Light From Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki (Tor, 2021)
Review by Warner Holme: Ryka Aoki’s Light From Uncommon Stars is a fascinating example of comic science fantasy, and represents a wonderful bit of storytelling in any part of its genre. It is also a massively queer story, and a story, in its way, about baking and music. This is a delightful combination, and the resulting novel is fascinating.
One is a group of refugees, a family with scientists and fleeing something called Endplague and trying to make quality doughnuts. The other is a young trans woman suffering through a great ordeal and offered an opportunity by a legendary woman searching for a way out of a diabolical situation.
The aforementioned trans woman is Katrina Nguyen. When the story starts readers discover her in an extremely difficult situation, learning that she has an abusive father, is likely trans, and is terrified. Paragraphs later they learn she loves the violin. It is a good and very swift introduction to the character, allowing readers the basic in a condensed form. Victims of abuse may find it a little hard to read, and the overall relatively light tone of the book makes this opening scene especially disturbing. Nonetheless it is both necessary and well-written.
Trans issues are a delicate matter. A well-intentioned individual can easily make mistakes while writing such stories, and cause a great deal of unintended offense. This volume deals with problems ranging from outing, to healthcare, to problematic allies extremely well. The idea of a science-fiction transition is brought up at a certain point in the book, which feels fairly appropriate. Were such a matter not mentioned, the fact it would seem entirely possible with the technology would have driven the reader slightly mad. The way it is resolved is interesting as well, feeling appropriate and in character (particularly to those familiar with any artform which requires physicality) and stays appropriate in tone all the same. Such a matter is a very difficult balancing act for any offer, and proves Aoki’s skill.
There is also an entertaining lesbian relationship in the book, featuring two major characters. At least one of them is bisexual, although this fact is downplayed. Bigotry against such relationships comes into play, and serves as an instigating point to a character having a major crisis. The use of a musical analogy in an attempt to explain difficulties with acceptance is unexpected yet beautifully written.
Music and baking are both arts that seem to require an unusual amount of science. The discussion of these very arts within this volume managed to be interesting on a literal as well as a metaphorical level. The ways these words come will make any music fan hear melodies, and a fan of donuts more than a little hungry.
The jacket copy compares this volume to Good Omens and The Long Way To a Small, Angry Planet. While each of those comparisons is appropriate in its way, they also deny Ryka Aoki has such a singular voice as an author. Throughout this volume, the individuality of a violin and the violinist are discussed multiple times. Such is also the case with authors, and Aoki is a rare and unique voice.
Many readers will not be familiar with the work of Ryka Aoki when they first find this volume. This is an excellent way to start looking at her material. It is a wonderful and deeply felt book, the kind that will make a reader laugh and cry without a second thought. Heartily recommended.
(1) EATING THE FANTASTIC EPISODE 200! To celebrate reaching this milestone Scott Edelman invites listeners to join J. Michael Straczynski for breakfast on Episode 200 of the Eating the Fantastic podcast.
J. Michael Straczynski
Wait, what? It’s Episode 200 of Eating the Fantastic? Really? That number shouldn’t seem so unbelievable, because Eating the Fantastic is, after all, my podcast, and I’ve been responsible for every episode, and yet … it still is. My guest for Episode 200 is J. Michael Straczynski, who took time out of his extremely busy schedule to chat and chew with me just as last month’s Nebula Awards weekend was kicking off.
Straczynski is perhaps best known as the creator of the television series Babylon 5, for which he wrote 92 of the 110 episodes. His roles in TV prior to that include acting as story editor on Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future, executive story editor on the new Twilight Zone, co-producer for Murder, She Wrote, and many others. And after Babylon 5 came its spinoff Crusade, as well as the series Jeremiah and Sense8. He also wrote Amazing Spider-Man from 2001 to 2007, plus extended runs on Thor and the Fantastic Four. In recent years, he’s published the autobiography Becoming Superman (2019), the novel Together We Will Go (2021), and Becoming a Writer, Staying a Writer (2021). He is also the executor for the estate of Harlan Ellison, someone whose name popped up frequently during our conversation.
We discussed his appearance on one of the greatest convention panels I’ve ever been privileged to witness, why Superman stood out above all the other superheroes of his youth, his epiphany which occurred the night before the premiere of Changling at the Cannes Film Festival, the low boredom threshold of Harlan Ellison, how Norman Corwin’s ability to overcome bitterness about the Blacklist helped him deal with his own demons, his realization there was something more important about writing than either plot or characters (and what that something is), the tendency of humans to sleepwalk through our lives and what can shake us free from that, the life-changing nature of the “shoelace moment,” why DC Comics would never have dared publish anything as political as Captain America #1, the reason you don’t ever have to worry about him eating off your plate, the early encouragement he received from Rod Serling, and so much more.
(3) GET READY FOR FATHER’S DAY. Steve Vertlieb ”My Father, Myself” points to “the very special tribute that I wrote for my beloved dad, Charles Vertlieb for Father’s Day a couple of years ago.”
Dad, I love you, and I miss you more and more with every passing day. I live in the sweet shadow of your goodness, and am but a tender reflection of your own humble purity. Wishing you a Happy Father’s Day in paradise.
(4) WRITE-A-THON TIME. Clarion West is taking registrations for the annual Write-a-Thon, which will run from June 25 to August 5. Donations are welcome — it’s their biggest fundraiser of the year.
The Write-a-thon is a time of year we set aside to focus on our wider writing community: participants set writing goals for themselves, create personal Write-a-thon pages, and write!
Achieve your writing goals
Meet other writers in our online affinity groups
Level up your writing with our weekly writing prompts
Join sprints and writing sessions online
Exclusive access to writing classes and webinars
No cost, no obligations
Anyone, at any level, can participate in the Write-a-thon, an opportunity to write alongside the Six-Week Workshop participants.
You can use the Write-a-thon to set personal goals in writing. You can cheer others on, meet fellow writers, and raise funds for Clarion West. The Write-a-thon brings together CW alumni, instructors, and new friends from around the world in one big happy puddle of writerly support.
(5) YOUNG PEOPLE READ OLD SFF. James Davis Nicoll unleashes the Young People Read Old SFF panel on a Hugo winner by James Patrick Kelly.
June 2023s’ Young People Read Old Hugo Finalists story is James Patrick Kelly’s “Rat,” first published in the June 1986 The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. Kelly, who first debuted in the 1970s1, has an impressive body of work, always worth seeking out. His fiction has been nominated for a wide variety of awards. “Rat”, for example was both a Hugo2 and Nebula finalist3.
In the ancient and now utterly irrelevant struggle between the so-called Cyberpunks and the so-called Humanists, Kelly was often lumped in the Humanists. Simple categorization is often misleading; “Rat” fits nicely into the Cyberpunk genre. Let’s see what our Young People made of it…
(6) MEMORY LANE.
2021 – [Written by Cat Eldridge from a choice by Mike Glyer.]
Ryka Aoki is an amazing individual. She says on her on her most excellent blog that notes she’s a poet, composer, teacher, and novelist.
Genre wise, her works are not that many. One novel, Light from Uncommon Stars which is where our Beginning comes from, and short piece of fiction, “The Gift”.
She’s won an Otherwise Award which was in the category for gender-bending SF.
Light from Uncommon Stars was nominated at Chicon 8 for an Award and for a Mythopoetic and Ignyte Awards as well.
Here’s our Beginning…
Shhh …
Yes, it hurt. It was definitely not just a bruise. Yes, she was scared. Her throat was raw from screaming.
Cautiously, Katrina Nguyen felt under her bed.
Girl clothes. Boy clothes. Money. Birth certificate. Social security card. Toothbrush. Spare glasses. Backup battery. Makeup. Estradiol. Spironolactone.
Katrina had made an escape bag the first time her father threatened to kill her.
At first, the bag seemed an “in case of emergency,” a glass that one would never break.
But after tonight …
Why had she let it come to this? Why couldn’t she be what her parents wanted?
Part of her was in a panic. What have you done? Apologize. Knock on their door right now. Say it’s all your fault—say you’re sorry, say you’ll promise to change.
But another, stronger, part of Katrina was calm, even cold.
You have to escape. Tonight. Breathe, be quiet, and listen.
And so, Katrina listened … for footsteps, for breathing, for sleep. She listened, and listened. Through the dark, she heard her mother’s one last cough. Her father’s one last flush.
And then, finally, there was silence.
Katrina clutched her ribs, then propped herself up. The pain was sharp, but manageable. She was in her room, behind a locked door. All she needed to do was be quiet. And calm. She could do this.
She could do this.
(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
Born June 16, 1896 — Murray Leinster. It is said that he wrote and published more than fifteen hundred short stories and articles, fourteen movie scripts, and hundreds of radio scripts and television plays. Among those was his 1945 Retro Hugo-winning novella “First Contact” which is one of the first (if not the first) instances of a universal translator in science fiction. So naturally his heirs sued Paramount Pictures over Star Trek: First Contact, claiming that it infringed their trademark in the term. However, the suit was dismissed. I’m guessing they filed just a bit late. (Died 1975.)
Born June 16, 1920 — T.E. Dikty. In 1947, Dikty joined Shasta Publishers as managing editor. With E. F. Bleiler he started the first Best of the Year SF anthologies, called The Best Science Fiction, that ran from 1949 until 1957. He was posthumously named to the First Fandom Hall of Fame in a ceremony at the 71st World Science Fiction Convention. (Died 1991.)
Born June 16, 1924 — Faith Domergue. Dr. Ruth Adams in the classic Fifties film This Island Earth. She has a number of later genre roles, Professor Lesley Joyce in It Came from Beneath the Sea, Jill Rabowski in Timeslip (aka The Atomic Man) and Dr. Marsha Evans in Voyage to a Prehistoric Planet. She amazingly did no genre television acting. (Died 1999.)
Born June 16, 1938 — Joyce Carol Oates, 85. No Hugos but she has garnered a World Fantasy Award in Short Fiction for “Fossil-Figures”, and has won more Stokers than I thought possible, the latest one for her most excellent collection of horror and dark fantasy stories, The Doll-Master and Other Tales of Terror. She has written pure SF in the form of Hazards of Time Travel which is quite good.
Born June 16, 1939 — David McDaniel. He wrote but one non-media tie-in novel, The Arsenal Out of Time, but most of his work was writing The Man from U.N.C.L.E. novels, six in total, with one, The Final Affair, which was supposed to wrap up the series but went unpublished due to declining sales but which circulated among fandom. He also wrote a Prisoner novel, Who is Number 2? Andhe wrote several filk songs, including “High Fly the Nazgul-O” and “The Mimeo Crank Chanty”. As a fan, he was quite active in LASFS, serving as its Director and Scribe, writing for various APAs (he aspired to be in all of them) and is remembered as a “Patron Saint” for his financial support of the club. (Died 1977.)
Born June 16, 1940 — Carole Ford, 83. She played the granddaughter and original companion of the First Doctor. She reprised the role for The Five Doctors, the Dimensions in Time charity special, and of course for The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot. Her first genre role was as Bettina in The Day of the Triffids, and she had an earlier role as an uncredited teen in the hall of mirrors in Horrors of the Black Museum.
Born June 16, 1972 — Andy Weir, 51. His debut novel, The Martian, was later adapted into a film of the same name directed by Ridley Scott. He received the Astounding Award for Best New Writer at MidAmeriCon II. His next two novels are Artemis and Project Hail Mary. Intriguingly, he’s written one piece of Sherlockian fan fiction, “James Moriarty, Consulting Criminal” which is only available as an Audible audiobook. Project Hail Mary was nominated for a Hugo Award at Chicon 8.
…The film distributor is planning a limited theatrical release for the movie at AMC Theatres before it releases digitally, beginning Friday, June 23. Wonderwell also stars Rita Ora, Nell Tiger Free, Sebastian Croft and Kiera Milward….
The movie follows a girl named Violet (Milward) who is brought to “a mysterious portal” near a medieval Italian village by Fisher’s character Hazel, who offers “a glimpse of what [Violet’s] future might hold” after Violet and her family travel to the village for her sister’s modeling opportunity, according to the outlet….
(10) WHAT ARE THE FAVORITE MOVIES OF THE DC EXTENDED UNIVERSE? With the premiere of The Flash this week JustWatch decided it is time for a definitive ranking of DC Extended Universe movies.
So far fans have had the opportunity to see 13 films, and the most favorite turned out to be The Suicide Squad accounting for 17.45% of the popularity. Thus, the standalone sequel became 3.5x more popular than Suicide Squad, which landed in 8th place. On the cinematic superhero podium, two remarkable entries also shone brightly: the empowering Wonder Woman and Zack Snyder’s Justice League.
(11) TAILS OF TERROR. “The Fish That Ate Our Ancestors” – Discover Magazine knows how to catch my attention. Here’s the opening of the article – more details at the link.
As life was first struggling to set foot on land in the Late Devonian Period, there was a predator waiting to snatch it back to the depths: the recently discovered Hyneria udlezinye, a toothy prehistoric fish estimated to have reached up to 9 feet long.
It represents the largest monster fish yet uncovered from this period and appears to have lurked in the brackish waters of the modern-day Waterloo Farm site in South Africa, in wait for its prey. An excavation exposed a wall of fossils there in 2016, during road construction, and led to this and a number of other discoveries, including the fossil of an early tetrapod, the massive fish’s likely prey. These early genetic forebears of modern human resembled large salamanders or small alligators and walked on four feet (thus tetrapod)…
So, what is this magic technique? Below we lay out the military method’s steps to a good night’s sleep. It’s deliberately designed to be easy and efficient, so anyone can start tonight.
Relax your face. Focus on your forehead, your eyes, your cheeks, your jaw, and so on. Feel the tension held in them and consciously push it away.
Drop your shoulders. Let your arms flop down and your shoulders relax. Imagine there is a soft, warm wind gently pushing your arms down.
Take a deep breath. Slowly inhale and let it out. As you do so, focus on how it relaxes your stomach. Don’t try to hold your stomach in; let it all out.
Relax your legs. The warm wind is back, and this time it’s gently easing your legs down. Let your legs sink into the bed or the floor. They are leaden, and the bed is soft.
Clear your mind. There are a few ways to do this. For instance, try to visualize some calming images, like lying by a flowing river or staring at the clouds. If that doesn’t work, try saying the words “don’t think” over and over for about 10 seconds. If you get distracted, don’t get angry; just pull your mind back to one of those two techniques….
[Thanks to Chris Barkley, Michael Toman, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Kathy Sullivan, Scott Edelman, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Andrew (not Werdna).]
Lambda Literary today announced that Ryka Aoki and Aaron Hamburger are the winners of the 2023 Jim Duggins, PhD Outstanding Mid-Career Novelist Prize. Ryka Aoki is an sff author whose novel Light From Uncommon Stars (Tor Books 2021) won the Otherwise Award and was a finalist for the Hugo, Locus, Dragon, and Ignyte Awards. Hamburger is an author who works outside the sff field.
Dedicated to the memory of author and journalist Jim Duggins, this prize honors LGBTQ-identified authors who have published multiple novels, built a strong reputation and following, and show promise to continue publishing high quality work for years to come. The award includes a cash prize of $5,000.
Ryka’s first novel, He Mele a Hilo, was called one of the “10 Best Books Set in Hawaii” by Bookriot. She was honored by the American Association of Hiroshima Nagasaki A-Bomb Survivors, where two of her compositions were named the organization’s “songs of peace.” Ryka has been recognized by the California State Senate for “extraordinary commitment to the visibility and well-being of Transgender people.” She is a two-time Lambda Literary Award finalist, and served as the Poetry Faculty for the 2018 Lambda Emerging Writers Retreat.
How has access to queer literature/ stories impacted your life as a queer person and shaped you as a writer?
In my case, I think it was lack of access. I don’t think we had so much queer literature when I was growing up. Definitely not trans Asian-American literature! That’s one reason why, no matter what I write, be it poetry or essays or songs or science fiction novels, I bring my authentic self—even if it is in outer space with donuts—to the page. Some people will identify with my characters and that makes me really happy.
But also, my identity does not match the identity of many readers. And I hope with them, my literature does what the literature of my childhood did for me. Despite our differences, I would like my work to impel future writers to take the pen or the keyboard or the direct thought -to-word input (wherever we are at the time) and create their worlds, their songs, their novels.
(1) GROOT, STAR-LORD, ROCKET, OR WHO? Guardians of the Galaxy stars Karen Gillan and Pom Klementieff test their knowledge of Volumes I and II by seeing if they remember who said what lines.
With such a stacked cast, the challenge should be difficult, but having such iconic characters like Groot played by Vin Diesel, Starlord by Chris Pratt, and Bradley Cooper as Rocket, Mantis and Nebula’s knowledge proves to be superior. Get ready for Vol III of ‘Guardians of The Galaxy’ by time-traveling through lines of volumes past.
(3) NEXT YEAR IN NEW MEXICO. And WisCon GoH Martha Wells has been announced as Guest of Honor of the 47th Jack Williamson Lectureship which will take place April 11-13, 2024.
Best known for her Murderbot Diaries, Martha Wells has been an actively publishing author in scifi and fantasy since 1993 and in that time she has won four Hugo Awards, two Nebula Awards and three Locus Awards. The Murderbot Diaries is also currently being adapted for a TV series, and this series has been growing increasingly popular in the past few years.
(4) GOOD OMENS GRAPHIC NOVEL. The second season of the TV series arrives July 28, and now a Good Omens graphic novel has been announced – Comics Worth Reading has the story. Neil Gaiman, the Terry Pratchett Estate, and Colleen Doran are creating a graphic novel version of Good Omens that will be funded via Kickstarter. The Kickstarter has not yet launched, but you can sign up at the link to be notified when it does.
(5) SIGNED, SEALED, AND SOON TO BE DELIVERED. Guess where fans will be able to find the new Sharon Lee and Steve Miller book?
SALVAGE RIGHT! Books signed, reboxed, and ready to make the pilgrimage to Uncle Hugo's in Minneapolis! @baen @File_770https://t.co/R4YBbUV2cu
— Sharon Lee ???????? ???? (@ClanKorval) May 29, 2023
Relativity! Extremely well supported by the evidence, and extremely inconvenient for SF authors who want jaunts to the galactic core to be as easy as popping down the road. Given a universe so large that light takes as long as anatomically modern humans have existed to meander across a single galaxy, combined with a very strict speed limit of C, and you face a cosmic reality that makes many stories authors might want to write quite simply physically impossible. So… what are hardworking science fiction authors to do?
The first solution, courtesy of E. E. “Doc” Smith is —
Disregard the Issue
By far, the most popular option is to ignore the issue or actively deny that it is an issue. Maybe Einstein divided when he should have multiplied (he didn’t). Perhaps light speed can be surpassed given sufficient will (it can’t). What if some miracle material for which absolutely no evidence exists could facilitate superluminal travel? (More likely, such materials are simply non-existent.)
…The particulars of Kong, including his size and origin, vary from movie to movie, but in every single telling he is alone. The reasons for his solitude haven’t been widely explored, but the 2005 movie shows the decaying skeletons of other giant apes, long since dead. While their cause of death isn’t entirely clear, it’s implied that the rest of Kong’s family were killed off by the other large predators on the island, particularly the T. rex-like theropod dinosaurs.
The dinosaurs probably contributed to the demise of Kong’s species, but the true culprit may have been the island itself. In the continuity of Jackson’s 2005 film, Skull Island was slowly sinking into the ocean by the time Denhem and crew landed on its shores. By 1948, a 9.2 magnitude earthquakes broke it loose and the island vanished into the sea….
Led by yours truly and Kij Johnson, Ad Astra is an umbrella organization that brings together creators, readers, educators, and fans to learn about and create speculative fiction through writing workshops, expert talks, seminars, and more. The people we work with create and teach art that opens minds and imaginations, reaching for the stars and “Saving the world through science fiction!”
Their residential Science Fiction Summer program takes off in mid-June, in-person again for the first time since before Covid. Kij Johnson and Barbara Webb’s Novel Architects Workshop is now full, but there’s still room in McKitterick’s Speculative Fiction Writing Workshop (and both of his and Johnson’s “Repeat Offenders” workshops).
…I live in Massachusetts, some 1600 miles from the small town in West Texas that Howard called home. With a wife and family, domestic obligations, and a busy professional career to manage, there is never a good time to do something like this, even though Howard Days had been on my bucket list for years….
The annual con is also part pilgrimage:
…Nothing can quite prepare you for the first view of Robert E. Howard’s home and ultimately the humble bedroom where did the majority of his writing. Others have made the same observation many times, but its stunning that Howard was able to birth and deliver such vivid creations to the world from such small, prosaic quarters. It’s a testament to his unique genius. The volunteer docents who serve as tour guides, women from the Cross Plains community, were patient and wonderful. I learned that Howard’s father, Isaac, treated bloodied oil field workers right in the Howard home. One docent noted poetically that blood has seeped its way into the roots of the home….
Murphy is also one of the guests on the Rogues in the House podcast episode “Howard Days Wrap Up”.
(10) ATOMIC SHAKESPEARE. Eighties cult TV favorite Moonlighting reportedly is slouching its way towards availability on a streaming service. Meantime, Heritage Auctions will put on the block some of the costumes from its most iconic episode, as explained in “Maddie, David and Bill Shakespeare”.
…That episode essentially paid tribute to [showrunner Glen] Caron’s inspiration for the entire series: The Taming of the Shrew. Willis, of course, would play the fortune-seeking Petruchio; Shepherd, the titular “shrew,” Katherina. The rest of the regulars rounded out the cast, among them Allyce Beasley and Revenge of the Nerds’ Curtis Armstrong, which was transported from the Blue Moon Detective Agency in Los Angeles to Padua, Italy, in 1593 (“or just an incredible facsimile,” per the title card, which was the Universal backlot).
The episode starts as a Moonlighting episode about a kid wanting to watch a Moonlighting episode; no series winked at itself in the funhouse mirror more. But the boy’s mother banishes him to his room to do his homework – in this case, read Shakespeare. He cracks open the play, and the episode quickly morphs into a rather sincere retelling of The Taming of the Shrew, down to the iambic pentameter and its occasional use of actual dialogue, combined with some anachronistic winks (Willis’ Ray-Bans, his saddle bearing the BMW insignia, the performance of The Rascals’ “Good Lovin’”)….
(11) GEORGE MAHARIS (1928-2023). Actor George Maharis, best known for his work on TV’s Route 66, died May 24. Though it was not a genre program, Steve Vertlieb recalled in his File 770 post about Route 66 there was one episode with a strong genre appeal to horror fans:
…“Lizard’s Leg and Owlet’s Wing” premiered over the CBS television Network on Friday evening, October 26th, 1962. Featuring guest stars Boris Karloff, Peter Lorre, and Lon Chaney, Jr., this beloved episode of the classic television series “Route 66” starring George Maharis and Martin Milner would be the last time that Boris Karloff and Lon Chaney, Jr. would ever reprise their signature performances as Frankenstein’s Monster and The Wolf Man….
Deadline’s summary of his career includes these appearances on genre shows:
In the 1970’s, Maharis returned to television and starred in shows like Night Gallery, The Mostly Deadly Game, … Mission: Impossible, … The Bionic Woman, Fantasy Island, and many more.
Maharis’ final credit was in the film Doppelganger directed by Avi Neshar in 1993 which starred Drew Barrymore and George Newbern.
(12) MEMORY LANE.
2011 – [Written by Cat Eldridge from a choice by Mike Glyer.]
Sheri Holman’s Witches on the Road Tonight is the source of our Beginning this Scroll.
It was published twelve years ago by Atlantic Monthly Press. It would win a Shirley Jackson Award for Best Novel, and it also won the Independent Publisher Book Award, Gold Medal, Literary Fiction. It was named a Book of the Year by the Boston Globe, the Toronto Globe and Mail, and PopMatters. Very impressive I’d say.
It is her only genre novel to date. She has written several other novels including a mystery set in a medieval monastery. Oh, and she was a principal writer on the Longmire series for much of its run.
(I finished watching the Longmire series recently. They did a stellar job of tying everything up there.)
And now the Beginning…
Eddie
New York City
Midnight
Of all the props I saved, only the coffin remains. Packed in boxes or tossed in the closet were the skulls and rubber rats, the cape folded with the care of a fallen American flag, my black spandex unitard, white at the seams where I’d stretched out the armpits, sweat-stained and pilled. I saved the squeezed-out tubes of greasepaint, the black shadow for under the eyes, the porcelain fangs. Of the gifts fans sent, I kept that bleached arc of a cat’s skeleton, the one you used to call Fluffy and hang your necklaces from, and a dead bird preserved with antifreeze. I kept maybe a hundred of the many thousands of drawings and letters from preteen boys and girls. There were some from adults, too, confessions of the sort they should be writing their shrinks or the police, and not a man who plays a vampire on TV. “Dear Captain Casket, Fangs for the memories.”
But in the move up to Manhattan, in the successive apartments Charles and I shared, everything has been lost or thrown away. Coming to me late in life, Charles has been pitiless in tossing my prehistory, usually while I am off at one of the twice-yearly conventions I attend as if having an affair we both tacitly refuse to discuss. Now everything has been scrapped but the coffin, too big not to be missed, too great a conversation piece even for Charles, a bit of memorabilia that you might send off to a regional horror movie museum or sell to some theme restaurant as the base of a fixin’s bar to defray a small portion of the funeral cost. We’ve been using it as a coffee table, pushed in front of the big picture window that overlooks the Chrysler Building, a view that accounts for three-quarters of the ridiculous price we paid for this apartment. It has held up well over the years, made of wormy chestnut, hand-planed and smooth as a wooden Indian. I used to keep it in the carport between Saturday shows, and you played in it as a girl. Sometimes when we couldn’t find you, your mother and I would look outside and you’d be curled up inside it, asleep, your hand bookmarking the eternally youthful and nosy Nancy Drew, your mouth brushed with cookie crumbs.
I have made it as comfortable as possible. It is lined with an old down comforter tucked inside one of Charles’s more elegant duvet covers, a dusky rose shot with gold thread. I have a pillow for my head and a scarlet throw to keep me warm. You might think I’d like to go out in full costume, but camp comes too easily these days. I’m wearing, instead, my most comfortable pajamas, the ones with the pug dogs you bought me for my birthday last year. They are about the only ones my chemo-blistered skin can bear. Before I put them on, I took a shower and washed what’s left of my hair. Maybe it was cowardly to wait to do this until Charles was out of town. His mother, who is only a few years older than I, is ill, too, and poor Charles hasn’t known whom to nurse more dutifully. He refuses to discuss my death, pulling, instead, all sorts of prophylactic voodoo like purchasing cruise tickets for next spring, or placing a down payment on a purebred mastiff puppy, if you can imagine, as if he can mortgage me back to life, keeping me on the ventilator of increasingly onerous financial obligation. I know he will be furious when he gets back from Philadelphia, but maybe he’ll take his mother with him on that cruise through the Cyclades.
My only real regret is not seeing you one last time. I left you a message before you went on the air, something light and innocuous, and I hope you’re not too shocked to hear it after you get the news. I want this good-bye to set the tone for all the memories that follow it. When people approach me about my show, they never want to talk about the cut-rate monster movies. Most can barely remember the titles. No, it is the irreverence of the interruption they cherish, the silliness and explosions. I made it my career for decades, but only now do I begin to understand the need to terrify, followed by the even greater need to puncture the fear we’ve called into being. It is a surrender and recovery that feels suspiciously like love.
(13) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
Born May 29, 1906 — T. H. White. Best known obviously for the wonderful The Once and Future King which I read a long, long time ago. Back in the Thirties, he wrote Earth Stopped and its sequel Gone to Ground, sf novels. Gone to Ground contains several fantasy stories which were later reprinted in The Maharajah and Other Stories. ISFDB also lists Mistress Masham’s Repose, The Elephant and the Kangaroo and The Master as the other novels by him, plus the aforementioned story collection. (Died 1964.)
Born May 29, 1909 — Neil R. Jones. It is thought that “The Death’s Head Meteor,” his first story, which was published in Air Wonder Stories in 1930, could be the first use of “astronaut” in fiction. He also created the use of a future history before either Robert A. Heinlein or Cordwainer Smith were to do so. They’re collected in The Planet of the Double Sun, The Sunless World and a number of other overlapping collections. He’s a member of the First Fandom Hall of Fame. (Died 1988.)
Born May 29, 1923 — Genevieve Linebarger. Widow of Cordwainer Smith. She had a hand in The Instrumentality of Mankind series, co-authoring “The Lady Who Sailed the Soul” (1960), and “Golden the Ship Was — Oh! Oh! Oh!” (1959) and, after her husband’s death, was the sole author of “Down to a Sunless Sea” (1975) published under his name, and completed “Himself in Anachron” (published 1993). (Credits per NESFA Press’ Rediscovery of Man collection.) (Died 1981.)
Born May 29, 1930 — Richard Clifton-Dey. An Illustrator of many SF book covers including The Wizard of Venus by Edgar Rice Burroughs. He did not sign many of his originals so his widow has the final say what is an original and what is not. (Died 1997.)
Born May 29, 1939 — Alice K. Turner. Playboy fiction editor from 1980 to 2000. Silverberg praised her highly and she did much to make sure SF had an important place in the fiction offered up there. The Playboy Book of Science Fiction collects a good tasting of the SF published during her tenure. (Died 2015.)
Born May 29, 1952 — Louise Cooper. She wrote more than eight works of fantasy and was best known for her Time Master trilogy. Most of her writing was in the YA market including the Sea Horses quartet and the Mirror, Mirror trilogy. (Died 2009.)
Born May 29, 1996 — R. F. Kuang, 27. She’s an award-winning Chinese-American fantasy writer. The Poppy War series, so-called grimdark fantasy, consists of The Poppy War which won the Compton Crook Award for Best First Novel, The Dragon Republic and The Burning God. She’s been a finalist for the Astounding Award for Best New Writer.
(14) COMICS SECTION.
Candorville shows a new tech that combines streaming with nagging.
Non Sequitur looks for a definition of intelligent life.
Macanudo has a strange mashup of Darth Vader and Casablanca.
(15) ALL IT’S CRACKED UP TO BE. This is impressive – watch Boston Dynamics’ “Spot” deftly remove a pistachio from its shell.
…Today, however, when computers perform operations at the rate of 4 billion cycles per second, we need a better measure. The rotation of Earth, and its orbit, change slightly over time. Earth’s rotation, for example, is slowing slightly. So measuring a second based on rotation would mean that a second would get slowly longer over time. Ultimately, we couldn’t compare the second of today to the second of yesterday.
So, to pin down a truly timeless measure of a second, scientists in the 1950s devised a better clock, one based not on astronomical processes but on the movement of fundamental bits of matter — atoms — whose subtle vibrations are, for all intents and purposes, locked in for eternity. Today, one second is defined as “9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the cesium 133 atom”.
That’s a mouthful.
…When hit with a laser, the single electron in a cesium atom’s outermost shell will cycle back and forth between two states — known as a hyperfine transition. It can be magnetically aligned either in the same direction as the atom’s nucleus, or the opposite direction, and under a laser’s beam, it will flip back and forth between these two states rapidly at a rate that never changes. Cesium isn’t the only element for the job, but it has only one stable isotope, so it’s easier to purify, and the hyperfine transition is both large enough and fast enough to be accurate, unlike some other atoms….
In any textbook on human evolution, you’ll find that fact, often accompanied by measurements of endocranial volume, the space inside a skull. On average, this value is about 1410 cm3 (~6 cups) for Neanderthals and 1350 cm3 (5.7 cups) for recent humans.
So does that quarter-cup of brain matter, matter? Were Neanderthals smarter than our kind?
While brain size is important, cognitive abilities are influenced by numerous factors including body size, neuron density and how particular brain regions are enlarged and connected. Some of these variables are unknowable for Neanderthals, as we only have their cranial bones and not their brains. But anthropologists have made the most of these hollow skulls, to learn what they can about the Neanderthal mind….
A new quantum compass that could replace GPS on ships has been tested on water for the first time, The Telegraph can reveal.
Inside an old shipping container onboard XV Patrick Blackett, the Royal Navy’s experimental ship, could be the future of navigation.
Military chiefs have been warning for years of the dangers of relying on GPS, due to the potential for adversaries to jam and manipulate trackers.
In an interview with The Telegraph last year, Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, the head of the Armed Forces, warned Russia could wage war in space against the West.
He said: “Russia could also attack the GPS systems which play a key role, both military and civilian, throughout the world,” he said. He added that attacking a nation’s GPS was attractive to an adversary because it involves “neither direct casualties nor an attack on another country’s territory,” and is therefore less likely to provoke a direct Western military response….
[Thanks to SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, Dariensync, Cora Buhlert, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Michael Toman, and Cat Eldridge for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Nina.]
The Otherwise Award winners for 2021 are Light from Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki and Sorrowland by Rivers Solomon. The Otherwise Award (formerly known as the Tiptree Award) honors stories that expose the many ways we experience gender in this world and others. The winners will receive $1000 in prize money, a specially commissioned piece of original artwork, and (as always) chocolate. The jury also shared an Honor List of nine works.
The Otherwise Award jury for 2021 offers the following statement about this year’s Award:
Given the recent literal and legislative attacks on transgender people, it’s no surprise that we the jury were drawn to titles that cut to the heart of what it means to be trans or otherwise-gendered in our world as well as in other pasts or futures. We read stories that focused on what it means to become a fully fledged person in worlds that sometimes do all that they can do to keep their people in tightly constrained boxes as well as stories in which those boxes have been flung open, showing us new ways to be and new ways to imagine relationships between people of all genders. Both winners and each work on our Honor List do so in a way that only speculative fiction can do, illuminating how gender functions in the societies we live in by showing us a world different from our own in big and small ways. At the same time, each of these chosen titles showed us what actual diversity looks like and feels like and sounds like; explorations of gender in this list are not separated from race, sexuality, ethnicity, sexuality, class, or disability. Intersectionality is no buzzword but is brought to life through the characters we meet, whether they are in ancient China, the year 3000, or the Big Donut Shop in today’s LA.
Maybe what grabbed us the most in our winners and honor list titles was the strangeness we encountered in them—a strangeness that entranced, haunted, intrigued, delighted, and stopped us in our tracks—something that good speculative fiction should do.”
Each year, a jury selects the Otherwise Award winner and Honor List of works that celebrate science fiction, fantasy, and other forms of speculative narrative that expand and explore our understanding of gender. The jury that selects the Award’s winner and the Honor List is encouraged to take an expansive view of “science fiction and fantasy” and to seek out works that have a broad, intersectional, trans-inclusive understanding of gender in the context of race, class, nationality, and disability. The 2021 jury members were Rebecca J. Holden (Chair), Anya Johanna DeNiro, Craig Laurance Gidney, Liz Haas, and Ana Hurtado.
About the winners
Light from Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki
Ryka Aoki
Light from Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki is by all accounts, in the words of juror Anya Johanna DeNiro, “a joyous novel.” It’s a delightful mashup of science fiction (aliens coming to Earth from another planet); the demonic (a key character sells her soul to the devil for musical prowess); and a bildungsroman (a young trans woman asserts her identity); and to top it all off, donuts play a formative role in the plot and relationships. At the same time, this novel delves deeply into the trauma of rejection, betrayals, family estrangement, displacement, and survival—including, as juror Ana Hurtado writes, “the traumas of being transgender in a city/family that does not accept who you are.”
Juror Liz Haas notes that this novel “feels grounded in contemporary LGBTQ Asian American experiences while also using the speculative elements to expand on and play with its queer themes in an enjoyable way.” The novel upends, sometimes in a satirical manner, Asian immigrant stereotypes of both the model immigrant who is a violin prodigy—cue Faustian bargain with the devil—and the family-owned donut shop—cue the aliens who hail from a distant planet and need the large donut perched on top of the shop to make some kind of galactic stargate. Aoki’s characters, like the themes running through the book, are far from one-dimensional. Jury chair Rebecca J. Holden comments: “I love the focus on music and also how the characters and relationships between characters, all of whom are truly alien to each other, develop throughout the story—no one is perfect and no one, except perhaps the demon, remains static.”
This is not just a story about Katrina, the young trans woman finding her place in the world; but also a story about Lan, an alien woman falling in love with Shizuka, a human woman, who has sold her soul for enhanced musical prowess; and Shirley, Lan’s holographic, cybernetic “daughter” asserting her position as a person and part of her family. We travel along with the characters as they learn what it means to find acceptance and success in the world they have found themselves in. This novel not only forces its readers to think about our notions of gender, sexuality, ethnicity, race, personhood, and power, but also explodes our notions about what a speculative novel could be and how explorations of difficult and traumatic stories can transform into a joyful song. This novel, borrowing words from its epigraph, definitely has “the right soul” and thus gives us “transcendent song.”
Sorrowland by Rivers Solomon
Rivers Solomon
Rivers Solomon’s novel explores the link between Black and queer trauma in a provocative and dark narrative. In the words of juror Ana Hurtado, it is a “powerful exploration of history and gendered violence.” Resistance to the kyriarchy, that invisible web of multi-vectored oppression, is woven through this taut, cross-genre (horror? science fiction? gothic?) story of survival. The novel grapples with histories of experimentation on Black people and government infiltration into movements for racial justice, exploring these topics with nuance while remaining unflinching about their impact. Vern’s journey to gain ownership over the way her body has changed and evolved as a result of her experiences is a striking metaphor for finding one’s own power in a racialized and gendered body.
Vern is an unforgettable character, whose Black and queer identity is a source of strength against the obstacles, both “real” and speculative. Vern has the resilience of Octavia Butler’s heroines. Reminiscent of the work of Butler, Walker, and, in particular Gayl Jones in its unflinching and sometimes uncomfortable honesty, Sorrowland is written with a fever-dream intensity—that careens from nightmare to moments of epiphany. Vern’s journey as a mother, as queer woman, as a survivor from a patriarchal cult is resonant with the history of the oppression of Black and female bodies.
About the Honor List
In addition to selecting the winners, each year’s jury chooses an Otherwise Award Honor List. The Honor List is a strong part of the award’s identity and is used by many readers as a recommended reading list.
A Natural History of Transition by Callum Angus This brilliantly written collection of stories disrupts what is “natural” and who gets to decide what is natural. It’s a beautiful, at times stark, array of magic realist techniques that Angus puts at his disposal to get at what it means to have a body, let alone a trans body. The fabulism is wise, darkly funny at times, and constantly shifting. —Anya Johanna DeNiro
Danged Black Thing by Eugen Bacon This sharp collection of Afro-Surrealist work takes the reader to near-future dystopic states where the body and tech and magic are all intertwined, twisted, and pulled from the earth. Myths are born and undone from the quotidian and later broken down through a candid and unafraid voice. —Ana Hurtado
The Actual Star by Monica Byrne This complexly structured novel takes place in three times—ancient Mayan culture in the year 1000 CE, US and Belize in 2012, and Earth as a whole in the year 3000. By the year 3000, all people are treated in the womb so that they are born with both male and female sexual organs, all people use she/her pronouns in honor of St. Leah (who is from 2012), but people can also identify with certain historical gender positions. Sexuality is described by four “preferas”—whether the person prefers to take or give, grip or penetrate, or both, or neither. All people are basically nomads, or in the language of the book, “viajeras,” and families as we define them no longer exist. The book follows the story of two Mayan royal teens just prior to their ascension to king and queen (1000 CE), the American girl Leah who is of Mayan and Euro-American descent and forms the basis of the religion guiding the future Earth (2012), and two people in the year 3000 who represent two factions in the “viajera” world. By telling the story of the origins of this future, Byrne shows how time distorts intentions and choices meant to free humanity from its tendency to “other” those who differ from whatever norm is currently in vogue and gives us much food for thought regarding our conventional ideas regarding gender, family structure, sexuality, ethnicity, and religion. —Rebecca J. Holden
Bestiary by K-Ming Chang Bestiary is a strange and beautiful novel. The frank and yet poetic discussion of bodies immediately struck me, and I loved its magical realist approach to exploring the connections and disjunctures between the immigrant generations of daughter, mother, and grandmother. I always appreciate when fiction uses speculative elements to put into words feelings that are too big and complicated to contain in a straightforward, realistic telling, and Bestiary does that effectively. —Liz Haas
Deep and Darkest Red by Anna-Marie McLemore McLemore has written a deeply intersectional novel that deals with Romani culture, religion, and trans issues set across two timelines. There is magic in how the author resurrects trans lives that have been erased by history. Deep and Darkest Red is, like the author’s other works, a fairytale for marginalized people. The dreamy romanticism of the style belies complex examination of history, gender, culture, and religion. Though marketed as a YA novel, it has a structural sophistication that will appeal to readers of all ages. —Craig Laurance Gidney
Chouette by Claire Oshetsky Chouette is an incisive examination of how the pressures of ableist societal structures shape the experience of motherhood, using the brilliant device of the owl-baby to recontextualize these issues. The writing is at turns darkly hilarious and moving, and it’s like nothing else I’ve read this year. —Liz Haas
She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan Big, bold, and assured about the story it tells—and subverts—particularly about the relationship between gender and power. How much is the body you’re “born into” tied to fate? The interplay between free will and determinism is not so cut and dried however, and as the political stakes rise, so do the costs. Shelley Parker-Chan has written a queer historical fantasy that never relents, and also dismantles the timeworn conventions of white, colonialist historical fiction. —Anya Johanna DeNiro
The Unraveling by Benjamin Rosenbaum In this highly imaginative world, there are two genders—but the genders do not fit into current gender categories. In fact, my brain kept trying to figure out which one was like “woman” and which one was like “man”—without success. The gender roles in Rosenbaum’s world are quite restricted and policed, but also outside of the categories or gender roles we might normally think about. Rosenbaum also plays with embodiment as well as with body modification and multi-bodied-ness, sometimes in ways that are disconnected to gender and sometimes in ways that continue to push the envelope on our notions of gender. In this way, the story plays with and explodes our current notions of gender while simultaneously critiquing restrictive gender norms in this fictional and sometimes overwhelming but fascinating world. —Rebecca J. Holden
Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas Through a rebel act against a patriarchal ceremony whose folklore roots are heavily linked to machismo and otherness, Cemetery Boys dismantles the brujx tradition to uncover the ways gender is constructed. The transgender young man practices radical hope while fighting for his personhood, falling in love, and, in the process, strengthening his latine community. —Ana Hurtado
RECOMMENDATIONS AND MORE. The process for selection of the 2022 Otherwise Award is under way. The Otherwise Award invites everyone to recommend works for the 2023 Award. Please submit recommendations via the recommendations page of the Otherwise Award website. On the website, you can alsodonate to help fund the award and read more about past winners and works the Award has honored.
The Otherwise Award began in 1991 as The James Tiptree, Jr. Award, named after Alice Sheldon, who wrote under the pseudonym James Tiptree, Jr. By her choice of a masculine pen name, Sheldon helped break down the imaginary barrier between “women’s writing” and “men’s writing.” In 2019, the Award’s governing body, the Motherboard, decided, in response to community concerns, to rename the Award. The Tiptree Award became the Otherwise Award. (For more on the reasons behind the change, visit the history section of the Award’s website.)
The Otherwise Award, under any name, is an award with an attitude. As a political statement, as a means of involving people at the grassroots level, as an excuse to eat cookies, and as an attempt to strike the proper ironic note, the award has been financed through bake sales held at science fiction conventions across the United States, as well as in Britain and Australia. Fundraising efforts have included auctions conducted by Ellen Klages and Sumana Harihareswara, the sale of T-shirts and aprons created by collage artist and silk screener Freddie Baer and others, and the publication of four anthologies of award winners and honor-listed stories. Most of these anthologies, along with other publications, can be purchased through the Otherwise Award store.
[Introduction: In Part 1 of her overview, Michaele Jordan reviews half of the Best Novel Hugo finalists: The Galaxy, and the Ground Within, by Becky Chambers, Light From Uncommon Stars, by Ryka Aoki, and A Master of Djinn, by P. Djèlí Clark.]
By Michaele Jordan: Like many of you, I’ve been immersed in my Hugo reading. (I don’t always manage to get to Worldcon – I am hugely excited about being able to vote!) Last week I was discussing my readings with a friend and they suggested I share my views here. They said, “You’ve been thinking so hard about the books you read. You really should write it all down, and post it!” And they’re right – do think hard about what I read. Why else would I read it?
You may be wondering why I am working so hard to justify writing a post about the Hugo nominees. Truth to tell, I’m a little afraid of how you’ll all take it.
When I was a kid, everybody in my family was an addicted reader. And since we all lived together, we couldn’t afford to get angry whenever we didn’t agree on a book, i.e., all the time. Instead we debated – explaining our views, dissecting the points of opposition, and searching for common ground got to be more entertaining than TV (except on Twilight Zone or Star Trek nights).
But fandom isn’t like that. It shocked me to my soul the first time I said at a con that I didn’t care for a book and a supposedly fellow fan snarled, “Well, that’s just stupid,” and stalked off. Sometimes flame wars even erupt just because two fans disagree, not on a book, but on their favorite character in the book.
So I hereby state, firmly and unequivocally, that I know I am just one fan, that I have no authority to tell others what to read or think, and that I am merely expressing my personal opinions. I bear no ill will to, and pass no judgement on, those who disagree with me.
That said, I’ll start with The Galaxy, and the Ground Within, by Becky Chambers (Harper Voyager / Hodder & Stoughton) because that’s the first one I read.
I found this to be a high-end mid-grade novel. I admit I tend to expect award nominees to be better than mid-grade, even high-end mid-grade. But I am not saying that this was a bad book, just more formulaic than I care for.
We’ve all seen the formula many times. A group of travelers collects at some common point – a bus stop, a hotel lobby or a police station, – where for some reason they are temporarily detained. Each detainee has their own story, which includes a personal issue in need of a resolution. In the privacy of their mutual anonymity, they reveal their secrets and face—or conclusively decline to face – their demons, and they make decisions. Then they are released to go their separate ways, with most of them changed, for better or for worse.
The Galaxy, and the Ground Within does not deviate from this outline by a hair. Three space travelling aliens are gathered at stopover facility between wormholes, which is owned and operated by a fourth alien. They become temporarily trapped by a technical difficulty in the transport system. They are all in a hurry (except the host, who has a terminally cute youngling) with plans that cannot withstand extended delay, not to mention uncomfortable political divisions.
One alien has a frail companion waiting for them on their ship, another is racing to a forbidden lover, and a third is in hiding from dangerous enemies. The host frets that they cannot make everybody happy, and the youngling is terribly injured in a foolish mishap resulting from misguided curiosity. But not to worry – it all comes right in the end.
The book’s greatest strength is its detailed visual depiction of its aliens, who may have perfectly comprehensible human-like emotions but are extremely peculiar to look at. The description of the youngling lumbering across a room with a tray is laugh-out-loud funny, and the giant caterpillar was so convincing it set off my insect phobia. The complete absence of humans (barring one off-stage) was a nice touch.
From there, I moved on to read Light From Uncommon Stars, by Ryka Aoki (Tor / St Martin’s Press). This book was more intriguing. Things happened that I had not seen coming. (Some people always want to know what’s going to happen next, may even want it so much that they’ll skip ahead and read the last chapter first. I’m not one of them.)
For starters, Light From Uncommon Stars offers an interesting blend of science fiction and fantasy. (The only time I have ever seen these two so inextricably intertwined was in Charley Jane Anders’ All the Birds in the Sky.)There are aliens from another galaxy, and there are demons negotiating for human souls. And it all circulates around a Southern California donut shop with a giant donut mounted on the roof.
On the one hand, we have Shuzuki Satomi, a brilliant and beautiful violinist who has not performed in many years. Instead she teaches. Her last six students have gone on to the highest pinnacles of international acclaim. And unhappy ends. Very unhappy ends. Hellish, in fact. Now she is searching for a seventh student. But she is hard to please, and has turned down numerous ambitious and gifted young musicians. Instead she inexplicably takes in Katrina, a troubled transgender teen with no formal training, on the run from an abusive father.
On the other hand, we have Lan Tran and her family of refugees, who run the above-mentioned donut shop. It used to be very popular, but since Lan Tran acquired it, its customers are drifting away. It’s not that the donuts aren’t good. Just the opposite, they are just as good as they used to be. Just exactly as good. Down to the last molecule. Because she copies it, molecule by molecule in her replicator. So it lacks that tiny sparkle of home-made originality.
The hand shake between these two scenes occurs by accident. Lan Tran’s family is secretly building a space portal inside the giant donut – but not so they can return home. Just the opposite. It’s so they can persuade the forces of the empire to stay away. And when the engines are being tested, they make beautiful music, which Shuzuki happens to overhear. Beautiful music is the only thing that really matters to Shuzuki. It is her only refuge from the demon she made a deal with, and from the memories of the six students she fed to that demon to keep it away.
Katrina does not need galactic empires or hungry demons to require a refuge from pain. Her ordinary human life has given her all the punishment this world has to offer. She pours her misery into her clunky old pawn-shop violin, playing tunes from video games, and finds more strength than she ever dreamed of possessing.
Light From Uncommon Stars is not a flawless book. There are a few little problems: Katrina’s gender issues are so overwhelming they tend to belittle the pain of a drunken, abusive father; her ability to master Bartok without any classical training, or even familiarity, whatsoever, is a bit too much of a stretch. But those are nits. It is a fine book. It shows us that, superhero fiction to the contrary, the victory of the human spirit is neither easy nor cheap, and certainly not inevitable. But it is possible. The weight of the world is overwhelming, but it can be endured – and that, in itself – is a great victory.
And then I turned to A Master of Djinn, by P. Djèlí Clark (Tordotcom / Orbit UK). Heavy sigh. This is the book that made me worry if I dared be honest with you. For me it was a DNF. I tried. Really, I did. After all, it was a Hugo nominee. Maybe I didn’t have to love it, but I certainly had to give it serious consideration. I don’t usually give a book more than thirty pages to capture my interest. I may even toss it down the basement steps after ten pages if the opening is stupid enough. But for the sake of my responsibility to the Hugos, I gave A Master of Djinn a hundred pages, before I gave up.
I can almost hear you protesting, “But it won the Nebula.” I know. It won the Nebula. And while I am trying desperately to remember that everybody is entitled to their opinion, I still can’t help but feel that’s a gross miscarriage of justice.
So what was so wrong with it? I promise to keep this civil. To give P. Djèlí Clark full credit where it’s due, the setting – modern Cairo in an alternate history world – is excellent. His choice of the turning point in the alternate history, and its consequences were intriguing. He describes a colorful combination of historic streets and architecture (which, I presume, is reasonably accurate since he went to so much trouble with it), and a modern (sometimes bizarrely so) infra-structure.
I am also confident that his presentation of the hierarchy of magical beings and the Egyptian pantheon is accurate; certainly he knows more of them than I, after only a little dabbling, do. I understand he has written a number of short stories set in this world, and he knows it well.
The story is a magical mystery which, I regret to say, I found pedestrian. In the opening scene, the original murder was impressive and mysterious, but he revealed the magical methodology – by far the most interesting element of the crime – very early on, leaving the reader to slog through all the usual whodunit clues. But this, in and of itself, would not have caused me to give up on the book. After all, there might be a last-minute clever twist.
An author friend of mine once told me, “If you just give one character a limp, another character an accent, and make the third use a lot of big words, everybody will say you’re a genius at characterization.” That appears to be Mr. Clark’s approach. Characters are portrayed primarily by the outfits they wear. One woman is strident and mannishly but stylishly dressed. Another is very feminine, and gushes and blushes. I cared nothing for either of them. But this did not cause me to give up either. Perhaps they would develop later.
In the end, it was Mr. Clark’s inadequate English skills that did me in. There were awkward phrasings on every page. Actual grammatical errors were almost as frequent. He mixed up ‘who’ and ‘which’. Occasionally his syntax and vocabulary were so tortured that I simply could not figure out what he meant. His attempt to describe a hexagon, without calling it a hexagon, was mind boggling. (At least I think he meant a hexagon.)
But in the end, that didn’t matter. Reading is (or should be) a pleasure, a matter of surrendering to the rhythm of the words. But if you have to stop every couple of paragraphs to reconstruct incomprehensible phraseology, reading becomes a chore, even a burden. So I gave up. My apologies if you loved it.
This post has gone on longer than I expected, so I’ll draw to a close. I’ll be back soon, if you’ll have me, with my thoughts on the rest of the nominees for Best Novel. So please keep an eye out for Part 2!
