Review

Short Story Review: “Tell Them a Story to Teach Them Kindness” by B. Pladek

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Lightspeed Magazine Issue 176, January 2025 (Story Link)

Jude is working as a “Curator” for the Milwaukee school district, assigned to prompt new stories using an AI called RIGHTR. RIGHTR is designed to create stories that offer moral instruction without offending anyone. On a whim, Jude decides to send a 10th grade teacher a story written by a human author (Le Guin’s “Omelas”), assuming – correctly – that like most people this teacher, Booker, has never read a real book and wouldn’t know what it was. The story is a hit with the kids and Jude keeps passing off human-authored stories as RIGHTR-authored prompts. The ruse works brilliantly, until it doesn’t.

The story is framed as a series of messages between Jude and Booker (as well as other’s in Jude’s orbit) and I felt this was a good format for telling this particular story. The contrast between the distinctive voices of the characters and the impersonal delivery mechanism is effective, and on-theme. The point of the story is to dramatize our present-day anxieties regarding the use of AI, as well as the alarming trend among parents (and increasingly compliant school boards) to censor anything that might “upset” their children. This story works well in fulfilling this objective, and Jude’s misconception about what made his deception successful is heartbreaking. However, in the end the story does not ask anything more of the reader than to agree with its own moral purpose. Ironic, if unintended.

Short Story Review: “Not the Most Romantic Thing” by Carrie Vaughn

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Tor.com, October 11, 2023

“Not the Most Romantic Thing” is the fourth of Vaughn’s stories set on the bounty-hunting ship Visigoth. It is the most light-hearted and (despite the title) romantic of the tales. Set much earlier in the timeline than the other stories, it relates Graff and Ell’s first mission together when their relationship was just blossoming. This time the Visigoth is hired to extract tissue samples from a defunct lab on an asteroid scheduled for demolition. Things go sideways when the “tissue samples” give the two men a little more trouble than expected and they run the risk of missing their window to flee before the asteroid gets mulched.

The story is structured as a flashback narrated by the illegally post-human Graff, whose enhancements give him perfect recall. As such, Vaughn doesn’t bother exploiting the story’s built-in countdown clock in order to ratchet up the suspense – Graff has already indicated at the start they will make it through alive, even if readers of the previous stories need no such prompt. The story concludes in the “present”, with the two lovers remarking on that long ago mission with particular attention to a detail that could have given away the secret Graff was (at the time) so terrified of letting out. In this way the story plays as something of a postscript to its tenser, heavier-themed predecessors; a “look where we’re at now” coda to the story so far. It’s a nice addition that works best for readers who have already been following the series, though I’d be lying if I said I wouldn’t prefer the author to turn it back up to 11 the next time around.

Short Story Review: “Death is Better” by Oluwatomiwa Ajeigbe

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Lightspeed Issue 158, July 2023

The narrator of this story is trying – along with his little sister – to escape the alien slavers they were sold to by their own uncle, knowing that if they are caught the penalty is death. As the title of the story suggests, this would not be the worst outcome. This is a very short, relentlessly grim tale, but the author has a gift for building suspense and writing an exciting action scene. I thought the ending was a bit of a cheat (though it certainly fits with the story’s title/theme) and I could have used more engagement with the setting, but it is a well-written and exciting story nonetheless.

Novelette Review: “Didicosm” by Greg Egan

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Analog Science Fiction and Fact, July/August 2023

When she was a child, Charlotte’s father committed suicide, unable to cope with his wife’s death. His actions were largely motivated by a pop-science author’s views on the structure of the universe. As an adult scientist, Charlotte dedicates her research to disproving that author’s theories.

Egan dramatizes a real-life theoretical debate over the shape of the universe, regarding orientable and non-orientable kinds of three-dimensional space. Charlotte is a compelling and relatable protagonist with noble, if also a little selfish, personal goals. This is also one of those Egan stories where the author leaps down a mathematical rabbit-hole (complete with 3D diagrams), and the reader’s level of enjoyment is likely to depend on one’s love of geometry relative to the author’s. Still, “Didicosm” is a solid story, if not among Egan’s very best.

Egan offers an even more thorough – if occasionally head-spinning – account of what a didicosm is on his website, for those interested in further understanding the concept.

Novelette Review: “Showdown on Planetoid Pencrux” by Garth Nix

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Asimov’s Science Fiction, July/August 2023

Like most SF/Western hybrids, Garth Nix attempts to mash together a variety of tropes and cliches from both genres in clever and amusing ways. For this reader, the results are mixed. The main characters are Uncia and Onca, a Sheriff and Deputy maintaining order in a small mining town on a planet outside the jurisdiction of the galaxy-dominating Federation. They are part-cybernetic beings known as “warborgs” who fought for the Hegemony against the Federation during a devastating war that the Hegemony lost. Now all warborgs are illegal under Federation law. Atrox, a sadistic warborg repurposed by the Federation to hunt down its own kind (and any humans unwilling to fall in line) has arrived to destroy Uncia and Onca and bring the planet under Federation heel.

Nix offers up a very detailed sandbox to play in, and that ends up being a double-edged sword. As fun as the setting and backstory can be, for the first two-thirds of the novelette the characters can hardly take a step or get off a line of dialogue without the author digressing into several paragraphs of exposition. The story is nearly half-finished before the main conflict is even established. This has the unfortunate effect of making the promised “showdown” feel somewhat hasty in its execution. Uncia and Onca are nicely delineated characters, though, and their relationship allows for a satisfyingly tender conclusion.

Novella Review: “The Death Hole Bunker” by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

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Asimov’s Science Fiction, July/August 2023

Recommended

“The Death Hole Bunker” starts a new storyline in Kristine Katherine Rusch’s Diving Universe, with some fascinating new additions to the mythology. Hogarth is mapping “death holes” that have been appearing underground on the planet Wyr for decades or more. The death holes always have mummified remains in them, and Hogarth always gets an uncomfortable, tingling feeling when he is near one. This time, there is no tingling feeling and he and his partner Raemi find a staircase leading to a series of rooms, suggesting someone once lived there. In one of the rooms is a treasure trove of rare and valuable items known as “ivory trees”, which are neither trees nor made of ivory. Rather they are branch-like objects made of an unknown material that no one has been able to replicate. And there are even stranger mysteries to uncover deeper in the bunker.

Of all the excellent worlds Rusch has gifted to the world, the Diving stories and novels are probably the most rewarding. This far far future, galaxy-spanning civilization is home to histories and technologies lost to the long march of time, unearthed by people with and incomplete understanding of their application, with often perilous outcomes. “The Death Hole Bunker” is as suspenseful and mysterious as any of the tales that came before. The only drawback is that this is one of those Diving stories meant to part of a longer work, so the long denouement acts a preview of things to come, leaving a lot of questions dangling with no closure for the reader. Of course I plan on reading the promised novel, but for now it leaves me with a tinge of bitterness on the back of my tongue for an otherwise excellent work of science fiction.

Novelette Review: “Imagine: Purple-Haired Girl Shooting Down the Moon” by Angela Liu

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Clarkesworld #201, June 2023

I am always intrigued by science fiction stories about art. Especially in the now times, when new technology (NFTs, generative AI) are reshaping our ideas of how art objects will manifest in the future, with all the attending controversies and concerns. AI prompts are a part of what Angela Liu explores in this story (the title itself being one such prompt), but the goings on mostly focus on a technology called “NC orbs”, in which the artist can “paint” fresh memories into the mind of the user. Strapped for cash, the narrator of the story agrees to illegally paint an NC orb for a client of the brothel she sometimes works at, and consequences ensue. Liu has created quite a detailed cyberpunk dystopia here, though one so relentlessly grim it flirts with absurdity. Quite early in the story it is obvious this is all spiraling toward unavoidable tragedy. Despite this, the characters are compelling, and the author’s engagement with the story’s themes coheres quite nicely.

Short Story Review: “Vast and Trunkless Legs of Stone” by Carrie Vaughn

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Clarkesworld #201, June 2023

Recommended

Carrie Vaughn’s latest is a first contact story, one that takes a scenario used hundreds of times before, then adds a rather unusual and ingenious wrinkle that makes for a thoughtful and exciting read. The protagonist, Mal, is chosen for the one-on-one meeting with a representative of a newly arrived alien race known simply as the Mapmakers. Mal is chosen because the Mapmakers insist on meeting with someone who is not in any way a “leader”, and the Mapmaker Summit Committee decided Mal was the best choice because, “she’s kind, she listens, and everyone likes her”. Mal is rehearsed and fed a lot of talking points they want her to cover (the usual stuff about technology, etc.). But the Mapmaker representative has a different idea of how they want the conversation to go. Vaughn, one of the most efficient storytellers in SFF, offers just the right amount of buildup before throwing the reader a curveball, one that is by turns intriguing, understandable, and kind of hilarious. I really enjoyed the effort Mal and the Mapmaker put into trying to have a natural conversation, even while many of the nuances in such an exchange are difficult to delineate. Another excellent story from a genuine pro.

Short Story Review: “The Officiant” by Dominica Phetteplace

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Clarkesworld #201, June 2023

“The Officiant” is in some ways an old-fashioned “sensawunda” SF tale, though one tempered by more modern understandings about cultural identity and colonialism. The author has created a vivid and complex world with a fascinating history and mythology. The narrator, a human born to Christian missionaries on the planet Raxia, has come to the planet Tau to officiate a wedding. The narrator quickly learns that the inhabitants of Tau, an enigmatic mechanical race called the Strangers, have a different motive altogether for inviting them there. The strength of the story is the way it gradually deepens our understanding the three cultures and how they view each other and how their competing needs, and mythologies, might set them at odds. Much of how the story unfolds is revealed in interactions between the narrator and the Raxian diplomat who accompanies them to Tau, limiting the amount of tension and excitement the author can build. The plot felt a bit slighter than I hoped it would be, but I would not at all mind seeing this world expanded in a longer work.

Short Story Review: “Spaceship Joyride” by Dominique Dickey

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Lightspeed #157, June 2023

The first science fiction tale from June’s issue of Lightspeed is a pleasantly written queer coming-of-age story. The protagonist (related in the 2nd person) goes on the titular joyride with classmate crush Eddie, unsure if he is in the friend zone or not. Just as that is about to get cleared up, they are pulled over by a cop, and some mild tension ensues. The story is written in a clear style, and the protagonist and Eddie are both likeable characters. The story is ostensibly SF (spaceships, etc.) but it doesn’t need to be. It could be a story about two kids who hotwire a car and go for a joyride on the highway and it would be the same story with different tropes. As a coming-of-age tale it is well-meaning but nothing really sets it apart.