Tag: short short

Toy Planes by Tobias S. Buckell

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Toy Planes by Tobias S. Buckell (Nature, 13th October 2005) begins with the pilot of a rocket plane that is about to be launched from an “island nation” having his dreadlocks cut off by his sister:

I’d waited long enough. I’d grown dreads because when I studied in the United States I wanted to remember who I was and where I came from as I began to lose my Caribbean accent. But the rocket plane’s sponsor wanted them cut. It would be disaster for a helmet not to have a proper seal in an emergency. Explosive decompression was not something a soda company wanted to be associated with in their customers’ minds. It was insulting that they assumed we couldn’t keep the craft sealed. But we needed their money. The locks had become enough a part of me that I winced when the clippers bit into them, groaned, and another piece of me fell away.

The next part of the story follows the pilot to the local market where he buys a toy plane to make up weight for the mission. During the journey the driver suggests that the money spent on the spaceship could be better spent on roads or schools, but the pilot sidesteps the question by saying that most of the money has come from private investors or advertisers, and very little from the government (and that the latter will eventually be repaid).
The final paragraphs describe his embarkation, and the balloon used to get to launch altitude. The story closes with the line “We’re coming up too”.
This is an overly fragmentary piece but perhaps it will appeal more to those who appreciate its atypical (“diverse”) setting. I’d note, however, that this is as much a story about private space flight and as such is part of a long tradition of in SF.1  
** (Average). 1,000 words. Story link.

1. Robert Heinlein’s Waldo, The Man Who Sold the Moon, etc., were published in the early 1940s.

Evil Robot Monkey by Mary Robinette Kowal

Posted on by Paul Fraser 1 Comment on Evil Robot Monkey by Mary Robinette Kowal

Evil Robot Monkey by Mary Robinette Kowal (The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction: Volume Two, 2008) starts with an augmented chimpanzee called Sly working at a potters’ wheel in what appears to be a zoo enclosure. When a passing school kid bangs on the window, Sly loses his temper and throws clay at his tormentor; then the chimp writes “Ass” on the window and makes explicit sexual gestures at the teacher.
Later, one of the chimp’s handlers, a sympathetic man called Vern, comes to talk to Sly about his behaviour, and tells him that his supervisor has instructed him to take Sly’s clay away as a punishment. The chimp almost loses control again but channels his rage into his wheel and, while doing so, makes a vase. Vern takes the vase away to be oven fired, and also takes Sly’s clay—adding “I’m not cleaning your mess” (hinting to Sly that he will still have the clay he threw at the window).
This is a pretty good scene (***+ quality), but it is a fragment (imagine reading two pages of Flower for Algernon). Awful title.
** (Average). 1,000 words. Story link.

The Answer by Fredric Brown

Posted on by Paul Fraser

The Answer by Fredric Brown (Angels and Spaceships, 1954) opens with a scientist called Dwar Ev completing a connection and then moving towards a switch:

The switch that would connect, all at once, all of the monster computing machines of all the populated planets in the universe—ninety-six billion planets—into the supercircuit that would connect them all into one super-calculator, one cybernetics machine that would combine all the knowledge of all the galaxies.  p. 36

Ev then asks the super-computer if there is a God, and it replies (spoiler), “Yes, now there is a God”. Then, when Ev rushes towards the switch to turn the computer off, it zaps him with a lightning bolt.
This is one of these squibs (it is less than a page long) that you find (a) pretty neat when you are twelve, but (b) a not very good gimmick story when older. The real sense of wonder here lies in the idea of ninety-six billion inhabited and interconnected planets.
* (Mediocre). 250 words. Story link.

The Lady and the Merman by Jane Yolen

Posted on by Paul Fraser

The Lady and the Merman by Jane Yolen (F&SF, September 1976) is a fantasy about a young girl whose sea-faring father who does not love her and whose mother dies while he is away on a voyage. Her father remains distant as the girl, who is called Borne, grows up. Then, one day many years later, Borne is sitting on a rock by the sea when she sees a merman.
When her father subsequently sees Borne’s distraction, he tells her to “be done with it”, which prompts her to write a message to the merman on the beach. When the words are washed away by the tide, the syllables are carried down into the deeps where the merman reads them. He later comes to Borne and, when he indicates that he can only talk to her under the water (spoiler), she follows him:

Gathering her skirts, now heavy with ocean spray and tears, Borne stood up. She cast but one glance at the shore and her father’s house beyond. Then she dove after the merman into the sea.
The sea put bubble jewels in her hair and spread her skirts about her like a scallop shell. Tiny colored fish swam in between her fingers. The water cast her face in silver, and all the sea was reflected in her eyes.
She was beautiful for the first time. And for the last.  p. 39

There is no particular plot here, but the story’s prose, dreamlike progression, and last line are consolations.
** (Average). 1,250 words. Story link.

The Rise of Alpha Gal by Rich Larson

Posted on by Paul Fraser

The Rise of Alpha Gal by Rich Larson (Asimov’s SF, September-October 2022) sees the narrator, Heli, meet her ex-girlfriend Nea in an all-night McDonalds. When Nea questions the choice of meeting place, Heli tells her it is ironic before launching into an explanation that involves (a) her reminding Nea of a cousin who got tick bites and developed an allergy to red meat (“The allergy’s unusual because it’s triggered by the Alpha Gal carbohydrate instead of by a protein”) and (b) that Heli has developed an Alpha Gal analog that can induce a permanent meat allergy with one dose. Heli then adds that she can make it contagious. . . .
After this revelation they debate the rights and wrongs of this type of eco-terrorism, before Heli eventually realises that her ex-girlfriend isn’t as enthusiastic about the prospect as she expected. They finally agree that the analog should be made available as a voluntary injection for those that want to give up eating meat (“Saving the world in slow motion”). After Nea leaves, however (spoiler), Heli inserts the contents of a vial into a sanitizer spray and starts spreading the agent.
This is a conversation about an idea, not a story—the novelette or novella that telescopes out from Heli’s final action would have been much more interesting.
** (Average). 2,300 words.

The Rules of Unbinding by Geoffrey A. Landis

Posted on by Paul Fraser

The Rules of Unbinding by Geoffrey A. Landis (Asimov’s SF, September-October 2022) opens with Kharkov in the Negev desert looking for antiquities, preferably gold or silver ones. We learn that he hasn’t bothered to get a permit and has no intention of reporting anything he finds to the relevant authorities.
After wasting his time digging up a jeep axle from the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, he finds a bottle just before he gives up for the day:

The bottle was ceramic, still intact, beautifully decorated with geometric patterns in yellow and blue glaze, but bound with an intricate cage of bronze, which must have been what had set off the metal detector. A clay jar would be exactly what a fleeing family might use to put their stashed coins in, so for an instant he’d been hopeful, but this was more of a bottle than ajar, with the neck opening too small for anyone to slip coins into. It was closed with a carved stopper (ivory, maybe?) that was held in place with twists of bronze wire—green with corrosion now—and then sealed with wax. Ottoman era, he thought; perhaps fifteenth century. When he picked it up, he realized it was too light to hold anything metallic, but still, a piece of Ottoman ceramic could fetch something in the antiquities market.
But he was curious what it had held—wine? Perfume? The rules of the antiquity market said that an untouched bottle would be worth more than one with the seal broken, but to hell with the rules. He could reseal the wax later and no one would know.  p. 80

Kharkov opens the bottle and smoke comes out, which eventually resolves into a genie clothed in modern attire. Kharkov quickly tells the genie that he wants his three wishes and then, when the genie begins to tell him the rules, says his first wish is that there should be no rules. The genie (spoiler) replies that without rules the universe would not exist in its current form (he gives several examples involving gravity, oxidation, etc. etc.) and asks Kharkov to reconsider. Kharkov complies and modifies his first wish to “no rules about wishes”—this means, of course (double spoiler), that the genie is not obliged to give him his three wishes.
Normally I don’t like short-shorts, but this one is well written and has a clever twist on an old theme.
*** (Good). 1,250 words.

Shoot your Shot by Rich Larson

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Shoot your Shot by Rich Larson (Analog, September-October 2022) gets off to an entertaining start with its description of the story’s coke-head narrator in a club bathroom:

It’s been a while since I done coke—too expensive out East—but before Dante left the club he gave me his last two grams and the rolled-up fiver he was using, I think as an apology for bailing. I forgot just how fucking good it feels.
“Yo,” I say, pulling myself up to the sinks to make a new friend. “How’s your night going?”
My sink neighbor glances over, gives a bleary grin. “Yo,” he says. “Yo, not bad.”
“Heard you pissin’ while I was in the stall,” I say. “Terrific stream. Gotta say it. Real powerful-sounding.”
The guy looks confused for a second, then raises his soapy hand for a tentative fist bump. “Thanks, bro.”
I bump it, then start checking my nostril hairs for snowcaps. Clean.  p. 61

Subsequently, the sink neighbour talks about how he was just talking to “the most beautiful girl”, a “dark-haired chick with the silver jacket”. He says he is going to ask for her number, and the narrator assures him that he will succeed . . . before promptly going out and picking up the woman himself.
After some conversation in the club she suggests they go outside, and they eventually end up in an alleyway. They kiss, and then, when the narrator suggests they do some coke, he notices that (spoiler) her words aren’t matching her actions, that she is talking from a hole in her throat, and that her mouth is peeling back to show something like broken razors. The narrator can’t flee as the kiss has numbed his face and body.
This reads like a short character sketch lifted from the writer’s notes and given a random horror ending.
* (Mediocre). 1,500 words.

The Last Science Fiction Story by Adam Troy-Castro

Posted on by Paul Fraser

The Last Science Fiction Story by Adam Troy-Castro (Analog, January-February 2021) is a piece of flash fiction that initially sets up the connection between stories and the outward urge:

At one point, someone wondered, what’s beyond the next hill?
No one had been there. No one had worked up the nerve to go there.
So, someone asked, “What if we went?”
A story got told.
And as time went on, and people went beyond that hill, it happened again.
“What is it like on the other side of the river?”
A story got told.
“What is it like past those distant mountains?”
A story got told.  p. 42

After a bit more of this (and some description of the human race spreading through the Galaxy) I would have expected the last line to echo the connection above, but instead the piece finishes with the question (spoiler):

“Yes, yes, that’s all well and good . . . but what’s out there?” p. 43

This appears to be a non-sequitur as that question illustrates human curiosity, which may be related but isn’t the same thing.
* (Mediocre). 650 words. Story link.

The Sweetness of Berries and Wine by Jo Miles

Posted on by Paul Fraser

The Sweetness of Berries and Wine by Jo Miles (Future Science Fiction Digest #14, March 2022) opens with Shoshana on Kepler Station, where the quartermaster tells her he can’t supply the strawberries she wants for a Passover dish called charoset (he tells her, “The war in the Celosian System has messed up our supply lines”). Later on, Shoshana discusses the problem with her partner Kindra, who asks why it is important as she is not religious. When Shoshana replies that it is her daughter’s first Passover, and that she wants it to be perfect, Kindra suggests Shoshana call her grandmother on New Jerusalem.
The second part of the story sees grandmother set Shoshanna straight after some teasing (“A disaster! You’d better give up now”), when she reveals that charoset was originally made with apples but they changed the recipe on New Jerusalem when they couldn’t get any. Shoshana learns about resilience and adaptation.
This parable was too cutesy, too saccharine for me.
* (Mediocre). 1,150 words. Story link.