The Reference Library

The Reference Library
by Rosemary Claire Smith

Isn’t it a joy to find that a favorite author has produced a new collection of short fiction? Isn’t it also great fun to dig into a batch of stories written by someone who made a strong first impression in a single story? Collections offer a chance to stare through the kaleidoscope of the writer’s obsessions with the people, places, and situations that fascinate them. For here we may find themes they return to again and again, ones that resonate with us. It can be fascinating for the analytically inclined to note when each story was written or first published and to consider a few questions. Did the author handle a particular theme with more raw emotion in earlier works and with sharper insight or greater nuance in later stories? Does the writer’s work seem to be getting more optimistic or more pessimistic over time? As a reader, why are you drawn to some of their works more than others?

Happily, three fine Analog writers, Brenda Cooper, Scott Edelman, and Michael Swanwick, have fresh offerings of short fiction. Readers familiar with Cooper’s and Edelman’s previous work may have some decent guesses as to the ideas and tropes forming the basis of their recent work. If, however, anybody can succinctly sum up a theme or two that predominates in Swanwick’s collection, do let me know. As for you readers who hanker for novels, I’ve got you covered too. Have a look at David Gerrold’s shapeshifter, Ian McDonald’s dinosaur wrangler, Elaine U. Cho’s space pirates, and John Chu’s engineers romping across the multiverse.

 

Brenda Cooper describes herself as a futurist, a technologist, and a poet. Her collection, When Mothers Dream, bears this out with tales of near and distant futures in which scientific and technological advances are employed to solve devilish problems, ranging from child rearing done by robots, to eradicating invasive species, to relocating those whose homes have succumbed to rising sea levels, to powering cities without resorting to fossil fuels. Cooper proves adept at exploring the intergenerational gulfs between mothers, daughters, and grandmothers as everyone struggles to find meaningful work in an age of growing solastalgia, which is the sorrow and grief wrought by deteriorating global climate conditions. Some of her stories are heartbreaking, others are filled with rage, still others strike hopeful notes, and Cooper is talented enough to combine all of these in a single story. For science-minded readers like me, the pieces that resort to magical realism to find solutions can feel somewhat frustrating. That said, on a more fundamental level, each work in this collection recognizes that technology is but one part of what’s needed to get us beyond the current environmental mess. Our world could use more of her intelligent, generous characters, even with their flaws.

Cooper interweaves ecological concerns with explorations of ways we might rethink our relationships with family members and others in our communities, and with the natural world around us. When Mothers Dream makes the case for reevaluating our individual and collective actions if we are to stave off the disasters of anthropogenic climate change, instead of allowing ourselves to sink into solastalgia. Her principal characters tend to be women who work hard to discern what must be done and just as hard to convince others, including those quite close to them. Several stories also deftly depict the unwitting damage that each generation does to the one that follows. In “Solastalgia Meets the Alps” a reporter explores innovative solutions for generating hydroelectric power while grappling with her daughter’s distress over wildfires back home. It’s set in Geneva, not far from Zurich, where I read it on a foggy December day soon after my tour guide had described wearing skis to school in the winter when she was a girl. These days, the city gets no appreciable snowfall in December.

As the illustration on the book cover indicates, Cooper’s recent stories and poetry are very much concerned with the fate of the orcas, which grows more dire every year. Even now, several pods of whales living off the coast of the Pacific northwest struggle to survive as their polluted ocean verges on becoming unlivable. “Tahlequah,” “Southern Residents,” “Annalee of the Orcas” and “When Mothers Dream,” raise the specter of fewer and fewer baby orcas born each year. Similarly, “The Seventh Feeling” centers around the challenges biologists face from eco-warriors who regard their study of the orcas with suspicion spilling over into active hostility. The poem “Curse of the Orcas” gives the whales themselves a powerful voice, while another new story, “Her Granddaughter’s Teachers,” tackles declining birth rates in human populations.

Notwithstanding the bitterness looming in several stories, a thread of hope and generosity run through others. The characters in “Elephant Angels” employ multiple high tech means of combating poachers. “Callme and Mink” overflows with heart as a conscientious robot raises dogs to be human companions. It contrasts with “Maybe the Monarchs,” a heart-wrenching tale set on a farm about a faithful dog. “In Their Garden,” which was first published in Analog’s sister magazine, Asimov’s Science Fiction (September 2009), focuses on a rebellious girl determined to strike out on her own. In a second Asimov’s piece, “Biology at the End of the World,” (September 2015), we meet the U.N. Biodiversity Protection Force, which operates in the extra-terrestrial diaspora of space stations.

Cooper wrote six original poems for When Mothers Dream, including the evocatively titled “Ice Free Future,” “Curse of the Orcas,” and “City, Inundated.” This last one depicts Seattle’s future. “The Road to Normal Is Closed” memorializes the names of places that people have loved and ruined. Throughout the collection, Cooper’s gracefully incisive writing style is on full display in her poetry and her prose.

 

When I think of Scott Edelman, what comes to mind is his association with Marvel Comics, his stint as editor of Science Fiction Age, among other periodicals, and his multiple award nominations, especially for the Bram Stoker Award for horror writing. Nevertheless, he is also the author of some fine short science fiction, as the pieces in 101 Things to Do Before You’re Downloaded amply demonstrate.

Here are thirteen stories ranging from the near future to the days when our post-human descendants await the Sun’s destruction of the dying Earth. The key to reading them is to take to heart Edelman’s statement that these tales will give you all you need to deal with the conundrums the future will invariably throw at you, whether you are a post-human immortal working through your To Do list, as in the title story, or a robot grappling with love and death while traversing a post-apocalyptic landscape, as in “Learning to Accept What’s to Come,” or an ill-prepared time traveler who finds that practically nothing is as expected, as in “The Stranded Time Traveler Embraces the Inevitable” and “The Time Traveler’s Assistant Discovers What Could Have Been.” For those who wonder about the wisdom of volunteering to become the first to travel back in time, one of Edelman’s characters comments that going back means no longer being forced to listen to all the theories, with their complexities and inconsistencies.

Edelman possesses a marvelous ability to take well-used science fiction premises that other writers have relied upon for decades, breathe new life into them, and finish with an unexpected twist. He has mastered the oft-given advice to begin by wondering what if . . . and then to follow up by asking the next question and the one after that. Accordingly, many stories in 101 Things to Do Before You’re Downloaded marvelously exemplify how far a writer who possesses a vivid imagination can run when employing this approach. What if, for example, someone were to save an alien who crash-landed and lock it up in their basement for reasons they believe to be fully justifiable? Or what if the aliens were to possess not only highly advanced science and technology, but also incredibly sophisticated forms of art, including literature, painting, sculpture, dance, and opera, thereby rendering human creative endeavors the equivalent of children’s crayon drawings fit only to be posted on their parents’ refrigerators? What if the people on a generation ship are awakened, one by one, to learn that they are the only intelligent life anywhere in the universe?

In “The Lessons Only a Jelly Bean Can Teach,” set aboard a different generation ship, Edelman gives us the perspective of a food replicator that is overqualified for its job and bored. Two memorable stories in this collection appeared in the pages of Analog Science Fiction and Fact. “After the Harvest, Before the Fall” (January/February2017) tackles the problem of how a community might best to cope with its brutal oppressors. “How Val Finally Escaped from the Basement” (November/December 2017) may have some readers reevaluating how well they know an older relative or two.

Mindful that each reader’s taste is distinctive, the stories that lingered in my mind long after reading were “Lost Out There in the Stars,” “An Invitation for the Uninvited,” and “How Val Finally Escaped from the Basement.” Authors frequently strive to place their strongest story at the end of a collection so as to stick the landing. Edelman’s “The Letters They Left Behind” closes out this volume with a moving mother-daughter tale about aliens who are not what they seem. Although Edelman proclaims at the outset that 101 Things to Do Before You’re Downloaded will give us that which we need to weather the storms of the future, it’s equally useful to ride out the worst of what the present throws at us.

 

The wildly inventive Michael Swanwick conjures up a slew of fanciful stories, richly imagined futures, and impossible worlds in his new collection, The Universe Box. Although all these stories appeared in print over the past fourteen years or thereabouts, Swanwick assures us that in some cases, it took him longer to find an ending that felt satisfactory. Be assured, these tales are an utter delight, well worth the wait. Having said that, I find it impossible to sum them up or even to characterize Swanwick’s primary themes, motifs, settings, characters, or genres. His writing is the literary equivalent of the weather in some locales: If it’s not to your liking, keep on reading for ten more minutes and it’ll be utterly different, sometimes in the same story.

The standout of the collection is the title story, a brilliant tale of a quintessential trickster who steals the entire universe and hides it in a cigar box. “The Universe Box” was printed in the September/October 2017 issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction. “Huginn and Muninn—and What Came After” is an astonishing tale based on Alice through the looking glass, which bears rereading in light of Swanwick’s introductory remarks. It first appeared in the July/August 2021 issue of Asimov’s. Two more stories in this collection also debuted in Asimov’s: “Cloud” (November/December 2021) and “Reservoir Ice” (July/August 2022). “Nirvana or Bust” is the only story in this collection that was first published in Analog, in the March/April 2022 issue.

My other favorites are “The Last Days of Old Night,” set on the coast of Iceland, the largely autobiographical “Ghost Ships,” and “The White Leopard,” a grisly tale about drones, hunting, and the dangers of underestimating someone you know well. “The Star-Bear,” which focuses on a Russian ex-pat writer in Paris, stayed with me long after closing the book. Did I mention that Swanwick is adept at writing older protagonists who don’t merely reflect on their lost youth, but also provide insights as to where they are now and what they still dream of doing or becoming? The two new stories appearing in print for the first time are real treats. “Requiem for a White Rabbit” begins with a Disney character yearning to break free of the Magic Kingdom, with an assist from a gnome and Cinderella. “Grandmother Dimetrodon” features a sail-backed beast that lived in the Permian Period, millions of years before dinosaurs first walked the Earth.

Tales such as “Artificial People” and “Timothy: An Oral History” provide provocative visions of where humanity and human creations could be headed. “Starlight Express” feels reminiscent of a future that Jack Vance or Gene Wolfe might have conjured up. “The Warm Equations” will doubtless spark memories of “The Cold Equations,” familiar to many science fiction readers. Another story serves as a tribute to James Tiptree. The collection is peppered with literary allusions to James Joyce, Stephen Crane, and doubtless other noteworthy authors.

For those who enjoy sprinkling a dash or two of fantasy into their reading, Swanwick’s latest collection includes a dragon and a tale of sword and sorcery. My favorite of these is a historical fantasy set in Shakespeare’s time, “Annie Without Crow.” It should please those who recall “The Raggle Taggle Gypsy-O,” from some years back.

The Universe Box opens with a brief glimpse into some of the influences that sparked Swanwick’s astonishingly inventive works. They include animal skulls and other ephemera found throughout his house. A final note of caution as you read these stories: It’s foolish to try to anticipate where the plot is headed. Invariably, Swanwick has something more devious in mind—I mean this in the best possible way—as you find yourself transported somewhere delightfully unexpected.

 

Ian McDonald begins by introducing us to eighteen-or nineteen-year-old Tif Tamin, an orphan who dreams big dreams of becoming a glamorous buckaroo in the center ring of a dinosaur rodeo. Tif aches to be clad in interstellar black and glittering rhinestones under the glare of the lights as he rides a triceratops or a hadrosaurus, or some other dinosaur. Finding a traveling dinosaur circus willing to take him in seems like an impossible quest amid the fiefdoms and feudal kingdoms that sprang from the remnants of post-break-up America.

Nevertheless, through some unusual circumstances, by the time Tif reaches Memphis Red’s Tatterdemalion Circus, he has acquired a dinosaur. Alas, that behemoth is an aged, one-eyed, shambling carnotaurus whose better days lie sixty-seven million years in its past. McDonald paints a vivid picture of it as a T. rex with wiggling arms, too-long legs, a tail dragging in the dust, and eyes crusted with dried rheum. The carnotaurus has endured a rough life and the same goes for the rest of the dinosaurs Tif encounters: a hadrosaurus, a triceratops, and a scarlet-crested anchiornis perched like a parrot on Memphis Red’s shoulder as though she were a pirate captain. Fortunately, she possesses a heart of gold and gives young Tif and his carnotaurus a temporary home in her traveling rodeo.

Boy, with Accidental Dinosaur provides the bare minimum in detail to explain how the dinosaurs from distant eras and geographic locations came to be brought through a “hole in the timeline,” known as the Berryman Belazu Tunnelling Transfer, to a future Wyoming. What matters is Tif ’s commitment to bringing the carnotaurus back to that locale so that it can be returned to its own era, as difficult a task as that will be.

This is a marvelous tale with so much heart, vividly depicted dinosaurs, a cast of finely drawn characters, and a plot that never lapses into trite solutions for a young person on their own in a post-America dystopia. My sole complaint was that it all wrapped up too quickly, by which I mean that I was in no way ready to bid farewell to Tif, the dinosaurs, the circus owner, or any of the rest of McDonald’s characters in this decidedly atypical coming-of-age story. Here’s hoping McDonald will return to this setting.

 

After a lengthy and distinguished career writing science fiction, including recent fiction in Analog, David Gerrold is still playing with fresh, intriguing ideas. The Boy Who Was Girl is told from the perspective of Slither, the aptly named gender-fluid assassin who works for a shadowy spy organization. Readers are warned up front that whatever you do, don’t anger Slither. This is the only warning you’re going to get from the augmented shapeshifter with a hair-trigger temper. During a mission to save Earth from an interplanetary invasion, Slither suspects that there is a mole in the organization. Understandably, they’re not inclined to give anyone the benefit of the doubt, and that’s before getting hurled across space to a world of misogyny and slavery.

One might suppose that shape shifting would be a significant advantage in many situations, including when sold into slavery, locked in a cage, and half starved. Nope, it turns out to be more complicated than this. Gerrold takes a science-oriented approach to shape shifting, and does so in a witty, eminently readable manner. For one thing, it is neither quick nor easy for shape shifters to transform their physical characteristics such as height, weight, musculature, sex organs, and the like. Doing so requires dramatic increases or decreases in body mass, which can only be accomplished by consuming a vast number of calories as quickly as possible or undergoing a corresponding rapid weight loss. Sex organs take longer to transform than other body parts. Then too, shapeshifters such as Slither must clothe themselves appropriately for their gender and surroundings, including their underwear, taking into consideration their anatomical changes.

These constraints present difficulties for a lone assassin operating on an unfamiliar world where no one can be trusted. But never fear, Gerrold delivers an engaging tale, including a brutal, fast-paced brawl. Don’t be surprised if you find yourself rooting hard for a cold-blooded killer to take revenge when up against bigger evils. The Boy Who Was Girl makes a fine addition to Gerrold’s impressive body of work.

 

Duologies can be tricky, especially when the second book emphasizes different themes than the first, or devotes many more pages to characters who previously played smaller roles, leaving readers to grow impatient as they turn the pages wondering what is happening with the players with whom they bonded in the previous book. Elaine U. Cho’s duology is a case in point. Ocean’s Godori introduced a prickly Korean pilot, Ocean Yoon, prone to dare-devil maneuvers as she zipped her spaceship full of engaging and quirky crewmembers around the inner solar system. They were on the run from ruthless space pirates whose leader framed Ocean’s BFF, Teo Anand, for the murder of his plutocrat parents who established and controlled settlements on Mercury and elsewhere. Ocean’s Godori ended on a cliffhanger as Ocean crash landed the spaceship on the Moon. The second book, Teo’s Durumi, begins soon thereafter with everyone confined to Artemis, a fascinating lunar city imbued with Korean influences including multi-course meals with marvelous dishes.

Despite the tension generated by several new characters, any of whom might secretly work for the space pirates who are still after Ocean, Teo, and the crew, Teo’s Durumi moves at a slower pace than Ocean’s Godori. For one thing, Teo Anand devotes less time to clearing his good name, or acting on his professed desire to improve living conditions for the hapless settlers on Mercury, than to swooning over the leader of a different band of raiders. Where Ocean’s Godori wove in two slow-burn romances as subplots, Teo’s Durumi places the development of both relationships front and center. This comes at the expense of the characters’ efforts to cobble together a plan to save themselves and expose the pirates’ plot to achieve interplanetary domination. It seems that the leader of the pirates has perfected a portable high-tech device to yank his victim’s the souls and memories from their brains and to upload them immediately into his own. For the sake of verisimilitude, science-oriented readers like me crave considerably more specifics as to how this device might work, how it can malfunction, and above all, what it is like to have several personalities partly or completely assimilated into one’s brain. It’s also curious that the villain’s gang fabricates only one of these contraptions given the evident success of the prototype.

Notwithstanding these considerations, Cho knows how to deliver exhilarating action as bullets whiz over the heads of the valiant crew. Teo’s Durumi is reminiscent of Firefly in that the fate of every quirky character matters, not merely the leads.

 

John Chu’s debut novel The Subtle Art of Folding Space tackles a notion likely to appeal to science-minded readers: What if a fundamental law of physics, such as Planck’s constant, was not immutable? Enter the skunkworks, with its cadre of skilled professionals dedicated to the exacting work of preserving the constants of the universe. These “maintainers,” as they are called, are divided into three categories. Architects design the configurations that generate and regulate the universes comprising the multiverse. Builders create reality by installing those designs. Verifiers provide the quality control for architects, checking on both what is designed and what is actually built.

Chu posits that the skunkworks has long existed, although the maintainers’ work became trickier over a century ago when physicists developed quantum theory. In fact, the maintainers’ initial constructs intended to take quantum mechanics into account are now proving to have been sub-optimal, thereby causing minute shifts in Planck’s constant. The Subtle Art of Folding Space, which is based on Chu’s short story “Hold-Time Violations,” likens the problem to circuits set to be open or closed for the wrong amount of time, producing errors in data capture. Another analogy is to networks of pipes connecting reservoirs, which will cause overflows if the valves are set wrong.

The central character, Ellie, must uncover the root causes of the problem in order to stabilize the universe. Her task is made more difficult by the discovery of an illicit device that can change these physical constants, one which creates a version of the universe dramatically advantaging some maintainers to the detriment of others. As Ellie travels among a multitude of nested universes she contends with malfunctions that cause “shards of discarded and potential futures” to clog the pipes. Here indeed is a book for everyone who enjoyed Everything Everywhere All at Once.

Despite several scenes where I feared my head would spin from attempting to visualize what was happening, I kept reading. Ellie is an engaging character who must also keep up her guard against her jealous sister’s bi-weekly efforts to murder her. On top of everything else, she struggles to cope with her ailing mother’s final illness. The real strength of The Subtle Art of Folding Space lies in the nuanced depictions of both mother-daughter relationships in which the sisters vie for their mother’s love. Meanwhile, other members of Ellie’s extended Chinese family freely voice strong opinions about filial piety. Instead of introducing a potential romantic partner to assist Ellie, Chu provides her with a cousin, another maintainer, who not only takes her side when their extended family doubts her, but also conjures mouth-watering dim sum and other delectable dishes seemingly from nowhere. Readers who mentally devoured the Korean food in Ocean’s Godori or the biang biang noodles in Annalee Newitz’s Automatic Noodle will likely find there’s plenty in The Subtle Art of Folding Space to their taste.

 

Rosemary Claire Smith’s novelette “Apollo in Retrograde” (Analog, November/December 2023) won the Sidewise Award for Alternate History. Over the years, Analog has published her time-travel tales, alternate histories, and other science fiction stories, as well as several editorials. Rosemary’s science fiction, fantasy, and horror stories also appear in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Amazing Stories, Fantastic Stories, and other periodicals and anthologies. Her interactive adventure game is T-Rex Time Machine. Rosemary has worked as a field archaeologist and a lawyer. Follow her online at www.rcwordsmith.com and across social media at RCWordsmith to find out what else she is up to.