Tag: 2024

Lucie Loves Neutrons and the Good Samarium by Thoraiya Dyer

Lucie Loves Neutrons and the Good Samarium by Thoraiya Dyer (Clarkesworld #219, December 2024)1 opens with Izzy (the main character) with her wife Lucie at their house in France:

Izzy simultaneously adores the French farming village, because stepping into her stone-lined cellar feels like stepping back four hundred years, and loathes the village, because her neighbors’ social attitudes feel like stepping back four hundred years.

This chippiness (first seen in an encounter with the estate agent) is most often manifested in the comments about their neighbour Gaston, an old man who runs a nearby vineyard, but Izzy’s concern about this recidivism is dwarfed by other events that are ongoing in Europe:

Both women’s phones had pinged, and they’d pulled out their devices, to see that the yellow nuclear strike threat warning level had been raised to amber alert. Amber was the second highest level. It meant there was credible information to suggest an imminent attack within a certain radius of their location.
Red alert would have meant duck and cover. Dropping face down, putting her hands under her body, and closing her eyes, until the blast wave passed and debris stopped falling. Izzy had waited, as she always did, heart pounding, to see if missiles had actually been launched.

We learn that both of the women work in the field of nuclear science: Izzy works at a new research reactor nearby, making medical radioisotopes, and Lucie works at ESA with neutron tomagraphs. These nuclear occupations will eventually drive the events at the end of the story but, before then, it is mostly a family soap opera where they settle into their new lives in France and an engineer friend called Miron become a sperm donor for the couple’s first child. While this all this is happening a number of other things occur: a colleague struggles to launch thousands of tiny telescopes to create an orbital array; Izzy finds out that most of Lucie’s extended family died of nuclear test radiation poisoning in Tahiti; Lucie discovers an new mineral that may be able to absorb neutrons to form stable superheavy elements; they receive an allocation of Finnish and Polish war refugees as the war worsens; and Lucie’s baby is later born during an amber alert—a traumatising event for both of the women. Their relationship then deteriorates under the stress of having a young baby to look after and another two tactical nukes being dropped five hundred miles away.
The final section sees Miron arrive unexpectedly. He sees the child for the first time (prompting some defensiveness from Lucie), solves Lucie’s colleague’s launch problem by using the cyclotron in an MRI machine, and then, while talking to Lucie about her work, prompts her to reveal her plan to make anti-nuclear bombs using the new mineral she has been researching and superheavy elements she intends to manufacture in Izzy’s reactor.
Subsequently (spoiler), they launch a test vehicle (based on a drone stolen from Gaston); Lucie manufacturers the neutron absorbing element 124; and, finally, they then decide they need someone else to test the device, handing it over to a secretive third party (while making plans to publicise the discovery). This third party turns out to be the Chinese, who televise a demonstration missile launch which is neutralised by the new weapon. The war winds down, at least on a nuclear level, and the refugees leave. The couple’s lives return, more or less, to normal, and Luc goes to school.
As you can probably tell from the synopsis, there are a lot of moving parts in this story, but, for all that, it unfurls in a relatively organic way—if anything, too organically at the beginning: at times it drags and threatens to devolve into a rustic family soap opera. The other weaknesses I thought it had were the hand-wavium science explanations, the unlikely gadgets that are cobbled together, and the Chinese being the ones who receive the device (under the noses of wartime allied intelligence agencies?) Overall though, it works, and it was a pleasant change to read something that develops organically, has an interesting theme (the anti-nuclear weapon), and sounds like it was written in a British voice rather than an American one (I realise the author is Australian, but still). Awful title.
*** (Good). 10,050 words. Story link.

1. This is one of the 2025 Clarkesworld Readers’ Poll novelette/novella finalists.

The Scalar Intercepts by Michael Cassutt

The Scalar Intercepts by Michael Cassutt (Asimov’s SF, January-February 2024) is a brief bit of ideation more than a story, and one which sees an AI report back to other AIs about the seven hundred or so humans left alive on Earth (there had been a past conflict between the two). The AI then reveals a discovery:

My research shows that, in addition to these kinetic processes, Objects possess a consciousness of their own. Yes, the Sun, other stars, the major planets including our own, and minor planets above a certain mass, are beings as self-aware and intelligent as any we know.
Organics and even Agents like us reside on the short or micro side ofthe lifespan scale. These space-based beings are on the macro side, living millions of years, and their communications take place at such a slow rate—one bit a year, for example—that I have chosen to call them Scalar Sentiences.
My apparently radical discovery, based on extensive analysis and translation of the Scalar intercepts, a process that has consumed energy for the last four hundred and thirty years, confirms that Scalars are hostile to our existence. p. 161

The piece ends with the news (spoiler) that the Scalars have sent asteroid hurtling towards Earth and the AIs will not survive.
* (Mediocre). 1050 words.

The Adherence by Jeffrey Ford

The Adherence by Jeffrey Ford (Asimov’s SF, January-February 2024)1 begins with an old man called Phil meeting a long lost female acquaintance called Dierdre in “The Crumble”. As they talk we learn that Phil lost his wife because of the effect of ubiquitous cheap products produced by a company called Adherent Corp.:

“She disintegrated.”
“Oh, my god, I’ve heard about that. Did you guys go in for all that cheap stuff?”
“I’m embarrassed to say it, but yeah. We had scads of it. It was just so fuckin cheap,” he said. “Couldn’t see spending top dollar on a bed frame or dresser when you could get either for a couple of bucks. Come on, a five-dollar television. You can’t beat it. We had everything.”
“I read that if you have a lot of the stuff from Adherent Corp., that it can set up a resonance field in your house,” said Dierdre.
“Not only that, but if there’s someone living there who’s suffering from depression, the particular atomic resonance of the victims of that disease can act as a catalyst, weakening the atomic bonds that hold together Adherent’s flimsy crap. The resonance of their merchandise disintegrating in turn affects the atomic bonds of the stricken, like Lily. One afternoon, in early autumn, when a cold breeze lifted the curtain and came through the screen of our bedroom window, I was walking down the hall, and the door was open. Lily was folding damp clothes from the half-assed dryer, and humming the song ‘Three Little Words.’ Just like that, she turned into mist, and that mist kept her form for a moment until the wind rolled through the room and dispersed her.”
“How long until you realized that having all that cheap stuff wasn’t worth it?”
“It took me a few days to wake up to the fact of what happened. I mean, back in the day, when we met, when we got married, who had any clue that someday, if you lived long enough, you might see your spouse vanish like the Easter Ghost. But eventually, yeah, it was clear we’d made our world from whatever tawdry substance went into making all of Adherent’s fine products. In the process it cost Lily her life.” p. 66

After this unlikely dollop of explanium/anti-materialism, the pair go to Deirdre’s house. There she tells him about Ronaldo, her ex, who is part of a religious cult called the Easterners. Apparently the “Easter Ghost” materialises at their services and has been known to reincarnate vanished people.
The last part of the story (spoiler) sees Deirdre arrange to have Ronaldo and the Easter Ghost come to her apartment. After they arrive (the Easter Ghost wears a three-piece suit of green and yellow, holds a stalk of yellow gladiolas, and floats a foot above the floor) Phil agrees to pay a thousand bucks to have his wife brought back. The Easter Ghost whizzes around the kitchen while Phil thinks of her, and then he wakes at a cash machine with Deirdre and Ronaldo. After they shake him down for the money he goes home to find his wife in his apartment. They make love but, after they finish, Phil discovers she is an Adherent Corp. copy.
This is a strange, dream-like story that doesn’t amount to much. Presumably it is making some sort of point about materialism, but what that might be is unclear (other than the obvious observation everyone makes about materialism).
* (Mediocre). 3,600 words.

1. The last sentence doesn’t have a full stop: “She put her arms out to him and tried to say his name, but in the jostling, her speakers had shorted”—I don’t know if this is intentional, poor proofing, or whether there is missing text.