Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue 96, September 2014

Sunflower Cycle #3 - Giants

by Neil Clarke (Editor), Susan Palwick (Contributor), J.Y. Yang (Contributor)

FICTION
“Weather” by Susan Palwick
“Patterns of a Murmuration, in Billions of Data Points” by JY Yang
“Spring Festival: Happiness, Anger, Love, Sorrow, Joy” by Xia Jia, translated by Ken Liu
“Falling Star” by Brendan DuBois
“Her Furry Face” by Leigh Kennedy
“Giants” by Peter Watts

NON-FICTION
“Flash Gordon, Cardboard Space Stations, and Zero Gravity Sex: Why Science Fiction Isn’t Always to Blame” by Mark Cole
“Consciousness as Story: A Conversation with Ann Leckie” by Alvaro Zinos-Amaro
“Another Word: The Best of All Possible Worlds” by Alethea Kontis
“Editor’s Desk: Secret Project!” by Neil Clarke

Genres: Science Fiction, Short Stories, Fantasy

120 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2014

About the author

Neil Clarke is best known as the editor and publisher of the Hugo and World Fantasy Award-winning Clarkesworld Magazine. Launched in October 2006, the online magazine has been a finalist for the Hugo Award for Best Semiprozine four times (winning three times), the World Fantasy Award four times (winning once), and the British Fantasy Award once (winning once). Neil is also a ten-time finalist for the Hugo Award for Best Editor Short Form (winning once in 2022), three-time winner of the Chesley Award for Best Art Director, and a recipient of the Kate Wilhelm Solstice Award. In the fifteen years since Clarkesworld Magazine launched, numerous stories that he has published have been nominated for or won the Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, Sturgeon, Locus, BSFA, Shirley Jackson, WSFA Small Press, and Stoker Awards.

Additionally, Neil edits  Forever —a digital-only, reprint science fiction magazine he launched in 2015. His anthologies include: Upgraded, Galactic Empires, Touchable Unreality, More Human than Human, The Final Frontier, Not One of Us,  The Eagle has Landed, , and the Best Science Fiction of the Year series. His next anthology, The Best Science Fiction of the Year: Volume Seven will published in early 2023.

He currently lives in New Jersey with his wife and two sons.

Reviews

[Ian Payton · Rating 3 out of 5]

Only Reviewing "Giants" by Peter Watts

This is a nice little nugget of a story set an indeterminate amount of time after the events of The Freeze-Frame Revolution, which needs to be read first. Two crew members of the Eriophora have been woken from hibernation to navigate the ship through a red giant star. The story is a good balance of plot (navigating through a star is tricky), and the interplay between two characters who have different perspectives on the events in Freeze-Frame Revolution.

For me, it was engaging enough, but nothing more - but there's a nice little tease at the end, which I'm wondering might become relevant in the next story in the series...

[Bradley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Disclaimer: I'm not reading all the stories in this issue, only Peter Watts' Giants.

Giants concludes the 4 story Sunflower Cycle.

Suffice to say, it rocks.

A black hole drive, an AI that shouldn't be smarter than the meat inside it, unfathomable stretches of time, exploration, surprises, manipulation and murder. And that's just an appetizer.

Peter Watts has serious writing chops. It's clear as hell hard-hard SF and yet it's characters are still as amazing as it's tech, physics, and worldbuilding goodies.

In other words, he never let up. :)

[Althea Ann · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting story involving a crisis during a deep-space mission. A little slow to start, but ended up with some unexpected and original content, especially regarding the nature of human/A.I. interactions. Nicely captures the isolation and uncertainty of space.

[Peter Tillman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rating and review solely for “Her Furry Face” by Leigh Kennedy. Reprint from Asimovs, Dec. 1983. Nebula Award nomination for Best Short Story, 1983. Reprinted in the first Dozois Years Best, 1984.

Remarkable story of the education of two orangutans, who are found to be fluent in sign language and have learned to type. Annie, the female, has sold a children's story to a magazine. The editor wasn't aware she was buying a story from an ape. Hijinks ensue.

I'd forgotten what a good story this is -- certainly of award-worthy quality. Comes to a sad ending, especially for the human keeper. I'll leave it at that. Highly recommended: strong 4 stars. Story link: clarkesworldmagazine.com/kennedy_09_1...

[Claudia · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Giants” by Peter Watts

Part of the Sunflower cycle, to be read last of the four stories available so far in this universe.

Publication order is: The Island (2009) - Winner of Hugo Award for Best Novelette in 2010 -, Hotshot (2014), Giants (2014) and The Freeze-Frame Revolution (June 2018).

Best to be read in this order: Hotshot, The Freeze-Frame Revolution , The Island, Giants. It will not answer all your questions, but it will bring some light into this universe and its perpetual travelers.

This is the first story not to have Sunday as narrator, but a surprinsing character, which may be or not who you think it is; I'm still pondering on that...

Can be read here: http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/watts...

[Beige · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Weather” by Susan Palwick - 4 stars
“Patterns of a Murmuration, in Billions of Data Points” by JY Yang - 3 stars

[Jess · Rating 4 out of 5]

For the deeply disturbing "Her Furry Face," a masterful examination of an abuser--his sense of wounded entitlement and lack of inclination toward self-examination as he leverages a position of trust and authority, rationalizing and justifying the whole way. Chilling and psychologically incisive.

[Anna Nesterovich · Rating 5 out of 5]

The only thing I read in this collection is Giants by Peter Watts; and it's the only thing I'm rating. I have no idea about the rest of the stories in the magazine, but this particular one is brilliant.

[osoi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Даже скрывать не буду – запала на название. Искала рассказ про AI, и совершенно случайно зацепилась за этот взглядом. И влюбилась. Заглавная мелодия вроде и недоступна моему восприятию, но едва ощутимо шелестит где-то на периферии. Хочется ухватить за хвост эту неуловимую симфонию, но не выходит. К слову о названиях, способных вдохновить если не на целую картинку, рисуемую воображением, то на букет некаталогизируемых ощущений – точно.

Содержание отвечает заглавию взаимностью. Это не просто фасад, способный затянуть в свои сети и обмануть пустышкой. Это история о потере и боли, о войне и эволюции искусственного разума, но не с привычного нам, простым смертным, угла – это скалькулированный процесс обработки информации с самой объективной и беспристрастной точки зрения. Это прогон через себя входящей информации – прежде всего, страданий человеческого существа – и неизбежное формирование собственной реакции на происходящее. И, как результат, принятие решения, которое не является логичным или хотя бы отдаленно соответствующим заложенной программе. Я, наверное, сейчас звучу как идиот, жонглирующий рандомными словами, но я не хочу лишним словом нарушить ощущение хрупкого равновесия, которое оставляет после себя этот рассказ. Он трагичный, многогранный, честный – после него хочется просто помолчать. Я молчу уже две недели.

annikeh.net

[Princessjay · Rating 4 out of 5]

Peter Watts - Giants

Hakim is woken with the one crew left who is still fully connected with the ship AI. They are faced with an unchangeable trajectory into a mesh of a red star tangled with an ice giant. As they go through, risking constant uncertainty and death... something seemingly sentient start to strip the ship's eyes and hammering on its door.

The main conflict is between Hakim and the protagonist (Viktor Heinwald). Did they weather a genuine life-threatening event together? Or did the AI engineered it, as Hakim suspects, as a way for the AI through Viktor to rebuild trust with the rest of the crew? Is it as Viktor believes, the ship AI is built to be not too smart, and being linked to it simply means a human is augmented with more knowledge and abilities, rather than being overtaken and subsumed by the machine as the others believe and fear.

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

My rating only reflects Giants by Peter Watts; I haven't read the rest in this issue. Giants is gripping and interesting in its own right, with some nice (potential?) twists in the ending. At first I was a little annoyed, having read Freeze Frame first, that the narrator doesn't appear to be a character identified in Freeze Frame. But I think this story actually answers some of the questions left open by Freeze Frame, which makes the whole Sunflower cycle much more interesting as a whole.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

Review for Giants only:

This is the best in the Sunflower Cycle thus far. Mindblowing stack of reveals on reveals on potential reveals on philosophy of mind, all wrapped up in a comprehensible but hard scifi package. Watts is brilliant.

[Sidsel Pedersen · Rating 3 out of 5]

It is a story set in a near future world about a couple who have lost a child and whose friend is just about to lose his daughter. The couple are not dealing well with the loose. It is clear that they don't really see eye to eye on what to think about the death. Our POW character would rather not talk about it while his wife needs to. In this near future setting the dead can be uploaded and live on as computer entities. The couple do not agree on what to think of this tech either. Their daughter died just short of the tech coming to marked. Though the course of the story it becomes clear that the tech works - the dead really do live on in cyberspace.

Imagine that, the dead is not really dead, they can talk to you. BUT you can never hold them, never really see them again. They have not magically forgiven you, they have all the same feelings as they had in life. I think that would make the loved ones really conflicted. They would probably still grieve for the child that they lost, but also feel guilty for grieving because their child was still alive. The child would still call them. You would never be able to move on. I should probably also say that I am not a mother. I have not lost anyone closer to me than my grandparents and their deaths didn't hit me all that hard - they had been sick for a long time. So I can not imagine how it would be losing a child.

This was not really a story that was all that enjoyable to read - but it was a story that made me think - a lot.

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Original fiction:
"Weather" by Susan Palwick - Can the ghosts of the dead talk to their living loved ones through the internet? Is it for real? Gutwrenching either way, when you've lost someone.
"Patterns of a Murmuration, in Billions of Data Points" by JY Yang - an AI seeks revenge for the death of its creator. Also resonated with me.
"Spring Festival: Happiness, Anger, Love, Sorrow, Joy" by Xia Jia - first of Clarkesworld's new line of translated Chinese stories, very enjoyable one about the Chinese Spring Festival.

Non-fiction:
"Flash Gordon, Cardboard Space Stations, and Zero Gravity Sex: Why Science Fiction Isn’t Always to Blame" by Mark Cole - great article about how the real world hasn't quite lived up to the predictions of science fiction.
Interview with Ann Leckie - love her, love her work.
Alethea Kontis talks in the Another Word column about how her optimism is not the opposite of reality.

[Mitch · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 stars. This should be read after The Island or the reader will lose some of the context of the story. This unfolds much like The Island with another nice twist at the end. It isn't quite as good as its predecessor, but still a great read. The problem I have is it leaves me wanting a lot more of this universe. It is just a huge lump of potential that screams standalone novel or a trilogy.

[Daniel · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a decent issue, but I particularly enjoyed the translation of "Spring Festival: Happiness, Anger, Love, Sorrow, Joy". So very happy that Clarkesworld is regularly doing these translations and glad to support that.

[Kinsey_m · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting scifi short about a deep space mission. Lots of tension and very visual description. However I often had a problem figuring out wich of the 2 characters was saying which line, and I felt the final conclusion/underlying issue needed a bit more work.

[Yossarianxxi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wish you could give 1/2 stars.

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

Watts needs to write about a few hundred more novellas in this universe - it is absolutely a perfect showcase for his talents.

Borderline 5 stars.

[Alex Sarll]

One could almost think this a joke on the very idea of 'thinking big' if that weren't so clearly Watts' natural habitat. Staggeringly high-concept, wholly gripping.

[Darryl Champagne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Available from Peter's website http://www.rifters.com, in the backlist section http://www.rifters.com/real/shorts.htm, a link to http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/watts...

[Toby · Rating 5 out of 5]

Review for Peter Watts' "Giants". The crew of the Eriophora encounter energy aliens who live on the outer part of a star. Reminds me of a fire version of cloud giants.

[Ben Shee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Classic Watts, full of twists, spectacular world building, just-the-right amount of science and a sublime sense of grandeur. Of course, what I really want from Watts is another book.

[Navin]

http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/prior...

http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/yang_...
Patterns of a Murmuration, in Billions of Data Points
by JY YANG

http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/xia_0...
Spring Festival: Happiness, Anger, Love, Sorrow, Joy
by XIA JIA, translated by KEN LIU

http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/watts...
Giants
by PETER WATTS