It’s
time for a new project here at Shared Universe Reviews. Spurred on by the
success I’ve had with The Blog Fantastic project, I wanted to do something that
was related to science fiction, another genre I love but I feel I haven’t
explored deeply enough. Heck, I’m well aware that I’ve only scratched the
surface. As much as I’d like to give science fiction its due by discover some
of the classic and contemporary works by authors new and familiar to me, I just
don’t have the time. While my output has slowly gone down since I first started
SUR, I’ve stabilized it to a regular schedule of one post a week. The problem
is that I’m not fully satisfied with that. It doesn’t feel like enough but it
might already be too much since some weeks I struggle to hit my self-imposed
deadline.
All of
this led to an idea. Writing smaller posts on short stories and uploading them
once a week. This way I can combined my goal of posting more frequently while
exploring more science fiction authors. That the goal is also for writing
smaller posts, I figured short stories are perfect for this. Additionally, short
story is a form of writing very closely linked to science fiction publications
in the last hundred years, it makes sense to combine these ideas together.
Short Story Sunday might not always be exclusively made up of science fiction
reviews, but I’m pretty happy letting that be the main focus. With each post I’ll
include where I found and read the story (online publication, best of
anthology, magazine, etc.) and give the story one of the following rankings:
1 star –
Bland ideas and poor execution
2 stars –
Unoriginal or overly familiar ideas and/or poor execution
3 stars –
Good ideas and/or good execution
4 stars –
Original ideas executed with skill and style
5 stars –
A classic of the short story form, highly recommended
I expect
that a lot of these reviews will get a ranking of 3 stars, but I’ll make sure
to include the reasons behind my ranking for each story. Without any more preambles,
here are the two stories for this Sunday.
“Sleeping Dogs” by Joe Haldeman
Read in Year’s Best SF 16 (2011), edited by
David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer
Originally
published in Gateways (2010), Edited
by Elizabeth Anne Hull
I’ve
only read one book by Joe Haldeman and it was a Star Trek book. It was the second Star Trek book I ever read and I really enjoyed it. The ending wasn’t
all that great, but it was good enough for me to go out and buy Forever War. A science fiction classic, I’m
a little ashamed to admit it’s been sitting on my bookshelves for over two
years. I’ll get to it eventually, especially since this short story gave me a
clearer understanding of the kind of science fiction writing Haldeman is known
for. That’s my guess, anyway, because like Forever
War, this is a military sci-fi story and I liked it.
“Sleeping
Dogs” is set a few centuries in the future, though no specific date is given. A
man has travelled to a planet that is part of the Confederación, a federation
of 48 planets. He spent eight months here as a soldier during his youth and, as
it was customary at the time, he was given the drug aqualethe before the trip
back to Earth. The drug blocks out all traumatic memories from his long term
memory. The drug was used to as a way to prevent (rather than treat) PTSD. The
memories weren’t erased, but the connections with them were greatly reduced,
ultimately resulting in them being practically erased. The distinction is
important however since the effects of the drug are reversible. The soldier has
come back to this faraway planet because he’s got a few doses of the medication
that will allow him to regain access to his wartime memories. In order to do
this, he needs to be in the same physical location he was when aqualethe was
originally administered.
It was
nice to get a sense of Haldeman’s non-Star
Trek style, but I was also disappointed to see him use pretty common sci-fi
tropes. Large corporations, galactic federations, old soldiers trying to figure
out the truth of the events of the war. There are some ideas that I haven’t
encountered before such as the drug aqualethe (break it down to its root words)
and the idea of memories being used as a way to control individuals. I also
quite liked that the federation of planets is dominated by Latin American
culture and that Spanish is one of the dominant languages. I certainly haven’t
seen that before. The story has a twist ending of sorts which works nicely with
the rest of the story. The story’s tone was one of its stronger assets.
Ranking:
3 stars
For a story
that used very familiar building blocks, it was nonetheless skilfully told. I
really liked the idea of the aqualethe and I wish there was another story that
continued to develop that idea.
“Castoff World” by Kay Kenyon
Read in Year’s Best SF 16 (2011), edited by
David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer
Originally
published in Shine (2010), edited by Jetse
De Vries
I wasn’t
familiar with Kenyon’s writing until I read this story. According to the editors’
notes, she set out to write a story that presented a positive look at our
future. I’d argue that she accomplished this and she did it by using environmental
concerns and the (at least) partial destruction of humanity in the near future.
It’s an odd combination of ideas, but it worked for the most part. The story is
made unique by its setting which is an ocean gyre, an area where many ocean
currents converge creating an area of high pressure where pollutants and
garbage often rise to the surface. In such a location live an old man and his
granddaughter aboard Nanobiotic Oceanic Refuse Accumulator, or Nora. As the
name suggests, Nora is a raft of nanobiotics that collects garbage and recycles
it into reusable materials. This recycled material is collected at regular
intervals and the floating island of Nora continues to do its job.
The
child and her grandpa live on Nora because an unspecified catastrophe has
rendered the mainland dangerous. It’s to be avoided. The story focuses on how
Nora works and how this odd family survives out on the ocean’s surface. A few
questions are answered but far too many at left ambiguous or simply ignored which
made for an unsatisfying conclusion. It feels like the beginning of a larger
story more than a complete short story. I’d be interested to read the
continuation if it exists but I could just as easily go on living knowing that
this is it.
Ranking:
2 stars
I liked
the story’s setting but the story itself, a young child befriending an AI and
helping each other survive in the world, is familiar. The writing style didn’t
impress me either. I found it to be far too cute. I’m also not a big fan of
near future stories. I guess this one has too many strikes against it to really
work for me.
Thanks to my friend and colleague Behroze, who unknowingly
inspired me to start this project. Hopefully I can convince him to contribute
to a future post.
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