Category: Science Fiction

David Ira Cleary’s “Dr. Abernathy’s Dream Theater” is a fun short story that borrows stylistically from the proto-SF of Wells and other nineteenth century authors, and thematically from steampunk SF.

The story’s narrator is a drug addicted former professor by the name of Dr. Jaromir Stavan who lives in an alternate world reminiscent of the late nineteenth century with a dash of early twentieth century automobiles. Stavan, through chance, is introduced to the title’s Dr. Abernathy and his Dream Theater, where a special apparatus allows for the improvisational reproduction of one’s dreams by actors. In the background of the story, there is a rivalry between a Dr. Orestel and Dr. Abernathy. These competitors in the realm of psychology and dream interpretation make me think of later comparisons of Freud and Jung (including exile from their homeland and the oppressive “Revolutionary Council,” which sounds a lot like Nazi German in the context of the story). Dr. Abernathy shares an fascinating insight into his line of work:

We are cartographers, Stavan. We explore the world of dreams, find its landmarks, boundaries, its cities and its empty spaces (48).

Stavan reports that:

The Dream Theater brings to center stage our internal dramas, where they can be recorded by independent observers and then scrutinized beneath the arc-lamps of objectivity (51).

The Dream Theater is a fascinating technological invention for the story. Like Ted Chiang, Cleary constructs a logical explanation for the way the invention works in his alternate world despite its conflict with our world. The author’s invoking the language of science is necessary to bridge the story to our understanding of the universe as well as report on the continual breaking down of objectivity in a post-quantum theory reality. Clearly, the world of the story is disconnected from ours. Therefore, the rules and universal laws may be different.

This is an enjoyable story with a twist or two that makes it a joy to read. I recommend you check it out in Interzone #210.

Steven Francis Murphy’s debut story, “Tearing Down Tuesday” in Interzone 210 (June 2007) is a fantastic tale that hits some heavy real life subject matter in the apocalyptic future following the Singularity.

It’s about a teenager, Kyle, who’s grown up with the stigmata of being an abused child. His dead father’s sins recur when Kyle is older and abused by Traveling Reverend Caldwell J. Robinson. However, the reader is led to believe that Kyle choses to be victimized in order to earn money to purchase his only friend, the robot named Tuesday. Unfortunately, sexual abuse and victimization is not a clear cut issue, and Murphy does a masterful job of presenting the dilemma and rationalization Kyle has to undertake in order to survive in the attempt to save his robot friend.

I definitely recommend this story to everyone. It does have mature and graphic subject matter, but the story’s frankness and honesty might also serve an awareness raising function for those not personally familiar with sexual abuse.

Candas Jane Dorsey’s “(Learning About) Machine Sex” is a feminist cyberpunk story about a female programmer who deconstructs the orgasm into feedback binary data. It was first published in 1988 in the author’s collection, Machine Sex and Other Stories.

The story begins:

A naked woman working at a computer. Which attracts you most? It was a measure of Whitman that, as he entered the room, his eyes went first to the unfolded machine gleaming small and awkward in the light of the long-armed desk lamp; he’d seen the woman before.

Angel was the woman. Thin and pale-skinned, with dark nipples and black pubic hair, and her face hidden by a dark unkempt mane of long hair as the leaned over her work.

[…] So she has a new board, thought Whitman, and felt his guts stir the way they stirred when he first contemplated taking her to bed.

On one level, the story is about the buying and selling of intellectual property. However, this is problematized when it involves an individual, Angel, who is the sole person developing sought after technology and the fruits of her work (Greek mythology–creation/birth as an eruption from the head) are tied to the company she helped develop. Unfortunately, the company was owned by a man, Whitman, who tells her that he sold it, including her, to a competitor, and he does this after having sex with her. To a misogynist like Whitman, Angel is a commodity to be bought and sold–an object to possess and control through the politics of sexual relationships. He styles himself into her pimp who uses as well as abuses her.

When Angel escapes to her hidden homestead in the secluded Rocky Mountain House, she invites a cowboy over (who’s never named in the story) for drinks. They begin talking, and after showing him her new program, Machine Sex, they debate whether it would sell or not. She believes that it will, because from her experience and point of view, people are empty and incapable of love. The cowboy, who happens to be gay (Annie Proulx’s “Brokeback Mountain” was first published nine years after Dorsey’s story), defends love and decries Machine Sex.

Their debate gets interesting when Angel talks about the vacancy of love based on her real life experiences, but the cowboy dismisses her troubles with love and people like Whitman as “politics.” But the thing is that sex and sexual power is a political power struggle. The politics of sex and gender relations is not something that should be dismissed. In fact, Angel appropriates the male dominated sexual political framework by creating Machine Sex, which will undermine the system through short circuiting the orgasmic feedback loop.

This is recommended reading. I found it in The Norton Book of Science Fiction.