There are few better literary thrills than unexpectedly stumbling across a Murderbot story! Especially if it's an online freebie.
This story is set aftThere are few better literary thrills than unexpectedly stumbling across a Murderbot story! Especially if it's an online freebie.
This story is set after the first four novellas in this series (and yes, you really do need to read them first). Murderbot is now in the Preservation System with Dr. Ayda Mensah, the closest person to a friend it has, and Murderbot has come a long way to even consider being friends with someone. Mensah is struggling with PTSD in the aftermath of being kidnapped in Exit Strategy, but she's assiduously hiding her personal trauma from everyone around her. The rest of Preservation is struggling with the problem of having a highly dangerous Security Unit on their peaceful planet (the words "killing machine" are thought, if not said).
This is a quieter story in the series, and not a lot happens, but it's always a pleasure being in this fascinating world. "Home: Habitat" is notable for being narrated by Mensah, and I liked being inside her head and seeing how she views Murderbot. They have such a unique relationship and respect for each other.
SecUnit is looking down at her. “You can hug me if you need to.” “No. No, that’s all right. I know you don’t care for it.” She wipes her face. There are tears in her eyes, because she’s an idiot. “It’s not terrible.” She can hear the irony under its even tone.
4.5 stars for this suspenseful Tor.com story, a 2021 Locus Award finalist. Free to read online here at Tor.com. Final review, first posted on FantasyL4.5 stars for this suspenseful Tor.com story, a 2021 Locus Award finalist. Free to read online here at Tor.com. Final review, first posted on FantasyLiterature.com:
Chessup is a day laborer working as part of a crew outside of Boulder, Colorado, helping to clean up a creek that was filled with trash in the aftermath of a flood. At the end of the day, looking to borrow a battery from the crew’s bulldozer to jumpstart his old car, Chessup finds something very old tangled up in the roots of a tree that the bulldozer had pulled down.
With visions of selling his discovery to a pawnbroker for cash, Chessup sets about removing it from the tangle of tree roots. He’s about to leave when his co-worker Burned Dan, who wears a bandanna over his face like a train robber, confronts him and demands that Chessup sell his find to Dan instead. But darkness is beginning to fall, and it may be too late for both of them …
Stephen Graham Jones’ “Wait for Night,” a Locus finalist short story, weaves a familiar mythology into an unusual setting. A pair of world-weary, down-on-their-luck workers are the main characters, and Jones’ depiction of Chessup’s character and his world is stellar.
Thirty minutes later, that five o’clock whistle blowing a couple hours late, my uncle’s unregistered Buick fell into its usual routine of refusing to start, and I was the only one still parked in the pullout. I sloped back down to the creek to splash my face, consider my life, and all the decisions I’d made to get me to this point.
The characterization remains true even as Chessup finds himself in an intense life-and-death situation, faced with choices he never thought he’d be required to make. Burned Dan is equally interesting, making seemingly off-hand comments earlier in the story whose true import becomes all too clear later on. It’s exceptional storytelling, with so much going on between the lines....more
Ten-year-old Nyma is3.5 stars. This Hugo award-nominated short story is free online here at Tor.com. Final review, first posted on Fantasy Literature:
Ten-year-old Nyma is chosen for a singular role in her country: to be the child whose life stands between the president’s decision to deploy devastating seres bombs in the war against their enemy. The only copy of the access codes to the seres missiles are in a capsule implanted next to Nyma’s heart. The law requires that the president personally kill the carrier child with a ceremonial dagger, to retrieve the codes to launch the bombs. Once the new president, Otto Han, is elected, Nyma is always to be near him. And despite President Han’s reluctance to grow closer to Nyma (he initially resists even knowing her name), it inevitably happens, while the war news grows more and more grim.
The theme and issue are clearly stated in this story, multiple times and in varying ways:
Do you truly wish to use such weapons so badly, that you would be willing to do as the law requires and murder a child of your own land with your own hands in order to gain access to them?
It’s pretty good message fiction: what if the government made it really (REALLY!!) hard for the president to pull the plug on deploying nuclear weapons? Is the loss of so many other lives, a belief in the rightness of your cause, the fear that your own country will be devastated if you don’t take action, sufficient? These are difficult questions that both President Han and the reader struggle with, and Huang doesn’t offer an easy answer. What makes it even more difficult is Nyma’s own belief in the necessity of her role, despite her wish to live.
But I can’t quite wrap my brain around the idea of enough people agreeing to create a law that deliberately uses an innocent child as the sacrifice that the president personally needs to take, with his own hands, in order to bomb the enemy. On the other hand, Ursula K. Le Guin‘s famous short story “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas,” a thematically similar parable about the ethics of the greater good, also uses an innocent child as an even more inexplicable sacrifice, and I think that story is great. Maybe Huang’s writing style, which is far less subtle, just didn’t engage me as much as Le Guin’s did.
In any case it’s great food for thought, and is a Hugo nominee....more
4.5 stars - this creepy, excellent novelette is now a Nebula award nominee! Free to read online here at Tor.com. Final review, first posted on Fantasy4.5 stars - this creepy, excellent novelette is now a Nebula award nominee! Free to read online here at Tor.com. Final review, first posted on FantasyLiterature.com:
Some thirty years after graduating from high school and leaving her home town, Stella returns for a visit and attends the funeral of the older brother of one of her childhood friends. She ends up impulsively volunteering to help her friend Marco clean out his brother Denny’s home — a major undertaking, since Denny was a massive hoarder.
Stella often lies about her life for no particular reason, so when she and Marco come across an aged TV set, she asks him if he remembers The Uncle Bob Show, something she had made up on the spot. Oddly, Marco says yes, and as he chats about Uncle Bob and his TV show, Stella begins to remember the show too, and even being part of the show’s child audience several times when it was being filmed at the local public broadcast station. As Stella investigates this old TV show with its unsettling host, she begins to notice the creepy stories that Uncle Bob would tell the children in the audience … stories that may have a lingering effect on the child they’re told to.
Two Truths and a Lie is one of those stories that gets more intriguing and impressive as you look more closely at it and examine its parts. The first time I read it I thought it was okay, maybe 3.5 star material. When it got a Nebula nomination I reread it, and I was completely on board with it the second time around. It’s subtle horror, in a creepypasta type of way, and it has its own internal, inexorable logic. I do feel sympathetic toward Stella, even as it becomes clear that she’s got pathological lying issues. But maybe it’s all the fault of Uncle Bob, who in one of his shows told a story about a girl:
“… the girl was willing to trade who she was for who she could be, so she began to do just that. Little by little, she replaced herself with parts of other people she liked better. Parts of stories she wanted to live. …This girl was her own cuckoo, laying stories in her own head, and the heads of those around her, until even she couldn’t remember which ones were true, or if there was anything left of her.”
The internal logic of the story breaks down a little, leaving the reader confused as to whether Stella’s initial lie about remembering the show was really a lie that somehow became truth, or whether she’d forgotten the show (or blocked it out of her mind) until she mentions it to Marco. The ending also initially seems like it comes out of left field, but the clues to the logic and even inevitability of that ending are there, hidden in Uncle Bob’s tales.
Bonus: Here's a more detailed discussion of the ending: (view spoiler)[The clues are in Uncle Bob's ongoing story about the boy/himself who was buried in the hill, which is referenced several times in the story, and in Uncle Bob's story about Stella, which is mentioned earlier and then repeated just before the end: "... the girl was willing to trade who she was for who she could be, so she began to do just that. Little by little, she replaced herself with parts of other people she liked better. Parts of stories she wanted to live. ...This girl was her own cuckoo, laying stories in her own head, and the heads of those around her, until even she couldn’t remember which ones were true, or if there was anything left of her." And that's what happens in the end: Stella replaces her life with the "boy in the hill" story told by Uncle Bob. (hide spoiler)]
Initial post: What is all this talk about “creepypasta” in connection with this Tor short? (Not just here on GR but also in the comment thread to this story on Tor.com.) I know I’m not much of a horror reader but I’ve somehow managed to get through my entire life until now without hearing about creepypasta, and apparently this is a Thing.
In any case I like Sarah Pinsker; she’s a talented author. Plus karen loves this one....more
Four fantasy novellas, including Every Heart a Doorway, available for free through Tor's ebook of the month club. Download before midnight, June 5, atFour fantasy novellas, including Every Heart a Doorway, available for free through Tor's ebook of the month club. Download before midnight, June 5, at https://ebookclub.tor.com/...more
This humorous SF story is currently nominated for the Hugo and the Nebula awards, and I hope it wins! Final review, first posted on FantasyLiterature.This humorous SF story is currently nominated for the Hugo and the Nebula awards, and I hope it wins! Final review, first posted on FantasyLiterature.com:
This is an absolutely delightful story! A grumpy robot, Constant Killer, who makes a living by engaging in robot deathmatch and assassination games, is obliged to mentor a chirpy, innocent new robot who is having problems with its life, ranging from “how do I remove illusionary dogs from my optical feed” to dealing with adverse working conditions at a cheap automated café. What begins as a meeting between opposite personalities gradually evolves into an unlikely friendship.
“A Guide for Working Breeds” is told in a creative, offbeat way, using the robots’ electronic messages, online searches and product orders to tell the story. On the surface it’s so funny and charming, but it deals with some underlying serious issues about the exploitation of workers.
3.66 stars. In this SF/fantasy "Wild Cards" story, you gradually are introduced to a benevolent but weirdly innocent (you find out why, later) charact3.66 stars. In this SF/fantasy "Wild Cards" story, you gradually are introduced to a benevolent but weirdly innocent (you find out why, later) character initially called the Visitor, who can (usually for a brief time) take over other people's bodies. She tries to do that only by invitation, and she can only take over your body if she or someone she's inhabiting has touched you. And often people really do invite her in: she also has a certain superpower that travels with her and is temporarily assumed by whosever body she's in.
Gradually the story focuses in on an evil pharmaceutical corporation that's trying to prevent the release of a new medicine that would hugely benefit humanity but trash their profits. They'll stop at nothing ... and they have other superpowered people like Ruby, the "Dragon," whose power is about what you might expect with a moniker like that.
It's a pretty straightforward plot, other than the initial confusing part where you're trying to figure out what this story is all about and the author keeps changing to different characters' points of view. It has some stock villains and a few more interesting and complex characters, including the assassin Ruby.
"Wild Cards" is a shared author universe set in an alternative future where an alien virus kills 90% of the people who get it, disfigures and/or gives useless superpowers to 9% (the Jokers), and useful superpowers to the last 1% (the Aces). It's helpful to be familiar with some of the other stories, but knowing that concept will see you through. ...more
Meigan builds a LiHugo and Locus award finalist short story! Free to read online here at Tor.com. Final review, first posted on FantasyLiterature.com:
Meigan builds a Little Free Library from a kit, paints and decorates it, sets it up in her front yard, and puts a bunch of her old books in it for neighbors and passers-by to trade and share. All goes well the first day, but on the second someone empties out the Little Free Library box completely. Meigan is rather miffed, but shrugs it off and leaves a handwritten note to them in the box to next time please take just one or two books, or leave a book in return. Rather than books, the unknown person starts leaving unusual presents for Meigan in the box in exchange for the books they take. Then one day Meigan puts a copy of Defending Your Castle in the box, and things start to get really odd.
“Little Free Library” is heartwarming and whimsical, with a bittersweet note. If you’re partial to stories about library and books and the ways they can affect lives, this is an enjoyable tale. It’s set in our world, but with a hint of magic in the wings, just waiting to come onto the main stage.
This short story has one of those open-ended conclusions that really leaves the reader wondering what will happen next, but it’s not clear if Naomi Kritzer has a follow-up story in mind or that’s just the way the story ends. The latter is where I tend to think she’s going to land, but I’d be happy to be proved wrong. In any case it’s fun to imagine what might occur next. I have a few thoughts … ...more
2.5 stars - just okay. A spaceship lands on a new world, but the captain and crew find to their dismay that the planet is already inhabited. They're s2.5 stars - just okay. A spaceship lands on a new world, but the captain and crew find to their dismay that the planet is already inhabited. They're stuck - the ship hasn't got enough fuel to go anywhere else. So the ship's navigator takes off to explore this world and see if there's an empty place they can fit in and be hidden to the rest of the world's inhabitants, while the ship shrinks down to the size of a rock, and the crew goes into some kind of sleep and awaits the navigator's return.
It's a murky story plot-wise, though there are some lovely descriptions of strange and creative ways of mapping that the people on this world use. That’s the best part of this story, frankly. I'm extremely unclear on what the point was. Life goes on and you do your best?...more
In the American Civil War era,Another Hugo award-nominated short story, free online here at Tor.com. Final review, first posted on Fantasy Literature:
In the American Civil War era, as soon as she hears that the man of the house has died in the war, Sully, a 15-year-old slave, slits the throats of the five women who own her and have mistreated her. That’s not really so surprising, but what happens to Sully next is.
The murder of a family by a girl so tender and young ripped a devilishly wide tunnel between the fields of existence, for it was not the way of things, and the etherworld thrived on the impermissible.
Sully’s anger cuts a path between these two planes of existence, and the spirit of a teenage girl who died long ago rides that path into Sully’s womb and is immediately born in flesh (conveniently and temporarily shrinking down to baby-size for the birthing process). The new girl, Ziza, and Sully get along well, but there are four more lives Sully took that still require balancing, additional revenants who will need more food than their farm can produce, and a nearby town full of people who are bound to come checking on the farm sooner or later.
Sully’s seething anger toward her former owners is understandable. It’s not the initial murders that take me aback here, but the ongoing bloodthirstiness of the tale, which makes for an odd combination with the romance and the hopefulness of the ending. “Blood is Another Word for Hunger” offers some disturbing metaphors for our own day and time. It’s a disquieting tale: a cry of anger and wanting retribution and more from a world that’s never felt fair....more
3.75 stars. A short, heartwarming tale, free on Tor.com. A man on a space ship is injured in an accident that should have killed him ... which is goin3.75 stars. A short, heartwarming tale, free on Tor.com. A man on a space ship is injured in an accident that should have killed him ... which is going to blow some deeply-held secrets wide open. When Graff is rescued by his shipmates, he's got a LOT of explaining to do, and no guarantees that they'll believe or forgive him.
Carrie Vaughn writes well, and I like her unexpected take on the issues here, and on Graff's hidden society. I read it twice today and liked it even more the second time around, but then I'm kind of a sucker for heartwarming stories (unlike karen). :)
Recommended if you like SF and M/M romance.
Content notes: No explicit content; a few F-bombs....more
Garth Nix wrote this novelette, and whatever Nix writes is usually worth taking a look at. It's about a Soviet political prisoner in the days of StaliGarth Nix wrote this novelette, and whatever Nix writes is usually worth taking a look at. It's about a Soviet political prisoner in the days of Stalin, a very thin, wiry young woman who's a trained contortionist, a talented sniper, and a deadly fighter. Imprisoned in Siberia for what appear to be bogus reasons, she's "offered" a chance to maybe redeem herself by exploring a strange alien artifact in a desolate area of Siberia, a network of small tight tunnels whose twists and turns lead ... who knows where? But the Soviet authorities want to know, and they've decided that Aleksandra is their best bet.
This story reminded me pretty strongly of the famous classic SF novella Rogue Moon, which I read back in my impressionable college days and which always stuck with me. This one pales a little by comparison, but this SF adventure set in the bad old Soviet Union days is still an interesting read.
Whoa! That last scene packed an unexpected punch! My eyebrows about hit the ceiling.
Ken Liu deftly combines insightful social commentary with post-apoWhoa! That last scene packed an unexpected punch! My eyebrows about hit the ceiling.
Ken Liu deftly combines insightful social commentary with post-apocalyptic sci-fi in this free Tor short story. A protected explorer of the plague-affected world gets more than he bargained for.
3.5 stars. Catching up on my Tor shorts reading to help me reach my 2019 GR reading goal. :D This SF story, set on Saturn’s moon Titan, is about a you3.5 stars. Catching up on my Tor shorts reading to help me reach my 2019 GR reading goal. :D This SF story, set on Saturn’s moon Titan, is about a young woman who’s part of a security team protecting the artificial intelligences, or Core, that reside on Titan. Nothing ever happens in Nila’s job, and she is so, SO bored ... until a terrible attack.
Lavie Tidhar is a brilliant writer but this story feels like a prologue (which, maybe it is?) rather than a complete story in itself. “In Xanadu” is set in a wildly complex future world that Tidhar has developed in his prior works, like Central Station. It’s fantastic world-building, but unless you’re already familiar with it you might be a little lost.
Full review to come! Read it free online at Tor.com....more
Aaahh!! I was so excited to find a prequel for Adrian Tchaikovsky's novella Made Things free online at Tor.com. More living puppets FTW!!
Tam is a low-Aaahh!! I was so excited to find a prequel for Adrian Tchaikovsky's novella Made Things free online at Tor.com. More living puppets FTW!!
Tam is a low-grade but determined wooden puppet (homunculus) who has carved a daughter to the very best of his ability. He beseeches the noble magician puppets for some gold to put on his daughter as filigree, to make her a better class puppet and improve her chances in the puppet's world. The magicians agree, if he will send his daughter to them for training when she has been imbued with magical life and learned to control her body.
The second half of this story is told from the point of view of Liet, Tam's daughter. This is a charming world, but Tchaikovsky deals with some universal human issues here, and it's not all sweetness and light.
A few days in the life of a seedy, superpowered hitman.
Spector pushed his horrific pain inside the man’s mind. The agony of Spector’s own death from
A few days in the life of a seedy, superpowered hitman.
Spector pushed his horrific pain inside the man’s mind. The agony of Spector’s own death from the black queen took hold. The man’s eyes rolled up in his head and there was a fresh corpse on the floor seconds later.
So this happens, a lot.
James “Demise” Spector wanders New York City, striking down people who irritate him (which happens quite often) as well as those he’s paid to kill, and takes up with an unusual “joker.”
The story is about as aimless as Spector himself. I think this Tor short story will mostly appeal to Wild Cards universe fans who are already attached to Spector.
Bumping up to all 5 stars on reread! This novelette was nominated for the Hugo and the Nebula. Full review, first posted on Fantasy Literature:
This sBumping up to all 5 stars on reread! This novelette was nominated for the Hugo and the Nebula. Full review, first posted on Fantasy Literature:
This story, told entirely from a cat’s point of view, is a must-read for feline fans! Jeoffry the cat belongs toowns a mad poet who is confined to an insane asylum in 18th century Great Britain. Jeoffry regularly battles the imps and demons who torment the inmates at the asylum. But when Satan himself enters the picture, planning to use the poet’s abilities to bring about the end of the world, Jeoffry just might be overmatched.
Siobhan Carroll drew me in with this whimsical and insightful tale. She tells this story from Jeoffry’s point of view, capturing the elusive essence of cats.
Jeoffry knows he is a good cat, and a bold gentleman, and a pretty fellow. He tells the poet as much, pushing his head repeatedly at the man’s hands, which smell unpleasantly of blood. The demons have been at him again.…
Jeoffry feels … not guilty exactly, but annoyed. The poet is his human.
There are so many marvelous elements to this tale, including some Turkish Delight that would have been better not eaten and a scene-stealing black kitten named the Nighthunter Moppet. Bonus if you’re familiar with the long religious poem “Jubilate Agno” written by the poet Christopher Smart around 1760, or at least with the “Jeoffry” section of the poem. Smart wrote this poem when he was committed to an asylum, with only his cat Jeoffry for company. A brief excerpt:
For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry. … For God has blessed him in the variety of his movements. For, tho he cannot fly, he is an excellent clamberer. For his motions upon the face of the earth are more than any other quadruped. For he can tread to all the measures upon the music. For he can swim for life. For he can creep.
In which stealing ideas for technological inventions from the future turns out to have some problematic side effects.
In turn-of-the-century Europe, EIn which stealing ideas for technological inventions from the future turns out to have some problematic side effects.
In turn-of-the-century Europe, England and its allies are trying to find ways to combat the evil Mongolian Wizard. Since they can't (or won't) beat him at wizard-making, maybe technology will work. And someone has figured out a way to use psychically-gifted people to get ideas and blueprints from the future. Is the murder that Ritter and his wolf are investigating related to this?
The plot, which deals with both the murder investigation and time paradoxes, got a little muddled here. Possibly that was the point, though.
Part of Michael Swanwick's Mongolian Wizard series of short stories, all of which are free online at Tor.com. Definitely read the first story, The Mongolian Wizard, first, but the later stories are somewhat interchangeable....more
In which we finally find out how the evil Mongolian Wizard is creating wizard underlings to take over turn-of-the-century Europe ... and it's even worIn which we finally find out how the evil Mongolian Wizard is creating wizard underlings to take over turn-of-the-century Europe ... and it's even worse than we thought.
The bleakest of Michael Swanwick's Mongolian Wizard series of short stories, all of which are free online at Tor.com. Competent and straightforward storytelling, interesting worldbuilding, and a tough protagonist with a wolf sidekick.
So the publishing company Tor is moving from its longtime home in the NYC Flatiron Building. To mark the occasion, Seanan McGuire wrote this slight, sSo the publishing company Tor is moving from its longtime home in the NYC Flatiron Building. To mark the occasion, Seanan McGuire wrote this slight, sentimental tale about an airship full of explorers from another dimension, coming to check out the landmark building in this dimension, and perhaps pick up a few artifacts from our world.
It's an amusing if improbable story, told from the point of view of the airship captain. Pluses are the "baklava" theory of multiple universes, the fun way that the first contact with the locals plays out, and this great illustration:
Tadiana ✩Night Owl☽
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