Tag: 2021

The Sin of America by Catherynne M. Valente

Posted on by Paul Fraser

The Sin of America by Catherynne M. Valente (Uncanny #39, March-April 2022)1 has a beginning that suggests (more or less correctly) that the story is going to be an overwritten myth:

There’s a woman outside of a town called Sheridan, where the sky comes so near to earth it has to use the crosswalk just like everybody else.
There’s a woman outside of Sheridan, sitting in the sun-yellow booth in the far back corner of the Blue Bison Diner & Souvenir Shoppe under a busted wagon wheel and a pair of wall-mounted commemorative plates. One’s from the moon landing. The other’s from old Barnum Brown discovering the first T-Rex skeleton up at Hell Creek.
There’s a woman outside of Sheridan and she is eating the sin of America.

We subsequently learn about (a) the woman (Ruby-Rose Martineau, middle aged, dead baby, parents run a butterfly farm, eating the sin of America), (b) the teenage waitress Emmeline (pregnant by the older and widowed owner), and (c) the diner (various items of décor). Then we see the diner’s clientele watch TV, and news of the trial of a man called Salazar.
Eventually, Ruby-Roses’s huge meal arrives and, as she works her way through it, she thinks about her past and how she came to be selected for her current task.
Many pages of description later, Ruby-Rose finishes her meal. She then goes outside—where (spoiler) the rest of the customers beat her to death. When a new customer arrives in the diner car park and sees Ruby-Rose’s body, a blood-spattered Emmeline tells him it’s okay, and “It’s the beginning of a new era. We’re all better now.” The TV in the diner shows the news that Ruby-Rose was behind a hedge fund Ponzi scheme.
I had no idea what the point of this was. Two suggestions in one of my Facebook groups were (a) that it is a Christ-allegory (she dies for their sins) or (b) it is similar to Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery, with its themes of scapegoating and conformity.2
Another story that illustrates the adage, “If you want to send a message, use Western Union”.
* (Mediocre). 5,600 words. Story link.

1. This is a 2022 Hugo Award short story finalist.

2. This is one of the Wikipedia interpretations of Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery.

Where Oaken Hearts Do Gather by Sarah Pinsker

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Where Oaken Hearts Do Gather by Sarah Pinsker (Uncanny #39, March-April 2022) opens with an online discussion of a song:

→This song, included among the famous ballads documented by Francis James Child, is an allegorical tale of a tryst between two lovers and its aftermath. –Dynamum (2 upvotes, 1 downvote)

>That’s awfully reductive, and I’m not sure what allegory you’re seeing. There’s a murder and a hanging and something monstrous in the woods. Sets it apart from the average lovers’ tryst. –BarrowBoy

>Fine. I just thought somebody should summarize it here a little, since “about the song” means more than just how many verses it has. Most people come here to discuss how to interpret a song, not where to find it in the Child Ballads’ table of contents. –Dynamum

→Dr. Mark Rydell’s 2002 article “A Forensic Analysis of ‘Where Oaken Hearts Do Gather’”, published in Folklore, explored the major differences and commonalities and their implications. In The Rose and the Briar, Wendy Lesser writes about how if a trad song leaves gaps in its story, it’s because the audience was expected to know what information filled those gaps. The audience that knew this song is gone, and took the gap information with them. Rydell attempted to fill in the blanks. –HolyGreil (1 upvote)

This passage pretty much limns the rest of the story in that: (a) it shows several people on a forum discussing the song Where Oaken Hearts Do Gather stanza by stanza—during which we learn it is about a man meeting a woman in the woods and having his heart is excised and used to grow an oak tree; (b) it illustrates the usual online friction between participants (most notably in this case between BarrowBoy and Dynamum above, with the former constantly downvoting the latter); and (c) we first hear of HolyGriel’s account of Rydell’s academic work, which leads a documentary maker called Henry Martyn to investigate further. Martyn later discovers that Rydell visited the location referred to in the song, a village called Gall in England, and (spoiler) he subsequently disappeared. Then, towards the end of the story, Martyn also travels to the village to do research for his documentary. There, he meets a very helpful (and knowledgeable) young woman called Jenny. . . .
This is very well done (the online comments and exchanges are pitch perfect), but the story has an ending you can see coming from miles away. An entertaining piece but not a multi-award winning one.1
***+ (Good to Very Good). 6,700 words. Story link.

1. This won the Nebula and Locus Awards for 2021, and is a finalist for this year’s Hugo and World Fantasy Awards. It’s a well executed piece but it doesn’t have the substance of a multi-award winner.

A Shot in the Dark by Deborah L. Davitt

Posted on by Paul Fraser

A Shot in the Dark by Deborah L. Davitt (Analog, January-February 2021)1 has as its protagonist Dominic Vadas, a solo prospector who works on Titania (a moon of Uranus), humanity’s farthest away outpost. The only company this committed loner has is an AI called Enara, who interrupts his work to tell him that there is an incoming message from their bosses, the UN Space Control Agency—they ask Vadas to fuel up his ship and intercept an exo-solar object that has entered the solar system. There is then further disruption to Vadas’s routine as he prepares to depart, when he gets a message from a woman claiming to be his daughter. After the ship gets underway Vadas sends a reply that describes his short relationship with the woman’s mother and how it ended. Vadas later learns that he is not only a father, but a grandfather too.
The rest of the story sees Vadas receive further messages from both the woman and UNSCA as he approaches the exo-solar object. As Vadas gets closer to the object it soon becomes apparent that it is (spoiler) a spaceship of alien construction and, after some cautionary hand wringing from UNSCA, he goes EVA to explore. Then, after an external and internal examination of the object, Vadas takes samples back to the ship and comes to the conclusion about what the alien object is:

Back on the Resolution, he examined his finds in the airless vacuum of the cargo bay, using a microscope. UNSCA had yet to call in to scold him, for which he was grateful. They might not, once he sent them his current results. “Bacteria,” he finally assessed.
“Some of them might still be viable,” Enara noted. “Some have formed endospores. Control will likely assess this as a weapon of biological warfare between long-gone civilizations.”
Dominic thought about it as he stripped out of his EVA suit. Thought about his daughter, whom he’d never met. The grandson he hadn’t known he had. A shot through the dark of time, a chance connection of genetic material spanning worlds. Like all life, really. “Panspermia,” he said out loud, sitting down by the controls. “That’s what this is. Not a weapon. I’d be willing to bet that whoever they were, they sent these out by the thousands. Hoping that someday, they’d land on a planet with decent temperatures and at least the start of an atmosphere. And when they did, they’d eject their payload and start life on that planet. And that life would adapt to its surroundings, and adapt its surroundings to it. Slowly. Very slowly.”  p .51

After this intuition the object comes to life, deploys solar sails, and starts heading towards Uranus for a gravity assist that will slingshot it further into our solar system. UNSCA greets this news with alarm and wants him to boost the craft out of the system, but Vadas sends a broadcast stating that humanity should pause and give the object a chance before treating it as hostile—i.e. be open to possibility. Then he asks his daughter for photos of his grandson.
This is a solid piece that successfully combines an interesting character study, a relationship dilemma, and an interesting SF story.
*** (Good). 8,000 words. Story link.

1. Winner of the novelette category in the 2022 Analog Readers’ (Analytical Laboratory) Poll.

Tangles by Seanan McGuire

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Tangles by Seanan McGuire (Magic The Gathering, 2021)1 opens with the dryad narrator and her tree arriving on a new “Plane” (I assume this is one of many realities in a fantasy multiverse). She has come to the Kessig forest to free the tree from her service:

They had taken another five steps when the tree spoke again, saying, Here. Stop.
Wrenn stopped. They drove their roots deep into the ground, and bit by bit, she began to pull herself out of the home that had been hers for so long. As she pulled, her awareness of the great tree dwindled, until she felt like a tooth that had been loosened in its socket, still part of the body but awaiting only one last sharp blow to knock it out entirely.
Then, with a final yank that she felt all the way to the bottom of her stomach, she uprooted herself and was no longer joined with Six. Six, who was no longer the majestic, towering treefolk he had become during their time together—trees had no gender as such, but dryads did, and upon discovering the concept in her mind, he had considered his choices and decided he preferred the masculine2—was now a mature, healthy, beautifully twisting Innistrad oak, his branches reaching for the clouded sky.

Wrenn subsequently searches the forest for a new tree and, as she does so, the villagers from a nearby settlement start hunting her (they fear she is a “white witch”). Accompanying them is a mage called Teferi, who finds her before the villagers do and makes her acquaintance. Then, when Teferi detects a demon behind them, he unleashes a magic spell that vanquishes the beast but also distorts the forest around them—and they end up locked in some kind of maze or Mobius strip (after walking for a time they eventually find themselves back where they started).
By now Wrenn urgently needs to find a tree to help contain the fire within her, so she gives Teferi advice about how to view and untangle his spell, as well as adding her magic to his. He (spoiler) succeeds in undoing the spell’s effects and they return to their original location. They also find that, during this process, Teferi has “bent” time, and a nearby sapling has aged and matured into a tree which is suitable for Wrenn.
This is a competently done story but an uninvolving one—possibly because the plot feels like various game moves rather than something which develops organically.
** (Average). 5,150 words. Story link.

1. This is one of this year’s (2022) short story finalists for the Hugo Award. Magic The Gathering is a fantasy game

2. Even trees are choosing their own gender nowadays. Hurrah.

Unknown Number by Blue Neustifter

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Unknown Number by Blue Neustifter (Twitter, 28th July 2021)1 is a story which is presented as screenshots of a text message conversation. The initial exchanges between the two people profoundly disturb the recipient because of the amount of personal detail that the sender knows about them. However, as the story progresses (spoiler), we subsequently discover that the sender is a male physicist who has developed a device that allows him to contact his other selves in the multiverse (hence his intimate knowledge). Later on we learn that he is looking for a timeline where his other self successfully transitioned to become a woman, so he can question them about their life and discuss his own gender dysphoria. Gaby, the person receiving the messages, has completed that transition.
This piece has a novel presentation and a neat idea, but it takes a while to get going (i.e. to get to the point that Gaby accepts what is happening), and then goes on for too long. It is also quite a wandering, narcissistic conversation, and occasionally descends into twitter/bumper sticker philosophy (“life is a fucking hard thing, and sometimes it’s happy, and sometimes it’s miserable; “life is hard, capitalism sucks, the world is dying”, etc.).
This is an original piece in some respects but the SFnal idea at its heart is amateurishly executed.
* (Mediocre). 2,600 words. Story link.

1. This was a finalist for the 2022 Hugo Award in the short story category.

Sample Return by C. Stuart Hardwick

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Sample Return by C. Stuart Hardwick (Analog, July-August 2021)1 opens with the protagonist Katy and her fellow crewmember, Xavier, in the process of launching an impactor probe towards Jupiter. Although this part of the operation is successful, the Proteus, the craft designed to collect the samples the impactor probe will cause to be ejected from the Jovian atmosphere, has a launch malfunction. Katy (whose mother has just died) quickly suits up and goes EVA to free the craft, even though they are in a high radiation zone.
Initially Katy just tries to dislodge the explosive bolts holding the Proteus to their ship, Jovian Queen, but her actions soon become wilder:

She jerked her safety line, setting the brake on her take-up reel so her line went slack. He hauled on his tether to reel her in, but as she drifted within reach of the webbing, she swept the shears forward and cut it, then jiggled her line to reset the brake and feed her slack back down into the take-up reel still attached to Proteus.
“Katy, no!”
Xav grabbed for her, but the line popped taught, and she spun and sailed down toward the hub.
“Dammit, Katy! Get back up here before you get yourself killed!”
He was probably right. She was probably committing suicide, but if she had to die to save the mission, then she had to. That was a calculation she’d made long ago, before they’d ever left Earth, long before that . . .
And goddammit anyway! If the mission failed now she’d be written off as hysterical, but if Xavier were down here, they’d already be writing his heroism up for the feeds back home. After all, they’d say, what was one life—any life—compared to iron or steam or stone tools or fire? The world’s monuments were filled with the names of men who’d died for less. Who’d left families and fortunes and nations behind. Who every one shared the same dying wish: that it all hadn’t been in vain.
But Katy wasn’t dead just yet. It would be dicey now, but if she could free those pins quickly enough—before the Queen started her burn—she might still be able to make it. Maybe.  p. 130

Katy doesn’t make it back, of course, and departs with Proteus for a Jovian fly-by. The rest of the story (spoiler) sees her spend the next few days debugging faults on the probe while her suit AI fills her full of anti-radiation meds. Then the impactor probe hits and the capture pods start deploying from Proteus to capture the samples. Katy manages to jump into one of pods, and hopes that she will survive until the Jovian Queen returns to pick them up. However, Katy is ultimately rescued by a skiff the ship’s crew have built to rescue her, and it turns out, although she is ill, that she has been sufficiently shielded from radiation by the chunk of the metallic hydrogen blown out of the Jovian atmosphere. Katy has a final sentimental vision of her mother.
This is a fast paced adventure with plenty of rivets, reckless action, and miracle escapes—it may appeal to some, but I thought it rather far-fetched. I’d also hate to be on a spaceship with someone like Katy, who would likely not only kill herself, but take others with her.
** (Average). 8,150 words. Story link.

1. This was the runner up in the novelette section of the Analog Readers’ Poll for 2021 stories.

Proof by Induction by José Pablo Iriarte

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Proof by Induction by José Pablo Iriarte (Uncanny #40, May-June 2021)1 opens with Paulie arriving at the hospital to discover his father has died. Standing next to his father’s wife is the chaplain, who offers Paulie the chance to enter his father’s “Coda”, a computer simulacrum of his father’s consciousness made just before his death:

Gone was the endotracheal tube. The room was eerily silent, with none of the sounds he’d associated with the hospital from his visits over the past week.
He met his father’s eyes. “Hey.”
His father smiled ruefully. “Hey.”
“Are you—”
“Dead?” His father gestured toward the inactive monitors.
“Apparently so.”
“Does it hurt?” Are you afraid, he wanted to ask, but he knew better than to talk to his father about emotions.
“Nothing hurts,” he said, picking at a scab on his leg. “I guess they have a way of turning that off.”
“Did the doctors mess up? Should I ask for an autopsy?”
His father shook his head. “Nah. I’m seventy-one, diabetic, and with a bad heart. You’re not going to win any lawsuits here.”
It occurred to Paulie that Codas could be programmed to give whatever answer benefitted the hospital.
Paulie stared out the window, over the parking lot, to the eerily empty expressway. “I really believed we were close on that Perelman proof.”
“Maybe nobody’s meant to find it.”
Easy for him to say. He’d already been beyond questions of tenure and publication; now all of that was even more meaningless for him.
For Paulie, though, Perelman would have been the home run his tenure dossier needed. He turned back toward the bed. “Okay. Well.” He put a hand on the chair he’d sat in last night while his father complained about his breathing. He should say something. Something like I love you¸ he supposed. But his father had never gone in for the mushy stuff in life, so why start now?
“Goodbye, then,” he finished instead.
“Bye, Paulie,” said his father. “Thank you for visiting.”

Paulie subsequently arranges to take a copy of the Coda home with him, and the rest of the story mostly consists of scenes where Paulie visits his father’s Coda to work on the theorem (although we also see something of Paulie’s own family life and relationship with his daughter, and the peer pressure he experiences at his university job).
The two men’s attempts to solve the theory become increasingly complicated by the fact that Paulie’s father has no memory of what has happened during previous visits, which means that Paulie has to explain everything they have done each time he enters the Coda. We also see further evidence of the emotional distance between the men, and Paulie’s attempts to make some sort of connection with his father, such as the occasion he mentions his daughter’s forthcoming dance recital:

“It just. . .it reminds me of my piano recitals.”
His father leaned on his bed railing. “Is that what this is really about, Paulie? Are you here to tell me I was a shitty father? I know. I already acknowledged that, after the divorce.”
Paulie dropped into the chair by the bed. “No,” he said at last. “Sorry. I keep thinking of what other people use the Coda technology for, and I keep waiting to hear you talk about something besides math or life insurance. I keep hoping you’ll have something profound to say.”
“I’m not the mushy type.”
“You could fake it.”
“You’re the smartest person I ever met. You would see through any faking.”
Paulie blinked. A compliment.
“I wouldn’t have blamed you if you didn’t want anything to do with me,” his father went on, “after not being there for you as a kid. But then you made me a part of your life and we got along okay. You treated me like a colleague, so I tried to treat you the same. Now you’re mad at me for not acting more like a father? I didn’t think you wanted that from me.”
Paulie waited to see if he would say anything else. That was about as close to “mushy” as he’d come since the night twenty years ago when he’d apologized for abandoning him.
After a quiet eternity, he got up from the chair. “Okay, well, I think I have enough to work on for now. I’ll come back when I have some progress.”
“Bye, Paulie. Thank you for visiting.”

Eventually (spoiler) they go on to solve the theorem, and Paulie comes to accept that his father is never going to say the things that he wants him to say.
Normally I’m not remotely interested in “Daddy” or other problematical relationship stories, but this one works quite well—probably because Iriarte handles this in a fairly muted way and not as the usual whiny adolescent psychodrama. I’d also note that the description of the mathematical processes undertaken to solve the theorem are an equal focus of the story, and are quite gripping—a significant feat considering that I had no idea about what was being discussed.
This story has an odd combination of ideas and themes, but I liked it a lot.
**** (Very good). 6,250 words. Story link.

1. This story is a Hugo, Nebula, and Theodore Sturgeon Award finalist.

Mr Death by Alix E. Harrow

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Mr Death by Alix E. Harrow (Apex #121, January 2021) begins with Sam, the narrator, telling us that he has ferried “two hundred and twenty-one souls across the river of death” before he is given his next assignment:

Name: Lawrence Harper
Address: 186 Grist Mill Road, Lisle NY, 13797
Time: Sunday, July 14th 2020, 2:08AM, EST
Cause: Cardiac arrest resulting from undiagnosed long QT syndrome
Age: 30 months

Jesus Christ on his sacred red bicycle. He’s two.

Sam goes to see Lawrence several hours before his death (a requirement that helps smooth the passing of the dead across the river to “rejoin the great everything”) and, when he arrives in the boy’s bedroom, watches him stir. Lawrence’s father, alerted by the intercom, comes in and picks the boy up and takes him into the kitchen. Sam then watches the father hold and feed Lawrence, and notes the father does not know that this will be his last time together with his son. Later on in the garden, the boy (unusually) sees Sam, and the pair later play catch together.
The rest of the story switches between this kind of affecting domestic detail (we see the boy with his mother when she gets home), backstory about the premature death of Sam’s own young son, Ian, and an account of Sam’s own death and recruitment as a “reaper”.
Eventually (spoiler), Lawrence’s moment of passing arrives and, when his heart stops, Sam intervenes, putting a ghostly hand into the boy’s chest and massaging it back to life.
Sam subsequently has his tea leaves read by his Archangel supervisor, Raz (“the kind of sweet, middle-aged Black woman with whom you do not fuck”) and is given another appointment to reap the boy. Once again Sam saves him, and once again Raz appears. This time she asks Sam what he would do if she punished him by leaving him on Earth, never to cross the river and rejoin the great everything, but to fade into nothingness. Sam says he would watch over Lawrence as long as he could, and the story finishes with Raz telling him he no longer works for the Department of Death. Before she goes she hands him a card, which says, “Sam Grayson, Junior Guardian, Department of Life”.
Although this story pretends, for most of its length, to be an edgy and dark piece, it is ultimately sentimental and feel-good—and, to be honest, quite well done.1 I couldn’t help but think, however, that there are darker and more profound versions of the story where the boy dies. Two options spring to mind: the first, which would appeal to the religious, is that we see the joy of him rejoining the great everything; the second just sees him die, and has the narrator reflect on the need for stoicism to get us through this veil of tears. I doubt any current SF writer is going to be writing that kind of story any time soon.
***+ (Good to Very Good). 5,100 words. Story link.

1. This piece, obviously, is a short story finalist for this year’s Hugo Award.

Heart of Stone by Tom Jolly

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Heart of Stone by Tom Jolly (Analog, May-June 2021)1 opens with what turns out to be a group of sentient asteroids (who call themselves “Stones”) seeing a flash of light in the rock field they inhabit. After discussing the matter between themselves (they think a younger member of their species may have mixed a hazardous “hotfire” that caused it to explode), one of their number, Five Rings, goes to investigate. During this, something wet hits it:

I sent harvesters out for the fluids and found that much of the internal material was organic. It was surprisingly warm, warmer than our own internal fluids. There was both water and organics, mixed together, much like our own minds and cells. Some of the outer covering was organic, too, but didn’t taste the same; it looked like it had been made, like some object we might excrete on our own stony surface. It was flexible. Had this Thing been alive? Regardless, the resources were too valuable to waste. As we spent water to propel ourselves on occasion, we needed to replenish it when we could, and the Thing was an excellent resource. I wondered if there were more Things available. It would save me from having to chase after every wayward comet that fell our way, putting a rock into its path and hoping some of the scattered ice shards would come my way, so that I might gather and store them for the future.
I broadcast my findings to the others, and the ones with close vectors propelled themselves in my direction, keeping a sharp eye out for more Things.  p. 28

After this the narrator changes to Heart of Stone, who tells the rest of them2 that he has detected another Thing, and is setting off to intercept it (although some of the others advise against this course of action). When he approaches the Thing (spoiler) it waves at him, and it becomes apparent (to those readers who didn’t suspect previously) that the Things are human astronauts. This second astronaut tries to communicate with Heart of Stone before trying to make it to a wrecked spaceship nearby:

I reabsorbed some of the warmgas, knowing that I wouldn’t need to escape an attack from the Thing, and ignited the rest, following the Thing to its rendezvous with the new bit of scrap.
Would this be another living thing?
No Sense Of Humor was nearby, and said to me, “That Thing is going to miss its target. If you wish to help it, you must get in front of it.”
“I have little fuel to spare,” I said. This was a common lie, since few Stones would allow themselves to get so low that they could not maneuver. That would mean a slow death, perhaps even consuming the core’s water to chase after more volatiles. It was a subtle request for help, whether actually needed or not.
“I can toss some ice to you when I am nearer. If you garner some benefit here, I expect some sharing,” said No Sense Of Humor.
It was a good response. I sparked some more warmgas and accelerated beyond the Thing’s position as it flew toward the scrap, and used simple steam to position myself in front of it. More volatiles than I would normally use in two cycles, but it seemed so important. I really was hurting for propellants. It was so rare that we ever needed to move anywhere quickly, and so expensive.
We flew past the debris together, the Thing coming down on my Stone, and then I accelerated slowly back toward the debris. The Thing seemed content to ride on my surface, though it kept pointing the shiny nob of its outer surface at me. I did not know what that might mean, but the Thing did not seem frightened.  p. 29

The astronaut eventually gets to the damaged ship—but only after fighting off alien scavengers that attack it and Heart of Stone (we learn that Stones are created by groups of scavengers occupying empty asteroids and becoming a single sentient creature). When the astronaut is finished examining the wrecked ship, he or she goes and lands on No Sense of Humour, who has just arrived at the scene. Subsequently, there are further attempts at communication during which the human gives No Sense of Humour a torch. Then the human dies—either from their injuries or damage to the suit (the scavengers caused a couple of leaks during the attack).
The penultimate chapter sees the Stones detect an even bigger ship (it appears the one that exploded was a scoutship) and, after another debate, they decide to contact it. Finally, the last chapter is related by Diamond Eye 16 cycles after this First Contact, and describes the events that have occurred subsequently (as well as giving us an insight into the novel formation of this solar system).
This is an original, inventive, and enjoyable piece.
***+ (Good to Very Good). 5,600 words. Story link.

1. This story was the winner of the Analytical Laboratory Poll for 2021 in the short story category. There is more information about the poll finalists here.

2. I was tempted to call this group of stones “the pile”.

The Trashpusher of Planet 4 by Brenda Kalt

Posted on by Paul Fraser

The Trashpusher of Planet 4 by Brenda Kalt (Analog, March-April 2021)1 has an opening that tells you pretty much everything you need to know about the story that will follow:

In the center of the ship, near the AI, a dozen candidates for methane drainer scurried out of the examination room.
“Watch it, trash!” a young chemical engineer snapped as he bumped another student.
“I’m sorry.” Awi Trashpusher Nonumber had a blind spot behind him. Though an adult, only four of the six eyes on his pale, skinny, cylindrical body had developed. The engineer castes had twelve eyes in two rings around their upper tips.
Awi had taken the exam in his usual state of hunger, and his tip now curled forward. Wrapping one tentacle around a waterpipe, he enfolded the pipe greedily. By the time he was temporarily full of water and upright again, the corridor was almost empty.
“Awi! How’d it go?” Roob Mechanical Engineer 3886, barely old enough to be a candidate, had scandalized his classmates by befriending Awi. Roob’s body was the clear yellow of the engineer castes, with more intense color along his feeding strip.  pp. 32-33

I would have probably stopped reading there if I was an editor as, at that point, I would know that (a) the story has an amateurish and juvenile tone, (b) it sounds clichéd and (c) that the tale would show Awi overcoming the disadvantages of his caste after some difficulties.
I wasn’t far wrong. After this encounter Awi goes home and broods about his lot until the ship AI (it materialises that he is on board an alien generation ship) gives him a job cleaning the scout ship Beautiful Light. The AI then tells Awi to take Beautiful Light on a reconnaissance mission. Awi takes the ship out—experiencing zero gee for the first time and learning how to use centripetal force to feed himself from the pipe—before orbiting a nearby planet that looks habitable. Then, when Awi returns, he meets Roob disembarking from another ship and they go to see the AI together. The AI subsequently instructs Awi to lead Roob’s ship, Firm Resolve, to the planet so they can dump nitrogen there to prove that the planet is terraformable.
After their experiment proves successful, the terraforming begins—although not without some pushback from the higher castes—and, during this episode, a new worldformer caste is created. Roob is given a place in it, but Awi is refused.
The story finishes (spoiler) with the AI more or less forcing the aliens to settle on the partially terraformed planet (it wants to go off and explore), and Awi taking his scoutship to investigate the “moonlets” that keep coming from planet 3 (Earth, obviously, so the planet they are terraforming is Mars).
I suppose that this is a competently enough told YA story where, ultimately, Awi doesn’t change the system but does escape it. I have to wonder what it is doing in Analog, though—I wouldn’t say that about all kinds of YA stories, but this type of story seems far too unsophisticated for a modern audience.
** (Average). 5,700 words. Story link.

1. This story was the runner-up in the short story category of the Analytical Laboratory poll for 2021. If this is really the second best short story from Analog that year no wonder so few of its works feature in the Hugo or Nebula Award final ballots (not that they are currently anything to write home about).