'Nathan Burgoine's Blog, page 59

Short Stories 366:13 — “Heavy Lifting,” by A. T. Greenblatt

[image error]Sometimes I think the deftest “world in peril” stories are the ones that tell us enough about how things have gone wrong but don’t tell us everything, and “Heavy Lifting,” from A.T. Greenblatt (found in Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction) has that balance down perfectly. It was all the more enjoyable in knowing of the scarcity, the structural weaknesses, and the worry the characters were facing than it would have been in knowing exactly what had brought this community to the brink.

The story picks up with a team trying to recover a hacked robot. Someone has managed to get the robot to take off, and it’s up to one person in the field and one person at her desk to try and recover the robot—which isn’t the first hacking attempt for this particular robot type, not the first successful attempt, but is the first attempt that has resulted in the robot bursting its way out of the fenced-in community, which adds a layer of desperation to the programmer at her desk (and her partner in the field).

There are some really clever plot points at play here, too. With more access, the programmer could simply stop the robot in its tracks, but no one has seen fit to give her that access, so she has to use skills she’s got to work around the problem, making things harder than they should be. That she’s also a character who uses a wheelchair and crutches to get around, and notes most of the buildings in their community have stairs at the entrance wasn’t lost as a parallel. More, the ending of the tale left me smiling in a similar way—I won’t ruin it—and all the more so as the character revelations piled up. “Heavy Lifting” does a great job of juggling the narrative, its theme, the POV of a disabled character, and that larger social context without dropping a single ball, and the result is a really enjoyable story.

Short Stories 366:12 — “Diyu,” by Robert William Iveniuk

[image error]Is it wrong to admit I was pleasantly surprised to see Canada as a setting, even though I knew which particular slice of awful history I was about to see? “Diyu” is the perfect example of what to expect from Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction from the Margins of History, in that the stories are set in darker times or places (or both) for the most part, giving voice to people written out of history or edited into things like the way I learned about them in school, such as “The Chinese helped build the railroads of Canada.”

“Helped,” meaning, of course, “treated abominably by the wealthy white men who demanded they work to death to build the railway as fast as possible at whatever the cost to their health, safety, or lives.” Here, though, we follow one of those Chinese workers, Wu Xiao-Lu, who works the detonators and has come to North America for purposes unclear at first glance, but don’t feel entirely like choice.

An accident uncovers something terrifying and unique in a time and place that was already horrifying by itself, and Wu Xiao-Lu is fairly certain he is one of the only people who can banish the demon uncovered by the man-made disaster. What follows is some really well-done historical spec-fic, told excellently through a comprehension and lens of the time period and character in question, and while not exactly uplifting—like most of the tales in Long Hidden—it is at least ultimately triumphant.

Short Stories 366:11 — “Mrs. Martin’s Incomparable Adventure,” by Courtney Milan

[image error]Every now and then you bump into a novella that collides with you at just the right moment for it to be read. I read this one last year, during some pretty frustrating times with organizations devoted to romance who seemed to be going out of their way to actively make many of us feel like we didn’t deserve our own damn stories, and then… Mrs. Martin’s Incomparable Adventure happened. Boom. Mood adjusted up all the way back to eleven.

So what do we have here? We have a sixty-five year old woman who has been left in the lurch after dutiful service to a family for her entire life decides a little lie and a little fraud is a small price to pay to replace a pension that she should have earned fairly. A very wealthy seventy-three year old woman is her path to these ends—that would be the Mrs. Martin from the title. A historical women-loving-women romance set in London between these two women that’s just… I mean… Magic. And the terrible nephew is just such a perfectly horrible character and his comeuppance is such a riveting freaking delight in the face of more sober realities.

This was an absolutely perfect example of what I love in novella-length romances. It’s not a word too long nor too short, has enough wrinkles and tangles and turning points and emotional moments to carry the reader along at a tidy pace, and then wraps it all up with a lovely epilogue that had me settling back into my chair and forgetting I’d been ready to burn all of romance to the ground an hour earlier. Thank you, Courtney Milan.

Short Stories 366:10 — “In the Image of Man,” by Gabriella Stalker

[image error]One of the things I’ve always enjoyed about science fiction is how often it takes a facet of contemporary life and aims a lens at it. Sometimes it can do so with a very subtle, light touch, and sometimes it’s a heavier stroke of the brush, but it can be super effective anywhere between the extremes. This story, from Women Destroy Science Fiction, is definitely not pulling punches, and yet the over-the-top-ness of the world Stalker creates has an unnerving ability to read a little too plausibly.

Set in the (near?) future when malls have apartment complexes and churches built right in, and the world outside those malls is rarely visited by anyone—other than to take a bus to a better or bigger mall—we meet Wendell, a young man in Texas who is absolutely taking part in the current culture. He gets his weekly teen loan (which he’ll have to pay back when he’s older, and to his mother’s frustration seems to be on the same path as his father who is still paying off his own teen loans), he has a girlfriend, he doesn’t question much of anything going on, and he’s about to graduate. And then he goes to a church that’s outside of any mall.

What follows could have been done with an even heavier hand, but thankfully isn’t, and the result made me nervous, waiting for a certain kind of penny to drop, but instead Stalker brings the story to a close in a way that managed to balance hopeful with realism… frustrating realism, but realism. The audio narrator also really pulled off intonations here, which added a kind of twangy gravitas hard to put into words, but really worked for the piece.

Short Stories 366:9 — “A Crooked Road Home,” by Caroline Sciriha

[image error]Most of the stories in Scourge of the Seas of Time (and Space) bring a protagonist to the table to really root for, and while Sciriha’s pirate is conflicted, I struggled to wish well of him given the first we see of him is his dooming a colony ship worth of passengers to suffocate and die. So this wasn’t going to be a Rah-rah, you go, guy! kind of story.

Pirates aren’t kind people, and even in a futuristic setting there’s going to be that level of death in play, and as his past is explored, there was some sympathy given for how he got to where he got. He feels bad about it, and that’s at least something, and he’s in an impossible situation, too, with a horrendous father higher up on the piracy food-chain, and a near insurmountable debt he can only repay by piracy, but… I couldn’t shake all the deaths.

So it was a nice turn in the story when another character was introduced I did care for, and since that meant rooting for the pirate captain to find enough of his shredded decency, I was down for it. And Sciriha doesn’t let him completely off the hook, which would have left me feeling kind of gross about the whole thing. It’s well balanced, and ultimately satisfying.

Short Stories 366:8 — “Double Time” by John Chu

[image error]Okay, it’s possible my heart shattered a bit with this one.

Found in People of Colo(u)r Destroy Science Fiction, “Double Time” opens with a contemporary enough feel: a girl performing at a skating competition. It’s only when she notices the flickering of light out of the corner of her eyes—people jumping back in time to watch something a second time—that things take the SF turn, and even then, Chu manages to weave that piece of technology and do something pretty amazing with it.

He turns time-travel into a no-big-deal thing, and instead turns the fallout of the technology into something incredibly personal and heart-breaking and emotionally engrossing in the life of his professional skater character. She’s still young, is feeling absolutely overwhelmed and ground down by what seems like the endless criticism of her mother, and even her coach isn’t always a solace. Her mother wants her to be the next Michelle Kwan, but without any of the learning curve or setbacks. It’s painful to read, and so easy to slip into her thought process, even as the skating world around them is changing due to the technology: because now, people can do a routine, then jump back four minutes in time and skate a duet with themselves, aiming for perfect synchronization and amazing scores.

The fallout of this particular quirk of short-range time-travel, the mother-daughter relationship straining to the point of a near break, and the place where Chu brings the reader (and leaves the reader kind of heart-broken and snivelling, in my case)?

Just fantastic.

Short Stories 366:7 — “How to Move Spheres and Influence People,” by Marko Kloos

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Ah, memories.

I have a confession. I read and re-read the first, I don’t know, six or seven Wild Cards books over and over again. See, I love superheroes—that’s probably obvious given my whole debut novel thing—and the X-Men were staples of my childhood especially because of the whole “born different to people who aren’t the same” thing, which really spoke to wee queer me. So me and superheroes? Huge love. And the Wild Cards were a part of that. Until I realized—and my memory is foggy here, but I can’t actually recall any, so I hope I’m not misspeaking—that there were no queer characters. Story of my reading life, right? But I loved those books and they keep a warm place in my heart.

And they’re still going strong, apparently. I can’t quite bring myself to pick them up and continue (or even figure out where I left off) but Tor.com had this story, “How to Move Spheres and Influence People,” up on the site and, well, I loved it. Disabled teen girl learns she’s got a very specific form of very powerful telekinesis? It’s even sphere-specific, which made me grin (again, because of my whole debut novel thing). I love the main character in this short, T.K., so much (and can we take a moment to just high-five over her initials being T.K.?)

The story is so freaking clever. It’s got the perfect amount of superhero origin mixed in with characterization, a turning point moment, and the finding of just the right name. It’s adorbs. And I always did love the whole notion of the Wild Cards breakdown: Aces, Jokers, and Deuces. It was really cool to step back into the Wild Cards world, even just for a day, and I’m really thankful to Marko Kloos for the visit.

Short Stories 366:6 — “An Open Letter to the Family,” by Jennifer Brozek

[image error]Epistolary format is a hard format to pull off. Writing a fictional narrative through a letter puts an extra burden on character voice to do it all: world-build, provide the POV lens for the entire theme and plot, you name it. I have a love of epistolary format, so when I saw this story in Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction I grinned and buckled in.

The story in the letter is, on the surface, fairly straightforward: a woman with a disease that has left her in chronic pain in normal gravity has been living in a zero-g station, and while that alleviated the pain, it has left her legs—which didn’t function—all the further atrophied and brittle and in danger of causing worse harm should they be damaged. So she makes a choice.

That’s the power of the story, and it’s something I absolutely adored. The choice is made. this isn’t a letter asking for permission. This isn’t a letter asking for forgiveness. This letter is a declaration of a choice, and there is no option for debate. It is done and this missive is to the whole family at once to say so (and I loved in particular the mentions of particular family members and the “stop inviting me to visit when it is excruciating for me”). Every word in the letter has just the right intonation, and there are some sly asides that hint at the humour I’ve found so common among spoonies.

Short Stories 366:5 — “Marigolds,” by L.S. Johnson

[image error]Leading up to the flour war in France in 1775, “Marigolds” by L.S. Johnson was a wonderful mix of the historical and speculative, which is exactly the premise of the anthology in which it is found, Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction from the Margins of History.

Here we meet Claire, a woman working in a brothel run by Mémé, who has all the women specifically paint sigils on the roofs of each other’s rooms before entertaining guests, especially when she lights the red lamps that let the clients know the women are menstruating. Mémé is an enigma at first, and Claire herself is more concerned with her own love for Isabella—another of the women in the brothel—rather than the madam. But as she starts to realize the sigils they paint do seem to affect real world change, and the changes outside the brothel become all the more violent and terrifying, Claire wonders if she might use the same magic to do the one thing she most desperately wants: to keep Isabella safe.

Johnson’s touches with the magic are brilliantly done here, and I really enjoyed both the slow reveals and the dark turns in the narrative. More, the story manages to be dark and gritty in its beginning and yet does deliver an ending with enough of hope to it to not be overwhelming or entirely maudlin. That’s a huge deal for me as a reader, as I’m so completely done with queer tragedies, especially in historical settings.

Short Stories 366:4 — “The Pursuit of…” by Courtney Milan

[image error]The first of (likely many) novellas during this project to talk about short(er) fictions every day, The Pursuit of… by Courtney Milan does something pretty damn amazing: it juggles really heavy, really depressing realities of history alongside two incredibly engaging characters and ends up telling a really delightful, funny, and uplifting story.

Full disclosure: I’ve read none of the rest of the Worth Saga (though now I intend to) and was instead just hunting around my lists of queer character novellas that I’ve picked up but hadn’t cracked yet during a post-headache day lie-in. This was the perfect companion. Henry Latham kind-of-sort-of surrenders/turns traitor at a battle during the revolutionary war, and John Hunter gives him his coat so he can pretend to be an American and slip free during the aftermath. Except Henry wants to thank him, and when he learns John is about to walk the long trek to Rhode Island to see if his family is still there, he just sort of comes with.

The story here is so incredibly integrated with the two characters—John is a freed slave who fought in the war to likewise gain the freedom of the man his sister married; Henry is a man with a runaway brain who has let down his wealthy family his entire life—and their positions on pretty much everything clash at the start. But as the journey continues (and god, the humour in these pages) they connect in a way that they both know to be, at best, temporary given their situations and statuses and lived realities. And then Milan does what queer people in history have always done: she finds a way. The result is a novella that left me smiling, and rekindled a little spark of hope.