Review of Sun-Daughters, Sea-Daughters by Aimee Ogden

This science fiction novella is a finalist for the 2022 Nebula Awards. Ogden has worked as science teacher and software tester and she is the co-editor of Translunar Travelers Lounge. This is her debut novella. It was published by Tor.com in February of 2021 and runs 112 pages. This review contains spoilers.

Atuale is the daughter of a Sea-Clan lord and has had her body altered so she can live on land with her husband and true love Saareval. However, a plague is killing the people of the clan and now her husband is deathly ill. Atuale has one hope left, a black market mercenary known as the World Witch, who is also her old friend and lover Yanja. She needs to use Yanja’s starship to travel off planet and find a cure for the plague, but their world is locked down because of the sickness. Can the two of them succeed in finding a cure?

This is an exotic, well-imagined setting where the various worlds are connected by jump gates and the occupants are adapted by gene-editing in order to live in particular environments. Most of the narrative is related to the quest plot and the interactions between Atuale and Yanja, who has had their body altered from female to male since they last saw one another. Yanja has something of an attitude about being jilted for Saareval, but they work it out. There’s a certain amount of imagery in the descriptions, and all ends well as Atuale returns with the cure for the plague. It gets extra points for attempting a romantic quets/adventure plot and a science fiction setting.

On the less positive side, I got the feeling I was missing a lot of the backstory here. I ended up with a lot of questions. Maybe these are characters Ogden has developed in other stories? There’s very little description of the living conditions on Atuale’s home world, which seems to be fairly primitive. This brings up the question of why the back market space-going mercenary Yanja is living there. The characterizations don’t feel quite right, as these are highly exotic people, but they interact like ordinary humans–there is no difference it culture. The community of worlds through the jump gates seems to function like a local community in the pandemic when I would expect a little more distance. Atuale violates all the rules, but there are no real consequences—she is just rescued by someone who rewards her persistence with the cure. And, where did Atuale get her body mods done? On her world? Then why don’t they have the technology to find a cure? There are also a couple of elements to this story that seem tailored to what must be publishing requirements at Tor. The first is Yanja’s trans sexuality, and the other is a comment out of nowhere that Saareval’s clan practices equity. Then why is Atuale still so proud of her heritage as the Sea lord’s daughter? Is she on board with the equity or not?

Three and a half stars.

Review of Spiderman: No Way Home

Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021) is a superhero film based on the Marvel Comics character Spiderman, co-produced by Columbia Pictures and Marvel Studios and distributed by Sony Pictures Releasing. Other films in the series include Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017) and Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019). The film was directed by Jon Watts and written by Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers. It stars Tom Holland as Peter Parker/Spiderman and Zendaya as MJ, as well as Charlie Cox, Benedict Cumberbatch, Jacob Batalon, Jon Favreau, Jamie Foxx, Willem Dafoe, Alfred Molina, Benedict Wong, Tony Revolori, Marisa Tomei, Andrew Garfield, and Tobey Maguire. This review contains major spoilers.

The film picks up where Far From Home leaves off. Quentin Beck has framed Spiderman for his murder and named him as Peter Parker in a public broadcast. This makes life miserable for Peter, his Aunt May, and his friends as they’re harassed by law enforcement and the press. Lawyer Matt Murdock gets the charges dropped, but the harassment continues. Frantic to make it stop, Peter goes to Dr. Steven Strange and asks him to work a spell to make everyone forget that Peter Parker is Spiderman. However, in the middle of the spell, Peter suddenly realizes what this might mean. Strange manages to contain the spell, but this opens rifts in spacetime for Peter’s enemies in alternate universes to come through. With a little work, he and his friends manage to round up the group, which includes Doc Ock, Norman Osborne, Curt Connors, Max Dillon, and Flint Marko, and imprison them while Strange works on a spell to send them back to their individual universes. After talking with them, Peter suddenly realizes all these people have been killed by Spiderman, and resolves to “fix” them so he won’t have to kill them in the alternate universes. This seems to go well, but Norman Osborne turns out to be a problem. And now more Peter Parkers are appearing. Things are getting dire. Is there any way Peter can repair spacetime?

The best point about this film is the appealing characters. Of all the Spiderman films, I think this is the best cast, chosen to appeal to the Disney audience most likely, but representing Peter well as a high school student. Willem DeFoe as Osborne is suitably creepy and the other villains manage to be more appealing than dangerous. This film also integrates the previous Spiderman films through the vehicle of the multiverse, bringing in older versions of Peter to give him advice and moral support. And last, there are consequences here.

On the less positive side, this feels like an obvious steal from the Academy Award-winning animation Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018). One of the characters in this film actually wishes for a black Spiderman. Besides that, it’s something of an eye-roller because of the typical Disney tendency for their characters to make emotional decisions. This causes huge problems. First, Peter doesn’t think out the consequences of asking Strange to make the world forget Peter Parker. Next, he decides he can “fix” evil from the alternate universes so none of his captives will die when they’re sent back. The action sags while the other Spidermen commiserate, and then Peter doesn’t end up making his own moral choices, but has to be saved by these other, wiser versions of himself.

There are plenty of consequences here, but I’m not sure the audience will connect these with Peter’s poorly considered choices and emotional overreactions because the film doesn’t really point these out. Strange says something about it after the interruption to his first spell, but it’s early in the film and goes by too fast—Strange should be wiser than this and Peter should be, too. Something not addressed by the film is how fixing the villains so they don’t die will change events in spacetime. The end result will take some fixing in the next film. Last, it was interesting to see Charlie Cox here. I hope it’s an indication Disney is going to try to reboot his Daredevil series that they destroyed through ending their contract with Netflix

This film has been highly successful at the box office, but there are a lot of not-so-positives. I’m going to give it tree and a half stars.

Review of “I Mean, It’s No Extra Parked Vehicle” by Jenna Katerin Moran

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. Jenna Moran has a computer science degree and lives in Portland with her cat. This story runs 696 words, and this review contains spoilers.  

Melanie is a ghost detective that works to help catch violations of the HOA rules so violators can be dragged off to HOA jail. When there is some question, she summons up a ghost who will finger the culprit. For example, whose cat has been messing up the garden, whose kitchen cabinets don’t comply with the rules, and who has not cleaned the inside of their mail box. Melanie does not do cold cases or murders because the ghosts are not reliable for that. It is unclear why ghosts might be interested in assisting the HOA.

I gather this is an absurdist piece. Presumably HOA means Home Owners Association, which suggests Moran may have been at odds with one sometime in the past and wrote this in revenge. Or has she been watching Ghostbusters, maybe? Or is this about stupid rules and authoritarian control, in general? I couldn’t find much subtext in there to help pin it down. There are a couple or three possible barbs. One is a recipe for an energy drink that depends on killing people. Another is trying to transcribe ghost talk because you’re supposed to show and not tell in your story. Then there’s mention of having to survive in a capitalist society, regardless if you’re a kitchen cabinet.

Hm. She lives in Portland? I don’t know that she’s namechecked the right political group. Less positives include the hodgepodge of elements and the difficulty in interpretation.

Three stars.

Review of One Day All This Will Be Yours by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Adrian Tchaikovsky is an award-winning British writer, best known as author of the Shadows of the Apt fantasy series and the Children of Time series. In a shadow life he is a lawyer, gamer and amateur entomologist. This novella was published by Solaris on March 2, 2021, and runs 98 pages.

Narrator is working to become the only survivor of the Causality War that destroyed time. It’s a complex issue, but once agents started to go back and change time to destroy their enemies, the timeline shattered into something unrecognizable. Causality bombs finished off everything at the end of the war, but Narrator escaped. He has set up a homestead at the End of Time to prevent anyone from going any further. When visitors show up, he kills them and feeds them to his pet Allosaurus. Then two people arrive from the future. This is a shock, as the whole idea of this set up is to prevent any possible futures. Weldon and Smantha hail Narrator as “grandfather” and take him on a quick tour of the utopia they live in. When he gets home, someone else is there—a woman named Zoe. The two of them spend a while trying to murder each other, but eventually they realize they’re united to prevent the future both have seen. Is there a way they can stop it from happening?

Somehow I have a feeling this was provoked by the 2019 novella This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone. The narration has a tongue-in-cheek, satirical feel and makes light of all the destruction and murder. Tchaikovsky scores some good points. One is a quote from Einstein: “World War III will be fought, but the war after that will be fought with sticks and stones,” referring to the destruction of civilization. Another is about the utopian future that is regulated through social control and “scrubbing” the minds of dissenters who don’t want to live in a perfect, totalitarian society. Of course, the representatives of the utopia turn out to be pretty nasty underneath, like the mean kid, elite clique at school.

On the less positive side, Tchaikovsky’s tongue-in-cheek approach means the characters and events end up somewhat flat. Narrator describes them for us, but we don’t really experience the gripping drama of what’s going on. There should be an amazing romance between Narrator and Zoe, for one thing, but he skims over it. There should be terrifying events in the war, but it’s all sort of a joke. And then, once the ideas are presented, Tchaikovsky gets bored with it and stops, leaving the reader hanging. It’s his preferred style, I suppose, but a case of telling and not showing. I’d prefer less intellect and more depth.

Three and a half stars.

Review of “Anti-Quarantine” by Jeffrey Lyons

 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. Jeffrey Lyons is a software developer who says he daydreams a lot. This story runs 599 words, and this review contains spoilers. 

Billy and his family are in anti-quarantine, and it’s starting to wear on Billy. He’s an introvert and being forced to stay in close quarters with other people is hard. Because the Divers can pick you out when they can’t see your face, masks are banned, and you’re never supposed to go anywhere by yourself and to always stay within six feet of another person. This is all for the greater good. Of course, there are conspiracy theories, that this is all so the government can implement their facial recognition police state, maybe. Finally somebody has developed a repellent, radioactive spray you can use to cover yourself and evade detection. If Billy uses it, can he go back to his old life?

This is satire, of course, and it’s pretty clear what it’s about. (Hint: ends with virus.) The story is a fairly straight forward narrative, without much in the way of characterization, world building or imagery. In this case, I could have used a little more world-building, as I ended up with no idea who or what the Divers are and why they are hunting people. It also seems like they’d be more likely to attack if they could see your face, so the part about the banned masks seems contrived to fit the story line. Whatever, it’s good to see some thoughts developing about the pandemic response.

Three and a half stars.

The Economics of Depopulation

In the last blog, I introduced the idea of depopulation as a means to save humanity from disasters like climate change, agricultural failure and mass hunger that now threaten the Earth. This idea of sustainable population has been around for a while, but what is that exactly? What kind of lifestyle is “sustainable” for humans on the Earth?

The policies of both the UN and world governments now seem to be moving toward depopulation as part of a solution to the various global problems. The idea that this is a good thing seems to have entered science fiction literature without much investigation of how it might be accomplished or what might result. If it’s true the tropics will become uninhabitable and their agriculture is failing because of global temperature increases, then we expect northern countries would need to open the doors for levels of immigration that might be unsustainable. This leads to concerns about competition for resources and ethnic genocide. Tropical countries are already complaining about loss of workers through immigration. China doesn’t have enough women for wives or enough young people to care for the aged. In  opposition to Bill Gates, there are people who have concerns about how the UN 2030 Agenda aimed at shaping government policy will solve global problems. Elon Musk, for example, has been active recently in challenging these ideas.

In 2021 Musk offered to donate $6 billion to the United Nations’ World Food Programme if they could produce a plan to end world hunger. However, the plan they returned only said this amount would “combat” world hunger by providing food vouchers to feed 40 million people on a short term basis to avert a “looming catastrophe”—not any kind of final solution. Musk went on later to pronounce birthrate reduction to depopulate as a sure way to destroy human civilization. What does he mean?

The problem is that the population ages if it doesn’t replace itself, and old people aren’t very productive. If birthrates drop below replacement, this means there will be a shortage of innovators, entrepreneurs and workers at prime working age, while the economy will need to divert more resources into elder care. This undermines the innovation and production that defines our civilization. Is Musk right? Is a certain concentration of healthy, productive, adult humans with access to resources important to carrying on the standard of living we currently expect in our civilization? Will reducing the number of people through lowered birthrates destroy this civilization so we end up back at the hunter/gatherer stage with no resources to produce technology? It might sound like a utopia to some, but caveat: the big theme of old Native American folklore is hunger.

The last time major world depopulation happened was during the Black Death plague in 1347-1352. Maybe half of Europe’s population died, plus unknown numbers in the Middle East, Central Asia, parts of China and elsewhere. This gives us a clue as to how things might go. The immediate effect in Europe was devastation. This plague killed the feudal system of government. Entire communities died out. There weren’t enough farm workers to harvest the crops, so famine set in.

A key point is that population recovered. But what if policy makes sure it continues to decline? There will be greater shortages of workers in key industries like farming, manufacturing and supply chains. There will be fewer goods on the store shelves and fewer opportunities for making a living. Officials in the US administration are already suggesting that Americans need to learn to live with less, to cut dairy and meat, and only shower a couple of times a week. This is where the current Great Reset is headed, and Musk is investing in robots..

Review of A Desolation Called Peace by Arkady Martine

This is the second book in the series, following the Hugo Award-winning A Memory Called Empire. The novel was released March 2, 2021, by Tor Books and runs 496 pages. It’s billed as Space Opera that “reinvents” the genre, and was a Dragon Award finalist this year. Arkady Martine is the pen name of AnnaLinden Weller, a historian and city planner. This review contains spoilers.

The story picks up a short while after A Memory Called Empire leaves off. The old Emperor of the Teixcalaanli Empire has passed away, causing a political upheaval, and leaving a new Emperor in place and an 11 year-old clone heir. The Empire is beset by dangers, as mysterious aliens are lurking at the borders, slaughtering humans and destroying outposts. The Emperor has dispatched Admiral Nine Hibiscus with a fleet to deal with the problem. The encounters are not going well, so Nine Hibiscus tries a different tack, requesting an expert on first contact from the Information Ministry. Three Seagrass volunteers to take the mission and searches out Mahit Dzmare, Lsel Station’s Ambassador to the Empire, for help. Dzmare has returned to the Station, where she faces death threats from Councilors in the government because of her survival of their sabotage attempt on her imago memory line and her performance as Ambassador. Mahit takes Three Seagrass’ offer in order to escape and the two join the Fleet to help analyze sounds recorded by one of the ships. Armed with the results, they manage to establish a contact with the aliens. Is there any way to negotiate a peace treaty?

Like A Memory Called Empire, this story is a leisurely, slow-moving narrative, but it remains gripping because of all the threats. Themes include colonialism, genocide, and collective consciousness. The world-building is already pretty much done, and Martine doesn’t add a whole lot more, putting all the work into intrigues and developing new characters. The situation was fairly desperate at the end of the first installment, so we start off in a pretty dire place. Mahit is looking at an unfortunate “medical error” that would kill her in an investigation of her “defective” imago, which is a technology developed on Lsel Station to record and save memory so skills can be transferred. Three Seagrass is Dzmare’s former liaison from her stint as Ambassador to Palace Earth where the Emperor passed away, and Mahit is sent off with demands from her government that she sabotage the Fleet and its task. Lsel Station is way too close to the alien encroachment; Nine Hibiscus’ assignment looks like it’s planned to be a suicide mission, and Eight Anecdote, the young heir, is treading on dangerous ground. Various people step up to be heroes and everything ends fairly well, with Dzmare looking at opportunities outside Lsel Station.

On the less positive side, the leisurely pace got to feeling like padding about three-quarters of the way through as it really started to slow down the action. The investigation of experience, background, thought-processes and feelings is helpful to develop characters, but eventually it got out of hand, especially in the insecurities department. This would have been a much more entertaining read if it were about 25-50 pages shorter and cut some of that out. Next, I ended up uncertain who the main protagonist is in this installment of the story. Dzmare was clearly it in the first book, but the profusion of characters here and the shifting viewpoints confuses the issue, leaving this more of an ensemble performance–I’m actually tempted to say Eight Anecdote should be the main character. I was led astray by the introduction of kittens living in the ships’ air ducts; I was sure these were baby aliens, and maybe they will eventually turn out that way. Still, it’s a loose end. And last, the Emperor’s heir seems to have gotten away totally scot free on what is certainly major lesé-majesty, or maybe treason. Assigned by the Emperor to be her spy, he eventually makes decisions counter to hers, sabotages her communications with the Fleet and substitutes his own orders instead. This seems a little much for an 11 year-old, and it should set up a succession battle, imprisonment, execution, exile, but…nothing happens. This is another of those misleading, permissive fantasies where there are no consequences to behavior, no matter how transgressive, as long as it’s done for the “right” reasons.

Four stars.

Review of “With Grace” by Andrew Kao

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. Andrew Kao is at Harvard working on being an economist, and it looks like he mostly writes research papers. The story runs 384 words and this review contains spoilers.    

Cousin is something and he is nothing, but somehow he gets the invitation to the Grande Ball. Did they get the wrong address? Surely not—after all, this is the Grande Ball. The invitation says he can bring a guest, who will be evaluated by The Graces for acceptability. She is reading the invitation now, and he wonders whether she will ask, or if there would be advantages if he should offer. What should he do with this?

This is a very short work, narrated in third person, but it brings up a lot of complexities. First, there’s an element of social class, and how some individuals are acceptable for functions like this and some aren’t. Next, there’s a subversive angle. This is an opportunity for the protagonist to move up in social class and whatever mistake has happened (is it a mistake?) puts him in a position of power over his higher-ranked cousin. He has a choice to use this opportunity to move up, to extort benefits from his Cousin for taking her to Grande Ball, and maybe opportunities at the Ball to network with the rich and powerful that would result in joining their class. Protagonist shows why he’s nothing–he may be actually antisocial, or maybe he hates these people? He throws the invitation in the fire. This would be an excellent start for a longer work, say a novel, on how this works out for Protagonist. Besides this complexity, there’s hint of a setting (his home?), some flashes of imagery in description of the invitation, color of Cousin’s eyes, and something of characterization in the interactions.  

On the less positive side, there are some lose ends. Who are The Graces, for example, and why does “Grace” appear in the title? Who are the people behind the Grande Ball? And worst, why did Protagonist react that way? Kao really does need to produce a longer work from this. Even if he’s snowed with graduate courses, he should be able to squeak out a novella.

Five stars.

Scientific American Tries to Cancel Star Wars

Politics and cancel culture are so hot right now that I’ve been trying to stay out of it, but this one is just too weird to skip. This week Scientific American magazine published an opinion piece that questions use of the term “JEDI” for social justice causes. Apparently this has become an attractive acronym for STEMM (science, tech, engineering, math and medicine) initiatives for achieving social justice. Used for this purpose, the term stands for Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion. The allusion is fairly obvious, because the Jedi are the good guys in the Stars Wars universe, always on the side of right and justice for the downtrodden. It makes anyone working in this field feel like they’re a warrior for justice and right in the world, and that the Force is always with them.

However, the authors of the article aren’t into romantic notions. They list five reasons why this is an inappropriate term for its growing usage: 1) The Star Wars Jedi are police-monks prone to toxic masculinity, 2) Star Wars promotes injustices such as sexism, racism and ableism, 3) Jedi is linked to the name brand of a major capitalist corporation (a.k.a. Disney), 4) Jedi is an exclusive term rather than an inclusive one within Star Wars culture, and 5) use of the term promotes images of space opera instead of the serious work of social justice warriors.

As far as inclusion goes, the authors complain about the enforcement of conformity to an ideal that the Star Wars culture mandates. You have to behave in a certain way and say certain things to be part of the culture. For example, Star Wars fans are graded on performance at conferences and other functions where they demonstrate they are worthy of inclusion within the fandom. The authors feel this is inappropriate for a real-world social justice initiative that wants to emphasize inclusion.

So, this article was rated on Twitter and mentioned in a couple of news feeds. It did not fare well. The obvious problem is that they’re dissing the Jedi, so Star Wars fans are derisive. The films are built on important archetypes and have entered the cultural consciousness of our society, which means they’re pretty sacred. The other problem hasn’t been pointed out very clearly, which is that this is an example of the pot calling the kettle black. Enforced conformity to an ideal? Who’s the absolute worst for that?

Review of “Truth, in Plain Sight Hidden” by Wendy Nikel

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. Nikel sidelines as an elementary teacher and road trip aficionado, and she has lost her tea. The story runs 959 words and this review contains spoilers.  

It’s Election Day and Narrator is getting constant alarms from every electronic device she owns that won’t shut off until she votes. She puts it off while she gets ready for work, but finally she sits down to look at the ballot. Her boss only gave her an extra hour to vote and she can’t carry a device into the office beeping like this. The ballot is in two parts: choose a representative, etc. And then she reads the second part. It’s about a rewrite. Voters are asked to choose harmful and divisive events they would like to have erased from the last year. Winning events will be erased and rewritten through an electromagnetic pulse that removes and replaces memories. Looking through the offerings, she finds the bombing that led to her sister’s death. It’s there. She votes: “None.” That evening she writes herself a message on the back of her sister’s picture and waits for the polls to close.

This story is narrated in first person, and has a strong emotional heart, but also a strong social/political commentary. The plotline is about Narrator’s sister Julie’s death and how she has an opportunity to erase or remember it, but the political commentary establishes the theme. The electromagnetic pulse is about “rewriting history,” “declaring ourselves the victors,” and remembering things the way we really want them to be. This sounds like a thinly veiled description of what happens every day when the electromagnetic pulse of the media spins events to make us believe lies. It’s also a possible reference to removing Civil War memorials. Narrator turns out to be a subversive; she writes the story of her sister’s death on the back of a contraband photo, just to make sure she won’t forget.

The only less positive I can come up with is that we don’t really get to meet Julie. She’s just a photo here and an empty chair. There would have been more of an emotional impact if we’d had a clearer picture of her character.

Five stars.