Review of “Let All the Children Boogie” by Sam Miller

This science fiction short story is a finalist for the 2022 Nebula Awards, and was published by Tor.com January 6, 2021. Miller is well established as a writer, and has won several awards.  This review contains spoilers.

It’s 1991. Laurie is sixteen and she’s listening to Iggy Pop’s “The Passenger” on Ms. Jackson’s late night radio show. It’s interrupted briefly by a strange electronic voice. The next day Laurie hears someone singing the song at Salvation Army and finds Fell. The two of them are misfits, and Fell’s mom is an alcoholic and they cling together. The voice Ms. Jackson calls the Star Man continues to interrupt her broadcast, seems to predict the crash of a passenger jet. The military is mobilizing. Fell thinks it’s someone from the future. The voice says the future can either be magnificent or terrifying, depending on which they embrace. What’s going on with the voice?

This story is very touching, constructed of all the memes that beset kids today. Fell is genderless, and Laurie uses they and them pronouns to describe her friend. The situation develops slowly as we learn more about Fell and their problems with their mom. The story is full of threats, desperation and anxiety. In the midst of this terrible world, the two have found each other.

On the less positive side, the elements here don’t quite fit together. The late-night radio show sounds more like underground radio in the 1960s than something from 1991. Not only does Fell’s mom fall short, but Laurie’s seem to, as well. Fell might be keeping away from their mom, but Laurie’s parents show more signs of control. So how does she stay gone from home so much? For someone who is so poor, how does Fell managed to finance a car and keep the tank full of gas? No sign of a job. Plus, the self-concept issues feel a bit contrived. Laurie apologizes for living, is scared to say anything to anybody. It’s a common teen problem, but it feels slightly overdone here.

Three and a half stars.

Review of “The Nine Scents of Sorrow” by Jordan Taylor

This short fiction work is a finalist for the 2021 World Fantasy Award, published in Uncanny 7-8/20. Jordan Taylor lives in North Carolina and has recently had short fiction published in LCRW, On Spec, and Beneath Ceaseless Skies. This review contains spoilers.

Sorrow is the queen’s perfumer. They were born genderless of a perfumery and a pistol and grew up as their father’s daughter. However, he left his business to his son when he died, so they became a son. They gained fame as a perfumer, and eventually moved to Pairs where they began to serve the queen at Versailles. The queen visits Sorrow’s workshop often, and when she needs a child, Sorrow produces a scent that creates one. For many years the queen does not come, but then there is death in the streets and she comes to beg Sorrow to take her child away. This venture is fraught with danger, but how can Sorrow deny their own child?

This is fairly surreal, as the origin of the children is shrouded in mystery. The story is written in seven sections, each headed with the description of a scent that Sorrow has presumably created and which drives the action. Sorrow is an atypical person in more than one way. Not only are they apparently genderless, but they have silver hair and discolored skin, possibly from vitiligo, which they hide under the wigs and powders popular in the day. The prose has a smooth flow and the story emerges gradually, with the dangers to the queen and her child creating a tension/climax which resolves to a feel-good ending.

On the less positive side, this is fairly long and includes a lot of discussion of scents, so you need to enjoy the prose and style to keep reading. The theme is uncertain. Clearly it features gender variance and children of the heart as well as those of the loins, but this never amounts to a readable message except maybe this is okay. The story has a melancholy feel and it’s unclear why the protagonist is called Sorrow, when their life looks to go well to me. It seems anybody should be happy to be that talented and successful, regardless of piebald skin and rosebud gender parts. They even end up with a child.

Three and a half stars.

Wrap Up of the 2020 Nebula Reviews

As usual, I’m going to look back through the nominees and the reviews for interesting patterns. First the diversity analysis. Because there are intersectionalities, some writers will be counted twice. Again, this is from information readily available online, so I apologize if I’ve mischaracterized anyone.

Novel: 6 women, 0 men, 3 black, 2 white, 1 Native American, 1 Hispanic, 1 LGBTQ, 1 disabled

Novella: 0 women, 3 men, 3 nonbinary, 3 white, 3 black, 3 LGBTQ, 1 Jewish

Novelette: 6 women, 0 men, 1 Asian, 5 white, 3 LGBTQ, 2 Jewish

Short Story: 4 women, 2 men, 5 white, 1 Asian, 1 LGBTQ, 1 disabled

There are 24 single-author nominees this year, so overall we get 16/24 (67%) women, 5/24 (21%) men, 3/24 (13%) nonbinary, 6/24 (25%) black, 15/24 (63%) white, 3/24 (13%) Jewish, 1/24 (4%) Hispanic, 1/24 (4%) Native American, 2/24 (8%) Asian, 8/24 (33%) LGBTQ and 2/24 (8%) disabled.

Overall, this is a lot of ethnic diversity, including Canadians and a couple or three Europeans. Women are represented above their US demographic of about 51% and nonbinary and trans well above their demographic, as far as I can tell. I couldn’t find nonbinary reported, and I counted the trans authors under LGBTQ, who are also well above their estimated demographic of about 5% (0.6% trans). This nonbinary gender diversity was at the expense of men this year, who were well below their 49% US demographic, and gay men had 0 representation. Black authors did very well, filling half the slots in the novel and novella categories. Overall, this showing was above the US demographic of about 13%. As usual, Hispanic authors limped along well below their US demographic of about 19%, and Native Americans scored above their 1.7% demographic with just one entry. Asians came in at about their 5% demographic, and as usual, Jewish writers did better than average, scoring well above their US demographic of about 2%. I’m sure the disability count is low here, as about 26% of US resident qualify as disabled.

On the less positive side, there were few new entries in the showing of ethnically diverse nominees. Many of these diverse writers have been previously nominated, and some repeatedly, which means the SFWA readership doesn’t check outside the recommended reading list very much. The group of black nominees did welcome Ekpeki Oghenechovwe Donald as a new member of the elite club. I wrote a blog a while back asking whether LGBTQ was erasing straight women, so looking at that, all the LGBTQ entries were female, meaning that only 18% of the women authors were cisgender, and the high number of LGBTQ authors came mainly at their expense.

Looking at characters: Four of the novels, three of the novellas, 4 of the novelettes and one of the short stories had prominent LGBTQ characters. Three more of the nominees had non-binary or ungendered characters. This totals out to 15/24 or 63%, and most of these works included trans characters, which suggests a preference for gender diversity among the Nebula voters. This number wasn’t as high as I expected, as sometimes the LGBTQ characters, especially trans characters, seem inserted as an afterthought, presumably because publishers think it will increase the marketability for the work.

Looking at publishers: Tor.com published 5 of the nominees (21%) and Uncanny published 4 (17%). The print magazines scored a couple of entries this year, with one each for Asimov’s and F&SF. Interestingly, although most of the novels were published by well-established publishers, the novellas, novelettes and short stories had more diverse origins, including small independent publishers and magazines. Most of the short stories were fairly long and well-developed, but Daily SF scored a nomination with one of their flash fiction pieces.

The topics leaned heavily to message fiction again this year. Four works had racial topics, five had gender topics and four had other prominent social or political messages. This works out to 13/24 or 54%. In general, these were edgier than last year, as some appeared to call for violence or illegal activities, justified because of the rightness of the cause. Besides these themes, works dealt with lying, promiscuous sex, searching for compatible unions or places, and ambition. Most nominees would be classified as fantasy, with seven entries in the list (29%) having some degree of possible SF content. Wells’ Network Effect is the only one I see that would be considered fairly hard SF. Roanhorse stands out for her classic good versus evil fantasy plot, and Sanford for another classic, a variation on man against the elements.

The Midnight Bargain by C.L. Polk

This Edwardian fantasy romance novel is a finalist for the 2020 Nebula Awards. It’s was published by Erewhon in October 2020 and then by Orbit in April 2021, running 379 pages. Polk is Canadian, is well established as a novelist, and has been nominated for the Nebula, Locus, Aurora, and Lambda Literary Awards for their first novel Witchmark. This review contains spoilers.

It’s bargaining season, and Beatrice Clayborn’s father has mortgaged the family farm and moved his family to the city in order to make a good match for his oldest daughter who carries a strong talent for magic. He’s made some poor investments and his business is in dire trouble, so he’s bought expensive gowns for both his daughters, and expects to show them to society at teas, balls and summer parties. This means there’s a lot of pressure on Beatrice to find rich suitors, but she’s actually determined to avoid marriage entirely because she will be collared to kill her magic, and she wants to be a mage like a man more than anything. That means she needs to achieve that state pretty quickly. She rummages through an old bookstore and finds the grimoire she needs, but she’s challenged for it by the fabulously wealthy Ysbeta Lavan, also determined to avoid marriage and become a mage. Beatrice is attracted to her brother Ianthe, and he seems willing to help the women. Is there any way they can make this work?

This is a slow burner, but it eventually arrives at a pretty tense climax. The theme is freedom for the women, and as the novel progresses, we get a look at the stakes. The reason for collaring the talented girls at marriage, and basically enslaving them for breeding purposes, is that the magic in this setting is based on possession by a spirit. When women get pregnant, the spirit can pass to the fetus and create a demon child, and when this is discovered, both the woman and child are put to death by burning to release the spirit. The collar not only kills magical powers, but also removes sensual enjoyment, making the world a really dull place. Beatrice and Ysbeta are playing with fire, conjuring spirits on the basis of secret knowledge decoded from the grimoires, and without any mentors or teachers to make sure they learn the correct techniques and safety measures. With this horrific underpinning, we’re treated to the whirling social scene, the gowns, the flirting, and Beatrice’s dilemma when she starts to fall in love with Ianthe.

On the less positive side, I don’t think there’s enough motivation to support Ianthe’s engagement is this crazy plot. He’s a member of the local guild, and already on his way through the process of becoming a mature mage, so he should be pretty well indoctrinated in the “right way” to do things. There’s nothing to make him a subversive, but he takes huge risks for Beatrice and his sister with minimal objection. I think the plot would have been stronger and the action line steeper if he’d dug in his heels and refused to help as soon as he found out what they were doing. Also, the ending is a little too pat. There could be a lot more drama there if Beatrice is worrying about a demon child. But maybe “happily ever after” is the requirement of Edwardian romances.

Four stars.

Review of Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse

This dark fantasy novel is a finalist for the 2020 Nebula Awards. It’s was published by Saga in October 2020 and runs 461 pages. It’s also listed as Between Earth and Sky #1, and #2 is due for release in March of 2022. Roanhorse is the New York Times bestselling author of Trail of Lightning and Storm of Locusts. She is a past winner of the Nebula, Hugo, and Locus Awards, plus the 2018 Astounding (formerly Campbell) Award for Best New Writer. This review contains spoilers.

Serapio has been forced by a cult of plotters to become the Vessel of the crow god. He was blinded and scarred as a child, set on this path by the sacrifice of his mother, rejected by his father and trained by tutors sent by the cult. Now the convergence is coming. On the winter solstice the moon will eat the sun, leaving the world unbalanced, and the time for the ascension of the crow god will be at hand. The Lord Balam contracts with Xiala, a disgraced Teek ship captain, to carry the Vessel on a ship across the inland sea to the city of Tova, where the Sun Priest will officiate for the solstice and the crow god will destroy them all.

There is plenty of note about this novel. It’s strongly plotted and the characters are highly attractive, likable and brimming with magic. Serapio is a sweet boy for someone who’s been so abused, but willing to meet his fate. He’s not expecting to survive the advent of the crow god. The independent Xiala, who never really gets attached to anybody, finds she’s falling in love with him, crow god and all. Politics in Tova is seething with intrigue, and a plot is afoot to depose the Sun Priest because she wants to make amends for past wrongs to the crow clan and to better serve all the clans. The world building here also deserves mention. These people strongly resemble the Maya and the crescent coastline and inland sea sounds a lot like Mexico and the Gulf, The canyon where Tova is built might easily be Red Bluff Canyon on the Mississippi River. But then, this is all just fantasy, right?

I have very little complaint about the way this is written at all. Roanhorse seems to have covered all the bases, including some (possible) social and political commentary. Bisexual and non-binary characters fit in well, but one trans character looked inserted as an afterthought. Standard requirement these days. The big grumble I have with this is the price. The ebook costs more than either the paperback or the hardback, which says something about changes in reading habits, I guess. This one is worth the price, though. Beware, it’s a cliffhanger.

Five stars.

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 “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 “Advanced Word Problems in Portal Math” by Aimee Picchi

This story is fantasy and a finalist for the 2020 Nebula Awards. It is flash fiction and was published by Daily Science Fiction, which posts short fiction online and also sends it out by email for busy people through a subscription service. Picchi’s is a journalist and writer, and her bio says she’s Juilliard graduate and a “former” classical musician. I’m wondering how she manages that. This review contains spoilers.   

Penny is 13 and she is expected to excel at everything, including washing dishes while her brother does his homework. When she is in high school, her math teacher asks her to text him if she has any questions. When his texts turn personal, she complains and gets blamed for enticing older men. When Penny is 20 and working in an e-commerce warehouse and saving money to go to college, her friend leaves a note that she has found a portal to a place where she will be appreciated. When Penny is 30, she has two daughters and is a stay-at-home mom because someone has to pick up the slack. Her husband laughs at her search for a portal, but then she opens the refrigerator and there it is. A sorcerer offers her a job cleaning his library. What should she do?

This story is a creative format, presented as four exercises. Each presents a brief description of Penny’s situation, followed by a fantasy math problem involving portals. There’s not that much in the way of characterization, world building or imagery, so theme and message dominate in a nice show-and-don’t-tell narrative. We get a good feel for Penny as a bookish, strongly imaginative type, always searching for appreciation, who ends up working at jobs well below her potential. There’s an ironic twist at the end when her portal finally opens and she’s offered still another crappy job. We’re presented a multiple choice problem at that point.

On the less positive side, this is message fiction, which will turn off some readers. We’re encouraged to feel angry about Penny’s lack of opportunity and assignment to scut jobs because of her gender, but the truth is, a lot of young people of any gender are currently suffering from this same lack of opportunity. As a remedy, they’re prompted to go to college and run up huge debts, which doesn’t turn out to help much because of various trends in business. Given that this is currently a hot-button economic and political issue, I won’t follow it out any further than that. Everybody should be aware of the arguments.

Four stars.

Are Women Being Erased from SFF?

Since the change in administration in the US this year, I’m noticing what looks to be strong moves toward erasure of women as a separate sex and/or gender. For example, in the first 50 days of the Biden administration, the president signed an executive order removing any distinction between women and trans-women in sports, opening the doors for anyone who identifies as a woman, regardless of phenotype or testosterone level. The Equal Rights Amendment is back for ratification. And the Biden administration broadened International Women’s Day in the US this month to include LGBTQ and disabled persons. Move over gals. Presumably, these people have their finger on the larger trends.

In publishing there’s been a fairly obvious discrimination against white men in recent years, justified as payback for all those decades when white men dominated the science fiction market. For a little while, it was a competitive advantage to be a woman science fiction writer, as progressive publishers opened the gates and searched for female talent to fill their bookshelves. But now I’ve looked back at my most recent review of the Hugo Awards, and I suspect the market is closing down for women. In 2020, for example, about 50% of the Hugo finalists were LGBTQ and about 30% were men, which leaves only 20% of the spaces for writers who identify as cisgender straight women of any ethnicity. This strongly suggests that just being a woman, or even a woman of color, isn’t enough to get you published any more as a writer and that you need to look for intersectionalities to make yourself trendier and more attractive for a publisher.

You can see this in development of C.L. Polk’s bio, for example. When Witchmark was published in 2018, Polk was described as a black woman, and used “she” for a pronoun. Now, I notice Polk is advertised as black, queer, disabled and nonbinary, having shifted to “they” as a pronoun. There is apparently even more pressure for white than minority women, as you can see a strong trend to fabricate minority ethnicities (a.k.a blackfishing) in order to gain advantage. For example, note Elizabeth Warren, Hilaria Baldwin, Rachel Dolezal, Jessica Krug and CV Vitolo-Haddad, all of whom have been recently exposed as fakes. In a related squabble, cancel culture went after J.K. Rowling last year for insisting that cis women should be recognized as a separate gender category. In response, I see there’s now a Harry Potter game where you can choose your preferred gender and ethnicity.

So, where is this headed? Is the only successful writer of the future “other” ethnicity, LGBTIQ, disabled and nonbinary? Or is there a way to manufacture more intersectionalities?

Review of To Be Taught, If Fortunate by Becky Chambers

This science fiction novella is a finalist for the 2020 Hugo Awards, a stand-alone novel written in the universe of the Wayfarer series. It was published 3 September 2019 by Harper Voyager/Hodder & Stoughton and is billed as 176 pages, but it looks more like 136 in the ebook. There’s an extensive acknowledgement section and “exclusive content” at the end that is an interview Chambers conducted with her (mom) science consultant, Nikki Chambers, an astrobiology researcher and educator in Southern California, that makes up the rest of the advertised length.

It’s the 22nd century and Ariadne O’Neill is part of the Lawki 6 team sent to explore exoplanets. The team has an assigned itinerary, and spends the time between arrivals in torpor storage where they are adaptively somatoformed so they can move freely on each particular world. Aecor has an ice crust with phosphorescent creatures that live under the ice. Mirabilis is a riot of life. Opera is terrible, fraught with storms that ultimately prevent them leaving the ship. Votum is tidally locked and at first appears deserted, but they find caves that hold secrets. Somewhere along the way Lawki 6 has stopped receiving bulletins from Earth. The team receives a final transmission from Lawki 5, damaged and attempting to land on Earth, but then nothing else. Is there any reason to continue their mission?

For anyone who’s wondering, this title is from a quote by UN Secretary Kurt Waldheim, 1977, recorded on the Voyager Golden Record as a message to any sentients who might intercept the interstellar probe.

I’d rate this story moderately high on the hardness scale because of the projections and the amount of real science that’s included, and as is usual with Chambers’ work, this contains a pretty big emotional wallop. The characters include two men and two women, with one of the men maybe trans, but this is only hinted and remains respectfully private and unclear. All characters are appealing and they respect each other, getting along with a minimum of conflict. The group is immersed in work they love and they experience the joy of discovery, but the mission turns dark when they start to suspect something bad has gone wrong on Earth. Besides this, Chambers engineers traumatic events in the mission that strongly affect the team members’ mental health.

On the less positive side, this probably needs a trigger warning because of its representation of murder, depression and attempted suicide. I would also have liked to read more on the ethics of killing aliens. The issue is given as cut and dried here, but it looks like a huge philosophical problem to me. The story also leaves us with an inconclusive ending. In the scenario provided, there’s no way around the team being stuck. It looks like a return to Earth might be a poor idea. They could extend their mission, but eventually they will run out of fuel. This raises the question of how they’re getting around. I’m just not sure the technology for a mission like this would be based on fuel that runs out. Shouldn’t the ship be at least nuclear powered?

Four stars.