Review of Axiom’s End by Lindsay Ellis

This novel was a finalist for the 2021 Dragon Awards in the Alternate History category. It was released by Titan in July of 2020 and made the NY Times Bestseller list. It is also listed as Noumena #1, and the second book in the series Truth of the Divine was released in October of 2021. Ellis is a filmmaker and former Hugo Finalist for Best Related Work, and this is her debut novel. This review contains spoilers.

Cora is on academic probation so has left her degree program in linguistics and is working as a temp in data input. Her dad Nils is on the run from the US government, hiding out in Germany and still publishing what he calls whistleblower material. When the second “meteor” crashes, Cora leaves her job and gets immediately fired. Mom is furious, but thing go from bad to worse when the FBI raids the house. Cora escapes, but is kidnapped by an alien who implants a tracker and an earpiece that translates its alien language to English. The alien, which Cora calls Ampersand, is on a mission to rescue others of its kind from the US military, and needs an interpreter. Cora agrees to help, and sets out to navigate the web of lies around alien landings. Can she and Ampersand rescue the group stranded on Earth? Will Earth get sterilized by the aliens? Will Cora survive this episode?

I’d swear that Ellis has done her research on Twitter. This gathers a bunch of current memes and smashes them together into a story set during the George W. Bush era. Presumably this is alternate history only in that Bush resigns over the alien cover up, when he didn’t over lies about the Iraq War. This is a total blowout on the theme of lies, by the way. Everybody here does it. The government lies, the aliens lie, the FBI lies, Cora’s family lies. The problem for Cora is in sorting through all the competing lies to create a workable path forward. The characters are well developed, and I was especially impressed with the alienness of the aliens and their civilization—most science fiction writers assume close similarities in alien contact and don’t really go to the effort to design real differences. Ampersand is described as looking like a cross between a dragon and a praying mantis, but there are other forms of his species as well and Cora struggles to understand and interpret their interactions. As her other relationships fail, she ends up bonded with Ampersand, but grapples with the consequences.

,On the less positive side, the alienness of the aliens stands in the way of readers bonding with them, as well. Although I can identify the emotional core of the story, I’m having a hard time feeling it. Worst of all, the story just stops at the end, right in the middle of Cora trying to deal without any denouement, epilog, etc. Presumably this picks up at the same point in the second novel, but the sudden stop was jolting.  

Four stars.

Review of “The Stranger” by David Paul Rogers

This is a flash fiction piece from Daily Science Fiction, which posts short fiction online and also sends it out by email for busy people through a subscription service. Rogers appears to be an established short story writer and poet with collections available. The story runs 722 words, and this review contains spoilers. 

 Rigel is an accountant at an ordinary small corporation who blogs sometimes in his free time. He notices a new conspiracy theory is spreading about the world being only a simulation. This is nothing new, but somehow the idea takes hold this time. People begin to neglect their lives, letting buildings, roads and bridges decay. Then a stranger comes to town, takes notes on the state of things. Soon after he leaves town, blackness starts to roll down the streets. Has the simulation ended? Will it be reprogrammed? Rigel is getting hungry.

This looks to be a take on Camus’ absurdist novel The Stranger where the protagonist sees the world as operating without order, reason, or meaning and is condemned because he doesn’t play “the game” in the right way. This makes Rogers story a comment on how people respond when life loses meaning, and how this leads to decay and isolation. It may also be a comment on current calls to tear down civilization to “build back better.” The really practical comment here is that when the system breaks down, people get hungry.  

On the less positive side, the allusion and the narrative are about all we get from the story, with only sketches of characterization and world building. I would have preferred a little more of both. Plus, it seems like the city audibly breaks off from reality into an island in space at the end of things, which doesn’t seem to fit the idea of a simulation, but probably is absurdist.

Four stars for the complexity. This one is subtle

Review of Ife-Iyoku, the Tale of Imadeyunuagbon by Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki

This fantasy novella is a finalist for the 2020 Nebula Award. It was published in Dominion: An Anthology of Speculative Fiction from Africa and the African Diaspora, from Aurelia Leo. The author is Nigerian and seems well established as a short story writer. He was also one of the editors for the anthology. This review contains spoilers.

Moroko and Imade are lovers who live in the village of Ife-Iyoku, Afrika. The village has been cut off from civilization by a nuclear war, and it’s now surrounded by a radioactive wasteland and Igbo Igboya, the Forest of Fear, inhabited only by outcasts and mutated beasts. Despite this situation, the village thrives reasonably well, as the men are hunters and the women till the soil, and they always take care to develop the talents of the children. These have grown into mystic arts since the nuclear conflagration, and workers can pull rain from the air, weave invisibility and similar talents. Moroko’s father Ooni, the head man, fears for the continuance of the village, and he uses old technology from before the war to contact people outside the wasteland, offering them some of the talented outcasts in the forest in return for aid. Instead, the outsiders send soldiers to capture villagers in order to study their talents. The men hide the women and children and fight successfully against the soldiers, but Imade leaves hiding to help with the fighting and the soldiers follow her backtrail to find the women and children. All are killed in an accidental explosion, leaving Imade the last woman in the village. This is a crisis. What can they do now to save the village?

This reads like a translation, both in language and in culture. The narrative is very straightforward, but I suspect there’s some wry humor hidden in there somewhere. The discussion of women’s work versus men’s is fairly commonplace these days, as is the rebellious woman who wants to refuse her traditional role. We just don’t often get into the situation where everybody is fighting over the last woman. Of course, Imade is eventually vindicated. She continues her strong-willed rebellion, aborts the child Moroko forces on her, defeats both the village men and the outcasts, becomes a channel for the god, and opens her village to the outside world in the end.

That’s a fairly clear statement for the power of women, but there are some issues here that I think Ekpiki missed. The men are all very concerned with Imade’s ability to bear more children to make sure the village survives, but no one mentions all the work in cooking, agriculture and weaving the women were doing. I imagine all the men are going hungry after the women die, and I don’t know why they’re not trying to get Imade to cook for them instead of all that planning on how to rape her. Also, it’s interesting that Imade erased all the women who were following their traditional role. Is this a comment?

Four stars.

Review of “Burn or the Episodic Life of Sam Wells as a Super” by A.T. Greenblatt

This fantasy/SF novelette is a finalist for the 2020 Nebula Awards. It was published by Uncanny in the 5-6/20 issue. A.T. Greenblatt is a mechanical engineer by day and a writer by night, and won a Nebula last year for the short story “Give the Family My Love.” This review contains spoilers.

Sam Wells is an accountant that has discovered a super ability. He can set himself on fire. This happened by accident in a bar incident involving a martini, and led to loss of his boyfriend. The incident makes the news, and Sam receives an application to the local Super organization. After a humiliating interview, he is accepted. It’s not to do great deeds, though. It seems they’re in need of an accountant to sort out the mess of paper records left by the last guy whose superpower fried computers. Sam goes to work in a cluttered basement office, makes friends in the organization and starts to become accustomed to the idea he’s never going to be anything but a nerdy accountant. After talking with Lance who sees possible futures, Sam begins to rethink what he’s doing, and decides a life of exile might be a better plan. He goes to the office after hours and packs his things, but once he’s outside, he sees someone setting fire to the offices. The cleaning lady is likely still inside. What can he do?

This story is written in episodes, and features a warm, slightly tongue-in-cheek style that picks up a bit of technique from children’s books. I expect it’s based on the ideas presented by Brad Bird’s The Incredibles, a family of supers hiding out as ordinary people in a society where superpowers are suppressed and persecuted. Sam’s superpower of igniting also seems symbolic, indicating his emotional state. The narrative flows smoothly, and the characters are sympathetic, if not deep. Sam is removed from the action, and mostly what we see is the bar and the basement, but we get glimpses of the world, what disasters happen, and (like the film) what things go wrong when the Super Team tries to deal with world-ending issues. The tension builds up nicely, and in the end, Sam comes to terms with both his super ability and himself.

On the less positive side, this is a borrowed concept, and the story seems to assume you’re familiar with the background. There’s less emphasis on how superpowers are suppressed to prevent excellence than in the films, but more on how people grapple to focus their own seemingly useless superpowers to accomplish something positive in the world. Of course, in the end it’s impossible to save everybody.

Four and a half stars.

Review of “The Pill” by Meg Elison

This science fiction (I guess) novelette is a finalist for the 2020 Nebula Awards. It was published in the author’s collection Big Girl, published by PM Press. Elison seems well established as a writer and novelist, and is also a feminist essayist “whose writings often incorporate the themes of female empowerment, body positivity, and gender flexibility.” This review contains spoilers.

Munchkin’s whole family is fat. Her mom, her dad and her brother Andrew are all rolly-polly balls of fat. Her mom is always looking for a cure, though. She tries different diets and participates in clinical trials for this cure or that, and finally she finds one called The Pill that really works. It’s extremely painful, as she poops out globs of her body weight, screaming through the whole cure, but the end result is that she is thin and beautiful. The Pill is approved for use, but the only problem is that 1 in 10 of people who take it don’t live through the excretion phase. Munchkin’s dad dies trying to lose weight with it, but her brother does well and ends up with a gorgeous body. It doesn’t seem to do that much good to improve mom and Andrew’s lives, but they still harass Munchkin about taking the cure. When she turns 18, her mom’s birthday gift is a stay at the local spa and the Pill treatment, but Munchkin goes away to college to avoid it. She struggles in traveling and at school, as it’s more and more obvious everyone it taking the cure and ending up on a low maintenance dose that produces that same cut, beautiful body. Then munchkin is approached by a recruiter for a secret society. She goes to the club with him and sees fat people who are being worshipped like gods. The recruiter offers her a contract, and after thinking about it for a while, she accepts. Will this work for her? Can she find love and a better life in the society?

This is a fairly absorbing story. It’s narrated in first person, so we see all the characters from Munchkin’s viewpoint. She doesn’t hold back on the trials of being fat, the issues with fitting into an airplane seat, of hearing the furniture creak when she sits down, or how stress only makes her want to eat more. One theme is that being thin doesn’t really change people’s lives that much. Of course, it removes all those annoyances mentioned above, but then Andrew had never practiced anything different and didn’t know how to interact with other people, so he ends up the same reclusive person he was before the change. Mom just becomes a dedicated flirt, trying to make up for lost time in her widowhood. The other interesting point of the story is that when all those thin people become cookie cutouts, the remaining fat people become beautiful and desirable. For anyone who doesn’t know, thin equals beautiful is actually a cultural thing, and some societies continue to prefer heavier figures. There is a reason that well-known prehistoric Venus is round and plump.

On the less positive side, the secret society here is a little bit troubling, as it includes displays and entrance fees reminiscent of the Fat Lady freak show at a carnival. The story represents the public interest as worship, but with a little shift it could look like prurience or fetishism instead. This isn’t necessarily all bad because it requires a little inspection of personal attitudes and cultural norms in order to get around it.

Three and a half stars.

Review of “Shadow Prisons” by Caroline M. Yoachim

This science fiction novelette is a finalist for the 2020 Nebula Award. It was serialized in the Dystopia Triptych series as “The Shadow Prison Experiment,” “Shadow Prisons of the Mind,” and “The Shadow Prisoner’s Dilemma,” published by Broad Reach Publishing/Adamant Press. Yoachim is well established as a short story writer and is a Hugo and three-time Nebula Award finalist. This review contains spoilers.

Vivian Watanabe, her wife Brooke and their child Cass (they/their) have implants that mean they live in a largely virtual world where people wear skins that hide their true faces and experience a system of surveillance that tracks their every action. When someone violates the established norms, they are virtually erased so they become just a faceless shadow, unrecognizable to friends and associates and ineligible for benefits like a job or social services. This is considered protection for those of the population who follow the required rules. Viv works for a social services organization and she tries to covertly give advice to a shadow she thinks she might recognize, hoping this will go unrecorded. There is a proposal to establish shadow prisons where these shades can be kept away from general society, and Cass is involved in some of the related protests. Concerned, Viv goes to the protest to try to get Cass home, but Viv is arrested and a background check finds the social services violation. She is erased to a shade and is confined to house arrest. Is there anything she can do to stop this system?

This story features an excellent premise and some pretty awesome world building. The characters have moved the next step up from virtual glasses that allow a constant internet feed to an implant that integrates users into the virtual system. This system has the same failings as the current internet, with ad bots that pop up at awkward times and the dangers of constant surveillance and monitoring of user activities by both Big Tech and whoever is in charge of things. Of course, Viv runs afoul of societal norms and is cancelled. “Shadow prison” in this case refers to an incarceration plan for the cancelled, but in real life, the term refers to a secret prison system currently used mostly to make inconvenient immigrants disappear. In addition, the story includes Asian characters and the now standard, de rigueur gender diversity.

On the less positive side, the prose is clunky here, which means the characterizations, plot sequence, descriptions and imagery all suffer. There’s not a lot of internal dialog, and Vivian and family come across as extremely naive about the dangers of what they’re doing in a rigid, totalitarian society that they have to be already familiar with, taking risks like they have no idea of the consequences. They’re living their lives the way we’ve all lived in the past, attending protests and trying to help the unfortunate like no one is watching. This doesn’t really ring true. They should already know better.

So, this is the story I’ve been waiting for. Last year Charlie Jane Anders appeared in the award cycle with The City in the Middle of the Night and its revolutionary theme “meet the new boss, same as the old boss.” Anders is GenX though, and she’s been around long enough to see through the revolution talk about how you have to tear everything down so you can “build back better.” In 2019 I reviewed Yudhanjaya Wijeratne’s Numbercaste about Big Tech surveillance and social numbers, and now here’s the allegory for cancel culture and the more covert shadowbanning on social media that’s often enough to cost people their reputations and their livelihoods. I think Wijeratne and Yoachim are both Millennials, but the revolution is happening this year in the US, and suddenly a few young people are seeing where it’s going to lead. Totalitarian communist societies is not where we want to go, folks. There’s still time to back up.

Five stars.

Review of “What Sadie Saw” by Michelle M. Kaseler

This is another flash fiction piece from Daily Science Fiction, which posts short fiction online and also sends it out by email for busy people through a subscription service. This story is on the long side at 969 words. Michelle Kaseler appears to be a short story writer who moonlights as a software engineer. This review contains spoilers.

Sadie and a policewoman are sitting inside her mother’s bedroom closet in the Eyewitness Recall Simulator (ERS) This is a virtual reality program that projects a witness’s memories into the scene in real-time, and anything captured from the session is admissible in court. Sadie is seven, and she is playing in the closet, trying on her mother’s clothes and rolling a car the policewoman gives her. As she plays, she relates what she saw of her mother’s murder, and the system reconstructs the scene. Can the two of them make it real enough to reveal the murderer?

This is a fairly riveting crime story, as the policewoman establishes a relationship and encourages Sadie not to be scared and to relate what happened to her mom. The characters and setting are well developed, and the images take shape for the reader as Sadie remembers. There’s also a big twist at the end, as this is virtual reality after all. The policewoman isn’t who she seems, but is actually another witness and accomplice.

On the less positive side, this ran just a bit long so there’s a mid-story slump. Sadie whines and plays like a real child would in like circumstances, but this fails to raise suspense, and given the twist, ends up as wasted time in the story. Also, the twist reveals that the ERS is more than just a simulator. There’s some kind of mind-altering interrogation going on here that smacks of totalitarian government. We do find the murderer, but I would have preferred more investigation on the ethics of the process.

Three and a half stars.

Review of “Best. Scientist. EVER.” by Omar Velasco

This is another flash fiction piece from Daily Science Fiction, which posts short fiction online and also sends it out by email for busy people through a subscription service. Omar Velasco is a Mexican writer who lives in Mexico City and publishes stories in both Spanish and English. This one runs 313 words. This review contains spoilers.

You’re pursued, but you steal a time machine so you can become the best scientist ever. Then you travel back through time, setting up the science that’s necessary to produce the time machine, even though the timeline mutates as you travel. Eventually you come to the conclusion that science should be left alone. You travel.

This structure for this story is points on a time-line, briefly summarized. It’s fun and in no way dramatic, but, it is actually fairly complex for such a short work. It loops back on itself, as the pursuer also seems to be the time traveler trying to stop himself. On the journey, we talk to Einstein, give Schrödinger a cat, throw an apple at Newton, and become the modern Prometheus. In 2042 the time traveler corrects the equations of physicist Douglas Wells, and I was curious enough to look this up. The character may be modeled on Douglas Wells the VP of Academic Affairs and Professor of Physics at New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology. It’s fun to maybe appear in a published short story, right? As long as it makes you look good, of course.

Four stars.

Review of “Political Awesomeness” by Sterling Woodburner

This is another flash fiction piece from Daily Science Fiction, which posts short fiction online and also sends it out by email for busy people through a subscription service. Sterling Woodburner seems mainly an unknown short story writer (which seems suspicious). This story is on the flash fiction side at 224 words. This review contains spoilers.

The politician checks social media, but all the bad stuff is way down the feed, so it’s pretty much invisible. There’s something about them being a pedophile, and something about the New World Order, but none of that is going to get any notice. They go on a podcast in the afternoon and brush it all off. “Everybody’s looking for a deep justification for my actions,” they say, “but–honestly, I’m just in it for the money.” They laugh, but people are dying.

This is a light, humorous look at how politics has moved to platforms like Twitter in the Trump era, and how the format shortens attention spans, buries real problems and leaves only vagrant surface thoughts, quickly gone, in the minds of readers. I guess this is my cue to comment on Twitter. The whole concept has revolutionized media, where everyone can sign up and make their case in a limited number of characters. What you get in your feed is based on the type of people you follow, and if you want to know what people are really thinking and what case they’re trying to make, that’s the place to go. Recent attempts by Twitter management have tried to suppress some speech, but if you want to know what’s going on under the surface of main stream media, that’s still the place to find it. Add crowdfunding, and you’ve got a revolutionary movement. It’s actually a little scary.

Five stars.

Review of The Wrong Unit by Rob Dircks

This science fiction novel was published by Goldfinch in July of 2016, and runs 286 pages. This review contains spoilers.

413s98-itr8 is a bipedal Autonomous Servile Unit, also called Heyoo, which operates in a human sanctuary enclosure protected by the AI CORE. The humans have a comfortable enclosure, are provided with over 1000 calories per day and are allowed to mate, but for some reason, they’re unhappy. They keep tripping Heyoo’s Circular Logic Function with comments like “Go screw yourself,” so it turns itself in for repairs. While it’s in the shop, there is a disturbance and a human rushes in, deactivates its tracker, hands it a package and teleports it into a strange, barren landscape without any instructions except the word “bananas.” The package turns out to be a human baby. This is a challenge, but Heyoo is built to protect humans, so it does its best. Years later it and the boy find the ruined city of Shanghai, and in the tallest hotel, a hidden chamber that opens to the password “bananas.” Inside is a frozen human female and a message that they are to free humans from captivity. What is an Autonomous Servile Unit to make of this?

The theme of this novel appears to be freedom and living a free life. It’s written in first person, so we see and interpret events through Heyoo’s perceptions. It’s only an average, not-too-smart robot, but programmed to be caring, so it makes a good parent to the boy it names Wah because of the crying noise the child makes. It’s been mistaken for a different unit in the repair shop that was supposed to be programmed with clear instructions on what to do to support a human rebellion against the CORE AI that thinks it is protecting humans by imprisoning and controlling them. Without these instructions, Heyoo has to make do, and the results are fairly humorous.

On the less positive side, I’m concerned about the teleportation device. If the humans can teleport a robot and child out into the wasteland, why not a lot of other people, too? Heyoo’s viewpoint is always mild and slightly warped, and the resulting humor tends to rob the events of any real drama. We get its perceptions about how the world looks, but not much depth in how the society or how CORE works, or how the ruined cities came about. The human characters are fairly flat, and the result ends up heart-warming but not especially deep or memorable.

Three and a half stars.