Martin's Booklog

Short SF Marathon Day 27: Vandana Singh, Michael Swanwick, Rachel Swirsky, Bogi Takács

Published on March 3, 2015Leave a comment

Vandana Singh, “Wake-Rider.” Lightspeed, December 2014.

A well told, intriguing space opera short story that makes me want to read more in this universe.

Michael Swanwick, “Passage of Earth.” Clarkesworld, April 2014.

A nicely weird first contact science fiction story, in which contact is not just made with the alien outside, but also the alien inside. Very new wavey without being old fashioned.

Rachel Swirsky, “Grand Jeté (The Great Leap).” Subterranean, Summer 2014.

There’s always been a strong Jewish current in science fiction of course, Avram Davidson for one, but what struck me reading through so many short stories in the last couple of weeks is how much more comfortable science fiction has become with matters of cultural identity, that you don’t need to pander to a percieved need for universalism by making sure all your heroes have good, decent Anglosaxon names. Rachel Swirsky’s story here is a good example of how having Jewish characters with a strong Jewish identity can be done while telling a universal science fiction story that’s enriched by this, without needing an excuse for them being Jewish. This is not another Golem story.

All of which is just to distract myself from the emotional content of this story; like Swirsky’s Hugo nominated short story “If you were a dinosaur, my love” this is a story about grief and suffering, in which a father has to cope with the death of his wife and the slow dying of his daughter from cancer, his daughter has to cope with her own dying and her father’s suffering, while the robotic copy he has made from her has to deal with her own emotions in all this. It’s a gut punch of a story, something that creeps up to you and then BAM, hits you in the feels.

As you may gather from the title, ballet too is a key ingredient of this story, as the dead mother used to be a ballerina, while the daughter sneaks into her abandoned studio to watch her old performances on dvd.

Bogi Takács, “This Shall Serve as a Demarcation.” Scigentasy: Gender Stories in Science Fiction and Fantasy #6, July 5, 2014.

On an alien planet, where the land and sea are locked into continuous battle with each other, yet in equilibrium, human settlements have learned how to use this battle to wage war against themselves, which in turns hurts the planet. Bogi Takács is “a neutrally gendered Hungarian Jewish author”, so it’s tempting to call this story a trans/genderqueer metaphor, the sea and land standing in for that battle of genders that isn’t a battle, the damage done for the damage that can be done by others or yourself when denied your own gender identity. But science fiction is always about metaphors made concrete and you don’t need to know what all this really means to appreciate its queerness, in the best sense of the word. It’s hopeful and joyful and a good palate cleanser after Swirsky’s heavy trip.

Tracking with closeups (February 4th through March 3rd)

Published on March 3, 2015Leave a comment

Semiprozine Directory | Semiprozine.org –
Approaching Pavonis Mons by balloon: Asimov’s Science Fiction – February 2015 – Reading this piece, I was struck by the sense – which I think has also been articulated by Gardner Dozois – that we're starting to see the emergence of what you might call the "New Default Future". Bear's world is one of vanishing privacy, information for all, continued social inequality, climate change as a given, radical lifestyle changes effected by new biotechnology. You can tweak the parameters a bit, but it does seem as if writers are once again beginning to converge on a shared sense of the future. No, it doesn't necessarily involve space colonies or rolling roads or flying cars, but it's no less valid, no less fascinating.
We Need Diverse Books Authors Take on Publishing, Reader Prejudice – Flavorwire – A few weeks later We Need Diverse Books, the social media movement that has grown into a well-regarded nonprofit in a matter of months, was born. The founders had already started planning their campaign when, not for the last time, an incident of industry racism gave them momentum. In April, BookCon — a subsidiary of New York-based publishing mega-conference BookExpo — announced a panel of superstar children’s authors that consisted of all white men, while the overall conference lineup was all white people, aside from Grumpy Cat.
GUEST POST: Elizabeth Bear on “Strong Female Characters” « Intellectus Speculativus – Specifically, my problem is that the idea that a female lead must be a “strong female character” leads to a whole complex of other problems. So here’s an inexhaustive survey of some of them, and some suggestions on how to avoid the traps.
Conventional Wisdom by Arthur Drooker – Cool Hunting – This time, people are the focus of his lens for "Conventional Wisdom." Drooker plans on attending conventions across the United States to capture the inner-workings of dedicated, passionate and sometimes surprising, communities, all in service to his next proposed book. We're excited to share exclusive sneak peeks from his explorations, as the "Conventional Wisdom" trek unfolds.

Short SF Marathon Day 26: Karl Schroeder, Lewis Shiner, Alex Shvartsman

Published on March 2, 2015Leave a comment

Karl Schroeder, “Jubilee.” Tor.com, February 26, 2014.

In an universe where common cryogenics and such has meant entire communities and worlds can live out their lives one day per several decades, the simple adoscelent love between a boy and a girl from opposing communities has created a legend among those living their lives in real time. But what happens to the society that grew up around the legend when the love affair ends?

Lewis Shiner, “The Black Sun.” Subterranean, Summer 2014.

It’s 1934 and the world’s greatest magicians develop a plot to over throw Hitler by using his and Himmler’s mysticism against him. A neat little adventure story that’s science fiction only in that it’s almost alternate history, told well. However I’m not sure I like it; doesn’t it sort of devalue the real suffering Hitler caused by imagining this sort of fantasy of overthrowing him before he could do much harm?

Alex Shvartsman, “Icarus Falls.” Daily Science Fiction, September 23, 2014.

A clever little story about the world’s first interstellar explorer, her daughter and the value of memories even when they’re not real.

Short SF Marathon Day 25: Kelly Sandoval, John Scalzi, Veronica Schanoes

Published on March 1, 2015Leave a comment

Kelly Sandoval, “The One They Took Before.” Shimmer #22, November 2014.

I think this is going on my Hugo short story shortlist, an urban fantasy story that looks at what happens after you get back from fairy land. It reminded me a bit of Jo Walton’s Relentlessly Mundane, about the same general emotions of loss and bitterness, but in a different key so to speak.

John Scalzi, “Unlocked: An Oral History of Haden’s Syndrome.” Tor.com, May 13, 2014.

Scalzi takes the oral history format that’s become popular in the last couple of years to remember anything from the 25th anniversary of Ghostbusters to the beginning of the AIDS epidemic in America in the early eighties and uses it to chronicle the spread of his fictional disease from his novel Locked In. A bit of a tear jerker in places.

Some of the developments seem to have gone a bit too quick or easy to be totally believable, but that’s more of a question of how much room there is in a novella. It’s funny to think that Scalzi has basically taken the exposition from his novel and reworked it into this.

Veronica Schanoes, “Among the Thorns.” Tor.com, May 7, 2014.

I’ve mentioned before I don’t like fairy tale inspired fantasy, but once again I have to make an exception. Apparantly there was a Brothers Grimm fairy tale in which a lowly peddler tricks an evil Jew and robs him of his money, then kills him by dancing him to death in a thorn bush. Veronica Schanoes uses this as the base of her story and puts it in the context of the actual antisemitism and brutality against Jews as happened in the period the fairy tale was roughly set in. Then she takes the daughter of the murdered Jew and let her take her revenge on the people who killed her father.

There are some horrible scenes in the first paragraphs of the story, but the violence isn’t gratitious. What I liked was this was both brutal and humane; the people who killed the protagonist’s father aren’t nazi caricatures but ordinary human beings and way Schanoes described the crowd who watched his death reminded me also of lynching mobs from American history. Ordinary, decent people can take great delight in watching the other being tortured and murdered in the right circumstances and Schanoes isn’t shy to point this out. But it’s not a story totally devoid of hope and decency. Revenge is taken but not total, Itte is too human to be as horrible as the tormentors of her father were.

Well done. On the Hugo ballot it goes.

Spies of the Balkans — Alan Furst

Published on March 1, 2015Leave a comment

Cover of Spies of the Balkans

Spies of the Balkans
Alan Furst
279 pages
published in 2010

Since 1988 Alan Furst has been writing a loosely connected series of thrillers set in Europe just before and during World War II, usually known as the Night Soldiers, after the first novel in the series; Spies of the Balkan is the eleventh. As you may imagine, these are not very jolly books. Even disregarding what we as readers know is waiting for them in World War II, the characters themselves are smart enough and knowledgeable enough to see the danger on the horizon, even if they don’t quite realise how bad it will become. Of course in 1940 Greece the danger is easy to spot. Hitler has already conquered Poland, Denmark, Norway, France and the Low Countries, while Mussolini is tooling around the Mediterranean, with Italian troops massing in Albania on the border with Greece.

In an important harbour town like Salonika, such times requires police officers sensitive to the political realities Greece has to face. Costas Zannis is one such police officer, tasked with dealing with all those …delicate… matters that crop up in a city that’s home to so many nationalities, in a country that has to tread careful to stay neutral and free. Though free is perhaps the wrong word to use under the Metaxas dictatorship. For an honest(ish) cop like Zannis, manoeuvring his way through the thickets of political considerations is tough. Yet his tact, honesty and understanding do make him eminently suitable for his job, as can be seen in the way he handles the problems a certain Jewish woman has crossing into Turkey.

This is the start of Zannis’ involvement with the pipeline the woman, wife of a powerful Wehrmacht officer, has set up to smuggle Jews out of Nazi Germany. Pragmatic as he is, he only does so after he gets the blessing of his superior in the Greek intelligence services in Salonika, who also helps provide him with the money needed. He also uses his contacts in the police forces of various countries the pipeline runs through, ironically the same telex equipment these countries bought under German pressure…

Meanwhile the political situation for Greece worsens, as the long awaited Italian invasion takes place, though it goes surprisingly badly for the invader. Zannis himself is drafted, as like most police officers, he’s also a reserve officer in the Greek army. This doesn’t last long however, as he’s invalided out of the army after he got wounded in an arial attack.

Through his involvement with the Jewish pipeline, Zannis also comes to the attention of the British intelligence services, though as it turns out they had had their eye on him for a long time already. Not surprising of course for a political police officer in a politically sensitive city. He’s “asked” to retrieve an English scientist from Paris, who had landed in occupied France when the bomber he was on was shot down. Things do not go entirely to plan and Zannis knows he’s now on the nazis hit list once they invade.

What I like about Furst’s writing is that his characters aren’t helpless in the face of the inevitability of World War II, despite being very much aware something bad is coming. What Zannis does isn’t futile. Even if he can’t stop the course of history, he can at least help some of its victims escape. For such a gloom merchant, Spies of the Balkans is a remarkably optimistic book.