Review of Machinehood by S.B. Divya

This science fiction novel is a finalist for the 2022 Nebula Awards. It was published by Saga in March of 2021, and runs 415 pages. Divya is established as a writer and editor and has previously been nominated for Hugo and Nebula awards for Runtime. This review contains spoilers.

Olga Ramirez and her partner Connor Troit have left government service and are working as shields for a funder. This is mostly show for the media cams and involves looking great while functioning as bodyguards so you can keep a full tip jar from social media. This is also a full time job, which is way better than most people do. Because of competition from AI and robots, the best jobs most people can find is short gigs, where you have to compete with tools like mech suits and nanotech pills that provide skills and stronger bodies, at least until you burn out. The great shield job is disrupted by a real attack by what looks to be a cyborg for a new terrorist organization called Machinehood. The Machinehood is advocating for equality for machines, and at first officials blame the Muwahhidun Empire in Maghreb. The cyborg attacks on funders continue, and eventually the Machinehood attacks the very basis of society. Who’s really to blame?

The best part of this is projection of current trends into the late 21^st century. Olga’s society is dominated by a connected social media web and everything she does is tracked by the media drone swarms. She has has been using zip pills to give her heightened physical abilities but she has reached her tolerance and now she is facing physical damage from the constant use. Connor wants to retire to a Buddhist run space station that emphasizes natural living. So, the one theme is how far we want to go with modifying natural human life. There also mention of how humans treat animals, who might also rate equality, along with the machines. There’s a discussion of whether violence is justified if the intentions are good. Olga sends her sister-in-law abortion pills, so abortion appears, but there’s not much discussion. The pharmaceutical industry is corrupt, marketing poorly tested pills. And what might be the man theme is what Ogla calls the “delusional path of grandiose revolution” that will destroy society to impose a particular philosophy. Besides good world building and lots of theme, there’s plenty of diversity here, a mixture of names and ethnicities, and somehow Europe and Russia have disappeared. The US, China and India appear to be the world powers. There are a couple of plot twists that keep things moving and a peaceful, everything-is-fine resolution.

On the less positive side, this doesn’t flow well. There’s an action line, but it doesn’t rise and ends in something of an anticlimax when the head of the Machinehood just steps up to take responsibility for the damage to society and take some possible consequences. Mea culpa. Then somehow everyone has learned from the attack on the world’s infrastructure and has a new appreciation for machines, animals and natural living so everything is good. The characters are also a bit flat, and feel unreal, especially the monks on the space station and the Caliph (who never appears at all). In all, this is a good discussion of issues, but it doesn’t quite come together as a solid, believable whole.

Four stars.

Review of Fireheart Tiger by Aliette de Bodard

This fantasy novella is a finalist for the 2022 Nebula Awards. It was published by Tor.com in February 2021 and runs 98 pages. Aliette de Bodard lives and works in Paris. She has won three Nebula Awards, a Locus Award, a British Fantasy Award and four British Science Fiction Association Awards. She was a double Hugo finalist in 2019. This review contains spoilers.

Thanh is the queen’s youngest daughter. All her older sisters are accomplished adults, but it seems Thanh can never please her mother. For years she served as a hostage in Yosolis. When the palace burnt down and she barely escaped, her mother brought her home, and now the queen expects her to help negotiate with the delegation from Yosolis. They are a powerful kingdom, and Binh Hai is not. When the delegation arrives, Thanh sees that the princess Eldris has come with it. Thanh interprets the delegations requests as a military occupation and tries to head it off, but Eldris makes an offer of marriage. Meanwhile, the small fires around the castle turn out to be a fire elemental that Thanh accidently brought from Yosolis. Can she deal with the demands and find a path forward for Binh Hai?

This is very well done. The chess moves of the negotiations make for a strong plot, and on the side, Thanh tries to deal with the romance of Eldris’ courtship. Themes include domestic violence and coming of age. The characters are strong, and the imagery is strongly sensual. There are symbols: Thanh’s chess game with her mother, the choice between the fiery elemental and the cold climate of Yosolis, the tiger quality of the elmental and the little fires burning around the palace. Interestingly, there is only one male character, the queen’s eunuch Long.

On the less positive side, I don’t know how these people reproduce. Normally courtship is about creating an heir to the throne, but they don’t seem concerned. Maybe the queen has a harem of men somewhere?

Five stars.

Review of And What Can We Offer You Tonight by Premee Mohamed

This fantasy/science fiction novella is a finalist for the 2022 Nebula Awards. It was published by Neon Hemlock in July of 2021 and runs 80 pages. Premee Mohamed is an Indo-Caribbean scientist who lives in Canada and has published several novels and novellas. This review contains spoilers.

Jewel is a high-class courtesan who lives and works at the luxurious House of Bicchieri. She and the other courtesans who work there plan a secret funeral for Winfield, one of the women who was found dead in her room, apparently killed by a client. At the funeral, Winfield wakes and accuses the wealthy and powerful Pederssen as her murderer. She announces that she will take revenge and leaves the funeral in the beautiful silken gown they intended to bury her in. Jewel sees her again now and then as her flesh and her gown begin to deteriorate, but Winfield’s resolve does not falter. Missing an appointment for a foray with Winfield reminds Jewel how much control the House has over her life, and now the management thinks she is plotting with Winfield to kill Pederssen. Will Winfield ever be able to carry out her revenge?

This narrative is slightly surreal, as it takes the zombie girl for granted and Nero, one of the residents, keeps getting implants and modifications that make him look like Satan. There are science fictional elements, like the modifications and Jewel’s hydraulic bra, which holds her upright when she’s tired and wants to slump. The themes stand out most strongly. One of these is the notion that the courtesans’ lives are worth very little to the evil, wealthy Pederssen and the House’s management apparently just covers up the murders to keep their reputation pristine and the money coming in. The other important theme is the element of social and financial control that the House has over Jewel. When she misses an appointment, they say nice things, but they attach her assets so that she has to borrow money for essentials. She has to put in extra shifts at her courtesan work in order to gain back enough income to ward off hunger. This is sex slavery that Mohamed is showing, and possibly the ideas and details have been sparked by current events.

On the less positive side, nothing much happens in the 80 pages. The narrative is mostly about establishing imagery and mood, so the action line develops very slowly. Because of the surreal quality, the characters and setting fail to take on sharp edges, and we never get Jewel’s feelings about working in the sex trade or about being trafficked. Pederssen does get his comeuppance, which makes for a satisfying climax, but then the denouncement is pretty vague. I gather that Jewel and Nero somehow take over management of the House and turn it into a garden? How does that work? Who are the real owners? Won’t they object to losing all that revenue? And why the Satan imagery? Is that just for fun?

Four stars.

Review of A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers

This science fiction novella is a finalist for the 2022 Nebula Awards. It was published by Tor.com and runs 161 pages. Chambers is a perineal in the awards cycles and is best known for her Wayfarer series, This review contains spoilers.

Sibling Dex is a monk on the moon Panga, where they work in landscaping, but they yearn for something more. They decide their real calling is to be a tea monk who travels from city to city offering tea and comfort. The enclave’s monks are supportive and build Dex a tea wagon. They find the work difficult at first, but eventually they tire of it, too, and decide their real calling is to go into the wilderness, where they hope to hear the song of a cricket. In the wilderness, they encounter a wild-built robot. Mosscap is not one of the original robots who gained self-awareness and left human society centuries ago, but one assembled from various parts from worn out machines. The robot has been elected to contact human society and wants to accompany Dex to find out what humans really want. Can they create a relationship?

Panga seems to be a very friendly place. Chambers creates a number of background characters while investing most of the effort into Dex and Mosscap. She also creates a society and history for Panga where the story plays out. As far a themes go, there’s discussion of self-awareness in machines and animals and whether this should give them status in the human world. Chambers makes an interesting point that fear is what controls interactions, and that humans are unchecked because they are missing a natural predator. From Mosscap’s question, the main theme is presumably “What do humans want?”

On the less positive side, nothing much happens here. There are no threats and no rising action line, just discussion. Dex changes jobs and is still dissatisfied. Mosscap is curious but slightly comical and completely friendly. There seem to be no natural predators in the forest. Also, the world building presents a bucolic society where everyone seems to be friendly and prosperous and has plenty of resources, but no explanation of where these come from or how the economy works. Presumably the enclave supports Dex while they work as a gardener and people pay for the tea service, but how does Dex think they are going to exist in the forest? They don’t seem to have even rudimentary gathering skills and the water needs to be filtered to be potable?  There are no survival issues in this world? It doesn’t quite make sense.

Three and a half stars.

Review of Flowers for the Sea by Zin E. Rocklyn

This dark fantasy/horror novella is a finalist for the 2022 Nebula Awards. It was published by Tor.com in October of 2021 and runs 80 pages. Rocklyn is disabled and uses their as a pronoun. They have appeared in several award-winning and award-nominated anthologies. This review contains spoilers.

Iraxi is one of the Nims people and has gills. She lived in a house with her family, and the kingdom’s prince comes three times to ask for her hand but she refuses because she loves someone else. Later she comes home to find the house burning. She rushes inside to the smell of burning flesh and is burnt, but saves herself by running into the sea. The kingdom floods and a group escapes on an ark ship. They have a green room where they grow beans and citrus, but food is sparse. They are threatened by monstrous flying razonfangs from above and purple-tenacled things from below. At this point, Irixi is heavily pregnant by someone she does not love. She has the child and it speaks to her in multitones, so she thinks it is a demon. Still she is attracted and parades naked with the baby on deck, where most of the residents think the child is a sign of hope. The monsters come for them.

Most reviews omit the summary for a reason. This story is lyrical in style, but heavily surreal. It jumps back and forth in time and between reality and dream so it’s difficult to put the story together into a reasonable whole. There is a lot of emphasis on sensory elements and body fluids, and an extended section on the labor and birth. A certain symbolism causes the dying trees in the green room to sprout as the child is born. This succeeds very well at horror.

On the less positive side, Iraxi is angry with the way life has treated her. She feels burdened by the child, but still guards it selfishly from others, establishing her ownership. She berates the midwife, who had a relationship with the child’s father, and also the man she really loves for not supporting her appropriately. On the nit-picky side, there is no way a green room to grow beans and citrus would support a population of more than 1700 people on the ship. Surely they fish?

Three and a half stars.

Review of “The Giants of the Violet Sea” by Eugenia Triantafyllou

This science fiction novelette is a finalist for the 2022 Nebula Awards. It was published by Uncanny Magazine 9-10, 2021. Triantafyllou is Greek and successful as a short story writer. She has been nominated for Nebula and World Fantasy Awards. This review contains spoilers.

Themis fled from her family to Omega years ago, shuffled aside, a failure as venedolphin tamer and unwilling to be a death-tattoo apprentice to her mother. She has been working at a hospital and has a small apartment there, but how her brother Melas is dead and she needs to return home for the funeral. Melas was a successful tamer, and his death is a mystery until Themis discovers he was caught in a net and poisoned. There are aliens from Freyja colony in the village for a research project, and Themis meets her brother’s friend Pirros, plus a boy Selinos from the meat-eating Alimniot people that Melas was training as a tamer. Can Themis find who murdered her brother? And more important, can she find a place in the village after all this time?

This is an atmospheric story with elements of strong imagery, good world-building and a murder mystery plot. There are clues scattered about as Themis encounters various of the residents of the village and its area and she eventually solves the crime. There ae themes besides the mystery. Freyja has done something to destroy their world and the aliens are here to find out how the colonists have adapted to the harsh environment of this world. The settlement is dependent on the venedolphins who are sentient and responsive. One of Triantafyllou’s strong points is in presenting situations where her characters have to come to terms with old issues. In this case the child Themis, who seems to have a certain talent for taming the venedolphins, was brushed aside by her father in favor of the more talented Melas. Losing her confidence entirely, Tehmis leaves the village rather than attempt the second choice of apprenticing with her mother. This has all festered through the years, and now the sources of her anger are dead—both her father and Melas are gone, so where does that leave Themis?

On the less positive side, the venedolphins didn’t quite come across as attractive. Possibly this is because of Themis’s terror of them as a child. The child Selios and the alien character Clem turn out to feel like red herrings, elements that introduced possibilities that didn’t pan out. And last, I was concerned that it took so long to get to the funeral, considering these people have no refrigeration.

Four and a half stars.

Review of “(emet)” by Lauren Ring

This fantasy novelette is a 2021 Nebula Finalist and was published in F&SF 8/21. Lauren Ring is an established novelist and editor of the anthology Recognize Fascism. This review contains spoilers.

Chaya is a software engineer for Millbank Biometrics working on the Phase Two release of California’s surveillance and face recognition software program. Phase Two is expected to remedy the problems with the first release and make the system foolproof, just in time for implementation of California’s new legislation that broadens surveillance. Chaya always keeps a low profile and never takes any risks, so she puts in long hours of remote work from her small farm and creates programmed golems from the river mud to handle most of her chores. She programs them for truth and death with the Hebrew words her mother taught her. At a meeting Millbank distributes a watchlist of wanted dissenters to be added to the system, and that night Chaya meets one of them at the Kosher grocery. She’s flees back home, worried that the chance meeting will look like she is somehow involved with the protest movement. He father was always afraid, but her mother was bold. Chaya knows all the dissenters will be arrested at the upcoming protest against the new legislation. Is there a way she can stop it?  

This updates the idea of the clay golem with software engineering. Chaya sculpts the clay figures, animates them and then programs and operates them on her phone. There’s background in the story about her parents and her mother’s mistreatment by the medical system that hastened her death. There’s a comparison of Chaya to the golems as she works on the project for Millbank and references to standing by and doing nothing while others are targeted, invoking pogroms without actually mentioning them. In the end, Chaya’s decisions put her on the side of the dissenters. There’s a lot of social commentary here.

On the less positive side, I didn’t think the different elements of this story came together as well as they could have. The theme of mindless, programmed workers operated well enough, but the subtheme of Jewish targets of totalitarian government wasn’t well enough supported (a.k.a. Europe, early 20^th century), which means there’s not enough motivation for Chaya’s sudden decision to join the dissenters. There needed to be some crisis there to trigger her sudden change, and not just a chance meeting at the grocery store.

Four and a half stars.

Review of “Just Enough Rain“ by PH Lee

This fantasy novelette is a 2021 Nebula Finalist and was published in Giganotosaurus 5/21. P.H. Lee is well established as a short story writer and uses “they” as a pronoun. This review contains spoilers.

Anat and her Mom both have a personal relationship with God, and God seems especially partial to Mom. So much so that he comes to the funeral and raises her from the dead. Mom is really concerned that Anat is 38 and not married, so she asks God to intercede. He sends his Angel to connect Anat with a nice man, but the guy flees. He’s a jerk, but on the other hand the Angel is awesome. Anat contacts God and asks for the Angel’s phone number. It doesn’t seem that they have one, but God makes the arrangements. The first date is a disaster, but after that things go better. Will Mom get what she wants out of this relationship?

This is a very entertaining story that reimagines the relationship with God as one where he arrives in the body of a stranger and performs miracles, or calls you on the phone. Mom long conversations Him. In addition, there is some discussion of insecurities and life callings and how a supportive relationship can help these. The world-building, imagery and characterization are all strong. This gets extra points for being a highly positive story.

On the less positive side, the discussion of insecurities and life callings isn’t quite enough to make this a life-changing story. There’s little conflict, and it ends up feels more entertaining than monumental.

Five stars.

Review of “That Story Isn’t the Story“ by John Wiswell

This fantasy novelette is a 2021 Nebula Finalist and was published in Uncanny Magazine 11-12/21. John Wiswell won the Nebula Award last year for Best Short Story for his work “Open House on Haunted Hill” and was also a finalist for the Hugo Award for Best Short Story, the Locus Award for Best Short Story, and World Fantasy Award for Best Short Story. This review contains spoilers.

Anton has bleeding bites on his thighs and he needs to get away from Mr. Bird and the dark house with the blackout shades. He throws a few things in a garbage bag and tries to get out to where his friend Grigorii is waiting in his junker car, but he’s confronted by Pavla, one of of Bird’s minions. Grigorii comes to his rescue, and they make what seems like an escape. Grigorii lets Anton stay with him and Luis in their little house where they have some old sofa cushion as furniture and an ancient game machine. Grigorii and Luis both work odd jobs, but Anton is terrified that Brid will come after him and hides in the house. When he finally gets up enough courage to take a landscaping job, sure enough, Bird and his minions come after not only him, but Luis, too. Anton manages to resists their threats and keeps working. Given his example, some of Bird’s minions start to leave him. Can Anton keep his freedom?

The most interesting point about this story is that it operates on two levels of reality. It’s narrated from Anton’s point of view where the nebulous, evil Bird is some kind of vampire that sucks blood and leaves bleeding bite marks on his slaves. Anton is sure Bird will destroy his friends who opened their home to him, and much of the suspense in the story is whether or not Bird can actually injure or control them. On the other hand, Grigorii thinks he’s rescued Anton from a cult and that he needs therapy to get his life back on track. The theme seems to be about control and not getting sucked into slavery. Anton starts from the bottom when he leaves Bird. The house is rude and he has to walk eight miles to work with his garbage bag as a rain coat, but Anton moves up in the world when he can make his decision stick. Grigorii’s support along his journey is especially touching.

On the less positive side, there feels like a disjoint in the climax and resolution to the story. Anton has been scraping bottom, but with his new income, he takes his friends out to a bar and meets Julian, who immediately sucks him into an upscale lifestyle. This is good on a symbolic level, but not so great for the surface story. here is no final battle between good and evil. Once Anton is on the right path, the evil just fades away. Also, we never quite get inside the characters. There’s a certain distance in the narration.

Four and a half stars.

Review of “Colors of the Immortal Palette“ by Caroline M. Yoachim

This fantasy novelette is a finalist for the 2022 Nebula Awards. It was published by Uncanny Magazine 3-4/21. Yoachim is an established writer, a two-time Hugo and a five-time Nebula Award finalist. This review contains spoilers.

Mariko is half-Japanese and lives in Paris under the name Mari, where she works as a sometimes courtesan and model for the flourishing artist community of the late 1800s. The famous undead artist uses her as a model and they develop a relationship. Mari aspires to be an artist, too, but she hasn’t the money to buy paint, and her lowly paintings are obscured by the masterworks of the men working at that time. Eventually she feels the pinch of time, and asks her lover to make her undead. He acquiesces, and given time, Mari develops as an artist, even as her friends in the artist community begin to die off. She moves to the United States during the war years and marries, learns to put some of her own essence into every painting. The time comes when her paintings are displayed beside those of the masters. Her one-time lover comes to say good-bye, as he intends to fade into the mist for the last time, but Mariko continues.

This is a leisurely story that flows over at least a century of time as Mari experiences the heyday of the Impressionist movement. There are scenes with the models, sex with her lovers. These are apparently vampires who steal life force and not blood. The chapters are titled with paint colors and the story touches on the process of art in metaphor form, as well as including discussions and reference to real paintings and real models. We’re lift with a feeling of melancholy about what has passed away. There is brief mention of the Japanese internment during the war years, and Mariko’s dismay at the bombing of her mother’s home city of Nagasaki.

On the less positive side, Mariko has no background, and we hear nothing about her parents except that her mother is from Nagasaki. There’s never a glimpse inside Mari’s undead lover, only her interpretation of his moods, and only a passing mention life with her husband. Ths point is the art, I suppose, but I would have liked to spend more time with the characters. .

Four stars.