Asimov's Science Fiction

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

WolfLeave a comment
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

WolfLeave a comment
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.