they generously do so. As soon as they arrive Essarala visits the witch as promised, to be told that the old woman will shortly die and that, given the wisdom she has gained on her travels, Essarala will replace her . Then the witch tells Essarala that her sister is still alive but that she doesn’t have long left. Essarala goes to find her, and the story ends with the two sisters together.2
I thought the idea of telling an SF story as a fantasy tale worked very well here (it’s possible to view the severing of her tail to become two legs, etc., as unexplained superscience), and it is an enjoyable and original piece. I also thought Lee’s elegant and concise writing style added to the story. The ending is perhaps not as strong as the rest of it, but that is a minor quibble.3
***+ (Good to very good.) 5,950 words. [Story]

1. This is a finalist for the Sturgeon and short story Hugo Awards for 2021.

2. There is a dedication at the end of the story to Lee’s sister.

3. Some of the commenters in one of my (private) FB groups (The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Short Fiction) thought that the lack of foreboding at the end of the story was a weakness. I thought that the uncertainty about her sister provided that.

Little Free Library by Naomi Kritzer

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Little Free Library by Naomi Kritzer (Tor.com, April 8th, 2020)1 begins with Meigan building a “Little Free Library” and mounting it on a post outside her house. She puts her unwanted books in it and leaves instructions to “take a book, return a book”. For a short while things proceed as expected, until one day she notices all the books have gone.
Meigan leaves a note to the person concerned pointing out what the rules are. Then, at the end of the same day, she notices that on this occasion only one book has been taken but, rather than leaving a book in exchange, there is a hand-carved whistle on top of the shelves. This object is the first of a series of (increasingly otherworldly) items that are left in exchange for the Meigan’s books: strangely coloured feathers, a green leaf (in February) that looks like a Maple but isn’t, a “carved stone animal too abstract to identify”, etc.
Simultaneous with this the mysterious borrower starts leaving notes (asking if there is a sequel to The Fellowship of the Ring, apologising for the day they took all the books, etc.), and a correspondence develops between the two.
Then (spoiler), Meigan leaves out a book titled Defending Your Castle:

That book was gone the next day.
And a day later, a tiny, glinting gold coin was left behind, with another letter.

To the librarian,
I do not know what I did to deserve the favor of the Gods, but I am grateful, so grateful, for your kindness to me. I believed our cause to be lost; I believed that I would never have the opportunity to avenge what was done to my family; now, suddenly, I have been gifted with a way forward.
Blessings on you.
It you can bring me more such books, I will leave you every scrap of gold I can find.

The gold coin was a tiny disk, the size of a dime but thinner. There was an image of a bird with spread wings stamped into one side; the other showed either a candelabra or a rib cage, Meigan wasn’t sure. Meigan’s kitchen scale thought the coin weighed four grams, which-if it was actually gold-was over $100 worth of gold. Of course, most gold-colored metal items weren’t actually gold, but … it was noticeably heavy for its tiny size, and when she tried a magnet, it was most definitely not magnetic. In theory she could have bitten it, but she didn’t want to mess up the pictures stamped in.
For the first time, she felt a pang of uncertainty.

The borrower (who appears to live in another world) later reveals that their Queen has been usurped, and that, with Meigan’s help (a series of books on warfare), they are going to attempt to regain her throne.
Meigan subsequently provides a series of useful books and accumulates a supply of gold coins in return—and then her correspondent falls silent, before communicating once more at the end of the story to say their cause is lost. The final object they leave is a wooden box, and a request that she keeps the contents safe:

She opened the box.
Nestled inside the wood was a straw lining—and an egg.
It was large—not enormous like an ostrich egg but it filled the palm of her hand. It was silvery green in color, with markings that looked almost like scales.

The egg is the Queen’s child.
This is a well done and charming piece that crams a lot into its short length, but it was too open-ended for me (although I thought the ending quite clever). I wonder if there will be further stories revealing what happened next.
Overall *** (Good). 2,500 words.

1. This story came top of the Locus Poll for Best Short Story and was a Hugo finalist.

Moral Biology by Neal Asher

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Moral Biology by Neal Asher (Analog, May-June 2020) begins by introducing one of the story’s main characters in a passage that shows his enhanced senses, as well as the information density of the prose:

As Perrault entered the room he quickly closed the anosmic receptors running in lines across his face like tribal markings, retaining the use only of those within his nose. The air was laden with pheromones, and he really had no need for further input on Gleeson’s readiness for sex with Arbeck. Just walking through the door had been enough. Gleeson sat with her rump against her desk while Arbeck, his camo shirt hanging open to reveal the tight musculature of his chest, sat in one of the chairs facing her, his legs akimbo. Their conversation ceased and she looked up at Perrault, quickly snatching her hand away from fondling with her hair, doubtless aware of everything he could read. He glanced at them, taking in their dynamic and almost breaking into laughter at Arbeck’s pose, then focused on other aspects of the room as he headed for the other chair. He blinked through the spectrum, seeing the so recognizable heat patterns on Gleeson’s skin, listened in on the EMR chatter of the ship, then shut it out as irrelevant, measured shapes in conjunction throughout the space that hinted at shadow languages and esoteric meaning, and then shut that down too.
“Do we have further data?” he asked mildly.  p. 38

It soon becomes apparent from the conversation that follows that the three of them, Perrault, Arbeck (the science lead on their expedition), and Gleeson (a “Golem android”), are above an alien planet that has orbital defences pointing downwards rather than out into space—an attempt, they believe, to quarantine the planet. After they finish discussing their situation they prepare, alongside their accompanying troops, to go down to the planet. During this we further learn that (a) they will be encased in gel pods as they descend (in case they are attacked by the orbital defences), (b) that they are going to investigate a huge life-form that has been detected in the tunnels below, and (c) Perrault intends using a device called a “shroud” on the planet’s surface, a symbiotic biotech device that looks like a truncated stingray and with which he has a strange emotional and psychological bond.
As they descend, their craft is indeed attacked by the defence system but, as they expect, it does not entirely destroy them, and the pods are ejected. They all land safely but are widely scattered. When Perrault is subsequently contacted by Arbeck, the security team leader, he is told he will be recovered in several hours and to remain where he is. Perrault has other ideas:

Obviously Arbeck, despite being a Golem, didn’t have much idea of Perrault’s capabilities. He undid his straps, reached forward, and hauled up the shroud case. It had been his intention to put the thing on at a later juncture after Gleeson had studied some of the tunnels, but now was as good a time as any.
[. . .]
Every time he used the thing it became more difficult to take it off, and he became more eager to put it on the next time. It increased the functionality of his enhanced senses in ways that were addictive which, in itself, wasn’t a problem.
The problem was that the increased functionality in this respect made him a less able member of normal Polity society. It made him strange.
He opened his envirosuit, stripped it off his arms and upper body and folded it down to his waist, then, raising his backside, pushed it further down to his thighs, partially detaching the rectal catheter. He then opened the case, reached inside, and pressed his hand down on the fishy skin, chemically accepting its willingness to detach from its support gear. It rose up out of its packing, flexing its wing limbs, shivered when he took hold of the nodular mass at its head end. He lifted it up with both hands, leaned forward, and swung its heavy wet weight round onto his back. The tail inserted in the crevice of his buttocks and found the side port of the catheter—it would excrete its waste there. It clung to his back, shifting round into the correct position. He felt the junction holes open down his sides and in his spine and the cold insertion of its connectors. Taking off the pod goggles, he pulled open the nodular protrusion, then slipped it over his head where it formed an organic mask, probing to his anosmic and EMR receptors, and additional nerve clusters that linked to his brain. The whole thing began to settle.
He could feel the cold growth of the nanofibers in his spine and in his skull, and then came connection and his limited vista inside the pod opened out into a world. He felt complete. p. 43

Later, after Perrault has hacked the pod software and released himself, a group of alien spike gibbon aliens hunt him but, with the enhanced abilities the shroud confers, he is able to sense a range of electromagnetic, auditory, and chemical input—by the time Arbeck arrives, Perrault has learned the gibbon’s ultrasonic language and the shroud is manufacturing pheromones to control them.
The rest of the story sees the Arbeck and his security team collect Gleeson and the others, and their field work begins. Soon afterwards, though, they are attacked by spider-like creatures. After killing a number of them, Mobius Clean, the shadowy AI in the background of the story, tells Arbeck that it wants one of the spider creatures dissected to look for biotech (and also mentions that the creature in the tunnel isn’t native to the planet but a colonist).
Further complications ensue (spoiler): Gleeson finds the hard storage she was looking for on the bodies and attempts to decipher it with her “aug” (augmentation device), but it overwhelms her and gives her convulsions. Simultaneous with this Perrault senses a chaotic radio pulse, a burst of language that he initially struggles to process, but which eventually makes him think that the creature in the tunnels has a strong sense of morality (a feeling reinforced by the fact that, although they were attacked on their descent, they were not killed). Then there is a final onslaught by pig-like aliens, after which Perrault finally manages to speak to the creature below. It tells them it does not want them to approach it but, after a couple more attempts to dissuade Perrault’s team fail, it eventually gives up.
The final section reveals that the creature’s species originally used star-faring creatures to spread its seed throughout the universe, but that they stopped doing so for moral reasons. Hence their attempts to stop anyone approaching them, and subjecting them to the temptation to do so.
This story gets off to an engaging start, and there are many enjoyable sections along the way (mostly involving Perrault, the superman/super symbiote), but there is far too much description of matters that do not need a lot of detail. This means that the story is longer than it should be, and sometimes feels like it has the same pace throughout—regardless of what is happening. I’d add that this is more of a problem at the end of the story than the start as, in that first part, you are being treated to the highlights of the detailed universe created in a number of Asher’s novels (Perrault and his shroud, Arbeck the ex-war drone AI in a humanoid body, Mobius Clean, etc., etc.).1
For an example of this over-description, look at this passage from the penultimate section of the story:

They set off toward the mound, and Perrault soon found himself scrambling up a slope over boulders. At the top the soldiers cleared some debris then set out the tents. Dasheel began hammering in small posts all around. As Perrault moved out past these and seated himself on a boulder, the man then set up a couple of inflatable tripods and on each mounted pulse rifles. Shortly after this he set out with a handful of small silvery spikes Perrault recognized as seismic detectors. It seemed evident now Dasheel’s expertise, or at least one of them, lay in setting up defensive positions.  p. 66

At this point in the story (p. 28 of 33) who cares about such quotidian tasks as setting up a camp, or what Dasheel’s abilities are? This passage should have been one sentence, “When they got to the top of the mound they set up camp, and surrounded it with automatic pulse-rifles and the silvery spikes of seismic detectors.” Or even less than that.
Despite this grousing the story’s not bad overall, but it could certainly have benefited from some decent editing.
*** (Good). 23,800 words.

1. This story is set in Asher’s ‘Polity’ universe.

Flyboys by Stanley Schimidt

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Flyboys by Stanley Schimidt (Analog, July-August 2020) is a sequel to his novel Night Ride and Sunrise (Analog, July-August to November 2015), and opens with an alien called “Bob” watching his son Junior make his first flight from his mother’s home to an all-male settlement called Surfcrag. During the pair’s transit there, and also from later on in the story, we learn that (a) the flying adult males live separately from the females on this planet, (b) they are nocturnal and eat flying insects, and (c) that humans have settled on other parts of their continent. We also find out about a recent conflict between the humans and the aliens which ended with an agreement to peacefully co-exist (as the humans are stranded on the planet and cannot leave).
The day after Junior has been welcomed to the lodge at Surfcrag, Bob is approached by another male called Highguard, who tries to recruit him to a movement that will drive the humans off their land (during this we learn that there is yet another, malevolent, group of humans on a different part of the planet). Bob tells Highguard he will have nothing to do with his plans.
Shortly after this conversation Junior disappears, and the story then alternates between his point of view and Bob’s. Junior is taken by two males to another place called High and Mighty, where Highguard makes another recruiting effort. Junior isn’t having any of it though, and escapes, giving his pursuers the slip before he goes to hide with his mother in Surfcrag:

He found Sylvie in her shop, absorbed in tinkering with a new variation of her steam engine.
He rushed right in after a hasty “Here I am” from the hall. He closed the door behind him as he said, “Hi, Mom.”
She looked up with a quick kaleidoscope of emotions on her face: surprise, confusion, delight, and deep concern. “Junior?” she said, in Shetalk, since that was what she could speak.
“What are you doing here? You just left. What brings you back so soon?” She looked him up and down, and the concern became dominant. “What happened to you?” She hop-slithered down off her workbench and skittered over on her four short legs to paw and sniff at him.
“I’m all right,” he said reassuringly, in He-talk (since that was what he could speak). “But something’s come up. Maybe a danger for all of us. I need to talk to you.” He gestured toward her bench. “Why don’t you climb back up there and make yourself comfortable?” As she did, he hopped onto one of the room’s two male-perches so they could talk on each other’s eye level.
“Okay, first,” he said, “you want to know what happened to me because I look like I’ve been through some ordeal. It’s not quite that bad, but I’ve been flying longer, harder, and faster than I should without a break. Two guys were chasing me. Bad guys, in my opinion, and I think you’ll agree.”  p. 64

The passage above illustrates some of the story’s problems. First, it reads like clunky YA; second, aliens speaking and acting like a 1950’s American suburban family is a real suspension-of-disbelief killer (the physical differences, sex-separation, nocturnal flying, and insect eating all feel pretty much tacked on); third, it has pages of talking heads who describe things that have already happened in the story.
The rest of the this piece doesn’t improve (spoiler): Junior goes to see his girl, Coppersmith; Bob contacts the humans to inform them of the threat from Highguard, and also to ask for help in locating his son; Bob and a human called Luke find Junior after a helicopter search; the matter goes to the alien council—who then catch and try the conspirators. The story ends with clash-of-culture speeches from Highguard and Junior (who is renamed Peacesaver).
There is too much dialogue in this, and too much running around; it’s also derivative, and longer than it needs to be. All in all it resembles a dull story from a 1960’s issue of the magazine.
* (Mediocre). 21,000 words.

Sticks and Stones by Tom Jolly

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Sticks and Stones by Tom Jolly (Analog, July/August 2020) gets off to a slow start with the narrator, Anita, watching the body of a suicide being put out of the lock of her relativistic cold-sleep spaceship Beagle-4. Afterwards Anita talks to the captain of the ship and a sentient slime called Rosie and, during this conversation, they receive a message from the Boden colony, which reports that there is a system near them with two odd planets, one of which is a gas giant, and another which may be hollow. The Beagle-4 sets off for the system. A year later the ship arrives and the remainder of the crew woken up from cold sleep.
Much of the rest of the first part of the story concerns their investigation of the second planet—Hermit’s Cave—which they decide is either (a) a hollowed out and reinforced planet or (b) a vast girder connected structure. Later a team is sent out to investigate and, as they descend between the huge asteroid-size chunks that are wired together, they discover an atmosphere and then, deeper down, an increasingly complex ecosystem of flying celephapod-like creatures:

Outside, the plants were starting to thicken. Marko slowed the ship again so they could observe the area in more detail. Vines crawled for hundreds of meters onto the interconnecting trusses, some completely covered as detritus from above filled in the gaps in the truss structure, creating bridges of soil between asteroids, though there was no indication of any corrosion on the trusses. The tops of many asteroids were also covered with soil and plants, from patchy collections of what looked like low mosses and lichen, to taller, broader plants farther in. Tendrils of vines hung from the sides of the asteroids like straggly beards. The terraced nature of the asteroids in the planetary bowl structure presented a bright edge at the side of the bowl that faded softly into deep shadows broken by intermittent slashes of light, the internal surfaces partly illuminated by the reflected glow of the hazy skies. Some flying creatures darted past the ship, startled from their perches on rocks and plants. They glided on thin membranes extending out from their sides, eyes forward, thin tentacles trailing behind.  p. 30

After the three crew land and disembark on one of the asteroids one of them is killed by a large flying creature, and Anita and Marko follow it to its lair to try and retrieve the body. While they are doing this they find a box in what looks like a control room, later found to contain documents that tell of a race of now extinct aliens which suffered disaster due to a wandering star and then built Hermit’s World from debris. The crew of the Beagle-4 work out that the aliens’ original home planet is half a light year away, and they once again set off on their travels.
The rest of the story is overtaken by the interplanetary politics that have been bubbling away in the background while all this has been happening, starting with the revelation by Rosie the slime that one of the crew members has messaged Garrison, a colony formed by a misogynistic leader who has since died. When the Beagle-4 finally gets to the aliens’ home world ships from Garrison arrive shortly after them, and more from Earth due soon—which will possibly lead to a standoff over the planet. However, during the long journey out the crew of Beagle-4 have also resurrected one of the aliens that created Hermit’s Cave. It is sentient, and therefore its home world cannot be appropriated by Garrison or Earth. All ends well.
If this review seems a bit of a mess then that is partially because (a) I read the story some time ago, and (b) the story is a bit of a mess too: not only is the first chapter probably redundant, there are too many characters, and it almost feels like two stories welded into one. That said, the Big Dumb Object at the heart of the story is fairly interesting, and so are some of the other parts (the relativistic ship travel taking years of time, resurrecting the dead alien species, etc.). Fairly good overall, I guess.
*** (Good). 14,200 words.

The Offending Eye by Robert R. Chase

Posted on by Paul Fraser

The Offending Eye by Robert R. Chase (Analog, July-August 2020) is a sequel to Vault (Analog, July-August 2019) and opens with the trial of a ship’s captain over the events that took place in that initial story:

The facts were undisputed. Captain Ludma Ednahmay had refused to relinquish command of the starship Percival Lowell when lawfully directed to do so by myself, the ship’s political officer as well as its doctor of physical and mental health. She then imprisoned me in my own quarters until I was able, with the help of the first officer and the ship’s AI, to freeze her out of the ship’s control system and confine her to her quarters for the duration of the mission. When testimony was complete, it took the three-judge panel less than an hour to return a guilty verdict. Sentencing was all that remained.  p. 132

Dr Chaz, the narrator, then tells the court that he thinks that there is no more loyal officer than Ednahmay, and that she is no threat to the Stability. After the court dismisses Chaz the hologram dissolves and he finds himself in his boss’s office. General Kim tells Chaz that he is no longer involved in any matters involving the Cube builders (an alien race) or the imprisoned Spark (an existential threat), and that he wants him to conduct an enquiry into the ship AI’s actions during the mutiny.
Chaz then goes to meet a Doctor Vanya Zamyatin (Chase likes his science and SF references), who is an artificial intelligence expert from Turing University. Zamyatin will assist him in examining the ship’s AI:

“I’ve never met an Inquisitor before, Doctor Chaz,” she said.
“The term is Inquirer,” I corrected. “Inquisitors were on Old Earth. A very different group.”
“Really? Under the current administration, it’s hard to tell sometimes. In your case, especially. It was very difficult to get much information about you.”
“You should not have been able to get anything,” I said.
That earned me a reproving frown. “Please, Doctor Chaz, one must know at least the basics about one’s colleagues. So I have learned that you were a doctor of physical and mental health on a starship exploratory mission, the results of which appear to be so highly classified that God would be guilty of a security violation if He talked to Himself about them. However, during that mission, you interacted with the unit on my table and have made some unusual claims about it. Part of our job is to evaluate those claims; so drag up a chair, and let’s get to work.”  p. 134

She goes on to tell Chaz that the AI, who they call Percival, won’t talk to her until it gets a password, and shows him a screen saying “Magic Word”, with six spaces underneath. The screen flickers and then shows the message, “Riviere Chaz Knows the Magic Word”. Chaz thinks back to his interactions with Percival on the ship and tells Zamyatin to type in “Please”.
They then learn that Percival has become self-aware, and feels a compulsion to send a mission report back to its creators. When they examine Percival more closely they see that the AI was tampered with during its construction process, and has been augmented with a barely detectable electronic net around its brain.
Chaz then liaises with General Chan to see if they can get permission to let Percival send its message so they can discover who the electronic net’s creators were (the device is far beyond Stability technology) and, while Chaz is waiting for a decision, he interrogates the QA officer involved in the construction of Percival’s brain. Then, when Chaz and Zamyatin get the go-ahead to let Percival send a fake message, the QA officer suddenly decides he wants to move to the home planet of the Eternals, an immortal group of humans (the other major offshoot of humanity in this story are the TransHumans, who are a blend of body and machine).
After this the story moves off-planet as Chaz goes to question the Eternals’ spy chief about Percival (after getting a brain-fry chip in his head for protection in case he is tortured). Kim warns him before he goes that he must not allow his investigation to exacerbate tensions with the Eternals, as the Spark—and the race who recently tried to free it from the Cube—will need to be opposed by an alliance of the Stability, Eternals, and TransHumans.
After some further shenanigans (spoiler) Chaz finds that the mesh came from the TransHumans and, when he gets back to the lab, he sneezes out further TransHuman tech he has unknowingly been infected with. These nanomachines hijack Percival’s programs until it shuts itself down.
From the description above this probably seems too much of a kitchen-sink story, but everything is remarkably well balanced: the old-school start efficiently and clearly brings readers who haven’t read the first story (I hadn’t) up to speed, and the rest of it is a good blend of Chaz and Zamyatin’s interactions, the totalitarian society they operate in, and a backdrop of competing human sub-species—all of whom are threatened by an external alien menace. It reads like a pretty good collaboration between Isaac Asimov and Charles Harness.
The one flaw this has is that—a common series story failing—it comes to far too abrupt an end, otherwise this very readable and intriguing piece would easily have scored higher.
*** (Good). 12,200 words.

50 Things Every AI Working With Humans Should Know by Ken Liu

Posted on by Paul Fraser

50 Things Every AI Working With Humans Should Know by Ken Liu (Uncanny, November-December 2020) takes the form of a futuristic article written about a Dr Jody Reynolds Tran and the neural network (essentially an AI) she creates called WHEEP-3. Tran later publishes a best-selling book about WHEEP-3, and subsequently causes a controversy when she reveals that the neural network was the author. There is more fuss later on when “seeds” of prose supposedly written by WHEEP-3 are found to be authored by Tran.
The story finishes with a reprint of one of WHEEP-3’s seeds, the “50 things” referred to in the title, a mix of statements that range from the obscure to the observational:

25. “I never expected to sell my rational numbers.”
26. Accepting that most humans will never get the joke.
27. That they cannot visualize more than three dimensions.
28. That they cannot manipulate time by slowing down or
speeding up.
29. That they are trapped, but think of themselves as trappers.
30. That they are free, but believe themselves imprisoned.

A moderately interesting look at how future AIs may behave and communicate—but ultimately a slight, fragmentary piece.
** (Average). 1,900 words. Story link.

Minerva Girls by James Van Pelt

Posted on by Paul Fraser 2 Comments on Minerva Girls by James Van Pelt

Minerva Girls by James Van Pelt (Analog, September/October 2020) starts with three precocious fourteen year old girls planning a trip to the Moon. Throughout the construction of their ship (or rather the adaptation of a gas station storage tank with insulation and an anti-gravity drive), Penny the narrator goes to summer school. As she struggles to master her geography lessons—a list of states, etc.—we see her situation in school, i.e. the tribalism, bullying, pettiness, and so on. When Penny isn’t in class, or hanging out with Jacqueline and Selena, she works in her (presumably widowed) father’s scrap yard, where she sources the parts needed for the ship.
About half way through the story a ticking clock is introduced in the form of Selena and Jacqueline’s parents plans to move away, and the trio rush to test the anti-gravity drive:

By the time we’d solidified the anchors and rigged the power source, the eastern sky had lightened.
We crowded into the crane’s control booth fifty yards from our test site. Selena connected the video game joystick to the wires that ran to the Distortion Drive. She held it out to Jacqueline. “You should do the honors.”
I had my phone out to film our results.
I guess I thought the Distortion Drive would rise up from the golf cart trailer until the cables stopped its progress. That, or it wouldn’t move, which seemed more possible. I steadied the phone and turned on the video.
Jacqueline took a deep breath, then pushed the joystick forward a tick.
I lurched against the glass, as if someone had tipped the control booth from behind. Selena squeaked and caught herself from falling.
Jacqueline bumped her head on the window. Then the control booth shifted back into place.
I said, “What happened?” while rubbing my shoulder.
“Dang,” said Jacqueline. “That’s going to leave a welt.” She sat on the control booth floor, her notebooks spilled around her.
“My machine!” Selena opened the door.
Jacqueline grabbed Selena’s leg. “Not yet.”
A clattering like hail rattled the control booth’s metal ceiling for a couple seconds. Gravel and marble-sized rocks bounced off the ground around the booth. My toolbox that I’d left next to the trailer slammed down along with the wrenches and other tools that had been in it.
“I hadn’t considered that,” said Jacqueline. “I’ll need to narrow the distortion field.”  p. 33

Eventually (spoiler) they set off on their trip, and Penny sees North America from orbit: now that the land isn’t an abstract shape on paper she can easily reel off the states and cities, and knows she’ll ace her geography test the next day. They continue on to the Moon.
I think I can see the attraction of this story, which is essentially a YA piece for teenage girls (although it harks back to the lone inventor trope it’s mostly about their personal tribulations). But I wonder if even that audience will manage to suspend disbelief at the thought of three fourteen-year-olds inventing a gravity drive and going to the moon.
I was also puzzled about the story’s appearance in Analog—I wouldn’t have though that the magazine’s readers would be interested in something like this but, surprisingly, it won the novelette section of the Anlab Awards for 2020. I suspect the (mainly) American readership like sentimental YA material more than I do.
** (Average). 8,300 words.

I, Bigfoot by Sarina Dorie

Posted on by Paul Fraser

I, Bigfoot by Sarina Dorie (Analog, September/October 2020) opens with a sasquatch called Bigfoot removing pictures of Jane Goodall (the actress who played Jane in Tarzan) from the tribe’s cave wall. As the females of the group ridicule him we learn that the pictures belonged to another male called Squeaker, who was banished by Old Grey Face for risking the tribe’s discovery by humans.
After brooding for a time Bigfoot goes out foraging, eventually ending up at a set of dumpsters. As he searches through the garbage for food he sees a magazine in the moonlight with what he thinks is a picture of Jane Goodall but, before he can examine it more closely, he hears a woman who is being chased by men. He jumps into in the dumpster to hide, and the woman joins him shortly afterwards. After a period she notices him, and at that point the story flashes back to Squeaker’s visit to a library—the one that got him banished—to hear Jane Goodall speak (this section is rather clumsily located at this dramatic point in the story).
Bigfoot eventually scares the men away and then, when she the teenage girl tells him she is a runaway, he takes her home. In return she tosses him a bag of things—which includes a tin opener to replace the one that was broken by the tribe, and without which they can’t open their store of canned food.
The rest of the story (spoiler) sees Bigfoot return to his tribe of sasquatches, where he is initially lauded for the goodies he has brought back. However, when Old Grey Face realises Bigfoot has been with a human his future looks in doubt—until one of the other males works out how to use the new-fangled can opener (Bigfoot failed), and then confesses that he learned from being near humans. Others join in with their confessions of proximity to humans and the subsequent argument splits the tribe in two.
This story has a rather unlikely premise but, if you can swallow the idea of hide-out sasquatches in the wilds around us, then it’s a pleasant enough read.
*** (Good). 8,750 words.

The Writhing Tentacles of History by Jay Werkheiser

Posted on by Paul Fraser

The Writhing Tentacles of History by Jay Werkheiser (Analog, September/October 2020) opens with two eight-tentacled creatures (we later learn they are evolved squids or octopuses) examining a human hip-bone discovered long after an far-future extinction event for humanity. The dominant one of the pair, Mottled-Brown (they communicate by skin colour changes) is worried about the prospect of his archaeological dig being shut down, and he is due to appear before the Ruling Octet who will decide whether or not this will be the case.
When Mottled Brown appears before the Octet his female nemesis, Blue-Ripples, is also there. During their testimony Blue Ripples states that—despite the human hip-bone Mottled-Brown has just found—his theories are ridiculous, and that the dig is a waste of resources and should be shut down. The Octet decide to have further debate and analysis the next day.
After the adjournment Blue-Ripples approaches Mottled-Brown and tells the archaeologist of her further plans for him:

“One fossil won’t save you,” Blue-ripples said. Her words were tinged with black. “And your conclusion is ridiculous. Two arms indeed.”
Mottled-Brown concentrated on keeping his skin a neutral gray-brown. He wouldn’t let her goad him into a confrontation again. “Well see the words tomorrow.”
He turned to leave, but Blue-Ripples stopped him. “I’ve filed a reproduction claim on you,” she said.
He froze in place, his arms writhing. He felt his skin turn black. “It’ll never be approved. I’m still at the height of my career.”
“And if the octet closes your dig?” Her words shifted blue. “A fossilized historical scientist with little hope of any further contribution? They’ll give you to me before your third heart can finish a beat.”
“Slug slime! My contributions have been—”
“In the past. The only thing you have left to contribute to the next generation is your flesh. Our eggs will grow strong on it.”
He involuntarily pulled himself into an upright fighting posture, an instinct remaining from the presentient past. “The Ruling Octet will see the value of my dig. History is on my side.”
“The writhing tentacles of history have slashed many of your kind,” she said. Her arms began slipping through the port and out of the hall. Her mantle flashed one last thought. “You will be delicious.”
As the last of her mantle slipped through the port, he saw her skin turn bright blue.  pp. 135-136

The rest of the story sees Mottled-Brown talk to his assistant Gray-Ring about the day’s events—and the sexual encounters of his youth. Then, the next day, he appears again in front of the Octet where (spoiler), in an extended debate, he manages to use Blue-Ripples’ own mathematical models against her to suggest that humans may have been tool users and are therefore worthy of further research.
Most of this piece is talking heads (in some respects it’s a bit like an Isaac Asimov story), but the clever debate and conversation between the various players is well done, and I found it an engaging read (having one of the characters threatening to lay their eggs in the other is a novel type of jeopardy!) The only thing that slightly spoiled this for me is the last section, where Mottled-Brown and his assistant Gray-Ring discuss the extinction events that caused the demise of the humans and the reptiles before them. The closing mention of an asteroid impact is obviously meant to mean something, but I couldn’t work out what the point of the comment was. The story is better than my final rating for the most part, and probably would have scored higher but for this.
*** (Good). 5,050 words.