Short SF Marathon Day 19: Sam J. Miller, Mary Anne Mohanraj, Sunny Moraine

Sam J. Miller, “Kenneth: A User’s Manual.” Strange Horizons, December 1, 2014.

As I said before, I started this project partially because I wanted to read more short fiction to be able to vote better in the Hugos, partially to see if Jonathan McCalmont’s fears for the direction of short fiction were justified. If I could guess, both this and the next story are prime examples of what he was talking about.

Because if we’re honest, “Kenneth: A User’s Manual” didn’t need to be science fiction, in its wistful recall of a certain type of early eighties, pre-AIDS gay man through virtual recreation a couple of decades in the future. Leave that framing out and you could publish it as a mainstream nostalgic-bitchy feature.

Yet, as I’ve argued before, plenty of classic honest science fiction had the same problem, could with a few tweaks be sold as a mainstream story, yet wasn’t. That’s where space opera originally came from after all, a derogatory term for this kind of story. But you can’t say that this particular story is cookie cutter in the way old school space opera was and if Miller feels more comfortable in writing what seems to be something of a personal story in a genre he’s used to, let him. In any case this was an interesting look at a sub culture I barely know anything about.

Mary Anne Mohanraj, “Communion.” Clarkesworld, June 2014.

Meanwhile “Communion” is, apart from a story that tells more than it shows — was this a sequel to a previous story perhaps, also a story that doesn’t make any sense when you think about it too long, even when you’re reading it. The political situation doesn’t make any sense; humans are at war with aliens or are they, but still one can come to the planet where his brother died? Meanwhile there are internal’religious’ conflicts about gene manipulation as well? And why provide the elaborate cod-scientific explenation for the alien’s death rites that really doesn’t make much sense when you think about it, if it could just as well have been explained as a cultural thing?

But where this story succeeds is in its emotional truth, of a grieving alien who gets involved outside his will in the domestic troubles of the couple that have kept the remains of his brother safe for him to take home. Again, with a bit of squinting this could just as well been a non-sf story, but I’ve been coming more and more to the conclusion that the particulars of a story matters even when generally it could’ve been told in another way as well. The shape of the story is what it is and should be judged on. We don’t need to worry about ersatz science fiction from pulp writers anymore; they’re long gone.

Sunny Moraine, “So Sharp That Blood Must Flow.” Lightspeed, February 2014.

The one thing that always annoys me about retold fairytales and allegoric tales undsoweiter, even the best of them, is the usual insistence that the story follows a set of arbitrary, unclear rules, that they run on deterministic tracks. Well, this is one fairy tale whose heroine has decided to break all the rules…