This is a short note to let you all know that yes, I’m still alive. However, I got hit with the SIP order in early April and barely had time to get my equipment home from the office before I found out I was laid off (along with half my team at work). I know I haven’t spent the worst SIP by a long shot, but the one-two punch has had nasty effects for my mental health. I was unable to even write for most of the month. It’s still difficult now.
It’s for that reason I’ve had to cancel the rest of the short fiction ratings up until the Nebulas. As of this moment, there isn’t the time nor, honestly, the spoons to do those novellas and novelettes justice. I have decided to attend the (online) Nebulas, and am trying to put back together all the things that fell apart in April…including my blog and Patreon.
So, stay tuned to this wavelength. There’s many more futures to come.
Here are the final three stories nominated in the Short Story category. Part I here. Now, we look in the face of storms, go back to the worst of the British Raj, and walk the stacks of alien libraries. Stick around to the end, where I unveil my favorite.
As a rule, I don’t particularly like “wrong and revenge” stories. Death Wish lingers way too long on the horrors of the wrong and then on the horrors of the revenge, and it’s not the only one by a long shot.
That’s really all you need to know to know why you need to read this story. It navigates the narrow line between the two extremes of this kind of revenge story, it neither forgives its offenders and tries to make them somehow likable, nor does it fetishize either the violence each side does. It doesn’t shy away from it either, the list of trigger warnings is half as long as my arm, but it describes the grim details without lust in its voice. I hammer on this because so, so, so many revenge fantasies fail this, and then you have to shower afterwards.
Instead, “And Now His Lordship Is Laughing” contributes to the ongoing conversation about the British presence in India, especially during World War II, and whether or not they were as bad as the Nazis and fascists they opposed. I can’t weigh in on this conversation, except to say the British in this story are not doing themselves any favors there. But this story is every bit as engaging, and troubling, as Harry Turtledove’s “The Last Article” or Orwell’s obituary of Gandhi.
I won’t lie, I didn’t like this story much at first.
I mean, the opening line is excellent:
“The wind’s moving fast again. The weathermen lean into it, letting it wear away at them until they turn to rain and cloud.”
A Catalog of storms
That’s some “clocks were just striking thirteen”-grade opening material.
But that seemed to be where this particular cli-fi/fantasy stopped. Characters came and went, we danced between lists and narrative, it was very emotional, but it just didn’t seem to go anywhere, even when it finally went somewhere.
So what changed my mind? The power of names, and how Fran Wilde uses them, the way A. C. Wise did with titles in “How the Trick is Done“, only more developed? The weird, off-kilter, Bioshock: Infinite air? Or maybe just the power of that opening line?
It was the way I kept hearing snatches of narrative, a day later. The way I could see Lillit go in my mind several days later. The way I started making lists of social and spiritual storms as my prayer beads sat to one side.
Good stories stick with you. Good stories stick with you long after the title and author have fled your mind, so much detritus in the wind and weather. I don’t particularly like this story, still, but I have to admit it is a good story.
I’ve saved this one for last, because I think this story is going to win the Nebula. It sure as Hell deserves it.
It’s an epistolary little tale, all one-sided, from Hazel “the last astronaut” to her brother Saul (and his wife Huang) as she treads across a barren planet and into an alien Library. She talks about the barren planet, and about the aliens, and about her research, and about the information she’s looking for and why.
She also talks a lot about how badly humanity has doomed itself, because she’s an anthropologist and has read a lot of history. She watched the Great Plains burn and the Pacific Northwest with it. She’s the last astronaut, not because she wants to, but because she was the only one qualified and because there’s not enough resources for astronauts. She doubts whether there’ll be resources for a government in the near future.
And she talks about hope, because in the end, that’s what this story is about. Whenever anyone talks about ‘hopepunk,’ they can refer to this story as their Exhibit A. It treats Saul’s hope as a subversive stance, Hazel’s pessimism as the only sound and sensible approach. We don’t get to hear Saul’s side, but we hear his influence, feel the shadow of his long arm.
And in the end, it might just save the world. Might. Ya gotta have hope.
And, honestly, it’s stories like this that made me read science fiction in the first place.
Moon Phase: Full
Next time: Novelettes, the forgotten length. Tune in next week, same time, same channel!
We’ll start off the Nebula nominee reviews with three of the short stories, ranging from a threadbare-elbow tale of Las Vegas to Edwardian schoolgirl cannibals to blood-stained generation ship cathedrals.
This first story on my Nebula reading list is a strange one. It seems to take place on a Vegas on the edge of the horizon, slightly tilted, slightly too real to be real, a Vegas where Resurrectionists bring potted plants back to life and Assistants falling off the Hoover Dam grow sequined wings and, most importantly, where titles have power.
The story is how the Magician died, how the Magician’s Girlfriend/the Resurrectionist, the Magician’s Stage Manager, the Magician’s current Assistant and the Magician’s former Assistant all play a part in it. “How absurd,” the narration notes as two of them first meet, “that they should define themselves solely in relation to the Magician.” These two have had names for some time, but as they introduce themselves, their titles fall away. Similar moments of transformation happen for everyone, except the nameless rabbit called Gus (and his lack of a name is important) and the Magician himself.
Watching the way Wise played with titles and names, names and titles, who’s called what when, was its own delightful little magic show. And I thank her for breathing new life into a whole set of tired old tropes about ledgerdemain, making something new of them. I’m sure Meg and Becca, in particular, would appreciate that trick.
I remember reading this little gem when it came out last May, I was quite pleased to find it the same story that I remembered. A ghoulish academic summary revolving around distant Ratnabar Island and an unspeakable supper in a girls’ boarding house in rural England, Nibita Sen has a keen awareness of how close academia and cannibalism really are.
On this read-through, I noticed how interesting it was to watch the names and narratives change over time, and watch the Gaurs start elbowing their way back into their own story amidst Rainiers and Cliftons and Schofields. And my God does Sen command the tones! I could place each excerpt’s academic era within a sentence or two, each one distinct and ringing true to its sources. And everyone, from the Angloest Anglo to the Gaur cousins, wants to take Regina Guar and the never-explicitly-stated Churchill Dinner, and carve them up for themselves, for their theories and their narratives.
One has the rather sickening feeling, afterward, that one has just seen the Churchill Dinner all laid out with ten separate diners all commenting on the delicacy of the meat.
At first, I thought I was reading a fantasy story – a cathedral, a sin-eater, a cup of sin and a cup of virtue, a dying cleric, and a bomb. But it quickly became clear that we were cooped up in one of science fiction’s hoariest of hoary stock plots: the generation ship gone bad.
But the trappings are just that, window-dressing for the two cups, the cup of virtue and the cup of sin, and the two women who drink from them: the captain, and the sin-eater. The one contains all the dead captains’ fine and regal memories, desires, impulses, the other all their…well, all their sins. All the slain mutineers, all the spaced excess, all the foul deeds decided. And Karen Osborne would like you to take a minute and consider what the souls of the unquiet dead can do to people. Especially their virtues.
What I love about this story is how Osborne twists the ending. You know how this story is, you’ve seen it a hundred times on the news and a thousand times in fiction. You can already smell the iron tang and viscera. And Osborne barrels down toward that fetid, horrifying climax…and what she does instead made me cheer.
Read it, if only to see for yourself.
Moon Phase: Gibbous
Didn’t see your favorite story? Part II is here, including my choice for this year’s Nebula-winning short story.
Well, takes on might have been more accurate…oh well. Because that’s right, R. Jean Mathieu is going to the Nebulas!
For those of you just tuning in at home, the Nebulas are the professional award of science fiction, SF’s version of the Oscars, given each year by our union, the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America. The Nebulas rival the Hugos for prestige, and this year they’ll be awarded in Woodland Hills, CA on May 31.
Everyone is gonna be issuing their reviews of the novels. Everyone. But you folks know me, you know how I feel about short fiction. So in the leadup to the Nebula Conference, I’ll be reviewing all the short works of SF, all the nominees for Short Story, Novelette, and Novella. When and where able, I’ll link you directly to the story, otherwise, to the Amazon.com or publisher page.
In addition to crowning my choice in each field to win their respective Nebulas, I’ll be rating each story on its merits, measuring in moons from new to full.
Novelette “A Strange Uncertain Light” – G.V. Anderson (F&SF) “For He Can Creep” – Siobhan Carroll (Tor.com) “His Footsteps, Through Darkness and Light” – Mimi Mondal (Tor.com) “The Blur in the Corner of Your Eye” – Sarah Pinsker (Uncanny) Carpe Glitter – Cat Rambo (Meerkat) “The Archronology of Love” – Caroline M. Yoachim (Lightspeed)
Novella “Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom” – Ted Chiang (Exhalation) The Haunting of Tram Car 015 – P. Djèlí Clark (Tor.com Publishing) This Is How You Lose the Time War – Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone (Saga) Her Silhouette, Drawn in Water – Vylar Kaftan (Tor.com Publishing) The Deep – Rivers Solomon, with Daveed Diggs, William Hutson & Jonathan Snipes (Saga) Catfish Lullaby – A.C. Wise (Broken Eye)
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