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beccaelizabethNOVELLAS
How Sere Picked Up Her Laundry by Alexander Jablokov
The Girl Who Stole Herself by R. Garcia y Robertson
I posted about the first of these as soon as read it, considering it worth the cover price on its own, https://beccaelizabeth.dreamwidth.org/3346818.html , but the other novella was also strong.
Central female character, mostly talking to girls and women, interesting career progression very swiftly, and a worldbuild that goes out in stages that make sense but sometimes managed to surprise me. Trigger warning for attempted rape, interrupted, and several different situations where sexual contact is implied or mentioned in situations cannot be freely consented to, like women in prison or slaves or attempted underage. It's all about how messed up all that all is. Protagonist is a 'closet princess' who spends all her time on the net, whose adventures in virtual reality have practical applications and real world political consequences. Interesting, but, see triggers.
Asimov's keeps being darker like that than is my preference.
NOVELETTES
Other Worlds and This One by Cadwell Turnbull
Depressing multiverse thing. Trigger warnings for domestic violence, drug use, bullying, violence, suicide.
The one character that can see other universes can't stay, can barely interact, cannot do anything permanent in them, and their home universe kind of sucks a lot. It's a whole roads not taken story. And one of the characters asks how anything matters if everything happens somewhere, and the answer is deliberately unsatisfying.
It ends with the pov guy watching a universe where everyone made their best choices, and calling it his slice of heaven and hell.
So it's dark.
I don't know, writer bio says he did a creative writing at university, and it reads that way.
@lantis by Rudy Rucker & Marc Laidlaw
Too druggie psychedelic to ever get my interest. I read it, but it managed to make some interesting ideas boring.
Gale Strang by Michael Bishop
Written from the point of view of a sentient bird cage. Which is made of coathangers. But can think. For no reason. And with no bearing on the plot.
Honestly I don't know why this one is science fiction. It's just weird.
Intersex kid runs away from abusive home, has symbolic interlude injuring and looking after unintelligent talking bird, finds family that accepts her.
Trigger warnings for child abuse, beatings, being abused because intersex, people refusing to acknowledge gender, and mentions of sex abuse and incest that gets denied but ugh.
It's all a bit literary.
Accurately described I would not have read it.
SHORT STORIES
Annabelle, Annie by Lisa Goldstein
Two parents in the very near future trying to connect with their kid, who is part of a youth culture that starts with knowing exactly how screwed the environment is and blaming the olders for it. Good social extrapolation, characters with heart.
An Evening with Severyn Grimes by Rich Larson
Trigger warnings for sexual assault, again. Which is one kind of logical in a setup where she plugs her brain in to wires and goes be elsewhere, but.
Interesting SF elements where consciousness can be loaded into new bodies but cloning is illegal so people 'volunteer' to rent themselves out. Dollhouse setup, but with physical wires and cones full of personalities that could also be running on robots if they wanted to.
Dark setting, lots of blood and crunching, violence and desperation. But a proper plot and characters and a satisfying resolution.
Transcendental Mission: Riley’s Story by James Gunn
Weighty Matters: Tordor’s Story by James Gunn
... all I can say about the two Gunn stories is they were so boring I stalled for a week trying to read them. And it's not the ideas, or not just the ideas, although many of those don't help. It's the writing style. I just... so bored.
The Patient Dragon by David Gerrold
Good setup, interesting tech, dragon of the title a shoulder sitting sort of computer that does all the connecting to the internet and quite a lot of research and a fair bit of cybertech management, and the whole posthuman cybernetic malleability of body and associated identities like gender was an interesting feature. But in terms of plot it got the character up the tree, showed us the view from there, and then "I won't say who and I won't say how, I don't want anyone to know, and I kight need to do it again someday. Most of all, I don't want to give anyone else ideas. The new crater is impressive and that should be warning enough."
... yeah, that's pretty much the whole resolution.
... after the 'none of it made sense, and that explained everything' bit, where the whole explanation for everything so far is 'incompetents'.
That does not, to me, feel like wrapping the story adequately.
But I can see how it's a thematic and tonal choice quite consistent with the story, which is about shit just happening to you and you never get the whole picture.
Doesn't mean I have to like it.
Field Studies by Sheila Finch
Couldn't figure how this one was SF neither. Homeless woman has miserable few days. Someone following her around says he's an anthropologist, and disappears at the end, after being ignored by other people all through. So, okay, I can see an angle, but, meh.
So that's a couple I can't see why they're SF, a lot that are darker than I'd like, and a couple of very readable ones.
So, basically, I can see Asimov's is doing a thing. It seems like a competently written thing. But it is only sometimes an overlap with things I want to read.
Still, good when it is.
How Sere Picked Up Her Laundry by Alexander Jablokov
The Girl Who Stole Herself by R. Garcia y Robertson
I posted about the first of these as soon as read it, considering it worth the cover price on its own, https://beccaelizabeth.dreamwidth.org/3346818.html , but the other novella was also strong.
Central female character, mostly talking to girls and women, interesting career progression very swiftly, and a worldbuild that goes out in stages that make sense but sometimes managed to surprise me. Trigger warning for attempted rape, interrupted, and several different situations where sexual contact is implied or mentioned in situations cannot be freely consented to, like women in prison or slaves or attempted underage. It's all about how messed up all that all is. Protagonist is a 'closet princess' who spends all her time on the net, whose adventures in virtual reality have practical applications and real world political consequences. Interesting, but, see triggers.
Asimov's keeps being darker like that than is my preference.
NOVELETTES
Other Worlds and This One by Cadwell Turnbull
Depressing multiverse thing. Trigger warnings for domestic violence, drug use, bullying, violence, suicide.
The one character that can see other universes can't stay, can barely interact, cannot do anything permanent in them, and their home universe kind of sucks a lot. It's a whole roads not taken story. And one of the characters asks how anything matters if everything happens somewhere, and the answer is deliberately unsatisfying.
It ends with the pov guy watching a universe where everyone made their best choices, and calling it his slice of heaven and hell.
So it's dark.
I don't know, writer bio says he did a creative writing at university, and it reads that way.
@lantis by Rudy Rucker & Marc Laidlaw
Too druggie psychedelic to ever get my interest. I read it, but it managed to make some interesting ideas boring.
Gale Strang by Michael Bishop
Written from the point of view of a sentient bird cage. Which is made of coathangers. But can think. For no reason. And with no bearing on the plot.
Honestly I don't know why this one is science fiction. It's just weird.
Intersex kid runs away from abusive home, has symbolic interlude injuring and looking after unintelligent talking bird, finds family that accepts her.
Trigger warnings for child abuse, beatings, being abused because intersex, people refusing to acknowledge gender, and mentions of sex abuse and incest that gets denied but ugh.
It's all a bit literary.
Accurately described I would not have read it.
SHORT STORIES
Annabelle, Annie by Lisa Goldstein
Two parents in the very near future trying to connect with their kid, who is part of a youth culture that starts with knowing exactly how screwed the environment is and blaming the olders for it. Good social extrapolation, characters with heart.
An Evening with Severyn Grimes by Rich Larson
Trigger warnings for sexual assault, again. Which is one kind of logical in a setup where she plugs her brain in to wires and goes be elsewhere, but.
Interesting SF elements where consciousness can be loaded into new bodies but cloning is illegal so people 'volunteer' to rent themselves out. Dollhouse setup, but with physical wires and cones full of personalities that could also be running on robots if they wanted to.
Dark setting, lots of blood and crunching, violence and desperation. But a proper plot and characters and a satisfying resolution.
Transcendental Mission: Riley’s Story by James Gunn
Weighty Matters: Tordor’s Story by James Gunn
... all I can say about the two Gunn stories is they were so boring I stalled for a week trying to read them. And it's not the ideas, or not just the ideas, although many of those don't help. It's the writing style. I just... so bored.
The Patient Dragon by David Gerrold
Good setup, interesting tech, dragon of the title a shoulder sitting sort of computer that does all the connecting to the internet and quite a lot of research and a fair bit of cybertech management, and the whole posthuman cybernetic malleability of body and associated identities like gender was an interesting feature. But in terms of plot it got the character up the tree, showed us the view from there, and then "I won't say who and I won't say how, I don't want anyone to know, and I kight need to do it again someday. Most of all, I don't want to give anyone else ideas. The new crater is impressive and that should be warning enough."
... yeah, that's pretty much the whole resolution.
... after the 'none of it made sense, and that explained everything' bit, where the whole explanation for everything so far is 'incompetents'.
That does not, to me, feel like wrapping the story adequately.
But I can see how it's a thematic and tonal choice quite consistent with the story, which is about shit just happening to you and you never get the whole picture.
Doesn't mean I have to like it.
Field Studies by Sheila Finch
Couldn't figure how this one was SF neither. Homeless woman has miserable few days. Someone following her around says he's an anthropologist, and disappears at the end, after being ignored by other people all through. So, okay, I can see an angle, but, meh.
So that's a couple I can't see why they're SF, a lot that are darker than I'd like, and a couple of very readable ones.
So, basically, I can see Asimov's is doing a thing. It seems like a competently written thing. But it is only sometimes an overlap with things I want to read.
Still, good when it is.