Month: June 2007

Ian R. MacLeod’s “The Summer Isles” first appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction in October/November 1998. It’s a very well written and helical alternative history narrative about how things could have gone terribly awry in Britain had they lost World War I. MacLeod shows off his literary talents in this novella.

The story is told from the point of view of a historian and professor at Oxford University who once knew Britain’s leader, though by a much different name and personality. The Great War changed his former lover into something perverted in a way much more real and worthy of concern than what tightly wound conservatives might think. The story deals with issues made explicit during the Third Reich in Germany, but MacLeod reveals how those hatreds and misconceptions can be fanned into a fury in places we might least expect it. Additionally, the way he presents the feelings, relationships, and plight of homosexual men in his alternative “brave new world” is expressive yet full of despair and eventually resignation to “do the right thing.”

The story is more an alternative history than strictly SF, but it’s definitely worth a read. It would probably be an valuable asset in classes dealing with revolution, genocide, and sexual orientation. I found the story in Gardner Dozois’ The Mammoth Book of Best New SF 12, but there’s also a bound edition available–more info on the author’s website here.

“The Very Pulse of the Machine” is the second story that I’ve read by Michael Swanwick. The first was his novella, Griffin’s Egg, which is a very fine story about an engineered pathogen that transforms people’s minds on a moon base. It’s a very intense and fascinating story. “The Very Pulse of the Machine” is no less a story, and very good in its own right!

Taking its title from William Wordsworth’s “She Was a Phantom of Delight,” it’s about Martha Kivelsen, one member of a two woman team exploring the surface of Io. Her lander companion, Juliet Burton, dies in an accident, but “she” continues to talk to Martha as she trudges along the dangerous surface of the moon back to the lander, hoping to reunite with Jacob Hols and the orbiter. Apparently, Io is an intelligent “machine” that was artificially created by “Mobile. Intelligent. Organic. Life.” (328). It accesses Burton’s memories of poetry and experience, and uses this in its attempts to communicate with Kivelsen.

I wonder if his choice to make the two planetary explorers female was done deliberately and if so, for what purpose? Kivelsen describes herself as also shooting for second place. She’s always on the crew, but never the commander. However, she misses her many accomplishments like being a space explorer and competing in the Olympics. Though, she could represent women in general as always falling short of first place in the male hegemony. This is made more poignant by her female commander’s death even before the story begins. Her choice at the end of the story is foolhardy, but it gives her power over her destiny as well as that of Burton’s.

Other themes explored in the story include the nature of identity and the encoding of self in a machine thereby becoming the “deus ex machina.” Also, Swanwick’s creative use of electrical charge and the surfur dioxide composition of the surface is particularly inventive.

I found the story in The Mammoth Book of Best New SF 12, but it can also be found in Swanwick’s Tales of Old Earth. Rush out and read this story!

First published in 1998 in Science Fiction Age, Cory Doctorow’s short story “Craphound” is about nostalgia for the past and childhood memories in a future where aliens walk among us and trade fantastic technology for trinkets and do-dads. This story struck a chord for me, because I’m a craphound at heart. I enjoy browsing junk stores and particularly vintage toy shops (for original Star Wars toys of course).

When the narrator, Jerry is talking about finding treasures like Ace Doubles or old pawn receipts, he puts it into words:

It all made poems. The old pulp novels and the pawn ticket, when I spread them out in the living room in front of the TV, and arranged them just so, they made up a poem that could take my breath away (74).

The pieces do form a kind of poem about people’s lives, their loves and passions, their mistakes and triumphs. He goes on to say:

Over the years, I’ve found the steel desk and the wall sconces and carousel animals and tin Coca-Cola signs galore. Finding them feels right, like I’ve checked off an item on a checklist…it’s touching them again, just once, having them pass through my possession that makes it good (75).

I feel this way when it comes to finding something that I’m looking for, but don’t really need. Just knowing that it’s out there somewhere and I got to see it energizes me.

If you want to relive the past, if only for a bit, you should read “Craphound.” I found it in Gardner Dozois’ The Mammoth Book of Best New SF 12, and it’s also collected in Cory Doctorow’s A Place So Foreign and Eight More, but Cory has been very kind to release it online under a Creative Commons license here. The story has also been read on the Escape Pod podcast, so you can download and listen to the story here.